Urban Forest Recycling

Wilkinsburg trees
Pilot project

This past Wednesday the 25th of February we worked in conjunction with Pittsburgh Lumberjack Tree Service, Inc. and Wilkinsburg borough to recover 4 beautiful London Plane trees along S. Braddock Ave.
Joe Suto from Lumberjack was great to work with and facilitated us getting the logs back to a lot where we can work to reclaim different sections for a variety of projects.
Kelly Frey from WTAE channel four news stopped by with Cathy working the camera to check out the endeavor and capture some footage of Lumberjacks' arborists bringing these beautiful specimens to the ground. Joan King from Wilkinsburg's shade tree commission also stopped to check on progress. Joan is responsible for contacting us originally to discuss the possibilities for working with the borough. Thank you Joan for all your hard work and dedication!!

Now the hard work begins as Urban Tree Forge's challenge is to find homes and opportunities to utilize these bastions of our urban Forest.
We already have a client for whom we can make a base for their dining table from a section, and we have a request for a sideboard cabinet for some as well. These projects will be a great start for these trees, but we need more. Please contact us here at the Urban Tree Forge if you are interested in having something made for you home or office, or if you are interested in a section you would like to work with yourself. These have some tremendous character and would be great for carving or turning as well.

My Cemetery Valentines... Allegheny style

A busy weekend
for the Forge

We had a great turnout this past Valentines weekend as a number of artisans showed their love for the trees of our urban forest by coming out for this endeavor. We spent the day in Allegheny Cemetery seeking and finding some amazing opportunities. Jonathan Shapiro came out this weekend looking for some fresh material for a new sculpture he wants to work on,Jason Boone and Julie came out to lend a hand and look for his next creative outburst.
Jen Bechak came in search of some interesting tree rings for another cache of Citywood for her series of metal infused furniture.

And Nate Lucas came out to help us with slabbing some beautiful maple slabs for a furniture project a client in another city requested, wanting us to utilize material from back home in Pittsburgh for their new home away from home.
The city trees showed up as well, providing us once again with the the characteristic beauty that are the trees of our beautiful urban forest of Pittsburgh. Thank you so much to the folks of Allegheny Cemetery for giving us the permission for recovering these wonderful pieces that are the legacy of our fair city.

Childrens Museum of Pittsburgh

I had the wonderful opportunity to demonstrate at the Childrens Museum of Pittsburgh this past Monday in conjunction with the touring exhibition "Exploring Trees Inside and Out". What a great day of playing with all the families, talking about our urban trees, and exploring the possibilities for considering new ideas. The kids just drank up the information and creative possibilities. Artists Randie Snow and Karen Evanchko also have their sculpture "Double helix"

which they created in the Urban Tree Forge Studio, on display in the entrance lobby of the museum. Thank you so much Randie Snow, senior designer with Giant Ideas for working so hard to get us the playfully creative display boards together for this event. Everybody loved the color and enthusiasm of these inviting pieces! Certainly anybody needing branding, illustration and graphic design done should contact Randie with the utmost of confidence for creative branding and original marketing campaigns...
We look forward with great anticipation to our opportunity to work with the Childrens Museum again this April 9th and 10th! Be sure to stop in and check us out. Thanks to Angela Seals with the Children's Museum for providing us this great opportunity to share our endeavor with the families of our wonderful city!!

Citywood and Tree Forge Happenings

Starting the new year off with a BANG!!!
We went looking for some beautiful wood in our fair city of Pittsburgh in January.. and did we hit it big! We harvested some beautiful maple slabs... and cubes!! in Lawrenceville and on the north side Lumberjack Tree service brothers Ben and Joe have helped us out by providing access to some wonderful oak logs for a local library project... Thanks again guys for supporting your local communities! We delivered some Citywood picture frames to Highmark... Hey, Thanks to Highmark too for supporting local sustainable business!!
Resident artist Jennifer Bechak had a great opening at the Brew House for an installation sculpture made with Citywood, and resident artist Olof Berner has pieces in a gallery in New Castle at the Bottlebrush Gallery and Shop. Check out Olof's blog for more on what he has been doing with Bernerworks, his own company. Great work Olof!!
More coming soon, as we have just been doing so much in the last couple weeks... stay tuned!

UnEarthed Benefit

We partnered with Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest to put together this wonderful event exhibiting amazing works from local artists around the city and to help “Friends” raise money in support of our urban forest. The event was well attended, raised thousands of dollars for the care and maintenance of our urban forest, and for planting trees in our communities to expand our urban forest canopy.

Urban Tree Forge selected over a dozen artists, that work in a variety of mediums, to assemble an exhibit of works demonstrating the varied and inventive ways we can develop value added products from our urban trees.
We had fabric artists to ceramicists, photographers, and steel fabrication artists, woodworkers, architects and industrial designers. We asked the artists to utilize materials from a single source, felled trees in Allegheny Cemetery and incorporate these materials into their works as they desired. The artists responded with an amazingly creative and diverse range of pieces that really helped to make the event special.

Urban Tree Forge worked with the artists to acquire what materials the artists requested, helping with the slabbing of trees to hauling sections of trees, assisting with the fabrication and realization of the different artist’s visions.
The event came together wonderfully and all the artists involved rose to the occasion, providing us with a diverse and creative environment of beautifully crafted works that were well received. Five of the works sold at the one night fund raising event.
Photographer Joey Kennedy wrote up a nice review on his blog about the Unearthed event with some great images as did Katie Smerick on her Holy Vataha blog Thank you both for your tremendous support!!

The fundraising event was only a one night event though, and we are presently seeking additional venues for the exhibition to continue. If you have information on additional venues or opportunities for this exhibition please let us know.

