Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Shaun Slifer (b.1979) is an Appalachian artist, nonfiction author, self-taught historian, scrimshander, and museum professional based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His multidisciplinary creative work challenges the oppression of currently-dominant historical narratives, both social and ecological. Shaun regularly works in collaboration with artists and other specialists, and in collectively structured groups including the now-disbanded Street Art Workers and the Howling Mob Society, and currently Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative (of which he is a founding member) and the award-winning West Virginia Mine Wars Museum (where he is the Creative Director). Shaun has exhibited internationally in a variety of museums, galleries, and nonprofit spaces, as well as non-authorized public settings. He has presented on his research and creative practice at numerous universities and conferences in the United States and Western Europe. His work has been exhibited across the US and the world, including at the Queens Museum, the Biennial of Graphic Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia), and the U.S. Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia (Italy). For his work with the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, he was presented with Honorary Membership in the United Mine Workers of America, Local 1440 in Matewan, WV - he is currently a UMWA Associate Member. His forthcoming book, _So Much To Be Angry About: Appalachian Movement Press 1969-79_, will be available on West Virginia University Press in the spring of 2021. Currently living in Pittsburgh, PA, with roots in Nebraska and Tennessee, Shaun received a BFA with a concentration in sculpture from Watkins College of Art in Nashville in 2003.
Other Media
We’ve just re-opened in our new expanded building…
Draw a line from forests of giant, sporulating trees to highways built on exhausted strip mines and waste slurry impoundment lakes bursting to drown whole human communities.
A new film by Addison Post about historical memory, and how we share it.
A new series about the rebuilding of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum!
Bloomfield neighborhood, Pittsburgh, PA
Arlington Avenue, near Allentown, Pittsburgh, PA
Polish Hill, Pittsburgh, PA
Documentation of two new exhibits of historical marker rubbings in the manner of erasure poetics.
Storytelling Through Artifacts, with Notes on Aerial Bombing and the Relationship between Mining and Militarism
Pittsburgh, PA
parking space saver, Bloomfield neighborhood in Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh: who cleans the 40th Street Bridge’s sidewalks? Most DIYDPW posts focus on signage, but every once in awhile we find a human filling in a vacant municipal role… Dani…
Portland, Oregon (thanks Icky!)
“To be honest, I carry all of them with me now. I’ve spent as many hours studying their features as I did studying their histories, and I feel a responsibility…
If you’ve found yourself at the levers of a small, even tiny, community project or non-profit, you’ve probably had to confront the uncomfortable reality of needing to pump people…
“Nothing cuts off self-determination more efficiently than eradicating its language. Replacing it with misdirecting prattle… is a magnificent coup for those who would like to keep us wary of one another.”…
“They saw this region as affected by a colonial influence from the larger urban areas, extracting resources from Central Appalachia historically, for over a hundred years, and not giving anything…
from the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, NYC (thanks Josh!) Looking back over the thumbnails on the DIYDPW blog channel page of all of these posts over the last few…
Update (summer 2020): this research has grown to become a book! So Much to Be Angry About: Appalachian Movement Press and Radical DIY Publishing, 1969–1979 will be available on West Virginia University…
I’ve been working as the Curator/Exhibition Designer for the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan, WV since our project was still an ambitious idea in a vacant storefront in…