Off and on, for the last several years, one of the region’s most secretive art galleries has hidden in plain sight … you just have to know where to look, and get lucky when you do your looking.

Across two faces of an ever-under-construction house in Millvale is a rotating gallery of both discarded / repurposed / found artwork and original, site-specific pieces attached directly to the exterior plywood of the would-be home. It’d be an odd thing to come across anywhere, but here on this side of a side street, up the hill from down, on an out-of-the-way dead-end seems particularly unlikely.

That phrase, lucky when you do your looking, is so apropos to the pursuit of Outside Art that I think we’ll use it for our title here. How else to describe the ephemeral experience of a chance encounter with art left out—out on the sidewalk, on the front porch, attached to a fence or telephone pole—that may no longer exist by the time you reach the end of the block?

In some cases, outside art is anchored on private property—it’s there for the long haul—but even this, we know, is temporary. The house will sell, residents will move along, time and tide will do their worst to anything left out in our all-four-seasons-will-get-you climate.

For so many others, public display time is measured in days, if not minutes, as any passer-by may take a swipe at the work, or toss it in the bin. So, like so much in life, enjoy it now while you still have the chance.

Poles and Fences

Freebies