Urban Art Pittsburgh Style

In The Studio

We have So much going on in the studio lately as many of the artists in residence here have been busy creating many new and exciting projects!

Jenifer Bechak has been working with our new oxy acetylene torches creating some beautiful bent metal work for a project she has been working to complete.










Olof Berner and James Sichak have been collaborating together for a cool project using some City Wood, salvage wood from industry and some driftwood recovered from our rivers. It's still early on in theis project, but you can see the great flow between these artists already.










Nate Lucas is working on a couple projects here as he works to complete a coffee table for one client, and a set of oars for another client.












James Sichak has been working to create some new jewelry items, preparing for the regional festivals season, and working on Urban Tree Forge projects in addition to his collaboration with Olof Berner.

I have had a couple projects going on myself in the studio. First I started working on a branch section from the Smithfield East end Cemetery sycamore tree and have been working this into what may be deemed my version of Bench 2009.















With my second project, I had another great opportunity to demonstrate with the Children's Museum for two days, and used the time to get things moving forward on the Moon River headboard sculpture after a full year of drying. I am hoping to complete this as 3 Rivers, a sculpture, in time to submit it for consideration for the Pittsburgh Tech Council's June 15 Minute Gallery show... submissions are due in two more days!!! I wonder if this would be considered suitable as public art?
Still lots to do to get this one ready! Better get back to this or I won't have anything to submit regardless of what it is!

Urban Tree harvest

This...
Is City Wood!!

We spent the past couple weeks getting some of our store of logs milled for upcoming projects we will be workiing on over this summer. We have some amazing large sections and some unusually wonderful grain character showing up in much of our material that is just going to make for some beautiful and unique furnishings and some great millwork.

As you can see, these amazing 4/4 oak slabs are almost 24" across and are in excess of sixteen feet long. We have another similar to this over Nineteen feet long. We have more amazingly rich material that was returned to us from our beautiful city forest as well. We have enough oak here to provide in excess of 5000 square feet of oak hardwood flooring, and more on the way.


We also found some tremendous character. Check out this beautiful crotch material we uncovered in one of our oak logs...







And this great section of walnut is destined to become an awesome top for a buffet, coffee table or even a sculptural wall hinging as it has such tremendous grain character.








The trees from in our city are larger than most forest resources because we strive to keep our trees alive as long as we can, not for a sustained harvest or for logging purposes.

Rich Haviland our friend and sawyer has a little wrestling match here as he works to get one of our city logs onto the mill to be sawn.
With Rich Haviland there to help us load the milled material, we were able to deliver 5000 board feet of hardwoods to the kilns at Ritenour Lumber in just one day this week... What a long day that was! Two full truck loads of slabs and milled lumber for projects within our great city of Pittsburgh!




Our first load contained a whole stack of whole width slabbed oak trees that were cut 2 inches thick and are up to 40 inches wide. Two of these slabs are destined for a local Carnegie Library project and two others for a residential project in the Shadyside section of Pittsburgh. The rest of these amazing slabs are available for consideration for projects. The remainder of the load was all 8/4 (2 inch thick) milled lumber we intend to utilize for the manufacturing on doors and table slabs

Our second load was a tremendous mix of the material we milled with rich Haviland at his saw yard. We have some amazing walnut as well as some oak, maple, and another log of slabbed whole width oak. These slabs are also in excess of 36 inches wide...

Our city trees are just yielding some amazing material for us!! We are so fortunate to be in a position to utilize this often overlooked natural resource here within our community.

We had tho ask Paul and Buck at Ritenour Lumber to hang around a little after closing for us to get our second load to them. They were gracious and accommodating in working with us to help make our project work... Thanks folks!This is one piece of wood, not a pile of logs... interested?

Stay Tuned... There's More Happening!!

Pittsburgh Tree Plantings

Staking A Claim For
Our Pittsburgh Forest

The past couple weeks my nephew James Sichak and I volunteered with a number of local groups to help reforest our Urban environment with trees to enhance our communities.
We helped the Wilkinsburg Shade Tree Commission relocate 23 trees from a community nursery to homes throughout their neighborhoods a couple weeks ago.


We turned out with a number of community groups including East Liberty Development, and Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest(FPUF) and about a hundred volunteers from various community organizations in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh to plant trees on East Liberty Boulevard.



