Millvale’s (unofficial) micro gallery, one of many opportunities to see outside art … if you get there at the right time
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.
Flowers and Tyvek, Millvale micro gallery
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.
Outside art garage, Garfield
The hands of aquatic life, Polish Hill
Vegetable tributes, Lawrenceville
Thi$ i$ America, Garfield
Tall building, Garfield
Aboriginal patterns (?) by Jorgé, Upper Hill
Birdhouses, Garfield
The psychedelic triangle! Garfield
Wall/flower, Wilkinsburg
Poles and Fences
No violins no crying no crying, Bloomfield
Big Eyes x2, Lawrenceville
Big eye twins, Lawrenceville
Blow me up!! (But start with your cell phone), North Oakland
You’d be happy too if you had love in your heart and paint in your hair. Outside art on Mt. Oliver
Relaxing in the sun is a curious figure. Large enough to be an elementary-aged child, the wooden man has a goofy grin, bespectacled eyes, and a red nose. “Dressed” in a patchwork of crazy patterns and colors, he’s very much in tune with the paint-splattered retaining wall he rests upon.
As decoration or mascot for Johno’s Art Studio, Mt. Oliver, the little fellow could be considered anything from advertising shill (if you’re that cynical) to neighborhood character—at least, hopefully people look forward to seeing the little guy as they crest the hilltop. Regardless, he’s an objet d’art that Johno put out for all to see and enjoy.
Life advice from P. Miller, Strip District
The art is public, but it’s not public art. It’s on private property—presumably sponsored by the land-owner—but very purposefully there for everyone to see. While the placement is external to a private residence (or business, like Johno’s), this isn’t what people mean when they talk about outsider art.
Outside Art, the term coined by The Portland Orbit, exists in the liminal space between these worlds as a sort-of aesthetic alternative to flag-waving and yard sign messaging. Sure, you could have a perfect green blanket with a killer array of azaleas, but what if you own a six-foot abstract statue with a human head and hand holding a golden bird? Put it out front, man—let the world enjoy that marvelous creation!
The head’s doing all right, but the body could use some work, Reserve Township
Triple-header, Polish Hill
Red rooster, Polish Hill
Fingers crossed, Uptown
Still life with horse and aquarium cottage, Lawrenceville
Welcome to Frogtown
The psychedelic lizard of Frogtown, Stanton Heights
One of two sheet metal work sheds painted by the artist Coker, The Wizard of Perry South
A blast of color. Soft pinks, big reds, cool blues and purples on one face; rusty reds, browns, and blacks another. Everything is accented in gold.
That gold! It’s a gold of ancient secrets and the gold of a new dawn. The warm glow has an extra glossy shine that elevates already-textured steel surfaces to a fourth dimension—something beyond space and time. What the amateur sees as mere spray paint is actually a fuzzy overlay on reality from another world.
Cast against the very literal rust of a pair of weathered steel sheds, the gold feels like flashes of light glinting and gleaming through stony creek water. Precious metal to some, fool’s gold to others, but with an experiential value beyond anything we can measure. That is, if you can climb out of 3-D and into this transformative plane.
J-E-S-U-S, gold. Detail, Shed 1
Stars and bars. Detail, Shed 2
In glorious full sunshine, surrounded by high summer’s lush greenery, the two old metal work sheds pop from the earth like temporary housing created by interstellar travelers. We may not speak their tongue, but these pictorial representations of stars and symbols, geometric patterns and light rays communicate enough otherworldly visions that we can get along.
Getting along is exactly what we want to do—very much so. The work is striking and soothing, both chaotic and patterned, with obvious iconography and wild abstraction. Like waves crashing on the beach or mountaintops viewed from a neighboring peak, one may stare into the wide murals, let the eyes go into a glazed soft-focus, and drift off to a blissed-out zen state where nothing looks the same way twice.
Notation for an impossible score. Detail, Shed 1
C-O-K-E-R. Detail, Shed 1
The artist who painted the sheet metal sheds has signed the work only as Coker, his last name—this much we know. We’d love to do a full-on Orbit artist profile on the man—there are so many questions! Does he also make smaller works? paintings? sculptures? what’s inside the sheds? It feels like there simply must be an amazing story there.
But … the volume of No Trespassing and Stay Out signs posted around the property suggest Coker is, at minimum, wary of uninvited guests and this we respect. I’ve visited the buildings a half dozen times over the course of a year-and-a-half, on various early mornings, mid-days, and weekends and left notes for Mr. Coker. Alas, I’ve never heard back and never managed to catch him in person. So … we’re left to muse about The Wizard of Perry South from his (street-visible) painted walls alone.
Gold stars. Detail, Shed 2
Shed 1, south profile
Coker’s most profound work—to these highly-opinionated eyeballs—remains the large abstract wall sections. “They’re like (Marc) Chagall!” Ms. Orbit exclaimed when your author produced his first photographs of the remarkable structures. That said, the artist’s paint work extends to more representational fare as well.
A corner wall section of the first shed includes tributes to Barrack Obama, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marvin Gaye, George Benson, and Snoop Dogg (in the form of gin & juice, illustrated with musical notes). Another celebrates the music of ’70s soul group Maze and includes the band’s bizarre seven-fingered hand logo. Elsewhere King Kong tramples New York while a bloated “fake news scum-bag”—not sure who that could be—tramples democracy.
Tributes to Barrack Obama, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marvin Gaye, George Benson, and gin & juice
“Man Swamp”: Tribute to Frankie Beverly & Maze
King Kong
“Fake news scum-bag”
Outside art / Pittsburgh skyline
Just down the block sits the third unmistakable Coker property. It’s a classic Pittsburgh two-up/two-down brick row house—now having outlived all former neighbors on a half-block-long dead end. The front of the home is painted in Coker’s tell-tale gold, daringly paired with splotchy silver—a color combination that makes even pink & brown stand up and take notice. Around the side, Coker has continued the blocky, abstract themes begun on the pair of sheds, but this time executed in gold, black, and white.
House Coker
Mural, House Coker (detail)
We could all use more magic in our lives—of this I’m sure. Luckily, we live in a time and place where one may stumble upon just that, right out in the open, on a simple summer bicycle ride or autumnal constitutional through a city neighborhood.
If you’re lucky enough to live in The Perrys, you know where Compound Coker is already. For anyone who doesn’t, we’ll not spoil the surprise with a precise address or instructions for travel. There’s enough information right here to locate Pittsburgh’s buried treasure of gold (art), it’s up to you to go out and find it.
Pittsburgh Orbit 