Sidewall: a mural project

Sidewall: a mural project sidewall is an outdoor arts venue, exhibiting new work on a bi-monthly basis.

sidewall is a public mural exhibition space hosted on the side wall of a private residence, dedicated to showing works by artists both local and abroad, creative collaborations, etc., with murals rotating the first Friday of every month. this is done in hopes of increasing the opportunity for artists to publicly exhibit work, as well as inspire verbal and visual dialogue around current issues.

April 2026Faron ThompsonLandscape
05/03/2026

April 2026
Faron Thompson
Landscape

This April through May, sidewall hosts Landscape, an austere environmental expanse captured by artist Faron Thompson. --...
05/03/2026

This April through May, sidewall hosts Landscape, an austere environmental expanse captured by artist Faron Thompson.
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Faron Thompson of Squirrel Hill is a versatile painter and illustrator. He is a lover of classical artists from history and often takes inspiration from their work. From landscapes to still lives, to portraits – and everything in between – Faron is always ready to paint in his own style. Along with classical painting, he is also a very talented cartoonist, taking inspiration from 90s character cartoons. If you’re lucky enough to catch him in the act, he will combine his comedic-cartoonist style with his classical paintings and dazzle you with something unique and interesting. Faron is also a talented weaver and is part of our Citizen Made program hosted at Contemporary Craft. He weaves complete textiles from start to finish with very little assistance. After only 1.5 years of weaving part-time he has shown an exemplary depth of knowledge in the process of weaving.
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Creative Citizen Studios (CCS) uses art to bring people of all abilities together. We work with artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities to make, exhibit, and sell their work. Our weekly art classes, workshops, and exhibit opportunities help promote our artists while connecting them with a larger community of artists.

CCS is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with Citizen-artists featured in local, regional, and national art shows and exhibit spaces.

February 2026Mick FisherJungle
03/06/2026

February 2026
Mick Fisher
Jungle

Sidewall Project has the great joy and privilege of collaborating with Creative Citizens Studios, exhibiting six of thei...
03/06/2026

Sidewall Project has the great joy and privilege of collaborating with Creative Citizens Studios, exhibiting six of their talented artists over the next year!

This past February through the month of March, we are sharing
"Jungle", the wild and wondrous work by Mick Fisher, teaming with the fictitious and real, fabled and familiar.
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Mick Fisher, of Upper Saint Clair, has been committed to his art-making practice his entire life and became part of Creative Citizen Studios in 2012. He is constantly drawing the world around him, transforming everyday observations into imaginative scenes filled with character mash-ups, visual puns, and playful jokes. Mick’s work reflects both curiosity and humor, inviting viewers into vivid, imagined worlds.

Color is central to Mick’s creative process and one of his favorite aspects of making art. He especially enjoys painting and drawing, and he is also a talented weaver, bringing the same focus, precision, and creativity to fiber-based work. Mick’s remarkable attention to detail allows him to create clean, straight lines and carefully spaced compositions entirely by eye, without the use of rulers or measurements. His dedication, technical skill, and joyful exploration of materials continue to shape a distinctive and engaging artistic voice.
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Creative Citizen Studios (CCS) uses art to bring people of all abilities together. We work with artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities to make, exhibit, and sell their work. Our weekly art classes, workshops, and exhibit opportunities help promote our artists while connecting them with a larger community of artists.

CCS is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with Citizen-artists featured in local, regional, and national art shows and exhibit spaces.

September 2025Maryellen SandsEternal Garden
09/27/2025

September 2025
Maryellen Sands
Eternal Garden

Through October, sidewall project celebrates the creative spirit of Maryellen Sands (1926–2019), hosting her exuberant c...
09/27/2025

Through October, sidewall project celebrates the creative spirit of Maryellen Sands (1926–2019), hosting her exuberant collaged work Eternal Garden.

