ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
Excellence In Design Pittsburgh
July/August 2023
ENLIGHTENED EXPRESSION
Color, texture, and faith collide in artist Eva Trout’s vivid, expressionistic paintings
For centuries, artists have sought to express the feelings that inhabit the recesses the psyche.
For artist Eva Trout, that exploration goes beyond emotion and delves into spiritual language and an encounter with the divine. Hers is a "transcendent expressionism" influenced by 20th-century styles though rooted in sacred truths and illustrative of the deep faith she carries.
Following receiving her bachelor's in fine arts from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Trout explored a variety of mediums before a 15-year period of working with encaustic. The hot process of painting with wax-based paints-heating, scraping, layering led to Trout becoming an intuitive process painter with play-filled discoveries becoming key to her expression.
Today, she works primarily in oils. From abstract seascapes to color-lit gardens, mingled with biblical themes as her inspiration, she paints in an exploratory journey to convey a felt, celestial joy.
She says, "I use a visual language of vibrant color, heavy texture, and energetic gesture as metaphor to speak of hope. Like most, I've suffered pain. As a teen I experienced crises as my dad dealt with addiction. Since then, and in so many ways, l've found that Christ is the source of healing amidst the rugged terrain of life."
Her art is at-once vivid and peaceful, ethereal and grounded, linear and organic. Trout's work offers a constant reminder of the beauty inherent in a childlike faith and a creative soul.
At Firebox Art Studios, her gallery in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, Trout showcases her art alongside the works of 20-plus regional and national artists. The gallery features original art and is open Thursdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and by appointment.
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CORNERSTONE TELEVISION NETWORK INTERVIEW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=sinLqIuy6dk
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ENGAGING ART ESSAYS AND INTERVIEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE
BY ROSLYN BERNSTEIN
Book published in 2020 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Section 2, Essay 31, page 225, Art And Inspiration: Firebox Art Studios, Carnegie Pa.
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MEDIUM ARTICLE - ART & INSPIRATION FIREBOX ART STUDIOS
Written by Roslyn Bernstein -An arts and culture journalist for Guernica, Huff Post, Tablet, and more.
On one side of Firebox Art Studios’s square business card is printed strictly conventional contact information for Eva Trout’s one-year old gallery on Main Street in Carnegie, PA, just six miles from downtown Pittsburgh. The other side, however, is definitely a surprise: Trout’s personal business card, where three words are given equal prominence. Floating on the red, green, and orange background of one of Trout’s compelling, cloudlike encaustic paintings are her three identities: Artist, Missionary and Speaker. A conversation with Trout illuminates how all three are braided into one being; how light and the cosmos and divine order permeate her paintings; how outreach programs, often using the arts, “encourage and inspire people who lived in extreme circumstances or have suffered emotional trauma; and how workshops at home and abroad encourage the importance of “individual unique expressions regardless of ability. “I am a maker, a teacher, and a creativity advocate for people who have experienced duress and hardship,” Trout said. Since 2009, she has worked as the Missions Director and pastor at Covenant Church of Pittsburgh. To Trout, who has traveled to South Sudan where she has established an ongoing water campaign and to Guatemala where she has reached out to girls and women who’ve been trafficked for sex, these trips represent not only the need for clean water and healing from trauma but the larger issue of the interconnectivity of cultures. “There’s a God-sized thumbprint on every human being that is to be honored in everyone,” Trout said. She believes in Albert Einstein’s motto that “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” That is precisely what she is doing in her life and at the Firebox Art Studios. Trout’s artistic resume reaches back several decades. A graduate of the Tyler School of Art (BFA), she has been exhibiting her work for over 20 years, with many paintings currently held in private collections. She has served as the Exhibition Chair for the Pittsburgh Society of Artists and is a member of both the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Society of Artists, two organizations from which Trout currently draws women artists for her new gallery. Art is selected purely by the artist’s aesthetic, and not by religious or cultural persuasion. In its short life, the gallery has already been nominated as one of the finalists for Pittsburgh’s Top Creative Arts Projects of 2018. Earlier this year, FIREBOX exhibited The Ron Rivera Memorial, Potters for Peace Water Filter Exhibition, which was curated by Dick Wukich and featured the works of many renown, contributing potters including Val Cushing, and David MacDonald. The exhibit highlighted a simple clay and colloidal silver water filter that, Trout said, “is now changing life for impoverished villages around the globe by making clean water a sustainable possibility.” Clearly, the show exemplified the deep link between Trout’s artistic philosophy and her commitment to global social activism. Currently at the gallery is Taking Shape, the first exhibit she has curated with a name. Why that name? Trout answers without hesitation: “Because I felt like the gallery was taking shape!” After many months gutting the space and stripping down to the brick walls, the show with 80 pieces by 10 artists hangs salon style in the space. Opened on July 13th, in conjunction with the first Art Walk in Carnegie, the gallery is geared to small collectors “who are buying for their homes.” In addition to her own work, including a recent diptych, Coalesce and Sequence, (an encaustic work made with heated beeswax, damar varnish, and oil pigments), that was featured in a room designed by Alisha Gwen for The Junior League of Pittsburgh’s Show House Event, the exhibit includes new works from artists who have been exhibited at the gallery: Joyce Werwie Perry, Patricia Apuzzo, Maura Koehler Keeney, Sarah Jacobs, Monique Sarkessian, Hiromi Katayama, Marian Phillips, Gina Dominique Hersey, Maggy Aston, and Crystal Latimer. Works range in price from under $100 to $6,000. Also for sale in the gallery is artisan jewelry including a line of copper cuffs by Branded Collective, each one stamped with an initial and a number. The initial belongs to the survivor who made the cuff; the number is a unique number on each piece, enabling the purchaser to send a Message of Hope to the survivors. Trout notes that a little arts community has been evolving on Carnegie’s Main Street. Nearby is the 3rd Street Gallery, Abandoned Pittsburgh (a photo gallery), and the Pittsburgh Pottery. There’s even a music school, Higher Voice Studio, run by Hilerie Klein Rensi which offers lessons for singers at all levels. Around Pittsburgh, many folks see Carnegie as the next Lawrenceville, PA, where Butler Street, its main drag, is filled with restaurants and nightspots, much like Brooklyn NY’s Williamsburg. Trout disagrees. “Carnegie is different because it attracts diverse residents: Indians, Africans, and Middle Easterners. “It’s an old steel town with cross-generational residents and a big mosque down the street,” she said. We walk down Main Street to the old Carnegie Post Office, now a coffee shop shared with a drug store. The vibe is cool, the coffee delicious, and the pastries homemade. It’s not Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue in New York City or the slick art galleries in Chelsea on Manhattan’s West Side but there’s something honest and pure about the scene. “It’s thriving,” Trout said modestly, adding that “a new generation of people are coming to the town.”
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