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Seth Clark is the artist behind the poster for the 2011 festival. A print designer, Seth’s work is primarily in mixed media and illustration.

Seth grew up in Seekonk, Massachusetts, and studied close to home in at the Rhode Island School of Design. He earned his BFA in Graphic Design, focusing primarily on print design and alternative typography. During this time, he discovered collage. This method of hands-on, spacial development took a major role in his digital work as well as his physical works on paper.

It was about three years ago, after graduating from college, that Seth traveled the country looking for the best city in which to begin his career as an artist and designer. The endless row-houses and rich architecture of Pittsburgh could serve as a valuable inspiration for his drawings and the affordability of the Steel City could allow for a large studio space and ample free time for productivity.

Seth is interested in exploring fragmentation and deconstruction in his art, and is fascinated by the aesthetics of houses and buildings and the personality of a place. On his website, you can find a plethora of drawings of broken down houses and decaying buildings. The festival blocks explore the structural composition of the city and reference the beauty of hand-painted signage.  The windows and patterns that appear on the blocks are, in a way, not far from what you’d see hidden in his drawings of abandoned houses and collapsing structures.

This architectural flair is prominent in Seth’s design for 2011 Three Rivers Arts Festival poster. Seth hand-painted the tiny details on hundreds of blocks, to assemble them to create a compact version of the Pittsburgh skyline. Seth photographed his installation and the colorful, playful image for the poster was the result. The three dimensional fragmentation of the blocks forms a whole and complete image. The many pieces of Pittsburgh fit together to form a colorful and exciting image for the festival.

You can see the actual hand-painted block sculpture during Festival hours at Three Gateway Center. Seth also had a piece accepted in the Juried Visual Art Exhibition.

Post-Gazette art critic Mary Thomas offered a substantial preview of the festival in Sunday’s paper. She summarized this way: “The 52nd Three Rivers Arts Festival sweeps into Downtown Friday, bringing with it 280 crafters, a new jazz component, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, food booths, a variety of stage performances and, of course, art in unexpected places.”

Read the full story here.

“I am proud to be leading the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on its return to the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival after more than 30 years,” PSO Music Director Manfred Honeck said. “This is one of the most celebrated summer events in the region and has a rich history of showcasing great performances. It will be a tremendous experience performing outdoors in this great city.”

“This is a great day for our cultural community and Pittsburgh,” noted Robert P. Oeler, President and CEO of Dollar Bank. “The long-awaited return of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to the festival and Point State Park is cause for celebration. The PSO is one of the country’s top orchestras, and this opportunity to experience the extraordinary talents of these musicians ‘under the stars’ will be a very special experience.”

Morgan K. O’Brien, President and CEO of Peoples Natural Gas, said, “Peoples Natural Gas is proud to support The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and Pittsburgh Symphony, two organizations that continually infuse creative energy into the quality of life of our region. We’re thrilled to help facilitate the return of the PSO to Point State Park and celebrate the talents of our Cultural District with the community.” Peoples Natural Gas is the Concert Sponsor of the PSO’s engagement on June 5th.

J. Kevin McMahon, President and CEO of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, attributed the collaborative spirit of the Cultural District as an integral factor in this special addition to the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, “The Cultural Trust and PSO have partnered on many projects, including the PNC Broadway Across America – Pittsburgh series and First Night Pittsburgh. However, the return of the orchestra to the festival and Point State Park is a major milestone among our collaborations.”

PSO President and CEO Larry Tamburri said, “The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is excited about returning to the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, center stage at Point State Park. Our hope is that this is the beginning of a new era which will see annual performances by the PSO at this most important of Pittsburgh festivals.”

The concert is also being sponsored in part by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra musicians.

“We are pleased to be a partner in sponsoring this concert and are happy to be returning to the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival,” said Joe Rounds, orchestra committee chairman.

Honeck will conduct the concert which will open with Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, followed by works by Johann Strauss Jr., Hummel, Khachaturian, Shostakovich and Dvořák. The concert will conclude with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. The featured soloist will be PSO principal trumpeter George Vosburgh. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra first performed during the festival in 1965.

