10 January 2016

Open Heaven Open Sky by Gabe Felice

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The Uptown committee that worked with Gabe Felice on the design for this mural told him they wanted something that would make the neighborhood through traffic slow down and take a look. You see, this little community has a lot of kids and the traffic going between downtown and Oakland is always in a rush. Mr Felice told them he wouldn’t be able to show them the final design until it was done because that just isn’t the way he paints. He works in layers – adding and subtracting as he goes, and he asked them to just trust him. So the committee presented him with a few guidelines: they wanted to see birds, water and community represented. Then they just waited to see what materialized.

On the right side of the mural you find Soho incorporated into the design. Originally named Ayer’s Hill, the neighborhood adopted the name of Soho from an estate that once occupied a good deal of the land. The estate is long gone, few remember the Soho district of Pittsburgh, and now the area is mostly referred to as Uptown. It’s also known as The Bluff though, and in fact the City of Pittsburgh neighborhood map shows Bluff rather than Uptown.

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