An impromptu/informal memorial for an unknown young man, attached to a tree in Woods Run
On an otherwise unremarkable side street, a single roadside tree stands out from the rest. Attached to it is a bouquet of pink and white flowers, a solar-powered light, and enlarged color photograph of a young man. The subject is both movie star handsome and ruggedly everyman in his plain white t-shirt and stretchy track suit pants. Aside from the man’s face, every square inch of exposed skin has been tattoo’d in an array of text, glyphs, and images.
Of course we can’t know for sure—there is no annotation for the beribboned photo on this back-alley tree—but by now, we’re accustomed to think of these informal tributes as memorials for lost friends, loved-ones, or community members who’ve passed onto the infinite entirely too soon for those who mourn them here on earth.
Shamus/Mikey, Polish Hill
Memorial Day. Let’s do this. In what has become an Orbit tradition, we take a hyper-local turn on today’s holiday. No, it’s not strictly about honoring our fallen members our armed services, but it’s also not about discount mattresses and blow-out doorbuster deals at the mall.
These impromptu tributes—painted on walls and staked into roadside berms, placed in windows and stuck into tree trunks—are the people’s memorials. They’re what we’ll be thinking about this day—yes, along with slaw dogs, Clancy’s chips, and beer from a can—as we memorialize the memorials that are inevitably not long for this world.
Happy Memorial Day, y’all.
unknown, Perry South
detail: “Please don’t think of me in sadness …”
unknown, Homestead
unknown, Manchester
Lotte, Polish Hill
Harley (the rat?), Chateau
“Never Forgotten” East Ohio St. OG’s (sic.), Deutschtown
The classic! A single chair from a dinette set, orphaned and alone, reserving an on-street parking spot. Garfield
Alone in the rain, playing dangerously in the street, a lone chair stands sentry over his master’s cherished sixteen feet of curbside frontage. The seat was once a member of a family—four, perhaps six, identical siblings joined around a matching dining table where the rest of the household would eat and cajole, argue and play. Now though, with that Camelot lost, just one chair is banished to the loneliest, last role of its life—standing on the street, waiting for a car to come home, holding a parking place.
Parking chair with backup cone, just in case. Lawrenceville
It’s strange to think of the omnipresent Pittsburgh parking chair as an endangered species or dying phenomenon—it is not, by any means—but the character of the object reserving that spot has changed significantly.
Twenty years ago, the parking scene was still dominated by chairs that once held keisters at the kitchen table. That image of the single chrome dinette chair, rusting and battered, dirty stuffing leaking through cracks in the upholstery, is indelible if you were lucky enough to see them in those salad days.
That time is past, though. Just look at this collection of photographs—the cheap, stackable, white plastic lawn chair has taken over the market and ex-dining chairs are few and far between. There’s still a lot of variety—folding chairs of every make and model and non-chair “chairs” (we’ll get to those)—but we still miss those diner-style seats that used to dot row house residential streets like birds on a wire.
East Liberty
For the last eight years The Orbit has resisted the urge to park our behind in this most predictable of subjects d’Burgh—it seemed too easy and too obvious.
Parking chairs are also really difficult to photograph well. I know, I know—boo hoo to this guy living the dream making fat stacks taking pictures of street chairs in Pittsburgh—do your job, amirite? It ain’t that easy, buddy. You want to see the chair, sure, but it’s (usually) only interesting in the context of a much larger thing—an entire house or a row of them—that it’s related to. So you’ve got to get this little thing in front of really big thing and then houses have all this visual noise distracting you, blah, blah, blah—it ain’t easy.
Anyway, the oddly routine experience of seeing single chairs randomly in the street is also right up our, ahem, alley. So that ultimately won out, even if these aren’t our finest photos.
Finally, if you’ve got a great parking chair, a photo of one, or a story about them, we’d love to hear about it or get tagged on it.
