Pittsburgh creative couple start residency at The Westmoreland

A creative couple from Pittsburgh are the first-ever resident artists at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg.

The arrangement formalizes a relationship that D.S. and Anqwenique Kinsel have had with the museum, including a February musical performance by Anqwenique in conjunction with “African American Art in the 20th Century,” the current traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Launching the program came via “a collision of many effects of covid on our roster of programs,” said Anne Kraybill, the museum’s Richard M. Scaife Director/CEO.

A foundation that was providing funding for a number of canceled programs agreed that those funds could be used for the artist residency, she said.

Canceled programs also meant that the museum’s Center for Creative Connection, where hands-on workshops and programs are held, was available for use as a studio space.

“The residency is part of a larger conversation about identifying and supporting marginalized artists and artists of color,” Kraybill said, initiated under her predecessor, Judy O’Toole.

D.S. Kinsel is a co-founder of BOOM Concepts, a Pittsburgh-based creative hub providing studio space and other assistance to foster “the development of artist and creative entrepreneurs representing marginalized voices.”

He describes himself as “a painter, a street artist and a cultural agitator.”

As a performer, Anqwenique specializes in opera, classical music, jazz and soul. She also is a director, producer and teaching artist who advocates for arts and music education.

She is developing “Just Sing!,” a workshop exploring singing as a means of self-care for dealing with stress and anxiety and also for vocal health.

Together, they have been collaborating since 2016 on “Love Letters,” a performance art piece incorporating film, poetry and projection work.

They also are parents of a 2½-year-old daughter, Liberty Kinsel.

‘Turbo yinzers’

As part of their personal practices at The Westmoreland, D.S. will be doing some encaustic landscape painting, and Anqwenique will continue songwriting and working on an EP.

They’ll be sharing with the public monthly through digital experiences, including a November conversation about their practices. They also hope to do some DJ sets, featuring vinyl records they’ve inherited and collected.

“Greensburg has some great, funky record shops,” D.S. said.

As lifelong Pittsburghers, D.S. said, most of the couple’s professional experience has been in urban settings. But as “turbo yinzers,” with generations of family history in Western Pennsylvania, they also are eager to engage with creative people working in more rural settings.

“We want to build an infrastructure of relationships with businesses and universities to make it easier for the next resident artists,” D.S. said, adding that the program will include four to six artists over the next two years.

“Part of that will be helping artists of color explore what is here,” he said.

The couple will work to connect their existing network of artists to those they will encounter in Westmoreland County.

The benefits of the relationship are many-fold, Kraybill said.

“We’ll be investigating what that brings to a place without a lot of diversity in its composition,” she said.

“For the artists, it gives them financial support and time to explore new bodies of work, and to introduce them to an adjacent neighbor,” she said. “It also gives us the opportunity to have someone else respond to our collection.

“It also is an introduction and invitation to a whole new population that doesn’t know about us,” she said.