For 10 years BOOM Concepts has been dedicated to the development of artists and creative entrepreneurs representing marginalized voices. Its co-founders, DS Kinsel and Thomas Agnew, have created a network for them and artistic organizations and partners, all of whom help push that mission forward.
This Saturday, that collaborative continues its reach to the Frick Environmental Center with the opening of “Collective Legacy II,” an expansive, intergenerational exhibition of over 50 years of Black arts in Western Pennsylvania, according to a Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy news release. It features a diverse collection of works from local Black artists, spanning mixed-media paintings, sculpture and classic photography.
The exhibition centers on a significant piece of art by the late Carl “Dingbat” Smith, a lesser-known Pittsburgh Black artist born in 1927 in the Hill District who died in the late 1980s. He used nails as an artistic instrument, according to biographical material posted on the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art website. A friend of artist and sculptor Thaddeus Mosley, Smith created intricate relief work using only nails of different sizes and colors to create fluid, improvised compositions.
BOOM Concepts invited about six other local artists to display their work alongside the piece loaned to Kinsel and Agnew by its Lawrenceville owner. All reflect recycling, reuse and resilience themes.
“Collective Legacy II” will also be on display at Emerald City, already started with a soft opening at its Downtown location, and later next year at the Pittsburgh International Airport.
The exhibit builds on a collaborative relationship between BOOM Concepts and the conservancy. It began earlier this year with the Juneteenth Storytime and Freedom Harvest Celebration events at Frick Park and its environmental center.
Kinsel and his wife, Anqwenique, both Pittsburgh natives, know the park well. They take their three young children — two boys and a girl who are 6, 2 and 1 — there often.
“I just love taking my children to the park. First and foremost, nature is the best babysitter,” he said. He said the Frick Environmental Center’s gallery space is small but nice. Kinsel wants other parents, children and residents to experience it all, too. And there’s one more thing: “I think it is a site [where] people aren’t expecting us,” Kinsel said. “We’re always trying to do something new, and the Frick Environmental Center was open to it.”
His organization offers artists studio spaces in its leased Garfield storefront and auxiliary locations with partners across Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. The spaces and resources cater to each artist’s creative and professional goals, according to the BOOM Concepts website.
The nonprofit Agnew and Kinsel created has been active as a creative hub, offering opportunities to local and national artists, curators, makers and neighbors. It hosts monthly art exhibitions as part of Penn Avenue’s #Unblurred First Friday gallery crawl, as well as film screenings, community meetings, music performances, dance parties, fundraisers and more. It’s been called a museum, artist incubator space, creative hub and community safe space.
This year it launched the first part of a $700,000 fundraising campaign for its “forever home” that will enable leadership to “sustain diverse, vibrant and impactful Black-led arts existence and ensure BOOM Concepts continues to build its legacy.”
Kinsel knows that the new BOOM Concepts home will be in the same neighborhood, and he has two potential sites in mind. “We want to be in Garfield,” he said. “It’s been a good 10 years. We want to make it another good 10 years in Garfield.”
Anniversary events this year included a legacy gala, artist career sessions, SolarPunk Future 2024 and other community events. The Juneteenth Storytime and Kinsel’s role as host at the Freedom Harvest Celebration fit the schedule and extended BOOM Concept’s reach into the community.
Kinsel said he, Agnew and the others are working hard on the campaign. “We keep, keep, keep sharing it,” he said. “We keep asking people to share it. We’re constantly in meetings.”
He said he knew the fundraising effort would have to be in two parts, with the first year raising awareness and financial support. The second year will continue that work. Kinsel said BOOM Concepts has received funds from many individuals and some big partners, with some announcements about those coming soon.
Grants are part of the effort as well, which Kinsel writes with a development employee. Locally they have been successful, and they made some inroads into state funding. The next logical step will be federal grant applications.