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Maryellen Sand was a talented and dedicated textile artist whose creative journey spanned over seven decades. Growing up in rural Nebraska, she discovered her passion for sewing early on, crafting doll clothes on an old pedal sewing machine. After settling in Boston and raising a family, Maryellen successfully ran a custom slipcover and drapery business for many years. Upon retirement, she embraced the quilting community, earning numerous ribbons and awards for her exquisite work. Later in life, she transitioned to creating detailed figurative textile folk art pieces, gaining further recognition in art shows and galleries. Even in her final year, despite facing dementia, Maryellen continued to express her artistic vision through a series of abstract collage works, exemplifying her lifelong commitment to creativity and craftsmanship.

July 2025Morgan DevillierPiñata Pieces
07/17/2025

July 2025
Morgan Devillier
Piñata Pieces

The final exhibit in the collaboration between sidewall project and Los Fantasmas is artist Morgan Devillier and her wor...
07/17/2025

The final exhibit in the collaboration between sidewall project and Los Fantasmas is artist Morgan Devillier and her work Piñata Pieces.

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This piece explores nostalgic symbols as a clustered representation of the artist's multi-racial identity. The shapes gather together in a time capsule of cultural heritage and exploration. Only a few of the shapes represent historically categorized ancestral symbols. The shapes that are abstracted depict the unknown or uncertainty in ancestry, a reflection of the erasure of culture through assimilation. By exploring new shapes, Morgan DeVillier embraces the unknown to reshape their sense of self and identity as a person with diverse and unknown ancestry and culture. The white spaces emphasize the notion of erasure and the self history of disconnection from cultural practices, creating a sense of emptiness and tension within the piece. The represented symbols and shapes clustered and unorganized over a white plaster of Paris can be viewed as the childlike nature of discovery, like drawing on white walls.

June 2025Veronica HerreraI Feel Seen
06/14/2025

June 2025
Veronica Herrera
I Feel Seen

The collaboration between sidewall x Los Fantasmas continues this month with I Feel Seen, a playful and pointed piece by...
06/14/2025

The collaboration between sidewall x Los Fantasmas continues this month with I Feel Seen, a playful and pointed piece by Veronica Herrera.

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My artwork centers around my own experiences as a Chicano artist. My love of color and patterns are an integral part of my work.

“I Feel Seen” (Artwork with self-portraits and emoticons)

This diptych focuses on the superficial judgement and discrimination people can have for one another based on skin color, race, occupation, economic status, accent, gender, age, ability, and beliefs and the resulting negative introspection that can have lasting harmful effects on mental health.

With social media adding a layer of judgement and need for acceptance, these paintings depict an exchange of emoticon comments. The large, colorful emojis convey the weight that approvals carry. Playful icons are common responses to funny social media posts, but they also symbolize the act of making fun of someone, and the use of humor to mask negative feelings.

The blue backgrounds represent common web browser color options, and the transparent self-portraits represent anonymity online as well as their cyber existence. While one face looks upward in an almost idolizing manner, the other face looks down on the viewer with a critical gaze. This visual motion from the viewer to each face creates a back-and-forth motion that simulates up and down scrolling on a mobile device.

It is my hope that these paintings create a moment for the viewer to pause and reflect on the positive, personal impact they can have on others and encourage acceptance and equal treatment for all.

Veronica Herrera is an affiliate professor in the Visual Art Program teaching courses in drawing and painting. She holds a BFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio and an MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder. She has exhibited in numerous exhibitions nationally. Some notable places she has exhibited include the Museo de las Americas, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CU Museum of Natural History, and the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Herrera is best known for her colorful, abstract works. She finds inspiration in her everyday surroundings, and looks to re-interpret her memories through color, repetition, and pattern. Color interaction and repetition of shapes are at the forefront. Color mixing and creating color schemes are part of her art-making process. Veronica looks for ways to make color pop by selecting fluorescent, highly saturated or complementary color pairs, and muting areas of her paintings with tints, shades and tones. Themes that reoccur in her artwork include self-portraiture, Hispanic cultural pieces and abstraction.

Veronica has her studio in Lakewood, Colorado.

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608 S Millvale Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA
15224

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