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Shuttered factories, abandoned warehouses and boarded up store fronts are being re-purposed as galleries and performance spaces by people with passion and vision. Art From the Ground Up was created to provide a showcase for some of the most innovative members of Pittsburgh’s emerging arts community.00000176-e6f7-dce8-adff-f6f7706f0000Art From the Ground Up is hosted by Bob Studebaker and is a monthly series highlighting small grass roots arts organizations and individual artists that take non-traditional approaches to the creation, presentation, and even the definition of art.Know an organization Bob should check out? Email him with your suggestions.

The Pillow Project "Experiments" in The East End

The Pillow Project

It began nearly ten years ago as “an evolving experiment for improvisational free jazz movement, performance-happenings and new ideas in dance,” and The Pillow Project has never wandered far from its roots. 

Pearlann Porter heads the group that sees the word “jazz” as a verb. The group gathers the second Saturday of every month at “The Space Upstairs” in Pittsburgh's East End to perform.  Project members call the studio in a repurposed warehouse a “4,000 square foot canvas where audiences and artists interact.”

“Its been an evolving project… that has developed into this small community of local artists, all with the same idea of execution,” said member Jordan Bush.

The Pillow Project invites the public in for live multimedia experimentations and honest, spontaneous, jazzed expressions of the moment.”

During those experimentations Bush does chalk sketches.  “It’s a very different style of art because being jazz it thrives on the improv.  So it’s definitely art but it’s kind of in its own category.”

The Space Upstairs,” where the group performs, forces the Pillow Project to use everything in the room.  “There’s no back stage to this space,” said Bush who has been called the Chalk Ninja, “we’re moving in and out with the crowd… and all that just adds to the honesty of the experience.”

Members of the troop and some of their audience members have called the art scene in Pittsburgh a “Petri dish” and they are working to develop cultures from their improvisational experiment.

Bob is a host for JazzWorks. Bob has been working in different areas of the radio industry for 33 years. He thinks “public radio is a forum for ideas and entertainment unavailable on commercial radio and that makes it indispensable.” Bob is a lifelong Pittsburgher who married and raised both of his children in his home city.