Brew House Arts

03/20/2025

ggggrimes’s digital drawings capture dreamy moments of q***r existence through brilliant palettes and thoughtful details of piercings, body hair, and layers of patterns. Self-taught, his style is inspired by graphic novels and manga, while his compositions are unapologetically authentic, brimming with desire, lived experience, and unabashed pleasure at the opportunity to self-express freely. 

gggrimes has three prints included in When the Lights Come On—Alone Time, Party, and Hookup.

03/11/2025

Jules Malice is an inter-media artist, VJ and DJ working across visual art, sound, installation, and performance to create spaces for audience interaction and eye-opening experiences. Hanging above the gallery are four satin banners, displaying Malice’s digital paintings, with one enlivened by a video projection. Akin to stained glass or crystals held up against the sun, the artworks cast a spiritual atmosphere encapsulating a broader, awe-filled experience of the space. 

For them, q***r nightlife relates to nonconformity as a means to start something new, to create “space for breaking down the boxed walls that we are forced to be placed into — be it about genre or gender, just like borders, the walls gotta go.” 



Photos:

03/04/2025

Have questions about the Distillery residency program or application? Get your questions answered at our virtual info session—Tuesday, March 11, 6:30-8pm, on Zoom. Free to attend. Link in bio to register.

02/27/2025

Announcing three new programs throughout the run of When the Lights Come On: Q***r Nightlife as Emergent Space. Feel free to come to just one program, or all three. Links in bio.

Panel Discussion: Thursday, March 13, 7-8:30pm
Q***r nightlife stakeholders huny young (HUNY XO), Samira Mendoza (MIRA MIRA), Ricky Mawzlin of Jellyfish, and Clark Price of Honcho share their experience with q***r nightlife in Pittsburgh and elsewhere. Attendance is limited, with tickets available on a sliding scale from $0-$20.

Writing Workshop: Sunday, March 16, 3-6 pm
Join writers Jenna Peng and Elina Zhang of Anti-Ante-Auntie Seminar and Dade Lemanski of SINKHOLE / GLORYHOLE in an activation of the exhibition. Registration available on a sliding scale from $0-$20. Workshop capped at 21 people. BIPOC and Q***r/Trans folks prioritized. Open to all disciplines and experience levels. Submit your application by March 9th.

Closing Circle: Saturday, March 22, 4-5:30pm
When the Lights Come On closes with a community discussion about q***r nightlife and what makes it meaningful. Free to attend. Tea will be provided.

02/25/2025

Nica Ross’s practice, which is grounded in humor and play, creates social machines as a means to disrupt cultural conventions and constructs. In Ross’ “Eyeball Palace”, the wackily wavy screen paired with a thermal camera performs as a mirror, representing a common design detail found at many gay clubs. The responsive footage mimics the “autoerotic heat” of dancing with your own reflection creating a moment to shed inhibitions and celebrate, as Ross says, “being ‘too’...Too q***r, too much, too beautiful, too loud, too weird, too honest, too good.”



Photos:

02/21/2025

Applications are now open for the 2025-2026 Distillery Emerging Artist Residency! Now entering its 16th year, Distillery is a year-long studio residency designed to help seven emerging artists transition into a sustainable artistic career. Distillery teaches artists how to integrate a professional art-making practice into daily living by supporting a rigorous studio practice and providing professional development opportunities in a creative and affordable environment.

Application Deadline: April 21 (11:59 pm). You can find all the details about the program and how to apply on our website.

Have questions about the program or the application? Get your questions answered at our virtual info session on Tuesday March 11, from 6:30-8pm, over Zoom. Please register through Zoom—link in bio.

02/20/2025

Harrison Apple is an oral historian and archivist, with roots in visual art. They are the founder of the Pittsburgh Q***r History Project, an oral history and media initiative, focusing on LGBTQ after-hours nightlife in Pittsburgh from 1960 to 1990. Their interactive installation, “Playback is Endurance”, allows viewers to practice at-home archival materials and techniques. In the process of repetitively rewinding and replaying Apple’s instructions while cleaning a tape, we are encouraged to contemplate what this material means to us. 



Photos:

02/10/2025

Hear what Curator, Hannah Turpin, and a few of the artists in "When the Lights Come On" have to say about the show and their work (thanks to NEXTpittsburgh for the feature).

You can come see the show in person through March 22, 2025. Check our website for gallery hours and upcoming programs.

