AIR x #notwhite collective 2026
The #notwhite Collective is partnering with Artist Image Resource (AIR) in Pittsburgh for a residency rooted in shared learning, access, and mutual support. The residency creates space for artists to work both independently and collaboratively, with mentorship from AIR’s printers and staff shaping the process along the way. Members are encouraged to experiment, ask questions, and learn through making, whether developing individual projects or engaging in dialogue with one another. This structure allows knowledge to circulate across the group, breaking down hierarchies and emphasizing printmaking as a communal practice. The residency culminates in an exhibition at AIR that brings these varied voices together, reflecting a collective commitment to process, generosity, and making creative spaces more open and accessible.
Meet the artists of the #notwhite Collective who will collaborate with AIR over the next year!
Fran Flaherty
Fran (Ledonio) Flaherty is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator whose practice centers caregiving as cultural labor and aesthetic inquiry. A first-generation immigrant mother from the Philippines and a Deaf artist, Flaherty bridges migrant family relations, maternal feminism, and disability aesthetics across painting, sculpture, mixed media, performance, and immersive installation. She is the creator and curator of Anthropology of Motherhood, an internationally recognized project that elevates mundane caregiving into fine art and transforms everyday public spaces into restorative environments for caregivers and their dependents
Flaherty serves as Assistant Professor of Digital Art and Emerging Media and Director of the FabLab at Carlow University (Pittsburgh, PA). Her work consistently addresses inequities related to race, class, gender, and disability, and she has organized nearly 100 exhibitions, workshops, and programs that foreground social justice and inclusion. A member of the #notwhite collective, Flaherty’s practice challenges dominant narratives of white supremacy through collaborative and site-responsive projects She regularly contributes to national conversations on accessibility and disability arts—as a speaker, mentor, and advocate for emerging Deaf and disabled artists.
Flaherty’s work is held in institutional and private collections including Smith College Art Museum, the Joseph F. and Helen C. Dyer Arts Center, Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, and Carnegie Mellon University Archives. She recently completed the Pittsburgh Chandelier for Riverlife Pittsburgh and a group show titled “MotherFuturisms” in Providence, RI. You can view her next group exhibit at The Flatiron Project Space NY, NY. Evening Star runs Feb 20-March 19th, opening February 26th 6-8pm. Through art and pedagogy, Flaherty amplifies marginalized voices and reimagines caregiving as a vital, transformative practice.
Sara Tang
Sara Tang is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the intersections of chronic illness, identity, ecopsychology, and the sacred in the discarded and underseen. You can find them glitching out in liminal spaces or exploring the underground powers that pulse through Pittsburgh.
Sara uses found and discarded materials to reclaim and illuminate the self and the sacred deeply embedded in our lives and surroundings. Her creative workshops, projects, and collaborations often explore multiracial and multicultural kinship, the power of knowing and shaping our stories, and understanding the complexities of health and wellbeing. Sara’s process is mindful of drawing people in to a deeper empathic encounter with themselves, their communities, and what is strange and beautiful about humanity and existence.
Sara is a member of the #notwhite Collective and is the Digital Content Curator for Anthropology of Motherhood. She has served on the leadership of JADED PGH Asian American Pacific Islander collective and with folkLAB’s These Hollow Hills artist residency program and inaugural folkFEST. She has also served on the City of Pittsburgh's Equity Audit Committee and on the Community Advisory Board Council for the Pittsburgh HR/Equity Arts Cohort.
Sara has participated in and co-curated exhibitions at 🅢🅔🅐🅕🅞🅐🅜 creative space, the McDonough Museum of Art, SPACE Gallery in Pittsburgh, ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art, Carlow University Art Gallery, the Brew House, Radiant Hall Studios, the Three Rivers Arts Festival, the Dyer Center for the Arts of RIT/NTID, Imagebox, Assemble, Level Up Studios, Black Forge, and UnSmoke Systems Artspace. She has been featured with the Carlow University Art Gallery, Luxe Creative, Local PGH, Mindscapes, folkLAB, Inside Our Minds, the sidewall project, the Abstractions Conference, Our Clubhouse, the National Council for Behavioral Health, Festival of Friendship, WHAMGlobal, VisitPittsburgh, the Firetree Project, and more.
Maggie Lynn Negrete
Maggie Lynn Negrete is a storyteller & cheerleader of curiosity, available for commissioned illustration, lettering, divination and educational experiences. A proud Pittsburgh resident and Vassar college alumni, Negrete’s visual art focuses on zinemaking, hand lettering, portraiture and editorial illustrations for freelance clientele. Negrete is affiliated with the #notwhite Collective, the Society to Preserve the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka, and BOOM Concepts.