We are so excited to share this year’s exciting lineup of concerts on the Dollar Bank Stage in Point State Park. Get ready for 10 days of gospel, bluegrass, rock, folk and dancing in the grass!

All concerts are FREE and take place on the Dollar Bank Stage in Point State Park. Headliners take the stage around 7:30pm every night except Sundays, when they play at 6pm. Full schedule information, including local openers and other arts programming, will be released in early May.

June 3
Blind Boys of Alabama

The Blind Boys of Alabama are recognized worldwide as living legends of gospel music. Celebrated by The Grammys and The National Endowment for the Arts with Lifetime Achievement Awards, inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, having sung for two U.S. presidents in the White House and winners of five Grammy® Awards, they have attained the highest levels of achievement in a career that spans over 70 years and shows no signs of diminishing.

June 4
Tom Tom Club

Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth established The Tom Tom Club exactly 30 years ago as a side project during their tenure with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Talking Heads. The group celebrates their anniversary this year by playing shows around the world, reinforcing why their funky musical style has been a staple of the dance music world since the early 1980s.

June 5
TBA in early May

June 6
James McMurtry

Texan singer-songwriter James McMurtry, son of acclaimed author Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment), grew up on a steady diet of Johnny Cash and Roy Acuff records. McMurtry appears at this year’s Three Rivers Arts Festival just months after reissuing two of his most popular albums, Childish Things and Live in Aught-Three. “James McMurtry is simply fearless,” wrote Elmore magazine. “While many other singer-songwriters make veiled references to difficult subjects, McMurtry courageously lays it out there.”

…with special guest Jonny Burke

Jonny Burke is a man on the move. After travelling through every state in the Continental U.S. over the past two years, the young musician has launched his full-length debut Distance and Fortune. While the disc reflects his time on the road, these aren’t your typical “drivin’ and cryin’” road songs. This set of tunes, according to Burke, is about “not playing it safe and practical, but allowing your future to be decided by forces of distance and fortune.”

June 7
The Baseball Project

Rock n’ roll vets Scott McCaughey and Steve Wynn share an unhealthy love for music exceeded only by an even more unhealthy obsession for baseball. The compatriots blend their two passions with The Baseball Project — Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails, an album of buzzing guitars and baseball back stories. Drummer Linda Pitmon and Peter Buck round out the squad, as they spin tales of ill-fated drinking binges (‘The Yankee Flipper’, ‘The Death of Big Ed Delahanty’), folk heroes (‘Fernando’, ‘Satchel Paige Said’) and, on ‘Gratitude (For Curt Flood)’, the overlooked man who changed the game.

…with special guest J. Roddy Walston & The Business

Piano slamming alt rockers J. Roddy Walston & The Business, led by the bandleader’s barrelhouse piano stylings, shifts seamlessly through jump-up shout-a-longs (“Used to Did”) to low slung, gritty travelin’ blues (“Use Your Language”), to arena-worthy anthems (“I Don’t Want to Hear It”). The band has built an audience the old fashioned way, through hard work and unrelenting live shows.

June 8
Tea Leaf Green

San Francisco-based band Tea Leaf Green got their start in the relationship formed between guitarist Josh Clark and drummer Scott Rager, who played in a high-school band together in Arcadia, CA.Sharing some of the style and substance of musical contemporaries My Morning Jacket, Wolfmother, and the Raconteurs, Tea Leaf Green conjures the spirit of bands like ’70s Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and The Grateful Dead, taking classic sounds and giving them a present-day polish.

June 9
Formula412

Pittsburgh’s own Formula412 returns to the Festival just two months after releasing their latest effort, Reality Show, and receiving the “Best Group” award at the 2011 Pittsburgh Hip Hop Awards. By adding live guitar, bass and drums to the traditional set-up of a DJ and an emcee, Formula412 pushes the limits of the genre and remains at the top of the Pittsburgh burgeoning hip-hop scene.

