G-20 Opportunity

Wow!!
GREAT NEWS!!

Urban Tree Forge to create
Tables for the G-20 Summit here in Pittsburgh

Thank you!!... to Phipps Conservatory for the great opportunity to participate in our city's hosting of the G-20 summit!
Phipps Conservatory, located here in the city of Pittsburgh, asked us to design twelve tables for a dinner and discussion session that will be held in their beautifully remodeled facility for the G-20 summit, and we just received the official approval to begin the project.

Uhhhh... just one thing...

we only have two weeks to turn 12 oak slabs into tables!

Fortunately, we just happen to have a number of trees that we recovered from Riverview Park, located here in the city, that were removed last year.


Joe and Ben Suto of Lumberjack Tree Service were kind enough to allow us the opportunity to utilize the trunks of some of these magnificent beauties that the city was forced to remove for local projects. We weren't sure how we would use them, but we knew they were just too amazing to walk away from... and now we know why, especially since they just came out of the kiln last week... Talk about synchronicity!! How wonderful to be afforded this great opportunity to make use of the tremendous natural resources available to us here right in our own great city Pittsburgh.

When we're finished with this project, we'll still have a few more of these beautiful specimens available for consideration for a future project or two... maybe there's an opportunity waiting for you... We'll just have to wait and see!

The courting Bench

I Got it Finished!!

My submission for the Pittsburgh Technology Council's 15 Minutes Gallery 2009 Annual Art& Technology exhibition was accepted as were fellow Urban Tree Forge Artisans Jennifer Bechak and Robert Bishop. Congratulations everyone!! I submitted 3 different pieces for consideration and they chose the one of the three I had least completed… requiring the most effort to present.

It has been a mad dash to complete this sculpture in time for the opening of the exhibition this Thursday June 18, 2009. With many late nights, and the aid of some awesome friends like Jason Boone and Nate Lucas we have

“The Courting Bench”

A beautiful piece of sycamore from the Smithfield East End Cemetery complimented with a few select pieces of Allegheny Cemetery elm… and an apple bottom to round out the bottom in the back… of course.

We finally delivered the bench this past Monday afternoon.

Please join us this Thursday evening for the opening at the 15 minutes Gallery. Visit the gallery website for more information on this event and directions for getting there.

If you are not able to check out the exhibit for the opening the show will be available for viewing through August I do believe. Please stop in and take a look at some tremendous Pittsburgh artists!

New Opportunities

From Brookline

Indiana Township

Wilkinsburg Borough

We received a call from our friend Reid Crosby about this ash tree being cut down in the Brookline area of our city.. . When we arrived the Mcnulty brothers, Ryan and Kevin of McNulty Landscaping were busy working with Tim the tree man to remove this wonderful ash tree.
We are going to be losing many of these wonderful trees in the future because of the emerald ash borer. It's sad to see these wonderful trees leaving our forest. Considering the possibilities for using these now is going to be our challenge. These particular ash logs would make about 900 square feet of some super tough flooring, it's the same material used for great baseball bats, and tool handles... This would also make for some amazingly beautiful furnishings as we found when we opened this regal beauty. We are seeking opportunities to utilize this material somewhere in our great city. If you have a project you think may be appropriate for these logs please let us know.

Just today we received a call from Wayne the crane operator about this tree in Indiana Township. We haven't been to see her yet, but she sure is big and beautiful.
If this amazing tree is still sound, there are some beautiful opportunities to get creative with this root section. We will know soon enough. If you would be interested in using or creating with this section please
give us a call or drop us a line. Wayne tells us this tree was uprooted and laying across a creek. They had it removed to keep it from blocking the flow of the local creek. The roots are clean and she has been out of the water about a year now... an awesome sculptural possibility!!






We also received a call from our friend Joan King of the Wilkinsburg Shade tree Committee regarding a mulberry tree her landlord was having removed from her yard a couple weeks ago. We jumped on the opportunity to acquire some of the beauty that is the wonderful mulberry wood from our communities. This wood is both beautiful and extremely rot resistant... one of the best available! We've already had a client put dibs on one of these colorful slabs for a garden bench in their back yard. There aren't many of these available so if you're interested you should hurry ... these will not last long.

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!!

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!!

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.

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!!

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.

Greensburg White & Ryerson Oak

Well, I said this past month was a little busy...

Another urban project in progress:

We are fortunate to have a wonderful client who requested a dining table for a move into The Cork Factory apartments.
Downsizing from a beautiful home to apartment living can be a little daunting. We're building a unique table to do our part to ease the transition to the smaller space and help make this a unique and special home for our client.

We started with some beautiful white oak we received from a Greensburg residence tree removal and dried by our good friend Reid Crosby... Nate Lucas turned oak timbers my friend Lee Spell provided us from Ryerson Steel's Carnegie facility refuse into a solid foundation for our Greensburg White oak tops.

We get to help a client, recycle from industrial refuse, utilize
our urban forest natural resources, and we get to create!!
It's a good day to work with urban trees....
Now, let's go plant some trees!!!!!!!!

Please keep an eye on our blog as we will be having more on this great project soon!!