Join Pittsburgh Creative Corps artists for a series of six tours that offer an exciting opportunity to discover new layers of place, to gain knowledge with a group, or find a new way of having fun. Tours are held on Saturday mornings from 10–11:30 a.m. Space is limited; advance registration is required.
Psychogeography: City Practice
Explore Pittsburgh neighborhoods through creative artist-designed tours.
Psychogeography encourages curious navigation of public spaces.
Shiftworks’ Program Manager of Education Rachel Klipa and writer & educator Sherrie Flick co-designed the pilot program Psychogeography: City Practice. After years of collaboration on other non-traditional walking tours, Flick and Klipa developed a cohort model to teach artists how to create experiential public tours of their own through movement, instinct, and alternative practices, focused on neighborhoods in the city of Pittsburgh.
Tours
September 12
10:00–11:30 a.m.
Sarah Shotland
Miracles of Pittsburgh
What is a miracle? How can an artist connect with the mysteries that reveal extraordinary moments of surprising truth and beauty in everyday life?
Whether you’re a long-time believer or a professional skeptic, the Miracles of Pittsburgh tour invites you to encounter secret spaces that spark contemplation, reflection, and acts of witness. The morning includes three creative prompts during a silent walking tour with stops at Holy Spirit Byzantine Church; Friends Quaker Meeting House; and St. Paul’s Cathedral.
These three houses of worship are situated inside a single 1-mile route in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood, and demonstrate some of the rich and diverse religious identities of our city.
These faith communities welcome those of all faiths (or no faith) into their spaces for contemplation and reflection. At each stop, participants will complete creative activities focused on secrets, mysteries, beauty, truth, and grief in an attempt to make the invisible power surrounding us visible.
Participants should bring a writing utensil and a notebook. All other creative supplies will be provided.
About Sarah Shotland
Sarah Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette and the artbook Abolition is Everything. Her work has been published in The Iowa Review, North American Review, Creative Nonfiction, and Gulf Coast. Her work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Heinz Endowments. She co-founded Words Without Walls and is the Program Director of Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University where she is also Chair of the Art, Communications, and English Department.
September 19
10:00–11:30 a.m.
Carolina Loyola-Garcia
Love Letters in Secret Gardens: Highland Park and East Liberty
Dear M,
Your letter made me look for the map, I started getting lost in it. Isn’t a map supposed to guide? When you think about your lover, eleven years ago, who do you find? Can you see yourself through the lens of time? Have you ever mapped your affections, drawing paths from one lover to another? So many questions…
Walk with artist Carolina Loyola-Garcia as she leads a tour through amorous letters, gardens, and Madeleine de Scudery’s “Map of Love.” You will have the opportunity to experience remembrance in association with movement in the cozy and safe environment of beautiful gardens in Highland Park and East Liberty. You will not need a topographic map, but might leave the tour with a draft of an emotional map and the beginning of a letter, along with some gestures to accompany it all.
Using a few back alleys, we will traverse a new path, trying to find a connection to the backyard of your own memories. There will be prompts at each stage, to engage you with your own self and memory, and maybe with those of others. What have you erased and what have you kept? Who have you kept and who has been forgotten? Still, so many questions…
Please bring a notebook and a writing implement.
About Carolina Loyola-Garcia
Carolina Loyola-Garcia is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator whose work explores the intersections of identity, memory, and the human condition. Originally from Santiago, Chile, she has spent decades contributing to the cultural landscape of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she established a practice that bridges experimental storytelling with digital innovation.
Her artistic approach often blends diverse media—including photography, video, and performance—to examine how we relate to our environments and one another. In her large-scale commissions, she frequently utilizes digital collage and fractal geometry to create immersive visual experiences that offer a sense of solace and wonder. As an artist committed to the public sphere, Loyola-Garcia’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally, reflecting her belief that art is a vital tool for community connection and personal reflection. Her practice remains a constant search for the beauty and complex rhythms inherent in both nature and the human spirit.
September 26
10:00–11:30 a.m.