Taped-up. Lawrenceville
Steelers parking chair! Lawrenceville
Bloomfield
Lawrenceville
Parking spot au naturale, Greenfield
Lawrenceville
Lawrenceville
Lawrenceville
No parking AND no sitting. Polish Hill
Out front and proud. Hazelwood
Parked parking chairs, ready to deploy. Bloomfield
Parking chair twins! Lawrenceville
Chair’s eye view. Lawrenceville
Just in Case You Didn’t Get the Hint …
“No Parking.” Lawrenceville
“Please do not move chair—therapist coming.” Lawrenceville
“No Parking! You will be towed away.” Bloomfield
Parking Non-Chairs
“The Thing” (our term), Bloomfield
Park here and you’ll get hexed! Parking witch, Southside
Parking milk crates, Bloomfield
The cone of toxic masculinity, Bloomfield
Parking tray holder and 4×4, Lawrenceville
The “Anything Goes!” Parking bollard, parking chair with 2x4s, Lawrenceville
Sometimes a picture may be worth even more than a thousand words. “I Lost My Mind” (detail) by Erin Harper was included in Art All Night 2023
There will be time to murder and create. The words are painted and collaged onto a set of five entrance steps to an elaborately over-the-top front porch. The three-story, Victorian-style dollhouse is covered with a blitzkrieg of … everything. Small toys, buttons, shells, bottle caps, and other found objects have been hot-glued to its surfaces along with a loose collage of magazine cuttings, product packaging, and patterned prints. The decoration is not limited to the exterior of the house. No, the walls and floor of each interior room are decked-out, each in a different over-the-top theme.
The art piece, titled I Lost My Mind, is by Erin Harper. One hopes Ms. Harper was speaking metaphorically of both the losing of minds and murder, but she certainly found time to create. It was perhaps the most striking work at last weekend’s Art All Night, this year again at 31st Street Studios in the Strip District.
If you have to make time for just one … “I Lost My Mind,” Erin Harper (detail)
Let’s get something straight: there were boobs—lots of them—wangs too. And yes, there was at least one hoo-ha. In addition to the requisite nudes and soft-porn, other Art All Night perennial genres included sports art, paint-splattered baby dolls, skip-a-little-rope, smoke-a-little-dope doobie visions, skulls, skeletons, and zombies, visual puns, and lots and lots of renditions of the downtown Pittsburgh skyline. This being the first Art All Night since the Dobbs decision came down, women’s rights and body autonomy was an important topical issue.
The Sleestack came back. “Slimy,” Don Strange
These specialties are not the sum of the artwork included at Art All Night. Despite the focus of this piece, know that Art All Night also features landscapes in oil, portrait paintings, photography, ceramics, elaborate sculpture, delicate craft, terrific kids art, and all the rest. The event, of course, is so much more than paintings hung on plywood walls—the mass of people out-and-about, kids going nuts on cardboard, performance art, the drum circle under the 31st Street Bridge.
But it is this collision of the sublime, along with the ridiculous and the mundane that makes Art All Night so special. And what is most thrilling is that these individual bizarre expressions—created as jokes or under the influence of hallucinogens or mental health issues as they may—have an outlet for public exhibition.
What the heck, man? “Brittany in a Sketchy Atlantic City Hotel,” Joseph Heckmann
I don’t know if there’s a gallery out there that would show Joseph Heckmann’s Brittany in a Sketchy Atlantic City Hotel, but I’m sure glad I got to see it. What was Brittany doing in Atlantic City and why is she dressed like a clown headed to aerobics? Does she really have a giant tattoo of another clown on her left leg? I want answers, sure, but Heckmann’s acrylic painting gives us that great gift of wonder—not just about the subject of the artwork, but about its creator too.
A whole different rainbow connection. “Death, Division, and the Iconography of Hope,” Adam Greene
That is Art All Night’s great gift to the world—both to its event goers and its art contributors. It continues, 26 year on, to be a safe space of free expression for every kind of any person to do what they want to do and share it with everyone else. Hats off, yet again, to the fantastic crew that manages to pull this genie out of a hat year after year.
If chickens can have fingers, fish can have legs … and perform on a Vaudeville stage. “Legs,” Casey Welsby
Rope was skipped here. “Path to Pacaya,” Megan D’Jovin
Black and gold and emerald green. “OZ Pgh,” Tara Lee Fedonni
Nun havin’ fun. “Popsicle Nun,” Leah O’Shea
A nun not havin’ so much fun. “The Scorned Nun,” Faith M.
You moss remember this. “I’ve Got You Covered,” Angie Monk
Tom Brady: “known cheater,” artistic muse. “GOAT 666,” The Artiste Reno
Baby on board. untitled, Eileen Cousins
Ernie’s got a brand new bag. “Existence is Futile,” John Rogers
Big pants to fill. “In Case of Emergency Break Glass,” Taylor Atkins
Robot dance party. Unknown (journalism fail!)