Promoting and advocating the utilization of our urban forest while working to expand our urban canopy replacing the forest we displace is not only a noble endeavor, it is necessary to our continued existence. Being self-reliant as a community using local trees for our resources is not just sustainable… it provides an opportunity for a negative carbon footprint and supports our local economy

My heartfelt Thanks to all the artists who participated in this event as well as the wonderful people who attended making this event such a great success for our community and Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest.

Art theft

Art Theft

Stolen Art

Sad news this week as we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. I had three significant works of art stolen as I delivered them to family in Millcreek, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. I had just driven the works out to family from Pittsburgh, PA with my brother-in-law Doug Belnap... (Thanks Doug!) completing the cross-country trip in just 27 hours, arriving at the home of Steve and Maura Cantwell late Thanksgiving eve. I left the pieces in the vehicle overnight with the intention of unloading first thing in the morning. What we awoke to was a morning of loss and grief as we realized the car had been ransacked of all personal items. Our loss included two end tables/nightstands created exclusively for Maura and Steve Cantwell as well as a sculpture titled "Touched" for the family of my brother, Eric Metzler, who died two years ago.

The loss of "Touched" was the most devastating of the day. After hundreds of hours of work,I was bringing this to our family gathering so that my brothers and sisters could contribute and impart a little of each of themselves to this gift for Eric's family. "Touched" was carved from a section of a birch tree recovered from one of my brothers last jobs as Metz Tree Service before his passing two years ago November 1st. Eric was lost to us when the tree he was climbing fell with him tied into the tree's crown. I helped his sons Josh and Justin clean up some of his open jobs. We were able to complete and recover the birch section from one of these projects. The base of the sculpture starts in six sections representing each of the members of his family and diverges to represent how our actions touch other lives in ways we could never comprehend.


The other two casualties in this ordeal are a pair of original night stand end tables I made for my sister and her husband (Maura and Steve Cantwell). The stands are made from oak and sycamore from Pttsburgh, our hometown. The sycamore is from the Point Park University, where my sister attended, studying dance and theater. The oak tops are from an urban tree, a local white oak crotch. The remainder of the oak was salvaged from a local steel supplier. These pieces are also incomplete as I needed to be able to pack them flat for transport to be assembled when I arrived. The stands were packed as 4 sides, the top, and the floor, all as separate sections. The doors were not hung and the drawer fronts were also not attached to the drawers.

In addition to the irreplaceable sculpture and original end tables I also lost a camera I received as a gift from my dear friend and love of my life, Randie Snow; my collection of CDs; my sleeping bag; and a hand made quilt that "Touched" was wrapped in. I had just received the camera days before my departure... (a Canon A1000IS) upon which were stored the only pictures of the lost pieces in their latest stages of completion. The images here are all of earlier stages of construction of the works.
Local Salt Lake City television station KSL TV was gracious enough to report on our loss and inform viewers of the works in hopes that someone would return them. We give our thanks and gratitude to Sandra Yi for her time and efforts to aid in the recovery of these pieces.

Friends.... and Friends friends

I was talking with a friend last week, who asked me what I had been up to lately, sooo... I told her about the wonderful opportunity I had received to convert some urban trees into flooring for Friends of the Urban Forest. I told her about their Floor Raiser Drive, which has been established to help them raise the necessary funds needed to install the floor... "Friends" is a great asset to our region, not only are they dedicated to restoring and protecting the urban forest, but they're also inspiring and engaging citizens to maintain, plant and protect trees with their Tree Tender program!!

I then began telling her about Tree Vitalize, and the tree stakes that I was making with Rich Haviland the sawyer... when she interrupted me with a

"nooooooo... What have you been working on...?"

Ohhh, I nodded... "working on"...

So, I started telling her all about a new initiative that I was exploring with Wilkinsburg Borough to help them establish their own municipal tree utilization program...

I mentioned that I was working on possibilities for Allegheny Commons on their restoration project, which includes the removal of over 30 ailing trees, along with a ground breaking for the new Carnegie Library, all in the same neighborhood... and, how we're developing plans to promote awareness and unification between the north side and the local design firms, so that they can see how using their own local resources can be beneficial for the environment and the community...

And, lastly, I started talking about the Cemetery Gates project... how we've been able to gather 10–15 artists together to do a show... and how each artist will be incorporating pieces of wood from the Allegheny Cemetery to demonstrate the range of creative possibilities for using the urban forest materials... I told her that we just received a very nice write up about it in the newest Tech Vibe newsletter...


My friend interrupted, again with "Noooo.... not that... what have you been making, working on, creating... Haven't you been creating anything?"


She continued, "Not that I don't care, but I don't want to know about that other stuff... I want to know about YOU... you know... what are you sculpting?"

Well, I began... the Cemetery Gates project is a sculpture show as well as a part of a fund raising event for Friends of the Urban Forest, so I will also be contributing a sculpture of my own...
I have a table that I'm creating from an arborvitae that I found on Penn Avenue, while looking at properties; Then there's Moon Willow Point... a sculpture and bed, which is currently in the drying stage; there's Touched... a sculpture for my brother's family that will be done any day now; and Trinity... a dogwood from Trinity Cathedral; there's some Ohio river drift wood; and finally, Mr. Appleseed... an apple tree that fell in the Regent Square neighborhood.

After my lengthy story, she said, "Well then, you haven't forgotten to keep creating... that's so wonderful!"

I replied, "We are trying to "create" awareness about the amazing diversity of products that we can create from our urban forest ... I have new trees and materials available all the time... maple, elm, oaks, cedars, and sycamore... all of them crying out to have a future other than a dump site or fireplace. Wouldn't you like a piece of furniture, or perhaps a sculpture, for your home or office?

She smiled, and then said, "Show me some possibilities..."