Last Chance

Catch It or Regret It

by Lydia Navatsyk

Sarah Gamble's paintings of superficial connections — strings of lights and cords running into outlets — do nothing to expel the loneliness permeating her dense, gray fogs. She depicts radio waves drifting futilely into an uninhabited landscape and UFOs hovering, waiting to establish contact with a world not of men, but of stereos and headphones.

Across the Sea (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

As an urban redeveloper in 1997 Pittsburgh, Harmond Wilks (Harry Lennix) sees the dilapidated Hills district as the perfect place for a new Starbucks. That is, until he realizes "revitalizing" means paving over hallmarks of his African-American heritage. The language of August Wilson's play wavers between poetic vernacular and hard entrepreneurial talk. Wilks must decide which one speaks to the future he wishes to achieve.

When 40 young artists illustrate the phrase "Across the Sea," they express great fantasies, nightmares and longings. The waves are at once toppling and transporting; they are the ruffles of a woman's dress, swallowing up a giant vessel, and the force that carries a young warrior to adventure. Sometimes, the sea is a distance — between empires, lovers, past and present, dream and reality. From childhood to old age, our sense of its mystery only deepens.