Carolyn P Speranza's photostream

Carolyn Speranza's media projects are site-specific and develop public participation in new ways. Requiem for the Netmakers, Urban Aquarium, Invisible Clock and My Bread Tastes Sweeter illustrate her approach to using digital media. For two decades, Speranza has demonstrated the capacity to collaborate across disciplines on complex projects while building community engagement on an organizational scale. Too Shallow for Diving: the Twenty-First Century is Treading Water, Sight of Stillness: What do you see when you meditate? and End of the Line: Building Bridges with Pittsburgh's Busways model these attributes with budgets ranging from $50,000 to $7,500.

While in art school, Speranza's formative influences were working with the D.A.X. Group; glass artist and sculptor Richard Harned; and Wexner Center performance art curator, Carla Peterson. Participating with Carnegie Mellon's D.A.X. Group in transnational, interactive telecommunications events in the mid 1980's introduced Speranza to a collective of artists and technologists creating new forms of communication. Speranza learned how to conduct an artistic inquiry from Richard Harned at the Ohio State University; providing her with the keys to awakening a profound sense of wonder about the phenomenon in which one is interested.* As a result, Speranza started making spaces and environments using light as an art material. Assisting Carla Peterson at the Wexner Center exposed Speranza to early '90's hybrid performance art; developing community distinct from audience; and in the age of the Mapplethorpe/Serrano NEA controversy, the integrity of taking a stand.

In 2003 Speranza stopped making art, and political activism became her expression. Between 2003 and 2005, Speranza trained with Wellstone Action, the PA Center for Women, Politics, and Public Policy; The League of Young Voters, MoveOn.org, the DNC Fifty-State Initiative and Al Gore's Climate Project. In 2005, Speranza was a Center for Progressive Leadership Pennsylvania Fellow. In 2004, 2006, and 2008, Speranza mobilized her neighborhood and the greater Pittsburgh community to vote. She returned to the art scene by curating Too Shallow for Diving: the 21st Century is Treading Water, an exhibition of sixteen artists/thirteen projects addressing water from aesthetic, environmental, economic and political perspectives. Debuting with this 2011 exhibition, Speranza’s, Frank Ferraro's and Angelo Gatto's Requiem for the Netmakers presented viewers with the centuries-old duel of Man vs. Nature played out by Big Oil Gangsters, the Ocean and generations of people whose livelihoods depend on the sea.

Speranza began exhibiting art in 1985 with solo and group shows followed by performance work, telematic and web-based projects, video screenings, site-specific installation and public art. Lucy Lippard, Robert Atkins, Elizabeth K. Menon and British scholar, Malcolm Miles have published her work in their anthologies. Speranza has completed residencies at the Center for the Study of Health, Religion & Spirituality, Indiana State University, New Orleans Glassworks, Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Sculpture Space, New York. Speranza is a past fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon and has held the endowed, Stephen L. Barstow Artist in Residence position at Central Michigan University. Her work has been generously supported by grants from the Heinz Endowments, NEA New Forms program, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Central Michigan University and The Ohio State University.

Carolyn Speranza is the Social Media Manager for the Laughlin for President campaign, bringing contextual activism to the 2012 race. She teaches at Penn State University and lectures for the University of Pittsburgh Osher program.
*http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/inquiry/methodology/reductio/heuristic-reduction/