Our first day at Children's Museum Pittsburgh was AMAZING!  Staff have been amazingly welcoming and supportive of our process.  We unpacked our goods and hit the ground running.  Day one included thrift store runs, fabric collecting, gluing, cutting, tying and exploring the museum space.  DID YOU KNOW that museum contains an amazing collection of artwork?  REAL Warhol painting hang inside the exhibits to children to see up close and personal. NOT POSTERS, the REAL PRINTS.  wow.    With one day under our belt we are getting closer to the opening.  Tomorrow will be a long day...

THE NEST has been in planning mode since JUNE 2014.  It began with conversations between CMP and myself when they invited me to come for the FINE Artist's Residency.  I soon invited Anastasia into the project because or fabulous collaborative past working on installation performances.  Plus she has an AMAZING design aesthetic that I trust and speaks to my own.  We soon began talking of an evolving space that tells a story and uses clues for visitors to construct the meaning of the space.  THUS, THE NEST was born.  

We have gone back and forth between a couple of designs thinking about different spaces within the museum, material considerations and time constraints.  Above is an image of the space where our installation will be built- the CMP Art Studio.  The image of the side shows our design inspiration- a giant nest made of macrame rope and maps.  OUR CREATURE is a vagabond, a traveller.  Its home takes many forms and for the next 10 days...IT LIVES INSIDE A MUSEUM!

Whew.  It has been a long journey in preparation for THE NEST @ Children's Museum Pittsburgh.  LUMiNS (our team) is  ready to arrive at the museum, unpack all of our materials and get building.  We have been speaking by video and email for FAR TOO LONG and its time to meet our fabulous collaborators who live in PGH.  We are lucky to be working with a fabulous puppeteer theatrical designer, and teaching artist,, Lisa Leibering, who has worked on many projects at the museum before and knows the ins and outs of on-your-feet art making with young people. Lisa design work is seen ALL OVER Pittsburgh and she is the Manager of School and Community Programs for Gateway to the Arts and a professor at 
California University of Pennsylvania where she teaches costume design and theatre courses. Also collaborating with us is Jamie Murphy, an award-winning, Pittsburgh-based leader in the dance community.  Jamie brings dance and choreography around the country and currently teaches with Pittsburgh Ballet Theater School.

 HOW LUCKY IS LUMiNS to work with such incredible artists?!?

SO excited to announce that a team of artists and I will bring an EVOLVING installation performance, THE NEST to the Pittsburgh Children's Museum as part of the FINE Foundation's Artist Residency beginning Sept. 20 through Sept. 29 2014!  LUMiNS is the name of our artists' collective which includes myself as director, Anastasia Schneider as production designer along with fellow collaborators Lisa Leibering, Jamie Murphy and Siri Hellerman.  Our team comes from Minneapolis, Phoenix, NYC and Pittsburgh to present this exciting work at CMP.

      THE NEST is an installation space that will evolve over nine days in residence at the museum. A GIANT creature has made its home inside the museum and together with visitors we will make artwork, explore clues and ask big questions to discovery the identity of the creature and its story which, really involves all of us!

MORE INFORMATION found at https://pittsburghkids.org/events/1341