Condition Report at Tomayko Foundation ❉ March 14–April 18, 2025

My work Condition Report, installed as part of every speck of dust illuminated at the Tomayko Foundation (Pittsburgh, PA) in partnership with Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and april april. March 14–April 18, 2025. Images by: Chris Uhren

Erin Mallea, Condition Report, 2024–ongoing
Aluminum and bronze slag, thrift store jewelry chain, glass and plastic beads, fishing sinkers, pennies, nurdles and polyurethane foam from the Ohio River, and spotted lantern flies coated in beeswax, resin, nail polish and sugar.

 

every speck of dust illuminated ✰ March 14, 2025

A new iteration of Condition Report will be on view as part of every speck of dust illuminated opening March 14, 2025 at the Tomayko Foundation juried by Patrick Bova & Lucas Regazzi of april april.

every speck of dust illuminated
March 14 – April 18, 2025

Alexandra Lakin
Karen Lue
Erin Mallea
Joseph Ryznar
Shori Sims

every speck of dust illuminated presents a tableau of the everyday. Inspired by Richard Siken’s poem “Visible World,” the exhibition sketches a feeling around quotidian notions of quietude, the banal, dreaming, and interiority (Siken, 2005). Assembled here is the work of five artists with ties to Allegheny County, each of whom have distinct material approaches to observing these notions and the memories inflected therein.

 

Uprooted: Plants Out of Place ✰ March 22, 2025

 

Issues of Tree News will be featured in Uprooted: Plants Out of Place, opening March 22, 2025 at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The exhibition explores humans’ role in the history and future of invasive plants.

Tree News No. 3, Summer 2022

 

Machina Ex Natura ✰ Feb 20–March 31, 2025

An iteration of my installation, Permissible Dose, and my short film Obscuring Power, will be on view as part of Machina Ex Natura at Kentucky College of Art + Design’s 849 Gallery from February 20–March 31, 2025. Thanks to Robert Zacharias for technical assistance.

 

Glass Center Residency ✰ Winter 2025

I’ve returned to the Pittsburgh Glass Center for a second Idea Furnace Residency. I am continuing work I began in 2023 (see below), and making nine new molds for casting and blowing glass.

 

Tree News ✰ Public Collections + Local Sellers

Tree News No. 5 was recently acquired and added to the collections of several institutions. It’s now in: Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Otis College of Art & Design’s Artist Book & Zine Collection, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Zine Collection, and on its way to George Mason University Library.

In addition to purchasing online, copies are available at Fungus Books and Paper, Dirt in Pittsburgh.

 

Tree News at PABF ✰ Sept 28–29, 2024

Left: Travis Mitzel, Tree of Heaven and Spotted Lanternfly relationship sprawl across time, Pennsylvania, and beyond, 2024. Right: Erin Mallea, found, stomped Spotted Lanternfly, 2023.

Tree News No. 5 is launching at the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair at the Carnegie Museum of Art in late September! Subscribe or pre-order here.

Issue 5 features contributions from scientists, historians and anthropologists to consider the larger context of Spotted Lanternfly's (SLF) arrival to Pennsylvania and spread in North America. We examine the media buzz and invasion rhetoric of the viral “STOMP!” campaigns, the history of the insect’s preferred plant, Tree of Heaven, in Pennsylvania, and novel coexistence on a planet ravaged by human industry and climate change. What does it mean to be “invasive” to already transformed and evolving ecosystems?

The issue was organized, designed, and produced by Erin Mallea and Travis Mitzel. Issue No. 5 features an excerpt from an Interdisciplinary Roundtable about the SLF at the American Ethnological Society’s Spring 2024 Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. The panel included presentations by Nicole Heller, Ecologist and Associate Curator of Anthropocene Studies at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Kelli Hoover, Professor of Entomology at Pennsylvania State University, Travis Mitzel, Artist and Instructor at Seton Hill University, Noah Theriault, Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, and Emily Wanderer, Associate Professor of Anthropology, at the University of Pittsburgh. The panel was organized by Noah Theriault, Nicole Heller and Emily Wanderer.

The issue concludes with an essay by Maria Ryabova, PhD Candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, focused on the development and implications of a Spotted Lanternfly-killing robot within the context of robotics research ecosystems.

 

Installation at (___) Residency ✰ May 2024

Condition Report, detail, work in progress, 2024. Aluminum and bronze slag, thrift store jewelry chain, and beads, polyfoam "stones" and spotted lanternflies coated in beeswax, nail polish, resin, and sugar. Photo: Sean Carrol

Installation images from Condition Report, a residency exhibition at (___), aka Blankspace in Pittsburgh, PA during the month of May 2024.

(___) invites artists to creatively engage vacant spaces within a house undergoing slow renovation. (___) and its primary steward, artist Joey Behrens, offer the space as a resource and invitation to engage in experimental, playful, and generative acts of co-creation.

Photos: Sean Carrol

 

Shiftworks Kayak Tour Returns ✰ August + September, 2024

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Photo by Ishara Henry

I’ve been commissioned by Shiftworks to design a tour in the public realm again this summer. Join me for kayak tours to Sycamore Island in August and September, 2024.

Sycamore Island is one of the few undeveloped islands in Allegheny County. Managed by the Allegheny Land Trust, Sycamore Island hosts a significant floodplain hardwood forest and presents an opportunity for the public to visit and experience a woodland that is imperiled in Pennsylvania.

Participants will be led on island walking trails with a series of listening prompts. Tour goers will practice redirecting attention by closely listening to distant, subtle, and shifting sounds, increasing awareness of our larger sonic environment.

Learn more and register here.

 

Carlow University Impact Series ✰ February 26, 2024

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I’m honored to be participating in Carlow University’s inaugural, Impact Series event, moderated by Carlow President Dr. Kathy Humphrey: Solutions for a More Sustainable World.

I will be speaking about my exhibition, Permissible Dose, and short film, Obscuring Power, which will both be on view at the Carlow University Art Gallery opening in April 2024.

To register for the event, visit https://bit.ly/47Zc22F.

Monday, February 26th | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Rosemary Heyl Theatre at Carlow University

 

Roundtable: Cultures of Atmosphere ✰ December 6, 2023

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I’ll be a panelist at Cultures of Atmosphere, a virtual roundtable discussion about the ways that artists and community members figure, represent, respond to, and participate in an atmospheric commons, facilitated and organized by artists Lindsey french and Alex Young.

The event will focus on southwestern Pennsylvania as a region where conditions of toxicity and industrial pollution have significantly impacted social and ecological communities, and where local conversations regarding shared atmospheres have generated international public discourse and environmental legislation.


December 6, 2023, 7pm EST
Online via Zoom ✰ REGISTER

 

Tree News at the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair

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Tree News (me and Paper Buck) released of Issue 4 at the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair. I had the pleasure of speaking with artist Magali Duzant about her upcoming book A Tree Grows in Queens, herbaria, and working with archives and being in conversation with Mason Heberling, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History Curator of Botany, for the issue. We were thrilled to participate in a panel discussion at with museum organized by Paper Cuts featuring Homie House Press and The Black Unicorn Library and Archive Project. Our discussion will be available online shortly.