Sports brings people together, creating a playing field where differences can be set aside and the game can take center stage. Pittsburgh is leaning into that spirit with a colorful new twist: the city’s first artist-designed pickleball courts. Called Arts Landing: Geometry of Play, the luminous ground mural by artist Sharmistha Ray is the latest addition to the Arts Landing Public Art program. Curated by Anastasia James, former director of Public Art & Galleries at PCT, the courts combine the beauty of public art with the growing popularity of pickleball.
Geometry of Play utilizes vibrant colors and shapes to create a psychedelic playing experience, striking a balance between abstraction and intentional game design. Taking inspiration from the geometric structures of historic game boards, including parcheesi, which originated in India, the interlocking shapes form a colorful, kaleidoscopic composition. Players move across a palette spanning the full ROYGBIV spectrum—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—invoking the rainbow and its associations with inclusion, visibility, and belonging.
Ray’s work has been strongly shaped by their experiences in South Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. Through their work as an artist, writer, and educator, Ray explores the ways identities can be interlocking and expansive, much like the geometric abstraction found throughout their work. Queerness is a prominent theme across their practice, and Ray is a founding member of the feminist artist collective Hilma’s Ghost. Ray currently teaches at Carnegie Mellon University.
Geometry of Play lives at Arts Landing, a civic space located in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District. A $31 million project designed by landscape architecture firm Field Operations and overseen by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the space was created to host festivals, performances, visual art, and community events. Ray’s courts join a growing roster of installations at the site, including works by vanessa german, Thaddeus Mosley, Shikeith, Mikael Owunna and Marques Redd, Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis, Darian Johnson, and John Peña. The inaugural Arts Landing artworks will remain on view for at least one year as part of the program’s 36-month implementation plan.
By blending public art with one of the country’s fastest-growing sports, Geometry of Play transforms an everyday recreation space into a colorful gathering place for the Pittsburgh community. The courts are open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. at Arts Landing in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh unveils the first artist-designed pickleball courts by multidisciplinary artist Sharmistha Ray.
Called Geometry of Play, the courts utilize vibrant colors and shapes to create a psychedelic playing experience, striking a balance between abstraction and intentional game design.
As the latest addition to the Arts Landing Public Art program, they combine the beauty of public art with the growing popularity of pickleball.
Through their work as an artist, writer, and educator, Ray explores the ways identities can be interlocking and expansive, much like the geometric abstraction found throughout their work.
By blending public art with one of the country's fastest-growing sports, Geometry of Play transforms an everyday recreation space into a colorful gathering place for the Pittsburgh community.
