Bridges Past to Present
Look down the path of one of the city’s three rivers and you’ll see horizontal lines suspended by feats of engineering magic — more than 29 of them, in fact. Overtop the rust and concrete and flaking decades-old paint lies even more paint, swirling in the shapes of names and pseudonyms, cartoon robots, smiling fire hydrants, and assorted obscenities.
When exploring the street art in any area, it’s important to go back to the beginning. Where did it come from? Before wheatpasting, before yarnbombing, before LED flowers and covert tile mosaics and padlock collages, graffiti was the first step towards a movement to reclaim both art and public space. It’s fitting that the best place to see street art in its infancy is on the features that are so distinctly Pittsburgh. This city is built on its bridges, and bridges are where graffiti lives.
That primitive graffiti is the ancestor of modern street art's renaissance is undeniable.
Lots of graffiti has to do with "tags," the artists' signature name or pseudonym, plastered wherever he or she can put it. This is an important distinction to be made: to be considered street art, the artist has to have a discernable style and have a concept in mind when creating said art, while graffiti is simply the stylized signatures of street names (most of the time). But is early graffiti itself really art? Depends on what it is and who you talk to.
“That is NOT ‘street art’ - that is just random tagging, pure and simple. Some asshole named ‘Resist?’ tagged every damn thing stuck to the ground in my neighborhood. I have never been more pleased to see the city come and cover it all up. I love street art, but I hate tagging. Any damned idiot can tag. Art is created by an artist,” said Reddit user emeyel, commenting on a post about Pittsburgh's street art.
When exploring the street art in any area, it’s important to go back to the beginning. Where did it come from? Before wheatpasting, before yarnbombing, before LED flowers and covert tile mosaics and padlock collages, graffiti was the first step towards a movement to reclaim both art and public space. It’s fitting that the best place to see street art in its infancy is on the features that are so distinctly Pittsburgh. This city is built on its bridges, and bridges are where graffiti lives.
That primitive graffiti is the ancestor of modern street art's renaissance is undeniable.
Lots of graffiti has to do with "tags," the artists' signature name or pseudonym, plastered wherever he or she can put it. This is an important distinction to be made: to be considered street art, the artist has to have a discernable style and have a concept in mind when creating said art, while graffiti is simply the stylized signatures of street names (most of the time). But is early graffiti itself really art? Depends on what it is and who you talk to.
“That is NOT ‘street art’ - that is just random tagging, pure and simple. Some asshole named ‘Resist?’ tagged every damn thing stuck to the ground in my neighborhood. I have never been more pleased to see the city come and cover it all up. I love street art, but I hate tagging. Any damned idiot can tag. Art is created by an artist,” said Reddit user emeyel, commenting on a post about Pittsburgh's street art.
A Loose Thread
Val and her cronies huddle around the bike rack, only partially obscured by the car they parked in front of it for easy access to supplies and for an added level of security. It’s late at night, but the thing about cities is that they’re never entirely quiet and you’re never completely alone. A car goes by, notices the girls, and immediately stops. The driver throws the car in reverse and rolls down the window.
“Do you girls need help changing that tire?” the man asks.
“Uhh, we’re not changing a tire. But … thanks?” they respond timidly. And with that, the driver rolls the window back up and goes on his way, no questions asked. Val, Steph, and Rachel resume their work, carefully sewing premade, knitted rectangles of yarn onto the bike rack. When the yarnbombing is complete, almost the entire bike rack will be covered in multi-colored, recycled yarn.
Val Head, Stephanie Brunner, and Rachel Sager are the force behind the Yarn Over Society, a self-proclaimed “expeditionary force of guerrilla knitters” in Pittsburgh. The three women, all of whom are graphic designers, were inspired by the intricate yarnbombing projects that had sprung up around the world, and so they created their own society on a whim, armed only with amateur knitting skills and an appreciation for impromptu art.
From its beginning, the group set itself apart from other yarnbombers in Pittsburgh by tagging their knitted bike rack or parking meter covers with pieces of paper that contained instructions. Viewers are asked to tweet @YarnOverSociety just to say that they saw the project.
“I think the thing we were most curious about was if we could actually get people to read the tag and do it,” Val says. “Can we do this and get people to actively respond as opposed to just walk by and be like, ‘oh, that’s funny’?”
That same thinking also prompted Val to launch the LEDFlower Project, where she mails yarnbombing kits to people around the globe. Each kit contains all of the materials and instructions to assemble a small flower made of yarn and fiber optics, which the participant then plants in a public place. They snap a photo, send it to Val, and she uploads the result to a Google map. After sending kits to far-flung friends, Val tweeted that she needed help for a project and that it only required getting something in the mail and taking a picture. To her shock, total strangers accepted her request.
“I just think it’s fascinating that people that I don’t know responded to that, let me send them mail, and then did it,” she says.
“But mostly the whole point of yarnbombing stuff," she continues, "is to kind of get people to notice their surroundings for an extra second. One of the things you might walk by, a parking meter, a million times, and then one day suddenly it’s covered in hot pink yarn … that’s kind of fun.”
“Do you girls need help changing that tire?” the man asks.
“Uhh, we’re not changing a tire. But … thanks?” they respond timidly. And with that, the driver rolls the window back up and goes on his way, no questions asked. Val, Steph, and Rachel resume their work, carefully sewing premade, knitted rectangles of yarn onto the bike rack. When the yarnbombing is complete, almost the entire bike rack will be covered in multi-colored, recycled yarn.
