While living in Pittsburgh from 2002 to 2014, I visited the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. When the long time Director, Judith Hansen O’Toole arrived in 1993, she found the stunning collection of 19th century landscapes hanging in the galleries, but the collection of Scenes of Industry relegated to darkness in the storage racks in the basement.
At that time people didn’t talk much about the steel industry. It had caused great harm to the environment, as well as to human lives and health. And as the mills closed down one by one, it left whole communities economically bereft.
But when the museum began to exhibit and study their own collection of paintings, they found tremdous public interest. I saw this exhibit, and bought the book by Curator Barbara L Jones, Born of Fire, The Valley of Work.
And I went back many times. I was drawn to the paintings by artists in Pittsburgh a hundred years ago or so, depicting the drama of the steel making process. The fire and smoke in the sky, the industrial shapes, the reflections in the water, the diffused light: I began intrepreting these things in fabric. They are seen through the softening lens of time gone by.
My series of art quilts inspired by these paintings started in 2009 and continued for a few years. Virtually all have sold. I included a couple of images of the Bethlehem stacks in Bethlehem, PA, which I executed after our move to Eastern Pennsylvania. Ironically Pittsburgh has only been able to preserve one furnace, the Carrie Furnace, while Bethlehem has preserved a 10-acre campus of the old Bethlehem Steel Mill. It is the largest preserved brownfield in the country. Concerts are held with the stacks as a backdrop, lit up against the night sky. There is even a walkway right through the stacks, as well as arts, culture and community events.
