PITTSBURGH – West Liberty’s AIGA student group recently took a field trip to downtown Pittsburgh to visit Toonseum, SPACE Gallery, Wood Street Galleries, and the Contemporary Craft Society. Toonseum is one of three museums of cartooning in the United States. The students were given a tour of the history of cartooning and saw several examples of early animation.  Creighton Hill, Graphic Design senior and AIGA president, was overheard saying that this was his favorite place to visit of all of his previous AIGA field trips. (And he has been on a lot of trips).

The next stop was the SPACE Gallery, which was hosting “Paper Politics”, a traveling print exhibition of 180 artists ranting against America and anything to do with conservative politics. Where is the outrage over the present administration’s financial bumbling and incompetence I say? But I digress. Some of the prints showed some artistic merit.

From there we walked to the Wood Street Galleries where we were treated to some unusual sound installations including a 1000 year composition, and a darkened room filled with motion sensors that triggered bizarre, scary noises.

Then it was off to the Strip District where a fish sandwich tried to devour Professor Kang’s head!

Then to the Society for Contemporary Craft and a light-hearted Do It Yourself Exhibition featuring the now famous yarn room, which nearly devoured Mr. Padgett.