Val Head, Stephanie Brunner, and Rachel Sager are the force behind the Yarn Over Society, a self-proclaimed “expeditionary force of guerrilla knitters” in Pittsburgh. The three women, all of whom are graphic designers, were inspired by the intricate yarnbombing projects that had sprung up around the world, and so they created their own society on a whim, armed only with amateur knitting skills and an appreciation for impromptu art.
From its beginning, the group set itself apart from other yarnbombers in Pittsburgh by tagging their knitted bike rack or parking meter covers with pieces of paper that contained instructions. Viewers are asked to tweet @YarnOverSociety just to say that they saw the project.
“I think the thing we were most curious about was if we could actually get people to read the tag and do it,” Val says. “Can we do this and get people to actively respond as opposed to just walk by and be like, ‘oh, that’s funny’?”
That same thinking also prompted Val to launch the LEDFlower Project, where she mails yarnbombing kits to people around the globe. Each kit contains all of the materials and instructions to assemble a small flower made of yarn and fiber optics, which the participant then plants in a public place. They snap a photo, send it to Val, and she uploads the result to a Google map. After sending kits to far-flung friends, Val tweeted that she needed help for a project and that it only required getting something in the mail and taking a picture. To her shock, total strangers accepted her request.
“I just think it’s fascinating that people that I don’t know responded to that, let me send them mail, and then did it,” she says.
“But mostly the whole point of yarnbombing stuff," she continues, "is to kind of get people to notice their surroundings for an extra second. One of the things you might walk by, a parking meter, a million times, and then one day suddenly it’s covered in hot pink yarn … that’s kind of fun.”
For more on the Yarn Over Society, check out Alexis' unedited interview with Val Head:
A Loose Thread by Alexis Wnuk is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Foster the People
Street Artist Ives has a plan.
Far from the world of wars amongst taggers and graffiti animosity, Ives is fostering the budding Street Art scene in Pittsburgh. It started with a passion for the form and freedom of street art that lead to research where he found inspiration in a fellow artist, Know Hope, who hails from Tel Aviv. Ives' style is sketch-like, with bold block colors (mostly red, white and black) and often includes poetry or song lyrics. His work is on paper which he wheat-pastes to walls, dumpsters or any other type of stationary object and on stickers that can be applied to the same types of surfaces.
Ives experienced a project in Barcelona in which many artists collaborated to form a gallery entirely of post-it sized elements. Now, Ives has brought this idea home to Pittsburgh by supporting such a gallery and is even offering a one-hundred dollar cash prize to the most creative submission. To promote this project, he makes cardboard drawings to stake into the ground, which depict a character that symbolizes Ives. These cardboard Iveses are similar to Know Hope's work, but with a different creative flavor (they have different faces and clothes). With this gallery and his future work, Ives hopes to promote a healthy growth of street art in Pittsburgh, which he says is lacking.
But, Ives has hope.
With the deadline of December 14, 2011 quickly approaching, he has been getting many art submissions for the gallery. Tiny slips of colored paper have been arriving with illustrations that range from dragons to fluffy kittens. This is a sign for interest in the art, and hopefully that some of these artists will be willing to be known in public. While this is several steps behind the emergence of a fully developed street art scene in Pittsburgh, and several millions steps behind street art being accepted by the general public and the art community, it is nonetheless steps forward. As Ives says, "I think there's movement in Pittsburgh eventually towards street art" and adds, "It could flourish, but it's going to take a little more time though."
Baby steps, you aspiring street artists, but if you're determined, you'll find that you're among fellow supporters.
Far from the world of wars amongst taggers and graffiti animosity, Ives is fostering the budding Street Art scene in Pittsburgh. It started with a passion for the form and freedom of street art that lead to research where he found inspiration in a fellow artist, Know Hope, who hails from Tel Aviv. Ives' style is sketch-like, with bold block colors (mostly red, white and black) and often includes poetry or song lyrics. His work is on paper which he wheat-pastes to walls, dumpsters or any other type of stationary object and on stickers that can be applied to the same types of surfaces.
Ives experienced a project in Barcelona in which many artists collaborated to form a gallery entirely of post-it sized elements. Now, Ives has brought this idea home to Pittsburgh by supporting such a gallery and is even offering a one-hundred dollar cash prize to the most creative submission. To promote this project, he makes cardboard drawings to stake into the ground, which depict a character that symbolizes Ives. These cardboard Iveses are similar to Know Hope's work, but with a different creative flavor (they have different faces and clothes). With this gallery and his future work, Ives hopes to promote a healthy growth of street art in Pittsburgh, which he says is lacking.
But, Ives has hope.
With the deadline of December 14, 2011 quickly approaching, he has been getting many art submissions for the gallery. Tiny slips of colored paper have been arriving with illustrations that range from dragons to fluffy kittens. This is a sign for interest in the art, and hopefully that some of these artists will be willing to be known in public. While this is several steps behind the emergence of a fully developed street art scene in Pittsburgh, and several millions steps behind street art being accepted by the general public and the art community, it is nonetheless steps forward. As Ives says, "I think there's movement in Pittsburgh eventually towards street art" and adds, "It could flourish, but it's going to take a little more time though."
Baby steps, you aspiring street artists, but if you're determined, you'll find that you're among fellow supporters.