You will be happy to know…

You will be happy to know that I’ve decided to use an actual photo instead of AI for inspiration for my recycle piece. It’s a photo of a streetcar crossing the Smithfield Street bridge. I will simply it a lot, turn it to night with snow, change the streetcar to one I rode, and get rid of the buildings in the background and put in the steel mills along the river. I’ve had this photo for a while so I’m not even sure where I found it online.

Here’s the photo. Since the streetcar I rode was the 35 Shannon Library.

“What Remains”

Once upon a time, Pittsburgh’s red and cream streetcars were an ordinary part of my childhood. I rode the Shannon–Library car to school, to Saturday art classes at the Carnegie Museum, and into the city. On this bridge, my grandfather once crashed the streetcar he was driving.

The mills that filled the horizon are gone, and so is the car I remember. I made this piece from discarded plastic bags — a material that refuses to vanish — to hold a place and a time that have.

Thanks for reading 

Chris

Before plastic

I just can’t get excited about any of these ideas that I’ve been creating. I definitely want the streetcar, but the rest of it was not working. I had to try something different with the streetcar. So here we are….empty wooden bench with a paper bag that has been left behind. I will be making this out of plastic bags which contradicts what these items were made from in the past. A paper bag made of plastic in my piece. A wood bench made of plastic. Now of course both are made of plastic. I thought about adding a glass bottle, but it might be too small in the image to know what it is. Of course it would add to the narrative since bottles are now plastic.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

I think we are there

I know you’re thinking that you’ve heard that before. My husband looked over the images and decided which one I should use to make my recycle piece. Plus we decided that if this is a memory the streetcar should be new and not rusted. 

So here’s the image of the memory. The memory is the hills of Pittsburgh, the steel mills, and of course the streetcar that was the 35 Shannon Library car that I rode. The scene is not accurate for the route, but this is a memory not true to reality. The image needs some editing that I will do when I start making the piece.  I suppose this may end up being 18 by 24 so the details won’t be so tiny. I will print out the pattern at 16 by 20 and 18 by 24 to visualize what it will look like. I prefer 16 by 20 just in terms of the work involved. 

A couple versions of the image follow. So this is where I am and what I’ve decided to do. I was so obsessed with the rust idea that I was stuck on it and couldn’t let it go. Now I’m just doing the memory of Pittsburgh. No more rust, no ghosts. The new streetcar will be easier to create vs the rusted one. So I have made my life simpler. 

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Stressed and ready to throw in the towel

Is art supposed to be stressful? I suppose that it could just be for me. Also has how I work through this gotten worse with more uncertainty plaguing me? It would certainly seem so. I don’t know which is worse the struggles with the surreal piece or this recycle piece. I’m usually a problem solver, but lately that does not appear to be the case. 

I wanted initially to work with the photo of the rusted decaying streetcars. When I determined that they were not Pittsburgh streetcars that immediately created a problem. I appear to be lost ever since and trying lots of ideas to get out of this dilemma. It’s like throwing darts at a dartboard blindfolded. Too many darts and no real solution. I’m not even sure what I want right now. What do I want this piece to say?

The only idea I came up with is a rusted streetcar with a new version of that streetcar as a ghost. Both are part of the past, but one is worn out and the other is the ghost of a memory. So I developed this idea. The ghost in this one is the rusted streetcar. That’s not exactly my idea. 

So I tried this. A rusted streetcar with a ghost. A distant steel mill in the background. Steel mills are gone from Pittsburgh, too. I remember them being there as a kid. This one AI did as plastic bags. 

Or should the mill be a ghost, too?

Still plenty to work out here. I need to see what a real steel mill looked like. Is the ghost streetcar enough of a ghost? Am I set with this idea for once upon a time? Who knows. A new idea always seems good until it isn’t. 

Am I worried on how to do this in plastic bags? Not really.

My husband likes these images. 

Thanks for reading. 

Chris