March happenings

What a busy month!!

I just have to start off with the great little mention we got this week in the Pittsburgh's awesome POP City e-magazine in an article about the Childrens Museum's "Exploring Trees" exhibit. We will be back at the Childrens Museum this April 9th and 10th to demonstrate some more possibilities for our urban trees... hope to see you there!

Around the studio

Olof Berner has been busy creating some new pieces, working on some beautiful jewelry ideas from our tree stake off cuts, cutting boards, and some other new offerings for our local marketplace.


Jason Boone has been working on a new sculpture and candlesticks made from our tree stake off cuts we have from Tree Vitalize projects with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in the Pittsburgh area. It's great to see the tree stake materials getting used for even more new ideas!





Jennifer Bechak has been busy trying out our new Oxy-acetylene torch set back in the metal shop area of the Forge and working on creating some new ideas.


Nate Lucas is working on a coffee table that is a beautiful mix of some reclaimed oak and another wood I'm uncertain of at the moment and inlaid with some pretty ebony pin striping.


I created a sculpture this month myself, "Confused Elegance" for the upcoming Persad auction this May. I created this sculpture from a section of an oak tree from the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh.

We've also been busy acquiring new materials to offer our artists in residence and for our clients. Lumberjack Tree Service dropped off a large section of oak for us from our city's Riverview park, which we will be using partially for some new tables for the new Carnegie Library on the Northside of Pittsburgh. We have also cut into a beautiful section of sycamore tree we recovered from storm damage from our Squirrel Hill neighborhood... and have come away with some beautiful pieces from this tree. We harvested a whole truck load of root burls from an elm tree in the Homewood cemetery that look just amazing. Anybody interested in creating or having something created from one of the beautiful sections of our local trees should give us a call or drop us an email to explore the tremendous possibilities further...

Urban Tree Forge Gives City Trees a Second Life

NEWS
NEWS!

We've had so much happening in the city the past couple weeks....

For starters we received a wonderful write up in Pop City Media "Urban Tree Forge Gives City Trees a Second Life" concerning our efforts to utilize our urban trees. Pop City writes about so many relevant local happenings... I'm always amazed at all the things going on in our city I wasn't aware were happening. Thanks to Debra Smit for her consideration, and for providing us a voice in our community.

I received a personal mention by Kurt Shaw , the art critic for The Pittsburgh Tribune Review for my sculpture "Becoming Fish" in his review of the Society of Sculptors show at Elan fine Arts gallery in Sewickley. Our thanks to Joan for hosting the SOS show in her venue. The sculpture "Becoming Fish" will be leaving us and moving to a new home in a residence in The Cork Factory along with a recently completed table from an urban tree and industrial salvage woods. See our earlier post "Greensburg White and Ryerson oak" for more on this table.

The Pittsburgh Technology Council hosted the 15 Minutes Gallery exhibit last month. I received an award for my work "The Giving Tree" and my partner, best friend and designer responsible for this blog's existence, Randie Snow won BEST IN SHOW for her assemblage sculpture "Flight of the Imagination". Tech Vibe the online newsletter for the council did a nice write up about Randie in their June newsletter's review of the 15 Minutes gallery show.
Randie is such an amazingly creative and talented artist who has been elemental in developing the marketing presence of The Urban Tree Forge, LLc. She's worked tirelessly for us and we couldn't thank her enough.
Should any of you be seeking creative talent for marketing or advertising that will set your company apart from the crowd, You can reach Randie through Giant Ideas Advertising in Pittsburgh.

Also, I took advantage of an opportunity to give a little Saturday as I joined Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest for a tree maintenance and care day in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh. The "Friends" have a great Tree Tender course available for people interested in giving to the care of our urban forest. It's a great educational experience worthy of your time and consideration.

Whew!, and there's so much more... stop in soon as we post about some beautiful trees that are going to have to be removed. We sure would like to provide them with an opportunity to live on in our community and our lives.