June 10
Brandi Carlile

Named Rolling Stone‘s “10 Artists to Watch in 2005,” Brandi Carlile has toured as a headliner and supported other artists including Ray LaMontagne, Jonny Lang, Hanson, Indigo Girls, The Fray, Chris Isaak, Tori Amos and Shawn Colvin. In 2010, she won Seattle’s City of Music Breakthrough Award. As Carlile’s fans well know, her concerts are near legendary in their perfect communion between performer and audience. Whether she is rocking out with her full band or standing quietly, tantalizingly close to the edge of the stage singing a capella, Carlile brings a riveting intensity to every performance

June 11
Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder

2011 marks the 52nd year since Ricky struck his first chords on a mandolin. This fourteen-time Grammy Award winner continues to do his part to lead the recent roots revival in music.  With 12 consecutive Grammy-nominated classics behind him, all from his own Skaggs Family Records label, the diverse and masterful tones made by the gifted Skaggs come from a life dedicated to playing music that is both fed by the soul and felt by the heart.

June 12
Buckwheat Zydeco

Legendary zydeco trailblazer Buckwheat Zydeco is celebrating 30 years together with a recently-released and Grammy Award-winning album entitled Lay Your Burden Down. Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural, Jr., bandleader and accordionist, returns to Three Rivers Arts Festival to perform songs from the new album and many beloved Creole classics.

The 2011 Three Rivers Arts Festival is just six weeks away, and that can mean only one thing: time for our annual day-long Dollar Bank Stage announcement with our favorite radio partner, WYEP!

Listen to WYEP 91.3 FM from 7 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Monday, April 25, 2011. We’ll announce one band each hour of the day, starting during the Morning Mix with Cindy Howes. As always, we’re gearing up for 10 diverse nights of live music on the Dollar Bank Stage in Point State Park.

“Like” us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to stay in the loop as bands are announced, or sign up for email updates to get the full list on Tuesday morning. More details on the Festival will be published in early May. We’re hard at work!

Artists Market
New deadline: 11:59 pm, Friday, February 18, 2011
More infomation

Emerging Artist Scholarship
New deadline: 5:00 pm, Friday, February 18, 2011
More information

Juried Visual Art Exhibition
New deadline: 11:59 pm, Friday, March 11, 2011
More information

Showcase Noir
Deadline: 11:59 pm, Thursday, March 31, 2011
Note: Artists applying to Showcase Noir can apply to the Artists Market at no additional charge, but you must apply to Showcase Noir first, and both applications must be received by 11:59 on February 18.
More information

All programs are juried separately. Application deadline for all programs is February 11, 2011, unless otherwise noted. Deadlines have been extended. See new program deadlines below.

Artists Market

The Three Rivers Arts Festival Artists Market is one of the top fine art and fine craft markets in the country, hosting 300 artists and welcoming approximately 300,000 visitors annually. Applications are accepted online through Zapplication.

Deadline: 11:59 pm, February 18, 2011

Start your Artists Market application

Emerging Artist Scholarship Program

The Emerging Artist Scholarship Program offers competitive scholarships for local artists who have never participated in an outdoor fine art & fine craft show to participate in the Three Rivers Arts Festival’s Artists Market for the first time.

Deadline: February 18, 2011

Start your Emerging Artist Scholarship application

Juried Visual Art Exhibition

The Juried Visual Art Exhibition is an indoor, juried visual art exhibition showcasing exciting new work by regional artists during the annual Three Rivers Arts Festival. Artists meeting eligibility requirements are invited to submit up to three works for consideration.

Deadline: 11:59 pm, March 11, 2011

Start your Juried Visual Art Exhibition application

Showcase Noir

Showcase Noir is a one-day juried exhibition presented by The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust to highlight artwork created by African American artists. In 2011, Showcase Noir joins forces with Three Rivers Arts Festival, and will be held on Sunday, June 5, at the Byham Theater.

If your work qualifies for both programs, apply first to Showcase Noir and you will receive a special discount on your Artists Market application fees.

Deadline: March 31, 2011

Start your Showcase Noir application

Now, if only you could all agree!

