Environmental and landscape art
Sculptural art
Community engagement and social justice
Pittsburgh Creative Corps Artist Directory
Makenzie O'Connor
homebody
Primary Discipline
Artistic Practice
Assemblage, including found objects, multimedia
Carving, including wood, stone, other materials
Murals
Abstract Paper Lanterns, 2024, upcycled paper, wire, glue, LED lights, Arduino, 6′ x 5′ x 2.’ Collaborated with Cornelius Henke to program LEDs to emulate a beating heart.
Paper + Dirt Community Space and Bookshop, 2023-2024. Designed and fabricated furniture for renovated storefront, served as the Creative Director and Program Coordinator.
Won’t You By My Neighbor, 2021, wood, 10′ x 6.’ Completed through Pittsburgh Urban Tree for Carnegie Mellon University.
Mural in Loft Gym, 2023, paint, 1000 sq ft.
Linda, 2020, paint. Intuitive and movement-based painting created in collaboration with a dance performance.
About the Artist
Mak (they/she) is an artist, designer, and researcher whose practice centers care-full space-making, understanding spaces as living systems of exchange between bodies, materials, memory, and meaning. They are drawn toward processes of possibility and approach design as a form of relationship-building, a way of tending to the invisible forces that shape how people feel, move, and orient themselves in the world.
Drawing from disability studies, phenomenology, and feminist design theory, Mak investigates how environments structure power through their affordances — how they invite, restrict, or reshape embodied experience. Their work examines how spatial and material systems can either constrain or expand possibility, and how design might contribute to more just and equitable ways of dwelling in and moving through the world.
Through publication design, spatial interventions, environmental graphics, and material fabrication, they develop projects that foreground lived experience, inviting attentiveness, sensory openness, presence, and belonging.
Mak holds a Master of Design Science from the University of Michigan and is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Photo by Vania Evangelique
Web
Accreditations, Certifications, and/or Awards
Masters in Design Science
Provides Fabrication Services to Other Artists
Yes
Teaching Artist
Yes, all ages
Joined the Directory
March 2026
Related
PROJECT
Pittsburgh Creative Corps
Designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pittsburgh Creative Corps initiative engages artists and creative workers to activate the public realm while providing economic opportunity.
“Working in the public realm allows me to expand my practice beyond individual expression into a dialogue shaped by observation, listening, and care.”
Makenzie O'Connor
Contact the Artist
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Related
PROJECT
Pittsburgh Creative Corps
Designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pittsburgh Creative Corps initiative engages artists and creative workers to activate the public realm while providing economic opportunity.
