Loud Silence by Tarish Pipkins

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A Ghost Mural in more ways than one. When we started the original PghMurals project, we chose to mark our map with some of the murals in Pittsburgh that no longer exist (our ghost murals) for a couple of reasons. One is simply that we hope to provide a resource for people searching for specific murals as well as those just looking to see what’s out there. On more than a few occassions we spent a lot of time riding around neighborhoods trying in vain to find a mural that we saw on line. Often people post photos without giving a specific address or the date that they took the picture. We were hoping to save people from fruitless searches for things that are gone by telling them up front that they won’t be able to find them.

We also liked the idea of documenting some of the murals that are gone, but left an impression. We obviously can’t do all of them. We don’t have the information or resources for that. Some of our ghost murals are murals that we saw and photographed before they were removed. Either the building they were on was torn down or the mural was painted over, covered up, or deteriorated to the point of uselessness.

In this particular case, we didn’t get to see Loud Silence in person. This was one of those murals that we rode around in circles looking for. We made no less than three trips to Garfield to verify that it just wasn’t there any more. The reason we mention above that it was a ghost mural in more ways than one for us is because of how we confirmed with certainty that we had searched at the correct location. When we used Google maps and looked at the street view of this intersection, from the Penn Ave perspective we could see the building on that corner was being torn down. At the very bottom of the wall along North Fairmont Street it looked like there was something painted on what was left (a few rows of cinderblock). When we moved our position on Google maps to North Fairmont at that intersection, the Google photograph had been taken just before that wall was demolished and you could still see the mural. So looking on Google maps street view you get a ghost image of what was. We found that bit of historic documentation very interesting. The image you see above is actually a screen shot from Google maps street view – thus the map portion above the image.

For a better picture, this or this link from the artist’s site will work.

It was not easy to read the whole poem in those photos, but we were able to find the words for this on line:

The loud silence. The peaceful violence. The beautiful ugliness. The sweet stench of my habitat. Infested with clumsy cats who lack agility. Staggering through the inner city intoxicated. Drunk off negative energy that saturates lost souls. leaving them soaked, reeking of that sweet stench. Irritated by the silent screams, I cover my ears to muffle the loud silence. But the silent screams come from within. The beautiful ugliness of my environment, my habitat. Where bright colors are tinted with shades of grey. Smothering the radiance of color. Darkness commits acts of peaceful violence on light. constant rattles of shackles and chains jingle and jangle in my brain. The loud silence. The peaceful violence. The beautiful ugliness of sidewalks stained with plasma. Victims of peaceful violence. As I stand on concrete Decorated with trash,cigar fillings and broken glass scattered about creating a ghetto masterpiece. I look up into the sky and scream at the top of my lungs. A scream of the loudest silence. Tired of the peaceful violence. The beautiful ugliness. The sweet stench of my environment,my habitat. lightblaq

Update
November 2014

Local cyclist and bike shop owner Chris Beech had a photo of this mural that he took during a Bike Fest Mural Ride several years ago. He was nice enough to share it with us:

Photo by Chris Beech

Summary:

Artist(s): Tarish Pipkins
Address: This mural is gone.

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Twitter: @PghMurals