Braddock Journey

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

On December 5th & 6th Obscurae will premier with one-of-a-kind framed photographs of Braddock’s details—showcased and given away in Braddock. I’ve had the immense pleasure of working on this show with Jodi Morrison and Ryan Brubaker, and I’m so excited about the event itself that I keep forgetting to post about it here!

We have more than 100 donated and framed photographs of Braddock from over 25 photographers that ticket holders (you!) will win and take home at the Obscurae art photography lottery. Works are mounted and framed with found-materials from the community—I’ll post sneak previews of some of the frames later this week—there are some amazing reclaimed materials being used!

Now for the details:

A $45 ticket guarantees you take home one of these framed art photographs in addition to enjoying the show, fresh-baked pizza by Josh Tonies from the wood-fired community oven, drinks, Merissa Lombardo’s photo booth installation and more!

Public viewing of the work, open to all and free of charge, begins Friday from 7 – 11pm and continues Saturday at 2pm; the art lottery is at 4pm Saturday. All pieces are stunning to display or give as a gift this holiday season.

Change is underway in Braddock: It is with this spirit that our photo show Obscurae views the maligned town – turning a photographic eye towards the borough’s oft-overlooked beauty amidst the former grandeur and “urban blight” that Braddock has come to represent for many.

I would love for you to join us during the two-day photography exhibition/fundraiser on Friday, December 5 and Saturday, December 6, 2008—Benefiting Braddock Redux’s continuing revitalization efforts in this historic steel mill town.

If you aren’t local and can’t support the change in Braddock in person, we will have a follow-up online gallery that opens December 5. A special limited edition run of each image, signed and numbered by the photographer, will be available for a limited time in our online gallery. (The first of each edition will be won at the lottery!) Photographs in the online gallery will be sold as individual prints but can be paired with custom frames for an additional cost. Unfortunately, the prices on the gallery may be higher than the $45 tickets—but the good news is proceeds will benefit not only projects in Braddock but also all of the amazing photographers who took their time and energy to explore Braddock and then work with us to make this show possible!

Be a part of the change, support the movement!

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Bill Daniel has an upcoming photography and video installation at the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Galleries, opening the same night as Art in the Dark at Jeb’s gallery.

Starting October 24 and running through January 10, 2009, The Great Depression will be at the Filmmaker Galleries at 477 Melwood Avenue.

The opening reception is next Friday, October 24, from 7-9:30pm with a performance on December 6 at 8pm and closing events on January 10 at 8pm.

Art In The Dark is a Halloween party at UnSmoke Systems. $3 cover gets you in for art, bands, DJs, games, and prizes. The artists are decking it out in spooky decor and costumes are expected.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Art Makes Eye Contact, a fund raising art show for the Transformazium church, was this past weekend. 

Almost everyone from Braddock headed east to Brooklyn for the event. I’ve heard some great reports on the show, and I’m really sorry to have missed it—especially Merissa and Bianca’s Braddock-themed photo booth.

I stayed here to take advantage of the rare low energy level in Braddock so that I could get some reading done for my dissertation. I finally really did get some things done. But not without distractions, after all even with everyone out of town it is still Braddock. There is always the house to work on, Lowe’s to be tormeted by, and then Melissa tempted me out for most of Saturday with the promise of scouring through items from a house that were headed for a thrift store. Now we have two boxes of kitchen things waiting (on me) to be washed and stocked in the convent. 

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Monday, September 29, 2008

This weekend Braddock will be hosting a Gist Street Reading. I’ve also heard there will be an urban hike earlier in the day, though I don’t have details on that. Below is the information on the reading:

Please come join us for a collaboration between the community of Braddock and the Gist Street Reading Series

Wood-Fired Words: Braddock, PA
Grand Opening of the Braddock Community Bread Oven and Gist Street Reading

The Unsmoke Systems Compound
1137 Braddock Ave.
Braddock, PA 15104

Directly across from the USS offices

A collaboration between the community of Braddock and the Gist Street Reading Series, Wood-Fired Words features 4 fiction writers, a poet, and a brand new Community Bread Oven.

On Saturday, October 4th (The day after Gist Street’s reading featuring Jan Beatty and Amy Knox Brown on Friday, October 3rd), Gist Street will take to the road (on Penn Avenue through Wilkinsburg to Ardmore Blvd to Braddock Avenue – Mayor John Fetterman warns to NOT take the Rankin Bridge to Braddock for this event. There is construction and Fright-Night at Kennywood.) A link to Google-map directions is at www.giststreet.org on the home page). Gist Street is hosting a reading at 1137 Braddock Ave. in the shadow of the region’s last operating steel mill, which serves to christen Braddock’s new bread oven.

John McNally, Amy Knox Brown, Sherrie Flick, and Nancy Krygowski will read for 10 minutes each. Bios follow.

It’s $2 at the door, which gets audience members literature read aloud along with free hand-made, wood-fired bread and pizzas. Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 8pm. It’s BYOB.

Last month Gist Street hit the North Side for Writers in the Gardens; this month they hit Braddock for Wood-Fired Words.

The Wood-fired Oven was built by a North Braddock mason using over 75% salvaged and reclaimed materials. Braddock’s Community Bread Oven will be churning out free hand-made, wood-fired pizzas topped with ingredients grown organically on Braddock Farms and artisan breads crafted by Braddock’s own Josh Tonies.

This event is made possible by and special thanks to Gist Street Reading Series, Mayor John Fetterman, Joe Bonifate Masonry, and Ray Werner.

