Video Game Art Show opens in Reno
Pitch Black Printing Company premiered their first video-game themed art show last week.
“Level Up” features 22 local artists and showcases art inspired by Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon, and Pacman. At the show, video game themed snacks and drinks were available, and guests could play their retro favorites on a game emulator.
Owners Maurice Harold and Megan O’Reilly got the idea after the did a Halloween-themed show last year. Then they realized that March 10, the day before the gallery show, was Mario Day.
“And we saw that on the calendar and thought, well, why don’t we just do a video game art show? That will be a good, easy one to do,” Harold says. “Turns out it was very easy to do. A lot of people got really excited really fast. It’s very accessible.”
Pitch Black Printing opened in 2015, and prints everything from photographs to wedding invitations. Harold, who also plays in a band, opened Pitch Black after being tired of having to pay other people to make his band tshirts.
The business doubles as a gallery and as a shop. All of the art featured in the “Level Up” show are available for sale.
“All I can hope for is that people come in and they’re stoked, and we sell at least some of them,” Harold says. “Of course, I always want to sell all of them. I want the artist to be happy with it of course. I want people to be stoked to be here and buy art, and look at art and sell art and do all those things.”
More than 150 people showed up for the March 11th show, and Pitch Black Printing sold 45 pieces that night.
Pitch Black Printing will have another show in April, and in June will be celebrating their one-year anniversary of being in their current building.
Pitch Black Printing will also be involved with Reno Artown later this year. At that show, called “Tiny Art,” Harold says artists will be restricted to an eight-by-eight inch canvas.
