Neighborhood Portraits by Swoon

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These portraits of local residents were done by Swoon as a part of her own Points of Interest program, where she invited several artists to town and gave them each a location to work with. In this underpass there are only the two portraits done right now, but there are several other panels that have been painted with the blue background. We suspect that there may be additions here in the future.

UPDATE
October 2014
We’ve been riding back to all the artwork we discovered over the past two years to check on it. When we made it out to see this underpass, we discovered that a new panel had been added:

We found information on this portrait of a man named Henderson (a crane operator in the steel mill) on the artist’s Facebook page:

This portrait tracing the history of the steel industry in Braddock was inspired by a subject in the excellent documentary, "Struggles in Steel" created by two beloved Braddock artists, Ray Henderson and Tony Bubba. It's an incredibly moving film, and anyone interested in the struggles of black Americans for equality in the mills should check it out. Here's a clip: http://vimeo.com/52101300

The above section of this mural is from NeeNee in Braddock. Again, from the artist’s Facebook page, she describes it as

This is a drawing of a young lady named Neenee who lives in Braddock and helped out with the creation of the original scale model of the church building that we're using to model out examples for the tiles and other creative renovations. The rest of the imagery within the drawing is various angles of the church, inside and out, and street views of the block at Jones and Hawkins St. This print is up on our Braddock Tiles kickstarter now.

...the first in a series of portraits created out of my work in Braddock, PA. This town, like so many devastated by the collapse of it's industry and the toxic effects left behind by the factories, is working to recover a way of life that is sustainable, and to discover new ways to value the pieces that have been left behind. All proceeds from this print will go towards rehabilitating a formerly abandoned church to become an arts based learning center, as well as a beautiful public landmark.