Red wave. “The Wave Returns to the Ocean,” Jenna McDermot
Zombified and skeletized. “Speechless,” Brenda Vernon
Flesh and bones. untitled, Lindsay Tate
Fire in the hole. “It’s Fine,” Crystal Berry
Down at the tube station at Midnight. “Wood Street T Station,” Brendan Donovan
Here’s lookin’ at you. The big eye on the hood of the Red Fish Bowl art van in Lawrenceville. One of many fine examples of artworks created for the engine hoods of automobiles.
Staring right back at you is the biggest eyeball you’ve ever seen. We’re talking about a King Kong-sized window to the soul. Gulliver’s frightened ocular as he’s swarmed by Lilliputians. The last thing your reincarnated keister sees before the fly-swatter takes you onto your next life … and it’s parked right there on Butler Street.
Our Lady of Perpetual Torque, Bloomfield
If you thought great art was confined to museum halls and bathroom stalls, banish that notion from your mind! Yes, it’s everywhere and anywhere. Why, you’ll find the work of budding young Picassos, Yayoi Kasamas, and Thomas Kinkades on worksheds, mailboxes, trash dumpsters, and right in the middle of the street.
But cars, man, cars! We’re Americans! We drive everywhere and get angry doing it! The automobile is our religion and its finish coating is this temple’s elegant spires and stained-glass windows. Why not treat it like the holy house it truly is?
We’ve all been hoodwinked in one way or another, but this time it’s in the very best way. The mother of all mothers blessing an F-150; a chainsaw-wielding mastodon rider with a window to another galaxy; someone’s sun-bleached Easy Rider fantasy played out across the front of an Econoline van.
So let’s get down under—and over—the hood and rev up another great canvas for self/automotive expression.
Chainsaw-wielding mastadon rider with a window to another galaxy, Lawrenceville
Stag in sunlight by Jim M., Jeannette
Motorcycles in the desert, Polish Hill
The mother of all hood art! 1970s Firebird, Strip District
Confetti Beetle, Bloomfield
Bloody skull/fangs, Lawrenceville
C OOL STUD S, Bloomfield. [Side note: they also could have gone with HO DENTS.]
Bad Girl, Downtown. [Side note: true to her name, Bad Girl was illegally parked.]
“HOH 22—Verticoll” (sic.), Downtown. One of many similar tile-based artworks installed on Pittsburgh streets over the last year
Appearing like alien inscriptions burned into city streets, they just seemed to arrive out of nowhere, in the still of the night. The images are cryptic—they could be designs for astral exploration or tools to cure conditions we can only imagine. These coded hieroglyphics seem as if they’ve been very intentionally left for only the most sentient of earth’s creatures who may be able to comprehend their true meanings.
HOH 21, Downtown
When last we encountered the House of Hades, six years ago, it was in the form of a series of similar artworks that could be fairly described as tributes or homage to Toynbee Tiles. [Newcomers to this topic: click those links for background.] The pieces used the same graphic language as the Toynbee originals: big block letters with clear—if bizarre—messaging that reads like paranoid prophesy of dystopia.
One man vs. American media in society, reads a tile; Media must be reduced to ash, another. One even goes as far as to name its inspiration: The resurrection of Toynbee’s idea in society.
Those pieces, all including the date 2012 were installed on and around Blvd. of the Allies, Downtown, in 2017. A cursory look around the Internet shows The House of Hades deploying similar pieces in a raft of American cities: Philadelphia, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Richmond, to name a few.
HOH 22, Downtown
Unless your author is slipping—and that is entirely likely—The House of Hades left Pittsburgh’s streets alone for the next five years.
Starting in the summer of 2022, though, new Toybee-like tiles began appearing throughout the city—Bloomfield, Oakland, Lawrenceville, and especially Downtown. These new cut-up mosaic street pieces are in the same medium as House of Hades’ 2017 deployment, but with an entirely different visual style. We don’t know these are from the same person or people—heck, we don’t know anything about these folks!—but the correlation and HOH attribution suggest our old friend is back in town.
HOH 21, Downtown
I don’t know what you did with your pandemic, but it feels like The House of Hades spent the last couple years working on a brand new bag. These pieces avoid any scorn of American media by abandoning text entirely (aside each tile’s HOH inscription). Instead, the tiles are more pure art: constructivist assemblages of colored blocks and metric lines, maze-like interlocking shapes and jumbled forms like tall stacks of books on a shaky table. They may be read as floor plans to space housing or profile views of history, mid-excavation. Rorschach-like, one can probably read just about anything into these designs depending on where the mind is inclined to wander.