Ruby Waldo
Utility Notation
Have you ever noticed the dots, lines, and dashes spray painted on the ground and wondered what they meant? Join artist Ruby Waldo for Utility Notation, a guided walk through Point Breeze to learn how to recognize and interpret utility code.
Just as the sidewalk directs the movement of pedestrians above the ground, electric cables, gas lines, water mains, and sewage pipes guide the flow of resources below it. These systems are tucked underground and woven into networks out of sight. Utility code is visual language to notate this hidden infrastructure.
Participants will learn the colors and symbols of utility code before using the sight of each marking as a cue for simple movement or embodied observation. A visual score will be distributed for participants to refer to on the walk and to keep after the session. Utility Notation encourages participants to pay close attention to the surface of the sidewalk and to their own bodies as they move along it.
About Ruby Waldo
Ruby Waldo is a pedestrian in Pittsburgh, PA. Her work is concerned with the body and the built environment, the landscape she lives in and the rhythms that shape it. Her projects range from newspapers and mail to walks and workshops that are informed by her experience as a caregiver and educator. In the studio, Ruby is often gathering, arranging, or redistributing materials such as archival imagery, architectural salvage, and found choreography. She holds a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture with a concentration in Social Practice & Sustainability from The Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2027, she will graduate from the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism with her certification as a clinical herbalist. For now, Ruby works in the children’s department of the public library.
October 10
10:00–11:30 a.m.
Tess Wilson
Thoughtful Excavation: An Exploration of Sediment, Slag, and Self
Local writer, artist, and naturalist Tess Wilson leads environmental and creative education around the region. She offers regular zine workshops, bird walks, and art classes to folks of all ages. What excites her most is finding ways to use natural places as artistic inspiration, which is the focus of this walk.
Pittsburgh has been shaped–in more ways than one–by geological and topographical changes over millions of years. From the high hills overlooking our rivers to the low streams that wind through our parks, this city is a tapestry designed by time and temperature. In a place with so many folds and crevices, it’s no surprise there are unseen and unexpected delights everywhere.
Join Tess to explore a short section of Nine Mile Run, between Summerset at Frick Park and Swisshelm Park. We will walk on a gravel trail that cuts through two eras of geological and industrial development. As we wander, we will examine our own lived histories together, drawing and writing our way along the stream.
This 1.8 mile walk will start and end at the parking lot on Old Browns Hill Road, just before the river’s edge. Since the trail surface is gravel and includes inclines, please wear hiking shoes. There is some tree cover, but please prepare for any weather, this includes bringing bug spray and sunscreen and/or other sun protection.
All creative supplies will be provided.
About Tess Wilson
Tess Wilson (she/her) is a librarian, artist, and naturalist. She loves teaching and learning about information democracy, creative education, and environmental advocacy. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University and an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh. She has worked in public and academic libraries, in both outreach and reference. Most recently, she was a co-author of an ALA United for Libraries Action Planner about building diverse library boards and contributed a chapter to ACRL’s Data Literacy Cookbook. In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering with her local watershed and making art of all kinds. She collects big books and small rocks.
October 17
10:00–11:30 a.m.
Marlana Vassar
Hidden Highland Park: A Tour of Art, Nature, and Community
What if art isn’t confined to museums or galleries? Join public artist Marlana Adele Vassar for a guided walk through Highland Park to explore the many ways art, community, and nature shape our experience of place.
Beginning at Giuseppe Moretti’s historic Welcome sculptures and concluding at Urban Conga’s interactive installation Together, the tour visits a diverse collection of artworks, gathering spaces, trails, and environmental landmarks. Along the way, participants will encounter community created projects, a legal graffiti installation, a waterfall and bridge, ecological sculpture, and Flora, Vassar’s own public artwork.
Through walking, observation, and conversation, the tour encourages participants to slow down and notice details that are often overlooked. How do artworks change the way we experience a place? How have different generations of artists, community members, and park users shaped Highland Park over time? What stories become visible when we move through a familiar landscape at a different pace?