BOOM Concepts operates with a four-member staff, two full time and two part time. It contracts with 40 to 50 artists for its programming. It has 30- or 90-day artist residencies, with applications available on its website, and offers them free studio space. Kinsel and other artists take their work out of town — including Miami; Providence, Rhode Island; and the Twin Cities — in a reciprocal process as they in turn host artists from those towns and areas.
Frick Environmental Center Director of Education James Brown has known of BOOM Concepts and Kinsel for years. His background is arts education, and before joining the conservancy, he served as the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh director of creative youth development. With the available gallery space, he said, it was just a natural fit to reach out to Kinsel and offer the exhibition.
“He has a wonderful network of artists and people that we can open up the doors to Frick Park and the Frick Environmental Center,” Brown said. “My big point — Frick Park is the city’s largest park, and it’s here for everybody.
“It’s been really exciting for me. We have this wonderful gallery space. It’s been a really exciting place to find connections between nature and art and thinking really broadly about different audience voices, a different demographic we feel is important to present to. … Pittsburgh is blessed to have so many artists, including artists of color. This exhibition will certainly focus on Boom Concepts’ 10 years of work and the artists Darrel and his partner promote.”
If residents noticed more arts infused in the conservancy programming, they can thank Brown for that. The Frick Environmental Center is the perfect place for much of it, he said, and it provides a place to bring people together, to think in interdisciplinary ways about all types of topics — arts, environment, justice, climate and other concerns for the planet.
“It’s important that we are collaborating with artists while we are doing environmental education and places to celebrate it as we do it,” he explained. “It’s all part of the human experience. What better place than an environmental center to be the convening space for all these activities?”
Plus, Pittsburgh’s arts community has many organizations, and the smaller ones don’t always get attention. Showcasing Smith’s and the other artists’ work was a great opportunity to do that, too.
A painter, Kinsel tries to schedule residencies to continue his artistic work, something he works out with his wife, Agnew and BOOM Concepts staff. Kinsel calls them great and supportive people who ensure his family is taken care of while he is gone. He has just returned from a month in France, where he created 20 new artifacts and paintings for his Brain Bone Blood collection. He is working toward an exhibition of 60 works next year, already set with a September solo exhibition in Rhode Island.
This upcoming exhibition at Frick Environmental Center is foremost on his mind right now. Recognition for Smith’s and the other artists work is as well. Mentors and other peers led him to Smith’s work, and he found out more about him online and through the houses that continue to host and sell his work. He said finding and obtaining any of Smith’s work is very difficult.
Kinsel recalled seeing the untitled piece that will be part of Saturday’s exhibit in person for the first time. “It was cool for me to be in the lineage of Black artists, to see and touch the work of a Black artist [such as Smith],” he said. “[It’s] nails into boards. Not as formal or archival as we work now.”
He believes Smith and his legacy “is still with us,” and it is important for today’s artists and others to know more about. “He was able to be a professional artist and have a cultural impact that is with artists today,” Kinsel said. “He was a colleague to our elders, part of Pittsburgh’s Black arts legacy. [BOOM Concept’s] tendency is to refresh the work and his story with our small action of one piece and be surrounding him not only of his time but also of today.”
The exhibitions at three different locations will also bring attention to the artists. Kinsel wants their work to be remembered.
Curators or houses that own Smith’s work, he continued, work them for perhaps a few months. His hope is the exhibit and the tools available now that weren’t in his time when culture was more casual “operates as a beam not only to see the work but also to share stories about his work and career.
“Now more Black artists are able to exist. The Black arts community was small back then, [and] everyone had to have a regular job. Now we hold onto things, and artists can exist online. It’s really cool to have these tangible objects and share them in different ways through formal exhibitions and partnerships like with the Frick Environmental Center.”
The exhibition will run through March, and some artwork will be available for purchase. It will feature special programming, too, including an artist talk during Black History Month on Feb. 15.
No admission fee will be charged for the opening, which will include light refreshments. Registration is available here.
Helen is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she's currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.