Across three pickleball courts in central Pittsburgh, Sharmistha Ray embraces the realm of sport as a canvas for vibrant paintings. Geometry of Play comprises large-scale murals that mark the first artist-designed pickleball courts in the country. While we most often associate outdoor murals with walls, the otherwise nondescript 22-by-40-foot area is ripe for interpretation.
Ray translates their vivid, geometric abstractions onto a playable surface, tapping into the sport’s communal nature. The artist has long been interested in themes of belonging, especially through the lenses of queer identity and the inheritance of multiple cultures.
In Geometry of Play, target-like spheres, diamonds, stars, and more intersect across the rectangular planes. Two side-by-side courts create a near-square with a compass-like dial shape in the center, which could almost be read as an eye. Confidently contemporary, Ray’s work sits within the continuum of abstraction, nodding to spiritualist painters like Hilma af Klint and the philosophy of the Bauhaus, which placed art and design on equal footing.
The work was commissioned as part of Arts Landing, a four-acre civic development project in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District consisting of a multi-use park with a performance space, plenty of tables and seating, and public art. In addition to the courts, the artist also designed a series of pickleball paddles.
Ray is also co-founder of the feminist art collective Hilma’s Ghost, which focuses on spiritualism and abstraction, and you can find more on their Instagram. You may also enjoy the artist’s project for the MTA and Lakwena’s basketball court murals in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
