Check out "Glass Lifeforms 2025" at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, enjoy original productions at the 24-hour-play festival by Full Day Suspension or see ceramic artist Keiko Fukazawa's retrospective — here's what to do in Pittsburgh this weekend.
Visual Art
Contemporary Craft celebrates the work of Japanese-born, California-based and nationally known ceramics artist Keiko Fukazawa. “The Space In Between” is a retrospective of her more-than-40-year career that runs the gamut from white porcelain handguns as memorials to victims of violence to decorative plates incorporating manga and other comics art. The exhibit opens with a reception Fri., Feb. 7.
Visual Art
The next edition of Unblurred, the Penn Avenue gallery crawl, is Fri., Feb. 7. Highlights include the opening reception for “Glass Lifeforms 2025,” Pittsburgh Glass Center’s exhibit of 50 original glass works of fish, fruit, flowers and more from an international open call. Also on the avenue that night: an artist reception, with live music, for “Pittsburgh’s Avant-Garde,” the big retrospective at the Irma Freeman Center. (It’s followed on Sun., Feb. 8, by a panel discussion on the show.)
Dance
The dancers of Attack Theatre perform in a unique team-up with New York City-based alt-pop artist Rachel Sage and frequent Attack collaborator Dave Eggar. “Sessions,” billed as a blend of a coffeehouse concert and a theatrical dance work, draws on Sage’s catalogue of more than 20 albums and EPs. Sage’s recent music deals with her treatment for cancer. She and Eggar perform live alongside the dancers for one night only, Sat., Feb. 8, at Attack’s studios in Lawrenceville.
Theater
For a theatrical high-wire act, there’s nothing quite like a 24-hour-play festival. A group of playwrights gets one night to each write short plays for actors they’ve just selected, then pitch those plays to directors who have until the following evening to get the 10-minute dramas or comedies on their feet. Suspension Theatrical Arts returns with the second annual Full Day Suspension event (“The Squeakuel”) at Mr. Smalls. Audiences can see all half-dozen or so finished plays the night of Sat., Feb. 8.
Visual Art
The Westmoreland Museum of American Art is launching its Year of Women Artists with “Our Own Work, Our Own Way: Southern Modern Women Artists.” The exhibit drawn from South Carolina’s Johnson Collection includes work from the 1940s onward by more than 40 artists, including Anni Albers, Elaine de Kooning and dozens of more overlooked names. The show opens Sun., Feb. 9, and runs through May 18.
Words
Antonia Hylton, a Peabody- and Emmy-winner for her TV news work, visits Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures with her acclaimed 2024 nonfiction book “Madness.” The bestseller tells the harrowing, 93-year-long story of Maryland’s Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records. The book also explores Hylton’s own family’s experiences with mental illness. She speaks in the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland, on Mon., Feb. 10.
