Ben Schonberger (he/him) is a Pittsburgh-based visual artist whose work in lens and print-based media traverses the deeply personal, the historically charged, and the unflinchingly queer. A senior lecturer at Point Park University and a long-standing figure in Pittsburgh’s creative ecosystem, Schonberger’s artistic practice is as much about image-making as it is about meaning-making. His work is held in collections at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Toledo Museum of Art, and MoMA’s Library, among others. Each is a testament to the intensity and intimacy he brings to his craft.
But beyond museum walls, Schonberger’s art lives in the context of community. His approach to making and sharing visual work is deeply informed by queerness. Not just as subject matter, but as a way of being and seeing. With an eye on visibility, mentorship, and transformation, Schonberger invites viewers into a process that’s as conceptual as it is emotional. “If you want your visual art to connect with a community,” he says, “you need to think about how you want it to be experienced outside of a first-person relationship that you’re having with your work.”
The Artist’s Lens
Schonberger’s relationship with visual expression began early in his life. “Working as a visual artist fuels me because it is the outlet,” he says. “It is the most fluid way for me to communicate and to apply ideas and things that I think are really important and put those ideas into the world.” For him, image-making is not just a passion, it’s a necessary mode of translation between the internal and the external, the abstract and the immediate.
He describes his artistic process as beginning with an idea, which evolves through a series of material choices. “A medium is chosen, tools are used, and then you have this thing,” he explains. “And then this thing ultimately becomes divisive. It’s designed to communicate an idea or talk about something specific, or maybe something abstract.”
But Schonberger’s work doesn’t end in the studio, it thrives in conversation with the world. “When you implement [your work] into the world, that’s kind of step one,” he says. “There are a lot of ways you can do that. I really like when my work is curated and put into a grander context.” Curation, for him, is a way to shape how the message is received but he acknowledges that interpretation always lives halfway in the eyes of the beholder. Citing Marcel Duchamp, he reflects: “The artist does their 50 percent, and then the world applies their 50 percent to interpret.”
Queering the Frame
For Schonberger, queerness is not a label affixed to his art, it’s embedded in the way the work functions, seduces, and resists. “I think, like, how my work sort of engages the queer community is that it is topically queer,” he explains. “If you interact with my work, or you come across it, it has this, like, queer façade. It has this very strange, almost fluid presentation, whether it’s the use of color, or it’s the use of subject matter.”
He likens his artistic style to a kind of aesthetic sleight of hand: “It’s kind of like the bait and switch. Like, I’m going to, like, seduce you first and then take your wallet.” Beneath that playfulness, however, lies a deep intentionality. “The themes, the subject matter, [are] all connected and tied to specific queer history. So, the work itself is queer.”
Visibility, he notes, is a powerful offering especially in a culture where queer people have historically been forced to gather in secrecy or express themselves only in private. “The queer community is a community that… has a history of having to gather in secrecy… because there’s a fear of being discovered, we’ll call it outed, and then being ostracized or punished,” he says. “So, I think anything that makes or allows visibility, or cultivates a place for visibility, is a signal of humanity.”
That humanity often shows up in the unlikeliest places. Schonberger notes that some of the most validating moments come when people outside the community, especially straight people, resonate with his work. “It’s almost like, like, you know… it’s a win,” he says. “Especially when it’s validated or appreciated by straight people. They’re like, ‘Oh, this is so great.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, you like that, you know?’”
Ultimately, for him, queerness is about subversion and expansion, taking what isn’t “inherently queer” and queering it through interaction, presentation, or perspective. “If you can cultivate a way for [non-queer things] to become queer, they become these devices that question what queerness is.”
And that questioning, that disorientation, is part of queerness itself. “At its core… queer means strange,” he says. “We use the term strange to talk about things that we don’t directly understand… And people immediately are weary with different.” Rather than shy away from that difference, Schonberger leans in.
Mentorship and Queer Belonging
Schonberger’s impact isn’t limited to gallery walls, much of his influence lives in the classroom, guiding students at Point Park University as they navigate their own artistic and personal identities. For Ben, this role is more than a job. It’s a response to a need he once felt deeply himself.
