9/5-9/10 Weekly Arts and Urbanism Roundup

Pittsburgh 

Downtown finally gets bike lanes. (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

New community ideas for the August Wilson Center (Essential Pittsburgh)

Meet the performance artist who "married Pittsburgh"  (Essential Pittsburgh)

Steeltown Anthem visits Carnegie Coffee Co.  (Steeltown Anthem)

National Forum in Pittsburgh focuses on art's role in improving education (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

In Pennsylvania, buying beer out of state makes you a bootlegger. (Pennsylvania Independent)

Cleveland 

Beachland Ballroom and Space"ROCK Gallery celebrate 50th anniversary of Beatles landing with concert and photo exhibition.

RTA introduces Ohio City Connector, making it easier to travel between downtown and Ohio City. (Freshwater)

Northeast Ohio Skate Parks attract skaters and bike riders of all ages (Cleveland.Com)

Interview with owner of Cleveland's Upcycle Parts Shop (Cleveland Scene)

Johnny Manziel racks up 10th trademark filing with Johnny Cleveland. (Cleveland Scene)

Cleveland Rock and Roll half marathon cancelled. (Cleveland Scene)

The New York Daily News will no longer publish, The Cleveland Indian's Chief Wahoo logo.

Richmond Times Dispatch travel writer tours Cleveland's quirky side. (Richmond Times Dispatch)

Columbus

Downtown's population growth slowly attracts restaurants and shops. (Columbus Dispatch)

Other Ohio News

Hocking Hills Zip Line makes USA Today list of best zip lines in America. (USA Today)

Storming the beach at Conneaut: (Belt Magazine)

West Virginia and Appalachia News

Will legal pot end Appalachia's biggest cash crop?  (The Revivalist)

Carrie Williams, West Virginia's little known civil rights hero (The Revivalist)

Other Arts, Architecture and Urbanism News

Extensive archive of avant-garde and modernist magazines available online.  (Open Culture)

Why walking helps us think (The New Yorker)

New Orleans' Afterschool scene has a transportation problem (Next City)

Are we approaching peak land use control?  (Planetizen)

It's OK to build transit oriented development before transit (Streetsblog)

Here's what Silicon Valley can learn from good old Midwestern Values.

Should you say you are from the city if you live in the suburbs? (article3)

What smart cities can learn from Denver. (Pop City)

Pinterest accidentally congratulates single women for getting married. (New York Magazine)

More Cincinnati Posts on the way.

No, I did not love Cincy more than Pittsburgh, but it is a beautiful city with lots of untapped potential.

A few more posts on Cincinnati neighborhoods and history still on the way.

Apartment Therapy Midwest Roadtrip : Ohio, Indiana, Michigan Etc...

Apartment Therapy has it's "United States Of Design" post up of some suggested Art/design highlights in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri.

The list will always make someone mad for what it leaves out. Sadly, I haven't seen enough to argue much aside from saying The Akron Art Museum is IMHO, a must see-and right now rates above The Cleveland Center Of Contemporary Art--until the new museum is done.

The Cleveland Museum is pretty much in a class by itself anywhere outside of NY, Chicago, D.C. or Philly in terms of scale, breadth and quality.

• Contemporary Arts Center, Columbus
•Columbus Museum of Art
• Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland
• The Cleveland Musuem of Art
• Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati

Also included are some shopping and flea market suggestions and a link about Cincinnati's Over The Rhine neighborhood.

Rust Wire Looks At Highway Socialism's Tragic Impact On Youngstown

Youngstown, Ohio, is a city in many ways struggling with success to revive it's beautiful downtown and create a financially sustainable path for livable urbanism. Residents have overwhelmingly supported a program to more rationally use the city's smaller resource base by shrinking streets and rightsizing neighborhoods--in a region in which not only the city but the surrounding area have lost 6% of their population in the last decade alone.

Meanwhile, the city competes with a county and state bent on socialising wasteful roads which bleed the city's tax base for ever spreading suburban sprawl.

From Rust Wire

"State Route 224 in Boardman is not the type of road that planners or sustainability advocates would delight in seeing replicated. Traffic slogs down this commercial corridor at a snail’s pace most times of day. The local paper, The Vindicator, described driving on the street as everything from “exasperating and near impossible to unbelievable and scary.” (It just underwent widening.)

The entire six-mile commercial stretch of SR 244 lacks a foot of sidewalk space. So as much as a headache as it is to drive on, it’s far worse for pedestrians. Furthermore, stormwater runoff from the acres of parking lots along this route have contributed to a persistent and costly flooding problem in Boardman Township."

People in these often Republican suburbs need to understand the process and ethics behind this for what it is-Socialism.

So how did Western Reserve rocket up the infrastructure priority list in the Youngstown area? Well, again, that’s a matter of public policy in a state that continues to favor growth. Because Boardman and Canfield Townships are unincorporated, they won’t have to pay a dime to widen Western Reserve. It’s a county road — that means the county picks up the bill. Many suburbs, including Boardman Township (population 37,000) benefit from remaining unincorporated, allowing them to foist many of their infrastructure costs onto the county.

