GA/GI Story/ Founder

With the advent of World Environment day in 2010, Christine Bethea was inspired by the collaborative efforts of Tree Pittsburgh and Hack Pittsburgh's first art exhibition to create a festival that celebrates and encourages conversations between people in the green and technology industries. She met with The Glass Center, The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, The Bloomfield-Garfield Association and Friendship Development as the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative, Urban Tree Forge, Carnegie Mellon University, City Councilman (now Mayor) Bill Peduto, The Pittsburgh Technology Council and many others who participated in helping her development the first Geek Art/Green Innovators Festival. At this time, there were no green festivals of any kind in the ciy or Allegheny county. Utilizing Penn Avenue's then fledgling artist's format "Unblurred" as the stage for the first GA/GI event, Bethea has for over six years continued to help build the art crawl by introducing new audiences, projects, programs and artists which has brought local and national attention to her beloved Friendship-Garfield community and the city of Pittsburgh.  Since 2010, Bethea's GA/GI event has highlighted hundreds of artists, had participation from nearly every Pittsburgh college and university and has been recognized by the Pittsburgh Council for the Arts, The Hill Houses Association and the Pittsburgh Technology Counctil for her continued work with the business and the arts community. Ms. Bethea currently owns Mostly Mod and ARTica Galley with her business partner, Bernie Schilling at 5110 Penn Avenue, is Vice President of Women of Visions, Inc, and coordinates events city- wide through Passports, an artist's collaborative.