Laurie and Laura’s second tea installment will occur within Buttery Spread as its own work of art that fuses performance, sculpture, and centers community by way of eating together. Seated at banquet tables instead of the typical intimate setting, tea-goers can expect to participate in whimsical invented tea rituals while enjoying this sensory experience as a group.

Each course will be paired with a new tea, served over the two hour program with lots of surprises along the way. Bring a friend, or meet a new one while we delve into making our own meaning and eat some sculptures together.

This event is value at $75—however we are offering a limited number of tickets at a discounted price of $50. Please purchase the full price ticket if you are able. Please purchase tickets using the link below.

**We are able to accommodate vegetarian diets (this menu is pescatarian and can easily sub out the fish) but cannot accommodate other dietary restrictions at this time. 

About the Artists

Laurie and Laura met when Laura was 5 and Laurie was a family friend and babysitter to Laura and her siblings. Back then Laura’s mom threw the most lovely tea parties. They reconnected on Instagram as adult artists a few years back and quickly began collaborating on their own Avant garde tea parties.

Laurie Trok is a Pittsburgh based multidisciplinary artist. She studied classical flute performance at Duquesne University before finding her footing as a visual artist. Laurie worked as a studio assistant in New York and returned to Pittsburgh where for a time she worked as an assistant in multiple Pittsburgh studios. Laurie’s work both poses questions and imagines alternatives. At heart she holds a disciplined approach to play, be it with frosting or felt. Constructing possibility and iteration, the work is often an investigation of her obsession with the construct and parameters of time. Food became more central to her practice during the pandemic when she started getting serious about baking and creating edible sculptures for community consumption (cake!). The ephemeral world of food and music continue to challenge and inform her studio practice. Laurie has exhibited in several group and solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Carnegie Museum of Art, The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. She has worked and shown nationally and is a current artist in residence at Bunker Projects in Pittsburgh, PA, where she is working on a solo exhibition in late spring 2023. Laurie lives with her partner and two young children in Penn Hills. They are the best art teachers she has had to date.

Raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Laura Riviere has always had a passion for people and the complex ways they relate to their clothing and food.  She graduated from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in Costume Design and Social and Political History.  As a costume designer and artist, Laura is always excited to take on new projects and to explore different media and techniques, including silver-smithing, sculpture, and edible art.  She is fascinated by themes of connection and texture in the human body and experience; and is a firm believer in the power of art and the way texture, color, taste, and smell can create unique experiences, specific to each individual.  Currently she is the costume designer for The Pittsburgh Opera’s January production of Iphigenie En Tauride, and works as a freelance stitcher and designer for Duolingo, among other clients.