And wander it shall as we stare deeply into these fascinating artifacts and dream of the next contact from beyond.
HOH 21, Downtown
HOH 22, Lawrenceville
HOH 21, Downtown
HOH 21, Downtown
HOH 22 ‘Su__?, Bloomfield
HOH 22, Lawrenceville
HOH 22, Oakland
Special thanks to Orbit reader Ivan Russell for his tips on a couple of the Downtown tiles.
The Lucite-enclosed photograph of Harry Begler (d. 1921). One of many grave markers that include both photographs and the symbolic imagery of chain links at Workmen’s Circle Branch 45 Cemetery, Shaler
From inside a half-globe of clear Lucite, Harry Begler stares straight back at us. The young man’s image is amazingly intact and undistorted by the odd curvature of the material that protects his photograph. The clear casing has suffered somewhat over time, but is still in terrific condition considering it’s spent the last hundred years living through as many freeze-and-thaw cycles, the corrosive air produced by heavy industry, and the inevitable presence of no-goodniks. Centered below Beglar’s photo and cut into his long granite grave marker is the depiction of three chain links making an ever-so-graceful arc downward.
Harry Abromovitz, 1888-1932
Chains are a not-uncommon symbol to find etched into gravestones and they appear in great frequency here at Workmen’s Circle Branch 45 Cemetery. Begler’s three links match the totem of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows whose symbol—standing for Amicitia Amor et Veritas (English: Friendship, Love, and Truth)—is its own standalone thing.
The rest of Workmen’s Circle’s linked chain imagery takes an entirely different form. For these, an unbroken chain encircles the deceased’s portrait.
Harry Shore, 1885-1928
Google the subject and you’ll find a whole lot more information around grave marker carvings that feature a broken chain—with its last link either missing or severed. There even appears to be a common twofer plan where the first half of a couple to die would have the broken link with her or his partner following it up with a connected chain to symbolize the pair united in the afterlife. We don’t see any of this at Workmen’s Circle, though—all chains are perfect circles and completely intact.
That the residents of Workmen’s Circle are all Jews may or may not be significant with regard to the symbolism of chains on grave markers. This goy couldn’t find anything connecting the two, but perhaps our O.T. brothers and sisters can help us out here.
Speculation aside, it’s always interesting to see how these patterns emerge at certain cemeteries—it’s almost fad-like. So gander away at these terrific combos of grave marker photographic portraits and the wreath-like protective chains that wrap them up both as design elements and symbols.
The ghostly image of Bennie Mazer (d. 1925) set into his grave marker. One of many similar deteriorating ceramic photos at Workmen’s Circle Branch 45 Cemetery, Shaler
The young man—he’s perhaps all of twenty-five—sits for his formal portrait in a jacket, tie, and pressed white dress shirt. Bennie Mazer possesses a full head of thick black hair and holds what is fair to call a Mona Lisa smile. The man’s eyes, though, are inscrutable. Through no fault of his own, the photograph—printed on a ceramic disc nearly one hundred years ago—has started to deteriorate in a most unexpected way.
In this image, Mr. Mazer’s deep set eyes appear as if engulfed by sparkles of light. The swirling electrical field that creeps over his right shoulder seems to have entered the body and lit Mazer like a jack-o-lantern from within.
The photograph, set into a large stone grave marker, is lovely, fascinating, and bizarre—equal parts local history and science fiction. It’s also hard to fathom how this object that survived 98 harsh Pittsburgh winters would deteriorate in such a lopsided way. The reality probably has to do with the printing technique and the particular value of that two-tone shade, but it feels like the work of spirits.
Dora Cherry, 1909-1918
The Orbit first went goo-goo ga-ga over these early-century ceramic grave photos when we encountered them at Loretto Cemetery years ago. Those were a revelation … and then Beaver Cemetery upped the ante considerably. Those earlier posts brought to mind all sorts of ponderances on memory and permanence and how we (the living) use these places—we’ll not repeat all that here but to say those questions are never far from the noggin.
Harry Beck
We also discussed the strange clustering of ceramic photos in certain cemeteries and the near complete absence in others. Let me know if you find more than three or four of these in all of giant Allegheny Cemetery.