Come listen and eat.

BIOS:
John McNally is author of two novels, The Book of Ralph and America’s Report Card, and two story collections, Troublemaker and Ghosts of Chicago.  He’s also edited six anthologies, most recently Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories, co-edited with Owen King.  A finalist for the National Magazine Award, John has published short stories in over sixty magazines, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Open City, and The Sun, and he’s a frequent book reviewer for the Washington Post.  A native of Burbank, Illinois, John now lives and works in North Carolina.

Amy Knox Brown is a fourth-generation Nebraskan currently living in Winston-Salem, NC, where she is an assistant professor of creative writing and English at Salem College and director of the college’s creative writing major. Her collection of stories, Three Versions of the Truth, was published in September 2007. It was a finalist for the Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers. Amy is also the author of a poetry chapbook titled Advice from Household Gods.

Sherrie Flick is author of the award-winning flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting (Flume Press, 2004). Anthologies include two from Norton: New Sudden Fiction and Flash Fiction Forward. A recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant, she has had residencies at Ucross, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is co-founder and artistic director of the Gist Street Reading Series. Her novel Reconsidering Happiness will be published in Fall 2009.

Nancy Krygowski’s book of poems, Velocity, won the 2006 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press.  She’s received grants from the PA Council on the Arts and from the Pittsburgh Foundation, plus residencies at the Jentel Foundation and The Kimmel Nelson Harding Center for the Arts. She works as an adult literacy instructor and is co-founder and assistant artistic director of the Gist Street Reading Series.

This project was supported by Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts (PA Partners), the regional arts funding partnership of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency. State government funding comes through an annual appropriation by Pennsylvania’s General Assembly and from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. PA Partners is administered in Allegheny County by the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Pittsburgh showcases its regional assets—fun things like museums, kayaking, the zoo, aviary, etc—every year by offering free admission. The event list is posted at the Allegheny Regional Asset District site. 

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Friday at noon I stopped working and started cleaning. 48 hours later we had completed the set up of a two-room cafe and opened the doors for a surprise brunch: Espresso, fresh oj, hot cocoa, bloody marys, iced toddy, tea, vegan waffles, peach crepes, quiche, muffins and more in Braddock’s own The Bad Habit cafe!

For months this cafe bar hardware has been collecting dust (and lots of it with our proximity to the steel mill) in a back room at the convent. A little less than two weeks ago Jodi, Emily and I decided that we should set it up and put it to use. It would clear out that room and create a space for socializing, working, and caffeinating in Braddock. We decided to surprise everyone with a completed cafe on August 17, but to do that we needed to wait and set it up right before the event.

Jodi went back to Brooklyn and started collecting donations for the bar. My friend Liz was in town from Massachusetts, and we brainstormed cafe names over dinner. Then we came back and ran them by Emily, who came up with art for the name with the most votes: The Bad Habit. We also called on Ryan to send a series of his photographs of Braddock to hang in the cafe with Emily’s drawings and Mary Beth’s photos of Braddock. Then we waited.

Finally this week rolled around and Jodi showed up with a car brimming with cafe supplies and decor. Jodi, Mary Beth, Emily and I cleaned and shopped and set up and cleaned and moved things and disassembled and rebuilt things and learned to use an espresso maker and baked and shooed people out and hid the progress with closed doors ... until it was complete. Then we stood in the room, 15 minutes to brunch, and took a collective deep breath. Inhaling the waffles and espresso and enjoying the moment.

If chaos, excitement, and swearing in surprise are good signs, then the cafe opening* was a success. There was a good turn out for the brunch, and everyone seemed to enjoy the cafe experience.

Over at the Matchwood Festival blog there are more photos and an interview with us on the day of the opening.

*unfortunately, the cafe is only open now for private events. We have some amazing volunteer baristas, and hopefully soon it will be able to open as a full cafe.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Braddock is never dull. Sometimes it is a respite from the crazy drivers and intense traffic in Pittsburgh, but most of the time it’s its own ball of vivid energy that always keeps things exciting.

Where we are living while we work on the house is sort of the core of Braddock, sometimes called the compound. But I can guarantee all you loving friends and family that despite the terminology it’s not organized enough to be a cult like some have suggested. Fortunately, we all have different visions for the Braconian future.

When we first arrived it was full force ahead to get a space ready for the Points of Interest artists to live while they installed temporarily permanent art around town. But nothing slowed down after that. There are people in and out checking out the town. Right now all of the rooms are full so returning visitors are staying in Monroeville and commuting to Braddock to hunt for buildings. Americorp workers and WWOOFrs are living here to work on the urban farm and with the Braddock youth. Friends and family of someone in town are always around visiting. Every Wednesday is potluck night, which occasionally turns rowdy. Random nights become group porch-sitting events. Puhala’s (and Joel) hosts karaoke a few steps away. Bands shoot music videos at the old school. Bands perform here on what used to be a Catholic alter. Movies are shot. Movies are screened in the parking lot or on the walls.

This weekend the artists who are working out of the old school next door are participating in a grand opening of Unsmoke Systems.

And in some weird loop of revitalization and art, the rear courtyard has been transformed from a place that was weeded and attended to a perfect imitation of the interior of most buildings around this area. Merissa and Bianca spent days constructing the walls, plastering them, painting them, and then aging them. The ceiling tiles are drooping and overgrown with vines (cleared from of our gutters, a revitalization offshoot), the mattress is burnt, with a God Bless Our Home sign shining above it. The set is complete ... and surreal.