02/04/2025

On the opening night of When the Lights Come On, three performers energized the gallery space with dance and performance. Kiss Ebony, D’Nico Ebony, and Noir Balenciaga each left behind an item as a memory of the event. Just like many of the visual artists, ballroom grapples with the significance of nightlife existing through memory, the fleeting reality of being present for an instance of radical pleasure and liberation. In the words of True T Project & Relations Manager, Julian McClain, “These moments offer a glimpse of a world where we are free to be ourselves without fear or judgment. They can inspire us to work towards a more just and equitable future.”



Photo by

01/31/2025

When the Lights Come On: Q***r Nightlife as Emergent Space, curated by Hannah Turpin, on view through March 22.

When the Lights Come On brings together local, national, and international artists reflecting on their experiences of q***r nightlife. The exhibition looks at these gatherings as sites of communal adaptation and resilience, amplifying how radical love and pleasure are necessary for imagining a more liberated future. The exhibition features artists working across various materials, including textile, projection, drawing, printmaking, and photography. Exhibited artists include Harrison Apple, Théo Bignon, Clint Fisher, ggggrimes, Jules Malice, Amanda Pickler, Nica Ross, Janie Stamm, Mary Tremonte, True T Pittsburgh, Jimmy Wright, and sarah huny young.

Photo by

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

01/21/2025

01/17/2025

Along with the new exhibition in the gallery, next Thursday’s opening will also celebrate new work in the Glass Box Vitrine “Catching Snowflowers” by Carolina Alamilla () is a multi-media installation using glazed porcelain, glazed stoneware, vinyl, wallpaper. “Catching Snowflowers” will be on view through May 2025.

The Glass Box vitrine is located to the right of the Brew House Gallery, in the lobby of the Brew House Lofts.



12/27/2024

Thanks to you, we’ve already hit our $5,000 end of year goal! With one more week before the new year, you can still help us meet a new reach goal of $8,000. 

Beyond Distillery and our Exhibitions, Brew House also supports emerging curators through our Prospectus Program, a residency program that connects emerging curators to mentorship, direct financial support, gallery space, design services, and one-on-one staff assistance to realize their unique curatorial vision. Through Prospectus we have supported curators like Anna Mirzayan ( ), who curated Soma Grossa in 2022.

“Prospectus was an incredible learning and professionalization opportunity. The BHA team really treated me as a peer and valued my ideas and vision, and advocated for the latter to come to life. I felt like I was part of a community that respected the work I was doing, and I learned a great deal about all facets of curation.”

Stay tuned for the announcement of our new curators in the new year—and help uplift curators like Anna Mirzayan by donating today!

Link in bio to donate.

Photo by: Sean Carroll
.



12/24/2024

Happy Holidays from Brew House! We’re open for our regular gallery hours this week, Thursday 2-7pm, and Friday and Saturday 11am-4pm. This is the last weekend to see Oat Milk + HXNY: Diaspora Kaleidoscope, so make sure so stop by before it closes on Saturday!
.



12/20/2024

Yesterday Brew House was featured on WQED’s Voice of the Arts Podcast! Executive Director Natalie Sweet, and curators Tacumba Turner and Venice Pascual sat down to talk about their exhibition Oat Milk + HXNY: Diaspora Kaleidoscope.

Oat Milk + HXNY features 35 artists from three diasporic communities, representing 11 ethnicities, whose authentic and individual stories weave together to form a rich tapestry of the collective experience of being a BIPOC in America. As part of the exhibition, the artists were invited to place objects that are personally and culturally meaningful on the community altar. Oat Milk + HXNY will be on view through December 28, 2024.

Listen now at WQED.org. Link in bio.



12/17/2024

Thank you to everyone who has donated to our end of year campaign so far—we’re so close to reaching our $5,000 goal! Your support will help us continue to support local art by providing necessary opportunities for emerging artists like Nick Sardo ()—one of our Distillery artists-in-residence from 2022-2023.

“The Distillery residency completely changed the way I approach my work. I had been looking to deeply delve into painting for a while, and having the space and time to push myself made it clear that this was something I wanted to focus on. The freedom to work much larger and explore more made my practice grow exponentially.”

You can support the creativity of local artists like Nick by donating to our end of year campaign today. Thank you!

Link in bio to donate.

Photos by: Kitoko Chargois, Adam Michaels Studio
.