Designed for both arts audiences and curious explorers, this 90-minute walking experience offers an opportunity to discover Highland Park through new perspectives and shared observations.
About Marlana Vassar
Marlana Adele Vassar is a multidisciplinary artist developing a symbolic visual language rooted in transformation, identity, and lived experience. Working across sculpture and public art, her practice focuses on creating images and forms that translate how people physically, emotionally, and psychologically navigate spaces.
Her work often draws from community narratives, personal memory, and mythological structures, using recurring symbols and figures to build layered, evolving systems. In public settings, these systems become site-responsive, reflecting not just where people are, but how a place is experienced over time.
Balancing bold design with conceptual depth, Marlana’s work moves between the personal and the collective, creating pieces that are both visually direct and open to interpretation. Each project contributes to a larger, interconnected body of work that explores cycles of change, perception, and self-construction.
October 24
10:00–11:30 a.m.
Celeste Neuhaus
Release Receive Repeat: Attuning to the Cyclic Rhythms of Nature
Join artist, witch, and originator of Conjure Creativity, Celeste Neuhaus in attuning to nature’s seasonal cycles of release and renewal.
As daylight wanes and leaves fall to the ground, autumn invites us into the season of letting go. Together we’ll step away from the fast-paced linear and logical world, and drift into the sensorial and imaginal realms of
the forest
the labyrinth
and the unexpected.
Gathering in Riverview Park, we will meander on our path to observe the sculptural forms of fallen trees—the empty space they generate, and the way they express the story of how they fell. As they weather, soften, and merge with the earth, moss forms. Fungi flourish. What decays is also nourishment. Release becomes relational.
Our hike includes walking a labyrinth — a single winding path leading inwards and outwards from the center. We will reflect on this time of year when life force begins its movement inward, to rest and restore during the winter. Synchronizing with the rhythm of this spiralic inward movement, we’ll make way for outward expansion.
Through writing prompts and reflections this guided tour invites participants to honor both endings and beginnings, grief and growth, as we honor the spirit of place.
Release.
Receive.
Repeat.
Please dress for cold weather and wear hiking shoes. Expect irregular terrain and some areas with steeper gradients. Please bring a notebook and a writing implement.
About Celeste Neuhaus
Celeste Neuhaus (she/they) is a multimodal artist and witch who constellates magic, ecology, and healing. Through sculpture, paintings, assemblages, and guided rituals, their art transmutes the grievous impacts of amalgamated systems of oppression and biodiversity annihilation. Incorporating alchemy, surrealism, the absurd and the erotic, her work vividly materializes the often subconscious interdependencies in the continuum between the somatic – psychological – political – ecological – cosmological – metaphysical.
Celeste earned a Post Graduate Certification In Ecopsychology from Pacifica Graduate School, an MFA at the University of New Mexico as an artist in the Land Arts program in Art and Ecology, and a BFA at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Performances and exhibitions include: the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA), The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, PA), Submersive HQ (Baltimore, MD) Sanitary Tortilla Factory (Albuquerque, NM), Comfort Station (Chicago, IL), School of Visual Art (New York, NY), and P.A.A.J. (Los Angeles, CA).
Tours designed by Pittsburgh Creative Corps artists and implemented through Psychogeography: City Practice are funded through the City of Pittsburgh’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Arts Programming, with additional support from the Appalachian Regional Commission as part of Shiftworks’ new Developing the Creative Workforce initiative.
Image credits
Gallery, top:
(1) Write the Rivers tour, 2022, photo by Heather Mull (2) Sycamore Island Kayak Tour, 2023, photo by Ishara Henry.
Artist Headshots:
(1) Sarah Shotland, photo by Heather Mull; (2) Carolina Loyola-Garcia, photo by Josh Milteer; (3) Ruby Waldo, photo by Emma Honcharski; (4) Tess Wilson, photo by Kelly Lanzendorfer; (5) Marlana Vassar, photo by J Visionary Visuals; (6) Celeste Neuhaus, photo by anna brewer.