Summer School: State of the Sky, collaboration with Luke Stettner
Interdisciplinary Arts-Centered Education Program
Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
June 17 - August 26, 2025
Summer School: State of the Sky is an experimental education program that will take place within the State of the Sky exhibition at Mattress Factory’s, 516 Sampsonia Way building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Summer School invites both artists and non-artists, aiming to create a diverse cohort of participants. Twelve participants have been selected through an open call, and the program is offered at a minimal cost. The curriculum includes six bi-weekly seminars, twice-weekly access to the exhibition’s solar darkroom over twelve-weeks, and two public film screenings.
Summer School: State of the Sky will focus on the document to reimagine and challenge dominant narratives. Participants will explore documents from archives, libraries, museums, and personal collections, engaging in the creative translation of newspapers, photographs, data, and other archival materials. The program will explore ways to un-archive and recirculate marginalized, contested, and unknown histories.
The seminars will be led by a diverse group of practitioners, including poet Michael Leong, urban geographer/architect Nida Rehman, political ecologist Noah Theriault, interdisciplinary artist Sobia Ahmad, with the first and final seminars taught by artists and program organizers, Luke Stettner and Calista Lyon. Each seminar will provide a unique space for participants to connect with various research methodologies, engage in creative experimentation, and foster critical discussions about cultural knowledge and memory.
In addition to the seminars, participants will have twice-weekly access to the exhibition’s solar darkroom. This unique space will allow participants to experiment with photograms—images created using the sun as a light source. The darkroom will serve as a hands-on creative laboratory, supporting personal research and artistic exploration.
Two public film screenings, Artifacts + Afterlives, curated by Benny Shaffer and co-hosted by Pittsburgh Sound + Image, will bookend the seminar series. These screenings will feature cinematic works that resonate with the themes of the State of the Sky exhibition and the Summer School, providing a broader context for the program.