Artist Pamela Cooper is taking a leap of faith by renting studio space in Greensburg. For the first time, she’s hoping to support herself solely by making art.
If all goes well, she’ll offer art classes remotely and in her space in the Westmoreland Cultural Trust’s Incubator for the Arts suite of studios in the Union Trust building on North Main Street.
“My vision is mainly for teaching kids, to open their eyes to people who look like me,” she said. “When I was a little girl, I didn’t see artists who looked like me. I didn’t see women and I didn’t see people of color making art.”
She said there still aren’t many artists of color who are active in Westmoreland County arts organizations.
“One main thing I want to bring to this area is an understanding of artists who are Black and brown people,” she said. “My art reflects who I am, where I live, my own vision. From researching and teaching about other Black artists, both living and who have passed away, I’m going to learn as well.”
Shirley McMarlin | Tribune-Review
Greensburg artist Pamela Cooper with her work in her new studio space.
Cooper is a lifelong Greensburg resident and a graduate of Hempfield Area High School. She has a degree in fashion illustration from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and a bachelor of arts degree in graphic design from Seton Hill University. She also has a minor in fine arts and K-12 teaching certification from Seton Hill.
She has taught art in a variety of settings, but this is the first time she’s had her own studio. Every room in her home has served that function at times, she said.
“When I first moved in, I didn’t know if I’d have money,” she said. ” I wrote it on a piece of paper and said, ‘God, I need this amount of money, (to pay the rent) for a whole year.’ I came in to sign my contract and I turned it over, and saw that I was actually able to write out the check for the full year. It was such a blessing.”
Cooper works in various media, including painting, drawing and sculpture.
“Lately I’m focusing on painting and drawing; that seems to be my niche right now,” she said.
“I’ve been doing blind contour drawings, and now I’m adding color to them,” she said. “With blind contour, I’m looking at someone face-to-face live or at a two-dimensional image of a person, and I’ll begin to draw what I see — but I keep my eyes directly on the subject. And I don’t stop until I get to the point that I feel that I’m done.”
Fleshing out the line drawings with watercolor is “a leap of faith,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone add color to them, so I’m thinking, ‘Should I do this? Maybe I’ll ruin it.’ There’s always a back-and-forth, you’re not sure if you’re going to ruin it, but a friend kept nudging me to do it and see what happens.”
One recent piece is titled, “I Just Wanna Live.” The title is taken from a song of the same name by teenage singer Keedron Bryant, which confronts police killings of Black people.
“Keedron Bryant’s song resonated within and I was compelled to create a blind contour line portrait of him,” she said. “As an artist, I drew from my own experiences of racial injustice. My art is my voice, my contribution to the movement.”
Notable mentors
Cooper said she has been encouraged in her work by renowned sculptor Thaddeus Mosley, a Pittsburgh resident.
“I got a chance to go to his studio and ask him questions about how he got his work into museums, what he did to get his work out there, and he was very gracious,” she said. “I was able to listen to him and learn from him. We sat, we talked, we drank some wine, we listened to jazz.”
The main lesson Mosley imparted, she said, is that persistence is a large factor in success.
Among the many artworks on Mosley’s wall, Cooper said, she was surprised to find a piece by fellow Greensburg artist Sue Pollins.
“I told Sue and she said, ‘Oh, we go back a long way.’”
Shirley McMarlin | Tribune-Review
A work in progress in the Greensburg studio of artist Pamela Cooper.
In her days at the Art Institute, Cooper had another well-known mentor in Henry Koerner, an Austrian-American artist who was Artist-in-Residence at Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) in the early 1950s and later taught at the Institute.
He was known for his magical realism style and for painting more than 50 portrait covers for Time magazine.
When Cooper was discouraged by another instructor’s criticism, she said Koerner told her in heavily accented, salty language that the person didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Art really teaches you about life. There are some things, that once you do it, you can’t go back, you can’t change it. You have to learn to adapt,” she said, saying that the lesson applies to both making art and navigating life. “Now I feel that I’m at a point in my life that everything is starting to come together. I’m doing what I love to do and what I believe is my God-given gift, and now I’ll be able to share that and give back to the community.”
Anyone interested in inquiring about art lessons from Cooper can message her on Facebook or call 724-672-3853.
Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley at 724-836-5750, smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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