Free exhibition of eight bronze sculptures cast from the wood works of Pittsburgh sculptor Thaddeus Mosley at Arts Landing.
Thaddeus Mosley: Touching the Earth opens at Arts Landing on Wednesday, April 29, and runs through Wednesday, June 30. The exhibition features eight bronzes cast from wood sculptures Mosley made between 1996 and 2021, including the archway Gate III.
Mosley (1926–2026) was a Pittsburgh sculptor who worked almost exclusively with wood. Since the 1950s, he assembled his pieces from hand-carved walnut, basswood, cherry and hickory—often salvaged from fallen timber and native Pennsylvanian hardwoods—and shaped them into biomorphic forms using only a chisel and gauge. Over more than seven decades, he built a distinctive language of expressive abstract forms rooted in the organic qualities of his material, a practice he called "listening to wood," which gives the show its title, borrowed from the writer bell hooks.
His influences spanned from Isamu Noguchi and Constantin Brâncuși to the Bamum, Dogon, Baoulé, Senufo, Dan and Mossi works in his personal collection, and he drew on the modernist traditions of jazz, calling his pieces "sculptural improvisations." A World War II Navy veteran, sports writer and photographer, he also made collages and wrote for Ebony, Jet, Sepia and the Pittsburgh Courier. His work is held in the collections of the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney and the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Arts Landing is at 803 Penn Ave, part of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and admission is free.
