In the Beginning...
Art Pop was a pop-up art program that started in Culliton (formerly Farnum) park. The goal of the 2018 phase of Community Engagement was to facilitate creative and collaborative community meetings and actions to communicate the future vision of the Culliton Park neighborhood, create a sense of ownership in the redeveloped Park, ease the transition of redevelopment in the neighborhood, and create better communication/trust between Lancaster City authorities involved in the redevelopment process and residents of the Southwest quadrant of Lancaster City. Additionally, we worked to creatively incorporate an understanding around the need for redevelopment of the park that includes improving management of storm-water while also being sensitive to the history of traumatic redevelopment and it’s after-effects that the community has lived through. In 2019, the work continued through three sub-programs: Community Tapestry, Community Mini-murals (Scale-Up), and a Community Mind Map.
And then...
Art Pop activities resulted in two murals on the Water Street Mission wall facing the park! In 2018, the temporary mural gained national recognition from American's for the Arts Public Art Network. 2019 we installed a permanent version of the mural. Activities in the park paused in the summer of 2020 due to construction and Covid 19. Art Pop returned in a modified way to celebrate the Grand Opening of the newly renovated Culliton Park!
And now...
Now we are Taller Pa'lante! The literal translation of Taller Pa'lante is Pa'lante Workshop or Forward Workshop. Pa'lante is super important to us as a creative philosophy and way of life. Pa'lante is teh conflation of Para and Adelante which means to move forward. We have chosen to rename and regroup as artists working in community to keep our work always moving our community forward (and always with an eye to the past). Taller Pa'lante incorporates the vision of what was Cafe Pa'lante and founder Salina Almanzar's independent work in the community. Together with art partner and husband Osmyn Oree, Salina chose to create an umbrella organization that can hold all of the work around Placemaking, Placekeeping, cultural expression, and public art that she has been doing in Lancaster City for the past decade.
Salina Almanzar
Lead Artist and Founder
Salina Almanzar (sah-lee-nah ahll-mun-czar)(she/her) is a Puerto Rican and Dominican visual and social practice artist, educator and writer. She is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 2013 with a double major in Studio Art and English Literature. She completed the Arts Administration and Museum Leadership Graduate Program at Drexel University in June of 2017. There, she completed a thesis examining Creative Placemaking in the Lancaster Latinx community. She has since continued her research through continued data gathering via story sharing as well as serving as co-facilitator of the Latino Empowerment Project. Salina also serves as a teaching artist in Lancaster City parks through Lancaster Public Art.
Osmyn Oree
Photographer and Lead Artist
Osmyn J. Oree is a deeply passionate and highly driven, 29 yr. old photographer based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He became interested in fine art photography at the age of 17, and has been a diehard devotee to the genre, ever since. Osmyn’s work focuses primarily on conceptual portraiture and the figure. It is of the utmost importance to Osmyn as a photographer – to always represent the human body (male or female), in a tasteful, yet thought provoking way – while still striving to meet his own high standards of excellence – in regards to the composition and quality of each individual photograph.
spurred his desire to explore the world of fine art nude portraiture himself – and in doing so, he has not only carved out his own, unique niche, but he has also filled a void in the Lancaster arts scene. A dedicated analog photographer, Osmyn stands out in a largely digital photography era, by shooting with a medium format Hasselblad camera.