Stone for stone, the per capita count of photo graves, or posthumous portraits, at the tiny Workman’s Circle Branch 45 Cemetery (and next-door New Light Cemetery—we’ll get to that) is off-the-charts. There are so many examples that we decided to break these out into a series around a few loose themes.
unknown
Here then is part one, where we look at the most haunting of the gravestone portraits—the ones that are in their own slow dissolve right before our eyes. The images contained range from mostly there with some weird distortions—like we see with Bennie Mazer—to versions so weatherbeaten and sun-bleached as to make their subjects barely distinguishable. We also threw in a handful of gentle fades and a couple that have apparently been defaced—a sadly common occurrence at all these cemeteries.
We’ll quit the gabbin’ so you can get to gawkin’. We’ll see you on the other side.
unknown
Eva Millstone, 1895-1917
Simon Begler, 1890-1932
Eleanor Saul, 1900-1925
unknown
Mary Katz, d. 1922
Temma Sigal, d. 1939
Harry Singer, d. 1927
Harry Singer
Rebecca Leah, d. 1940
Evelyn Goldman, 1927-1934
One that got away / Spock hands. S. Rozinsky d. 1918
Holy City. A mural featuring the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh, Homewood
Man, I hope you came ready to eat.
It’s been a been more than a year since The Orbit served up its last over-the-top feast of all things skyline-shaped, themed, printed, and painted, so you have a right to be hungry.
And O! What a meal we’ve prepared for the skyline-starved today! Murals with downtown Pittsburgh as both star and supporting player. Business signage to either boast one’s 412 bona fides or pander to us yokels from a corporate office far, far away. Hand-created tributes as extracurricular activity spray painted onto bicycle paths and inked onto city steps railings.
The city with a disembodied foot: mural, Perry Hilltop
All that—and more—awaits diners at this all-u-can-eat buffet of bridges, The Point, Steel Tower, PPG, and the rest. Grab a fork and knife, don’t waste your time on rolls—those are for suckers—and dig into a legitimate, if figurative, smorgasbord of Your Favorite City™ put on the pedestal it deserves … or, at least, thinks it deserves when it’s not too down on itself.
If somehow you’re still hungry for more, you can always go back to skyline stories one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine part 1 and 2, you know, just to tide you over.
Cubist City: mural, Love Pittsburgh, Strip District
Flood City: mural, Ketchup City, Sharpsburg
Undead City: mural, Zombieburgh, Monroeville Mall
Music City: mural (detail), Homewood
Shoe City: mural, Mexican War Streets, North Side
Sparkle City: The Color Park, South Side
Pittsburgh: where the coffee flows like a tidal wave. Adda Coffee, Garfield
Sagging City: mural, Art All Night 2022
Step City: handrail drawing, Polish Hill
‘Do City: Pittsburgh Cuts & Styles, Wilkinsburg
Green City: Patagonia, Shadyside
It’s 9:10 somewhere. Downtown Pittsburgh plus the old Duquesne Brewery clock, Crossfit Athletics, South Side
Emerald City: Emerald Electrical Services van
Electric City: A to Z Quality Electric
Iconic City … at least we hope this is a super-stylized image of The Point and downtown buildings and not something more sinister
Bubble City: Up in Suds Soap
Buy-a-Lady-a-Drink City: Stella Artois beer sign
Paradise City: Winner’s Paradise, Wilkinsburg
A city with high heels and rubber balls: Steel City Kickers League, Lawrenceville
River (Trail) City: River Trail Cafe, North Side
Gray City: Quinerly Financial Group, North Side
Food City: Pittsburgh Restaurant Week office, North Side
This is why we can’t have nice things. PGH DOMI neighborway signage, Lawrenceville
A window of whispers. The alluring title comes courtesy of artist Escalator Harrison (neé Dan Ivec) whose solo show of small pen-and-ink drawings filled one of Pittsburgh’s smallest art galleries for the first half of April, 2022. The gallery itself—a mere two-and-half feet wide, not quite as tall, and fronted by a single pane of glass—is its own window of whispers, even when the Escalator’s not running.
The Silver Apple Gallery, located on residential Main Street in Lawrenceville, was installed right around New Year’s Day, 2022, and received its signage, lighting, and variable pedestal options in the coming weeks. We thought we’d celebrate that achievement with a look back at its first year.
Show announcement for Escalator Harrison’s “A Window of Whispers”
Full disclosure: We at Pittsburgh Orbit are not impartial observers to this particular story. This has been a project between your author and Mrs. Orbit from the start and it’s been a joy to see how the little venture has taken on a life of its own. In that first calendar year we hosted 11 individual artist shows—two a month on the even months (we had one cancelation in December)—and offered the space as a free little art gallery/art swap on the odd months.
