What is Color Park?
Color Park is an area along the Three Rivers Heritage Trail on the South Side of the City of Pittsburgh where individual art is allowed and encouraged. It draws on the examples of other Color Parks across the U.S. and world. Color Parks, sometimes known as Graffiti Parks, all have different management, rules and traditions, but they are all places where painted art, specifically graffiti, is allowed to be created and displayed without the usual legal consequences. Learn about other Color Parks in the world.
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What are the Color Park rules?
There are some rules for painting in Color Park, because it is a public area within a community:
- No obscenity. This means no actions, words or images that are not appropriate for the general public, which includes children.
- No hate speech. Any statement or art that incites discrimination, hostility, or violence towards a person or a group or that expresses prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds.
- No painting beyond the boundaries of the park. This includes the surface of the Three Rivers Heritage Trail, and all surfaces beyond the specific area of the park.
Friends of the Riverfront holds periodic painting refresh events, where the art is painted over to provide a new “canvas” for artists. Friends documents the art via photographs before starting these refresh events and the photos can be found in the Color Park Archive.
There are also rules that apply to Color Park because they apply to all areas of the Three Rivers Heritage Trail:
- No destruction, damage or painting of benches, signs, water fountains or other amenities on the trail.
- Stay right, pass on the left.
- Speed limit is 15 MPH.
- Follow all traffic rules.
- No littering.
- Dogs must be on a leash.
- Clean up after your dog.
- Trail is open from dawn to dusk.
- Respect others. The trail is a welcoming space for all.
Taking note of these rules not only shows respect for the local community, it shows respect for all the artists involved and all those who use the trail.
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I want to paint in Color Park, but I don’t want my work painted over. What should I do?
Color Park was conceived in 2017 as a public, ongoing art project as a result of a legal encounter that a local artist, Baron Batch, had with the law concerning paintings he had created on the Three Rivers Heritage Trail. The intention of this project was to provide a place for artists to experiment legally with art along the trail. (Learn more in What is the History of Color Park?)
Color Park was created to be an ongoing, ever-changing space for expression, with no preference shown for particular art or artists. It has always been, by its nature, a place where people knew their art may last only days or hours, and that this impermanence was part of the artistic intention of the space from the beginning.
If you want your art to be permanent, we don’t recommend you paint in Color Park. Instead, we urge artists to memorialize their Color Park art via photographs, and we invite them to share those images in whatever way they decide is best. We also encourage artists to share their work with Friends of the Riverfront via social media. Friends periodically captures images of the art in Color Park and maintains those images in our Color Park Archive.
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What about the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA)?
Protection provided to artists by the VARA does not legally apply to works in Color Park.
First, there has never been any reasonable expectation by any artist working in Color Park of preservation of their art. Since its inception (see What is the History of Color Park?) artists have amended and painted over the art there, sometimes on a daily or even hourly basis. It was created in 2017 to be an ongoing, evolving project, with no preference shown for any individual artist or work. No art has ever been commissioned for the space.
Second, the VARA applies only to the destruction of visual art on a public area owned by another entity if it is of “recognized stature.” Recent Pennsylvania and national court cases involving the VARA have reinforced this part of the law to mean that the artist themselves must have an acknowledged professional artistic reputation that goes beyond Pittsburgh and is most usually applied to works that have been commissioned and/or that the artist has received some form of payment for.
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Who owns the Color Park?
The land on which Color Park is located is owned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, known as the URA. Friends of the Riverfront has an agreement with the City of Pittsburgh that allows our organization to help maintain Color Park. Maintaining the Three Rivers Heritage Trail and the Three Rivers Water Trail is what we do, and so Color Park falls under our mission to maintain these trails.
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How can I help support the Color Park?
We invite you to connect with us by signing up for our emails, where you can find out more about events we are holding there and the periodic cleanups we conduct. If you want to suggest something for that space, or propose an event or initiative around Color Park, get in touch with us!
