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.