The injustice of this whole arrangement is that the costs of widening the road will be shared by all residents of the county — including the people who live in Youngstown. Youngstown’s roads will go unmaintained, and the county will continue to draw money from central city residents and redistribute it into the suburbs and exurbs.

To a large extent this story could have been with a few revisions been about the insane, ugly and destructive sprawl around Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Akron, Detroit or an endless number of cities.

A piece by Chuck Banas, titled, "The Sprawl Bubble" might the best succinct description of the problem.

All of this is stupefyingly expensive. These indirect costs constitute the majority of the expense, yet remain invisible to most people—spread-out in the form of local, state, and federal taxes, or camouflaged as municipal bond debt or various other forms of government debt. So in addition to being redundant, this means that suburbia is a doubly expensive living arrangement.

The other point that I’m trying to make is that the migration of wealth to the suburbs has not been a free-market phenomenon. Customer choice is only a small part of the equation, or this wouldn’t have happened in virtually every American city at the exact same time in the exact same way. Which, of course, is exactly how it did happen.

I assert that much of the economic crisis we’re seeing today is simply the end result of decades of bad decisions driven by bad economic, transportation, housing, and land-use policy.

2010 West Virginia Flash Animation Festival: April 22nd and 23rd

Sadly, I can count the number of honest, sincere attempts to develop creative interactions between artists, in West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, let alone a wider area. There is the recently developed small press festival and publishing of Open Thread. There is the juried show at The Erie Art Museum, which allows submissions (unlike, the Associated Show which is keepin it Yinz) from within 250 miles. The Pittsburgh Visionary Arts Festival included a few Ohio Artists and there are occasional conferences often held in Youngstown, to which it seems nobody comes.An Urbanophile post rightly referred to Cleveland as a cultural Cul-de-sac. We know hyper local in these parts.

Ironically, it's often the little schools and more isolated communities in the region that see the point of reaching out. Ever, heard of this school? Well, I sort of have and it seems they now have a pretty good media arts program-- a medium that obviously transends normal geographic limits.

"The tenth annual West Virginia Flash Festival will take place on the campus of West Liberty University on Friday, April 23, 2010. Free Entry for students from colleges and universities throughout West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky to compete for $2,000 in cash prizes in three different categories: Animation, Electronic Music, and Video. See the Call for Entries link for more details. (now closed)

The West Virginia Flash Festival began as a class project ten years ago. Students in my Animation for the Web class worked hard to create some great animations, and we wanted to create a public venue to display their work. The event grew through the years to include college students from the states of West Virginia and our neighboring states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky. This tenth anniversary is our biggest event to date. We are bringing in some outstanding media professionals to juror the entries and to share their tips and techniques."

See the full event schedule here

Glad I'm now aware of this event!

Open Thread Regional Review’s Open Reading Period Closes Nov. 1st!

Regular readers know I'm obsessed with the Pittsburgh art scene's extreme issolation from the outside world.

Yes, It's relatively easy to show your work here but very hard to make even regional connections without leaving the area entirely.This problem seems to be mirored by the even greater issolation of artists in West Virginia and Ohio. It doesn't have to be this way.

Anyway, print and online media are easy ways to try to break this loop

The Regional Review is a publication of Open Thread, a new regional arts organization based out of Pittsburgh. Open Thread seeks to establish frameworks for artistic discovery in the tri-state area, providing local artists, writers, performers, and vendors with opportunities for publication, performance, or exhibition.

October 8th, 2009 Adam Atkinson The open reading period for Volume Two of the Open Thread Regional Review closes on Sunday, November 1st at midnight! We’re considering unsolicited poems, stories, essays, paintings, drawings, prints, photos, video stills, documentation of 3-D work, comics, and mixed media and genres!

Who’s eligible? Any native or current resident of Open Thread’s target region: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Eligible writers and artists must also be in the early stages of a career in their respective field.

Here’s how to submit: go to www.openthread.org, register as an Open Thread member (free!), and then upload your work at www.openthread.org/submit! Be sure to read carefully: preference is given to work that meets our submission guidelines.

The Open Thread Regional Review is an essential collection of the region’s best emerging art and literature. Volume Two is scheduled for release in early 2010 and is supported in part by a Seed Award from The Sprout Fund. Volume One is available for purchase at www.openthread.org/publications.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 10:42 am and is filed under Call For Submissions, Ohio, Open Thread, Pennsylvania, Publications, West Virginia . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Cleveland Artists On Cleveland Art Scene

From this Youtube video, it looks like Cleveland has a lot of the same problems and issues that Pittsburgh has with it's art scene. A few fairly well funded big institutions, a number of well known art collectors (um we don't have that) but almost no glue in between so that people feel alone or at least the artists feel alone.

Chicago Trip: Arrival.

