Art Force 5 takes page from pro football playbook to honor Nellie Bly in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA – In the shadow of a professional football game, a team of artists will continue their nationwide effort to celebrate female empowerment icons as if they were sports superstars. Alfred University’s Art Force 5 will build their second mosaic tribute to Pittsburgh’s Nellie Bly on Sunday, September 15th as thousands of fans pour into Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The artists - wearing custom designed Black and Gold jerseys with the face of Nellie Bly - will invite fans to take five minutes to paint one tile and learn about this unstoppable force for women’s rights.
This will be the third NFL-related project for the Art Force 5, which use creativity to address difficult issues of violence, poverty, and equality. In January of this year, the program was featured on NFL360 as they paid tribute to Atlanta’s earliest African-American police officers. In July, the program was invited to pay tribute to Susan B. Anthony at the Buffalo Bill’s training camp in Rochester, NY. The organizers have programs designed to honor Harriet Tubman (around Baltimore), Shirley Chisolm (around NYC), and Dorothy Dandridge (around Cleveland) but await partnerships that put them in proximity to the football action.
The series of mosaic portraits hopes to raise awareness women’s empowerment as the country prepares to pay tribute to the centennial of the nineteenth amendment, giving women the right to vote. The first five mosaics will be on exhibit at The Strong National Museum of Play in January 2020 for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Dan Napolitano, Assistant Dean of Art and Design at Alfred University and program founder is careful to clarify that this is a grassroots effort and not endorsed by the National Football League.
“It is important that this comes from the students and shared directly with the fans,” explains Napolitano. “Similar to the women we honor, they were outside a system of power trying to be heard and respected. This tribute is a bit scrappy in finding places to set up a pop-up art-build and convince fans of the merits of paying tribute to these icons. If NFL players were out here painting, people would care more about autographs than suffragists.”
The football jerseys are designed by Alfred alumni Jillian Mullen and produced by Logo Print Services of Hornell, NY. Each has the number 19 for the Amendment on the back and the name of the icon above a portrait on the front. Rochester’s Susan B. Anthony House and Museum will begin selling the jerseys on September 14 as part of their annual celebration of their namesake. Three of the Nellie Bly jerseys will be randomly awarded to three participating painters who tag #artforce5 in their social media posts.
“Our society is totally comfortable with women wearing sports jerseys with men’s names on them,” shared Napolitano. “This is an opportunity for women and men to own and wear a jersey showing they’re a fan of women and equality.”
For those interested in painting a tile, the team has been granted space by the Community College of Allegheny County beside the historic Chalfant Hall at 915 Ridge Ave just 0.3 miles north of the stadium. The pop-up tent will be engaging fans from 9am until 2pm. The event is free but due to game day parking no parking will be available specific to this event. Questions may be directed to artforce5@alfred.edu with more information posted at www.artforce5.com .
Link to video of Buffalo Bills project: https://youtu.be/oK5wbcnNx_Q