Troy Loves Hill by Carolyn Kelly

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The Sprout Fund provided the information for Troy Loves Hill:

Pittsburgh’s Troy Hill is a traditionally German neighborhood with colorful history. Artist Carolyn Kelly captured these historic elements in her 2009 Sprout Public Art mural, unifying them with a tree. Each painted leaf represents a different aspect of the area’s past, ranging from the Heinz Corporation, by which Troy Hill residents have often been employed, to St. Anthony’s Church, which contains the second largest collection of relics in the world–topped only by the Vatican. An incline that no longer stands in Troy Hill is commemorated, as is Pittsburgh’s famous Penn Brewery, known for its annual German Oktoberfest celebration. Kelly also depicted “Pig Hill”, or Troy Hill’s Rialto St., which was known for pigs being led to slaughter on Washington’s Landing. Kelly’s mural puts a more positive twist on this piece of Troy Hill’s past, showing the pigs instead escaping from the hill.
In her painting process, Kelly allowed some of the signage that had existed on the wall prior the mural’s installation to remain as a design element that can be seen through the new composition. In this way, history wasn’t taken away but rather became a part of the mural: an idea wholly in tune with its greater theme.

Summer Harvest Goddess by Carolyn Kelly

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Spreadsheet of Pittsburgh Public Art and blog archives
Map of Pittsburgh Public Art

The Sprout Fund provided the information for Summer Harvest Goddess:

Summer Harvest Goddess exemplifies a very site specific Sprout Public Art mural, in that Kelly and the South Side Local Development Company wanted to have a mural that referenced the weekly farmer’s market that runs in the summers in the area adjacent to the wall. Carolyn chose the classic image of a woman holding a cornucopia as the mural’s central figure, showing the bountiful harvest of produce available at the farmer’s market. She also snuck in a few Pittsburgh references, like a dinosaur and a Steelers scarf, to localize the image. The mural reflects the style of Kelly’s personal illustration work, but achieving this required some inventiveness on her part. She wasn’t able to get the precise stroke that she wanted from a normal paintbrush, and decided to dip an ear of corn from the farmer’s market into her bucket of paint to create a more graceful line! Kelly’s striking color choices and signature illustrative style can also be seen in her 2009 Sprout mural in Troy Hill.