Then, this past weekend for Earth Day we joined again with FPUF and this time we worked together with Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Tree Vitalize, and Friends of The Waterfront . Our gratitude and humble thanks to corporate Sponsor Keen Shoes and the around 300 volunteers helping with planting trees along the South Side Trail bike trail. People were planting trees, perennials and bulbs along sections of the trail. There were over a 115 native trees planted today just along the trail... from river birches to American elms, magnolias to oaks... we planted trees! FPUF had two other plantings coinciding this planting, in the Morningside and Lawrenceville neighborhoods today as well. Awesome work FPUF!!
We had the tremendous opportunity at Urban Tree Forge to work with a a few of our community groups to provide tree stakes for their planting endeavors. This year we decided to take the opportunity to stencil our web address onto our stakes so we can get the word out about our efforts to utilize our local tree removals for projects and people within our urban setting. We were fortunate to be afforded the opportunity to provide tree stakes for Wilkinsburg borough tree plantings, for the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association, and for Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Some of our stakes were used for the tree plantings in the Lawrenceville and the Morningside neighborhoods, and for the East Liberty plantings a couple weeks back. Thank you for the opportunity to make a difference in our great city everyone...

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...

Cemetery Gate Opening

We had a wonderful turn out for the opening of the Cemetery Gate exhibit at The Clay Place Gallery this past Friday the 13th. Elvira Peake, Owner of The Clay Place, was a wonderful hostess providing us a venue for the exhibit. We had participation from many great artists from the area demonstrating the creative possibilities for considering our Urban trees for reuse within our community.
My thanks and gratitude to all the artists who participated in the event.








The exhibit will be running through the first week of April. So, if you haven't had the opportunity to stop in... there's still time.

Urban Wood from Squirrel Hill Pittsburgh

New Opportunities

Jason Boone, one of our Urban tree forge resident artists and an architect for Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects alerted us to a tree that fell from a wind storm in the Smithfield East end cemetery that looked like it might provide some cool opportunities for us.
We contacted Jeff Magdinec, superintendent for The Historic Homewood Cemetery and The Smithfield East end cemetery. Jeff was gracious and accommodating to our endeavor. Jeff was wonderful in working with us to recover not just the London Plane tree we originally sought, but also a beautiful oak, some of which we cut right on site and some amazing root burls that are just looking like they are going to be some great fun to work with!
When it came time to remove these beautiful trees from among the residents we relied once again on our friend Wayne the Crane Blumling and his amazing prowess with his crane to move with agility through the cemeteries' mature trees without hitting any, then lift these beautiful sections and move them to our facility where we can work on them further.
While Wayne was on site, he helped lift one of the root sections out of the ground so we could take a look for some opportunities to utilize this beautiful root flare section of the tree for some new possibilities. Look at the beautiful red color in this specimen... wow!!Thanks again Wayne, You're awesome!!
Now we have to remove the dirt from the root section so we can get the flare cut into sections we can consider for new opportunities. We need some rain to remove some of that dirt!!

Evaline and An Unfinished Love Story

Recently I finished a new piece, "Evaline" from S. Evaline st in the Garfield/ Friendship area of Pittsburgh near Penn Ave. This beautiful little table started out heading for the local dump when I happened upon her on my way back from Bartlett Fasteners on Penn Ave. You can view this moving little table full of life and the character of our city at the Fifteen minutes gallery in the Pittsburgh Tech Council lobby.

My other recent project "An unfinished Love Story" a heart shaped section of Goldstrom cherry from the Beechview section of the city, which I carved. The section split while I was working on it and it seemed only appropriate to leave it thus for the time being. This piece was given in an incomplete state...
My sincerest hope and dream is to have the opportunity to complete this piece sometime in the future... and the beautiful love story that accompanies this piece as well. We will have to wait and see for that one...

I am wrapping up work on a new mantle shown previously in the "Unearthed" show. I am pretty excited about how well this piece is responding to being worked. The grain being revealed is beautiful!
I will be showing this in The Clay Place Gallery starting next week... I better Hurry Up!!!! The show will be titled "Cemetery Gates" and we will have work from a number of local artists utilizing material from Allegheny Cemetery showing in the exhibit.
More on this upcoming show in the next couple days... so stay tuned!!