“When I was in college, I never had a queer mentor,” he says. “When I was in high school, I didn’t have an iPhone. You know, it was such a different time to be in the closet or to be queer. It wasn’t like considered this flex or this power move like it is now. And I truly am really proud to say that I believe that to be real. But I think looking back… had I had a queer mentor, I think things would have moved faster for me. And I didn’t have that cheerleader that I try to be for our queer students, because we have a lot.”
He recognizes the very real challenges that many queer students still face often arriving from communities where self-expression comes with risk. “They come from places in the state, in the country, where you have to watch your back. You have to protect yourself. You have to be mindful of what you’re doing. Even in the home… If your parents disagree with a lifestyle, they could cut you off. That’s still a thing, you know.”
Pittsburgh itself, Ben jokes, “is like the Wild West of Appalachia… it’s a play date.” Yet he also describes the city and Point Park specifically as a transformative place for queer community and visibility. “When I moved here and took my position at Point Park, I was so happy and proud to see such a strong visible queer community in an institution and to see that type of support and the quality of a safe space… it just blew my mind. It was like, wow, I’m a human being in this community and this is amazing.”
Ben’s mentorship is grounded in helping students especially queer students find their own voices and build self-confidence. “Making art is a great way to question. It’s a great way to communicate ideas that we can’t express verbally or that we’re not ready to express verbally. So when students or young people start to go that direction, having a cheerleader, having someone that knows how to drive down that road, it makes things so much more manageable and the confidence grows.”
To him, great mentorship isn’t about molding someone in your own image. “Great mentors don’t teach you how to do things the way they do things. They help you find your way. And that’s what I try and do with our students… everyone’s path is inherently a unique personal journey.”
Pride as Practice
For Schonberger, pride is less about spectacle and more about rootedness, about recognizing one’s own value and carving out space for belonging. “I think having pride means seeing value and establishing a conscious sense of belonging, even if it’s just a sense of self-belonging,” he says. “Being able to look at yourself and say, you know, this is great. There is a place for me and there’s a place for others. There’s a place for everybody.”
His art, while undeniably queer in tone and texture, isn’t created with a deliberate agenda to be “prideful.” Instead, it emerges organically from his lived experience. “I don’t make work with the mindset or the agenda, like, I’m going to make this and it’s going to be queer,” he explains. “The work stems from a sense of queerness because my behavior, the way I carry myself, the way I look at the world, the way I laugh at the world, the way I am afraid of the world comes from a queer sensibility.”
That sensibility doesn’t stop at the edge of the canvas. It carries into his teaching, too. “I teach through my queerness,” he says. “Everyone has their own voice as an educator. The way I teach is really queer. It’s very fluid. It’s very strange. It’s sometimes ridiculous.” That irreverence is intentional and effective. “Those methods work because I believe in them, and I have figured out how to refine it like a fine art practice.”
Looking Ahead
Schonberger’s next body of work, Hi-NRG, opens July 25, 2025, as part of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Gallery Crawl at Gallery 707 and will run through November 2. The show promises a continuation of his signature approach: art that seduces, unsettles, and asks big questions through a lens that is deeply queer, deeply intentional, and deeply human.
As both an artist and an educator, Ben Schonberger is carving out a space where visibility is power, mentorship is radical, and queerness is both subject and method. Through his work and presence, he reminds us that to create is to assert existence, and to do so queerly is to expand the world’s imagination of what’s possible.
Ben Schonberger’s Hi-NRG exhibition is on display through Sunday, November 2, 2025, at 707 Penn Gallery in the Cultural District. The exhibition draws from the visual culture of the gay underground and the sonic legacy of Patrick Cowley, a pioneering composer and producer whose work helped define Hi-NRG (pronounced “high energy”)—an accelerated form of disco that emerged in the late 1970s. Before his death from AIDS in 1982, Cowley crafted some of the era’s most innovative electronic music, shaping a soundscape that pulsed through queer nightlife.
