2022 – 2023 Distillery Program

Artists in residence Sandra Bacchi, Paige Tibbe, Tara Hayes, Zim Syed, Nick Sardo, Jameelah Platt, and Rachel Simmons. Photo by Adam Michaels.

The Artists:

Sandra Bacchi is a Brazilian-American visual artist based in Pittsburgh. Working with photography, video, and glass, her documentary and conceptual works weave together fiction and truth to tell more open-ended stories about how human beings find common ground. After earning a degree in photography in 1997, Bacchi worked in the Brazilian film industry. In 2012, she moved to the US and turned her focus to her artistic career. Since then, she has shown her work nationally and internationally, including shows at the McDonough Museum of Art (Youngstown, Ohio), Pittsburgh Glass Center, and Houston Center for Photography, and reviewed in publications including LensCratch, Float Photo Magazine, and A Curator. In 2019–2020, Bacchi was an artist in residence at the Pittsburgh Glass Center. In 2022, Bacchi’s photobook Watermelons Are Not Strawberries was published by Yoffy Press and exhibited as a solo show at Concept Art Gallery in Pittsburgh.

Tara Hayes is a visual artist, maker, and educator currently based out of Pittsburgh. She received a BFA in Studio Art and a BS in Art Education from Miami University in 2017 and an MFA in 2D Fine Art from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design in Boston in 2020. She was a 2018 Yeck College Artist Fellow at The Dayton Art Institute. She has exhibited her work in Boston at Scollay Square Gallery, MassArt x SoWa Gallery, and Gallery DeWolfe, on the virtual platform Kunstmatrix, and locally in Pittsburgh. In 2021 she was featured in Friend of the Artist Vol. 13, a printed book of emerging artists, and the Studio Image Project, an online photo-collection of working artist’s studio spaces.

Jameelah Platt, is an interdisciplinary, African American artist from Pittsburgh. She studied Fine Art and minored in Film at the University of Art in Philadelphia and received a certification from the Permaculture Institute of North America in 2021. She has had solo exhibitions with the Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media and Assemble Learning Center, and has also exhibited with the Free Expression Project, Museum Lab, University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia. In 2019 she participated in the Freshworks Artist Residency at Kelly Strayhorn Theater.

Nick Sardo Originally from Santa Monica, California, Nick Sardo is a Pittsburgh-based mixed media artist, currently focused on painting. He paints singular figures involved in self-contained narratives, combining highly rendered form and deconstructed facial features. Sardo holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University and has exhibited locally and nationally, including at Irma Freeman Gallery, Bunker Projects, and here Gallery. He is currently a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.

Rachel Simmons Born and raised on a farm in McDonald, Pennsylvania, Rachel Morgan Simmons is a painter, published poet, and multidisciplinary artist based in Pittsburgh, PA. She received a BFA in Studio Art from Allegheny College in 2016 with awards for exhibited work and worked as a studio assistant for New York City-based artists Alexi Worth and Barnaby Furnas. Her work has been exhibited in gallery spaces around Pittsburgh, and she has performed live readings of her written work around the city.

Zim Syed is a Bangladeshi-American mixed-media artist. Zim was born in Atlanta and moved to the United Arab Emirates soon after. He spent his childhood between the USA, Bangladesh, and the UAE, and his upbringing and experiences as a Bangladeshi American have vastly shaped his life and work. Zim became involved in the local art scene while studying Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2020, Zim was the lead artist on the John Lewis Mural, located on Locust Street in Pittsburgh’s Uptown neighborhood, which promotes visual messages about police brutality, systemic racism, and gun violence. In 2021, he received a BIPOC Micro-Grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation’s Center for Philanthropy. Zim is represented by BoxHeart Gallery in Bloomfield.

Paige Tibbe is a visual artist based out of Pittsburgh. They graduated from Seton Hill University with a BFA in Studio Art in 2017. Paige is a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh (AAP) and the Pittsburgh Society of Artists. They have exhibited at galleries in the Pittsburgh area, including the Christine Frechard Gallery, the Westmoreland Museum of Art, and Slippery Rock University. Juried group exhibitions include AAP’s 106th Annual Exhibition, curated by Taras Matla (2018) and I See You, curated by Jen Melvin at Point Park University (2018). Paige has shown in other notable regional exhibitions such as the Students of Artists Who Teach at the Westmoreland Museum of Art and Physique at Panza Gallery, at which they were awarded Juror’s Choice Award (2018). Paige’s inclusion in the juried exhibition, Art of the State, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was awarded with Honorable Mention for their painting Mike (2019).