The shows have been tremendous with many of the artists creating site-specific installations that completely maximized the space to turn what is essentially a glass-fronted, street-facing, cupboard with pretensions into a magic oasis of creativity and surprise for determined visitors and random passers-by alike.
Suzanne Werder “Car Wash” (Feb. 1-14, 2022)
Announcement for Ricardo Solis’ (untitled) show
The single-artist shows have come with all the fixins. Openings, closings, and in one case “middling” receptions right there on the porch and spilling out onto the sidewalk. Attended by friends of the artist, gallery faithful, neighbors, and the curious, these have been great ways for people to see the artwork who mayn’t be in the neighborhood otherwise—and it’s just a good excuse to have folks hang out on a Sunday afternoon (or whenever).
Stick people by Claudia McGill, arriving by mail from Eastern PA, Jan. 2022
Collage by Kim Breit, left in gallery Sept. 2022
And what of the pieces randomly arriving during free gallery months? To say that every day is a surprise would be a stretch—but it’s more often than not.
Right out of the gate, art hero Claudia McGill sent us a package from the other side of the state containing a family of “stick people” (photo above) and a gaggle of equally wonderful “vial people.” Serial contributors like collage artist Kim Breit, Dan Ivec, Mark347, and John “Clohn Art” Lee—all of whom have had/will have solo shows at the space—have dropped-off terrific small works.
Artist John Lee drops off the first piece of free art at the Silver Apple—before we even had a sign—January, 2022
Untitled landscape by David Geer, left in gallery Jan. 2023
Like a mini Art All Night, what walks in through our tiny glass door comes in all media—paintings, drawings, ceramics, assemblages, collage, papier mache, photographs, sculpture, lino prints—you name it. Some pieces stay for a little while, some are gone so fast we don’t even get to see them once. Like that proverbial tree falling in the forest, we don’t even know what we don’t know.
Painting by Stephen Caspar, left in the gallery Feb. 2022
“Rick Dog,” left in the gallery May, 2022 (artist unknown)
Enough tooting of one’s own horn! It was a great first year and we have an exciting slate of shows booked all the way through the end of the year. The current show—Dave English and Jennifer Ramsey’s “A Spirited Winter”—is terrific and well worthy of your eyeballs.
If you find yourself on Main Street in Lawrenceville, maybe pause to take in whatever’s happening in the gallery on that particular day. You can follow what we’re doing here or there and hopefully we’ll see you and/or your art around the gallery sometime soon.
Erica Leigh Murray “The Life Ephemeral” (June 16-30, 2022)
Ralph Cuccaro “The Wrath of Caesar Baby” (detail) (June 1-15, 2022)
Announcement for Sherri Roberts’ “Grinn While You Can: Tiny Art for Small Spaces”
John Lee “Sold Out Solo Show” (detail) (Aug. 1-16, 2022)
Announcement for Melissa Ciccocioppo’s “Creepy Cuties”
Mark 347 “Signs + Symbols” (Oct. 16-31)
Getting there: Silver Apple Gallery is located in front of 255 Main Street in Lawrenceville. It is always “open” (for viewing) but the lights aren’t always on when it’s dark. For happenings and show announcements, follow on Instagram at @silverapplegallery
One thing is certain: Woodwell Street continues to impress with block-long public art projects
When last we left Woodwell Street—a single long residential block at the north end Squirrel Hill—it was full of bright color. Thin streamers from every point in the rainbow decorated lamp posts and trees like electric shafts of light. House after house, the community art project was a wonderful, safe, deep pandemic way to get out and experience little bursts of joy.
Woodwell Street is at it again, read the email from dedicated streetwalker Lisa Valentino, and she wasn’t kidding. (The block mounted a yarn bombing project between then and now, we’re told, but we missed that one.) Woodwell Street is currently host to an excerpt of Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb,” displayed (mostly) one word at a time, house-by-house, in block letters attached to front porches and dug into flower beds.
The poem, written for and first delivered at the inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris, is a call to action. To merge mercy with might and might with right are fabulous words with terrific intention. Walking down Woodwell Street on a blessedly beautiful day like the one we happened to catch is a wonderful experience of community effort, but putting those heady words into action isn’t so easy. Let’s all see what we can do.
Pittsburgh Orbit 