David Bernabo + Assembly
Recorded with over 20 local musicians, David Bernabo + Assembly’s latest album, Happener-Magicker, surely qualifies as one of the most ambitious musical endeavors to come out of Pittsburgh’s indie scene. You could tell that just from reading the liner notes. Then, upon actually listening to the record, ambitious becomes too weak a word to capture the art-rock soundscapes Bernabo and crew explore. Indebted to everyone from Jim O’Rourke to Steve Reich to the Dirty Projectors, Happener-Magicker is surely one of the most exciting, challenging records to come out of the city in recent memory. Leaping like a frog on a lillypad-strewn pond from free jazz to prog-rock to avant-garde, pseudo-classical string arrangements, this record grins defiantly in the face of genre. Lucky is a word we could use to describe how we should feel, having this band here in Pittsburgh, but, again, it doesn’t seem strong enough.

Last year, Happener-Magicker’s wonderful first single, “Out There,” competed with a slew of other local tracks in the Pittsburgh Rocks Battle of the Bands. It didn’t win – because y’all weren’t ready. But maybe now you are.

Boca Chica
The title of Boca Chica’s latest album is Lace Up Your Workboots, and whether that’s an order directed at the listener remains unclear. But giving the record a spin, it’s pretty clear that workboots were not involved in the recording of this gorgeous, unassuming folk-pop.

Essentially, Boca Chica is the solo project of singer/songwriter Hallie Pritts and whatever musician friends she happens to be recording with at the time. Her voice is sweet yet idiosyncratic, something like a sleepy Joanna Newsom. She drapes her easy words in lively banjos, gentle guitars, singing of “Snow Angels” and “Afternoon Tea.” Iron & Wine had best watch their back; Boca Chica may trounce them for the title of indie folk’s best crafter of lullabies.

Harlan Twins
Being from Pittsburgh, the Harlan Twins (a five person outfit containing precisely zero siblings) are situated geographically between Canada and the South. There is a certain logic, then, that the Harlan Twins cultivate a sound that draws equally upon the Band and the Allman Brothers, classic groups from Toronto and Jacksonville, respectively.

Folk-rock, ping-ponging across state-lines and through the decades, manifests itself differently with each group of musicians who choose to explore it. In the hands of the Harlan Twins, it takes on indie-rock qualities, incorporating intense quiet/loud dynamics and the hazy, reverb-heavy atmospherics exemplified by the music of My Bloody Valentine. They describe their sound as yinzer pastoral, and that sounds nice, but you could just as easily settle on calling it great music, and you’d still be right.

Lohio
About a minute and a half into “Grandfather’s Chaise,” Lohio makes it clear they’ve got the folk thing and the rock thing down. The first minute of the song is a sweet, CSNY-style meditation on waking up, feeling the early morning sun, etc. that is followed, triumphantly, by a roaring guitar solo that would make Wilco proud. The song is a statement of purpose, and it says: “We’re Lohio. We effortlessly make big music that you should listen to.” Or something like that.

Lohio came together around Greg Dutton, a singer/songwriter who migrated from Ohio to Pittsburgh, only to fall in with a circle of like-minded musicians, including Boca Chica’s Hallie Pritts. This network of artists interested in exploring folk through the perspective of Pittsburgh took Dutton in, allowing him to assemble the good men and women of Lohio.

Two albums and one EP later, Lohio is a firmly established part of the city’s indie scene. The confidence time and reputation brings can be felt in each of the 5 new tracks on the self-title EP Lohio released last November. “Grandfather’s Chaise” is the first track (you can stream it on their myspace) and, as mentioned, it’s a doozy, the kind of song that makes you stop your Internet browsing, scroll back to the page streaming the mp3, and just listen.

Local Indie Music Showcase with MC Cindy Howes of WYEP’s Morning Mix
Saturday, June 12
5:30pm: David Bernabo + Assembly
6:30pm: Boca Chica
7:30pm: Harlan Twins
8:30pm: Lohio
Dollar Bank Stage at Point State Park