Madame Dolores
From Nomadic Artistry to Arts Leadership: Madame Dolores’ Journey of Resistance, Resilience, and Radical Storytelling
Madame Dolores is a globally rooted, multi-platform, cross-inter-disciplinary artist who uses sound, image, text, and performance as powerful tools for storytelling—creating bold, often provocative artistic experiences and cultural dialogues. Her work aims to challenge and uncover the origins of societal injustices.
Trained classically in art at institutions including the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Tyler School of Art, and the Lehrer Seminar in Switzerland, she sought to ground her practice beyond Western academic traditions by immersing herself in real-world communities. To that end, she embarked on a five-year nomadic journey, working in Alaska as a fishery employee, becoming a baker in Upstate New York, and living in remote desert areas across the Southwest. After fulfilling her wanderlust, she returned to Pittsburgh to establish herself in the local arts scene, joining Women of Visions, co-founding and co-running the transcultural arts nonprofit Sun Crumbs, performing poetry, writing plays, curating exhibitions, and participating in various music projects.
This vibrant creative life slowed down when she was diagnosed with ME/CFS and advised to cease all activity and rest. In response, she transitioned into arts administration at the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, dedicating 15 years to supporting artists through initiatives like Art on the Walls, the Teaching Artist Initiative, the Women in the Arts network, the Pittsburgh chapter of Network for Arts Administrators of Color, the Pittsburgh Artist Resources website, and the Emergency Fund for Artists—vital during the early stages of the pandemic.
In 2021, she launched her own arts consulting and coaching business, no box engagements. Concurrently, she began a six-month artist-in-residency at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in partnership with BOOM concepts, joined the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, the City of Pittsburgh’s Art Commission, and Grantmakers in the Arts. As a founding member of the #notwhite collective—a group of 13 women artists committed to using collaborative, multi-disciplinary work to amplify the voices of the Global Majority—she has become a prominent advocate for inclusive art.
She has earned numerous accolades: 2002 Pittsburgh Magazine “40 under 40” award; received funding from Sprout for two MiniM Music Festivals for the Blues and Jazz genres and for “Listen to This”, featuring poetess, Ursula Rucker; a 2003 Pennsylvania Council for the Arts fellowship for world/jazz/blues composition; 2004 commission from the Pittsburgh Foundation to write her debut play, Saffronia, and funding from the Multi-Cultural Arts Initiative to produce Saffronia: the Mulatto Slave, which placed second at the Trinidad Theater Festival in 2016; honoree at the New Hazlett Theatre “Celebrating Women in the Arts in 2007; received Advancing the Black Arts grants to support solo release, Amor Fati (2010) and her fourth solo release NAEAMA (2020); in 2017, she was honored with the Pittsburgh Business Times Women First award; 2010 August Wilson Center Fellowship; and commissioned by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust to compose a song and lead Pittsburgh’s first Complaints Choir at the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival in 2014.
ROOTS
She grew up in a home where every aspect of daily life was a creative act—ranging from organizing the linen closet to decorating the Christmas tree, making music, painting the living room, and drawing at the kitchen table.
This environment immersed her in art from an early age, shaping her as a multi-disciplinary artist who is a writer, visual artist, performing artist, and musician. For her, being an artist is not an extension of herself but an expression of her full being—an integral part of her identity. In the same household, she experienced intense discussions at the dining room table about injustice and inequity. As the child of a German immigrant mother and an African American father in 1970s America, she faced constant challenges to her family’s cultural identity.
Creativity became a vital tool for navigating the confusion, oppression, and cruelty she encountered. With urgency, she deconstructs and decolonizes inherited realities to create pathways toward freedom. Her creative practice spans paintings, drawings, small objects, installations, poetry, art books, music, performance art, playwriting, and collaborative works. Though these forms appear diverse and disconnected, they are unified by her holistic artistic vision. Her work is inspired by vibrant natural light and color, global myths and ancient symbols, nightmares and dreams, ugly truths and beautiful lies, and global spiritual practices centered on stillness and healing.
Her art invites viewers to engage deeply, to see and unsee the world in order to connect with it and achieve harmony. Through her lens, she challenges audiences to authentically see, know, and accept themselves, ultimately dreaming forward a reality grounded in belonging, shared equity, justice, and joy—where coexistence is not a zero-sum game defined by imagined borders, inflated privilege, hate-filled mono-stories, or invented supremacy.
