Pittsburgh Artist, Kim Beck Skywriting Project Over NY's High Line Tomorrow

Local artist, Kim Beck currently has three related creative projects going on in Chelsea-A solo show, at Mixed Greens Gallery, three site specific sculptures visible from the High Line and tomorrow, her skywriting project.

"The Sky Is the Limit/NYC consists of fleeting messages from advertising billboards and storefront signage written by a skywriting plane. Phrases like “Last Chance” or “Now Open” will gradually unfold, and then fade back into the air, inviting viewers to interpret the language in their own unique way. With the current uncertainty in the economy, The Sky Is the Limit/NYC is intended to play upon universal longings for hope and change by engaging the most potent symbol of longing in the landscape: the sky."

Sunday, Oct 9, between 4-7PM over the High Line

Great Time To See Work By Pittsburgh Artists, Diane Samuels, Kim Beck and Mary Mazziotti in New York

Mary Mazziotti @ OK Harris
EXHIBITION: APRIL 9 – MAY 14, 2011



Mazziotti Rooster - 2011
embroidery and applique on textile
50 x 46 in. (127 x 117 cm)

"This series of embroidered and appliquéd textiles is presented as a memento mori for our nation. Each figure is worked in black felt and mounted on a vintage tablecloth that bears the wear and tear of use. They suggest the notion of a great empire, slipping from the strength of her glory years into an inevitable decline."

So sorry I will miss this show which revives the language of naive optimism often associated with early American and Mexican folk art-at the very time so many are questioning our nation's future.

Diane Samuels: A Noisless patient spider @Kim Foster Gallery
April 28 - June 4, 20

"Samuels’ drawing The Odyssey of a patch of street exactingly renders a 21 x 310-feet stretch of scarred asphalt onto a 92 x 33-inch sheet of paper. With the help of a magnifying glass, you discover that the drawing is made from handwriting that word for word transcribes the entire text of Homer’s Odyssey, the epic poem of war and homecoming. The cracked asphalt is the street in front of Samuels’ home. The text winds its way down one side of the sheet of paper returning up the other side, back to her home, and ends with the text’s call to bring a halt to the great leveler, War.

Before beginning to write, Samuels affixed a photo-mask of the street’s crevices and potholes over the paper. After the text was written, she peeled away the mask removing some of the text. Where the text was destroyed, the drawing was created. Accompanying the drawing is an archive of the lost and destroyed memories made from the text-covered photo-masks."

Kim Beck: Space Available on The NY High Line

March 4, 2011 - January, 2012. On rooftops along Washington Street, between West 13th and Gansevoort Streets.



Kim Beck presents three sculptures resembling the skeletal framework behind advertising billboards. These blank forms emulate the abounding indicators of the economic recession, such as empty storefronts and "For Sale" signs. Beck's sculptures have the illusion of depth when viewed from the front, but as visitors move past them, the side views reveal that they are completely flat, cut from perspective drawings and built like theater props.

Joanne Mattera & Brent Burkett Walk The High Line

Photo By Joanne Mattera

Two other bloggers I like Joanne Mattera and Brent Burkett did posts that give a fuller record of the magical space the High Line is becoming. I hope very, very much,Joanne doesn't mind me lifting this one image from her blog.

I put this stuff up here because while Pittsburgh and NYC are very different, both share the post industrial waterfronts. Spaces like the High Line shows that there sensitive ways to get the benefits of both an urban and park experience in the same place because it's not just the nice views or nice park that make the High Line special,it's the energy and people of the city around it.(will do another post about that)

Joanne's post

Brent's Post, Brent's other post about Spencer Finch's work on the High Line

"The High Line is online, and it's pretty damn exceptional. The architects do a masterful job of marrying the previous to the present. The tracks and overgrowth comfortably share their space with newly manufactured lines and resting places. The future even gets a nod if only in the hope one can find in the competence, thoughtfulness, and vision exhibited on this elevated plane. Yes, this town has more to offer to its inhabitants than the Nets Arena."

A Look @ NY's High Line

One of the highlights of my NY trip was seeing the High Line close up.

While I'm a big fan of the so called "new urbanism" and it's interest in defending the age old interface of street design that has worked for thousands of years; I also always thought that new innovative design concepts and interfaces in cities did not always have to mean the destruction of the city's history, street life or human scale.

The High Line shows how coincidence and sensitivity can lead people to see a new use for something considered worthless. A lot of New Yorker's favored the creation of a large waterfront NY park, while other's including myself saw the value of weaving the area back into the fabric of the city, through more residential and mixed use development. Few realised that an awesome interesting natural park had been forming for years on an abandoned stretch of rail that threaded through the neighborhood which might offer the best of both worlds.



Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Some more videos on the High Line's history which shows the natural state only a brave few broke in to see.







Obviously, Pittsburgh is not New York and the perfect storm of pent up real estate market, prime location and all star support that made what one sees here happen isn't here.

However--- stunning spaces and good designs can create big support quickly. I'm sure most of the High Line's original big supporters thought the idea was crazy-- until they saw and experienced the space themselves.

Some more photos. The project is being done in stages with only the section fron 13th to 19th St open.

Just to set the scene here-- You are in a [park which is above the streets and walking through and under buildings. Pretty amazing.