The drive to Chi-town was carefree, but monotonous. I took Route 80 across both Ohio and Indiana. In both states Rte. 80 is the turnpike, and there's not a whole lot to look at. The OH stretch at least has regular Starbucks joints- so you can get all hyped up on caffeine and watch the cornfields passing by. I played with the radio until it sickened me, and then resorted to the CDs I had brought along. Until I actually hit Chicago, the only "city" I caught a glimpse of was Gary, Indiana. That place looks like a rotten shithole (my apologies to its residents). Other than that it was mostly sky and crumbling farms. At least I moved through it quickly. I didn't hit much traffic until I could see the Chicago skyline, and then I sat for 45 minutes in the throes of rush hour. It was an overcast day, and the pallor of the clouds gave the city an especially industrial look.

My friend L. lives on a pleasantly tree-lined street in the neighborhood of Andersonville. I was surprised to find street parking almost immediately outside his apartment. The place is spacious, with hardwood floors and lots of windows. The rent is quite affordable, considering its proximity to a few vital business districts and the safety of its streets. I got a good impression of the North End of Chicago right away. From what I've seen, it's city living on a very human scale. many of the neighborhoods have retained an authenticity of character. Although it is clear that city planners are pushing for rapid gentrification or the inner city, they seem to be doin a half-assed job of it. Last night L's co-worker gave us the lowdown on Mayor Daley's corrupt approach to governance. With it's old-school Democrat approach to politics, it has a lot in common with Pittsburgh.

After getting settled in last night, L. and I went for grub. We landed at a small bar/eatery in the Bucktown section. "Handlebars" has that hipster-cum-anarchic-bike-culture vibe that would make the clientele of the Quiet Storm (back in the Burgh) quite happy. I was a bit dismayed to open the menu and realize L. had brought me to a vegetarian restaurant. I sat baffled and tried to figure out what I might order. I ended up with black bean tostadas and smoked gouda mac-and-cheese. And you know what? It really wasn't half bad. The rather feeble-looking patrons surrounding us looked happy and natural in their element. If you aren't much of a carnivore, then I can recommend the place without reservation. I do have one disclaimer- You have to dig a bit through the drink menu to find a "real" beer as the place caters to the wheat beer crowd. After we were done there, we went to L.'s workplace and told stories at the bar as the restaurant shut down for the night.

Today L. had to tqake care of some business downtown, so I walked around for a bit among the tall buildings. I was shocked at the relative absence of hustle-and-bustle. And I was saddened to see a Hard Rock Cafe and Disney-fied Rainforest Restaurant in the center of the city. i guess that sort of thing is inevitable now in the big cities- especially in the wake of the castration of Times Square, NYC. If they are going to offer a de-fanged hyper-commercialized version of nightlife for the whole family, then they might as well come up with something particular to the history of Chicago. I don't understand the people who want to travel to a new place merely to experience a homogenized cartoon of somewher altogether different. Why can't they keep crap like that out in the suburbs, and at least make a suitable mockery of whatever authenticity the specific city truly offers? Wait a second... was the first Hard Rock in Chcago? If so, I take it all back.

Before departing for this trip, I had made a list of museums that I was interested in checking out. So we set off for the Museum of Science and Industry. I had read that they had a display of cross-section cuts of actual human beings (predating the recent Body Works traveling sideshow). That sounded compelling. We should have known better as soon as we pulled into the attached parking garage, and were asked to pay $12 just to keep our car there. They rope people in by enticing kids to badger their parents to see the OMNIMAX movie on dinosaurs (or whatever), and each and every disgruntled father has to shell out this exorbitant parking fee before he even gets to pay the $27 adult admission. When we got inside we saw the huge banners for the CSI (the TV show) spectacle, and the mass of sheeple, and we decided to just at the $12 and get the hell out of there. I swear that every science center in every American city offers the exact same slick-modern-day-tourist-trap diversion. We drove to the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum instead.

The NVVAM offers three floors of artwork by veterans. They have both permanent collections and temporary exhibits. I have always been drawn to "outsider art", and considering my long-held fascination with the Vietnam War, this was a natural destination. Today they had a "Works on Paper" show, which contained a variety of autobiographical visual pieces by artists across a range of skill levels. The curators give the creators a chance to write something to accompany each piece, and many of them included anecdotes about the terms they served incountry. As one might expect, the totality of the work contains a lot of emotional confusion, violence, pain and loss. But unlike what I'm used to seeing in canonical modern art exhibits, there is an extraordinarily personal depth of feeling that transcends technique.

I've always believed that the the American involvement in Vietnam taught many people lessons about the moral ambiguities and entrenched complexity of war. For awhile it was almost a cliche that the Vietnam War forever changed our nation's psyche. The recent conflict in the Middle East has made me question whether or not anybody still remembers the 1960's and 70's. I was pleased to see that the curators of NVVAM see very strong parallels between what is happening now in Iraq and what happened in Vietnam. They have included several sections in the museum dedicated to the work of Iraqi War veterans. I think it would be great for our current "leaders" to take a tour of the NVAAM. Perhaps our president and VP could gain a little insight into an essential part of our history- a place and time that they avoided because they had more "pressing concerns".


*Note: I apologize for the lack of links in these posts. I'm writing on a MAC laptop, and Blogger.com has a much more limited interface on this system, and thus a lot of the tools I rely on are unavailable.