House Permutation by Wole Soyinka and multiple artists

About Pgh Murals
Spreadsheet of Pittsburgh Public Art and blog archives
Map of Pittsburgh Public Art

The second of the City of Asylum's "House Publishings".  House Permutaion is also known as Winged House, and includes three separate pieces of art by four different artists that are all interconnected.

Wole Soyinka was the artist in residence here and it is an excerpt from his book The Man Died that's etched into the glass door in his own handwriting.  He is a Nigerian poet and playwright who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1986.   The Man Died are notes from the 22 months he spent in prison due to his political activism.  The following is the inscription from the door:

I had newly discovered the world of numbers. Once the first breakthrough was over I began with increasing rapidity to rediscover one mathematical formula after another. Part investigation, part titanic excavation from the murky burial-ground of the labours of long-suffering teachers I tackled one idea after another, testing and re-testing the achieved formula by the most simplistic count-by-count systems. I had TIME! Often I woke up in the morning to a problem and one minute later literally one minute later the guard was tapping on the door to signal lock-up hour. I DESTROYED time. Once I wrote out all the possible combinations of six digits. In the process I uncovered the only way that this could be done to ensure, at a glance, that there was neither duplication nor omission. The result was so obviously a plan for computed aesthetics that I ruled out squares on toilet paper and proceeded to repeat those combinations with colored squares.(Green from leaf juice, black from my ink — christened Soy-ink — and toilet paper white.) The cyclic continuum of the result next made an impression. I joined one end of the toilet paper to the other and asked, Now what have I got? It had a strong resemblance to symbols made by computers. Now how on earth do computers function anyway?

Behind the glass on the door you can just make out a mosaic.

Artists Laura Jean McLaughlin and Bob Ziller (with some help from the Mattress Factory's art lab) created this mosaic to represent the 720 combinations of 6 colors from the passage on the door.

Sculptor Thadius Mosely was commissioned to create the beautiful carved wings on the front of the building.  Spiritual Wings were inspired from Mr Soyinka's passage. Sampsonia Way magazine quoted the artist as saying: I wanted to do something to give the house wings, something with an air of spirituality. When you read the work of these writers, you can see the joy, spirit and idea of personal freedom. I wanted to reflect that.

River of Words by Israel Centeno

About Pgh Murals
Spreadsheet of Pittsburgh Public Art and blog archives
Map of Pittsburgh Public Art

Israel Centeno (Venezuela) is a writer-in-residence at City of Asylum, having arrived in 2011. He is the author of poetry, short stories, and ten novels.

He worked on the River of Words, (2014) a public art installation within the Mexican War Streets. He chose 100 words, relevant in some way to Pittsburgh. Neighbors were invited to host a “word in residence," meaning that they would display a representation of their word (designed by Venezuelan artists Carolina Arnal and Gisela Romero), on the wall, or door, or window of their houses. River of Words was wildly popular. Residents excitedly selected and suggested words that they wanted to display.  If you walk the streets around Sampsonia Way, you can still spot some of the words. Some of them are bold; some inconspicuous; some stenciled on garage doors or sitting above garden gates.

The words, in Spanish and English, are references to poetry, literature, and the Pittsburgh physical and cultural landscape. For example, the names of our three rivers were included, as well as words like “zombies”.  The words are made from laser-cut acrylic, vinyl letters, or even chalk.


All of the words were supposed to be removed in Dec 2014, but residents have been petitioning the Historic Review Commission to keep them.  The residents that hosted a word chose one that had significance for them and they didn't want to give them up when the "temporary" art installation officially closed.  Almost half the homes hosting a word were within the historic district, which made keeping them somewhat controversial.

River of Words was so much more than a temporary art installation.  It's become a focal point in the debate about expanding the historic district and the role of public art in an historic district.  It's beamed some light on the restrictions to modifications of these historic homes.  Do the restrictions conflict with “free speech” and is this a class issue?  It has really brought the discussion of public art and what it means to people to the forefront.  Some homeowners decided that they did not want to become a part of the historic district because they would most likely be denied the public art option.

The project also included a drawing along Sampsonia Way, using lines and words to connect the homes along the street. “Human beings make contact with each other through the exchange of energy, affection, and knowledge,” the artists noted in their project proposal. “We’ll use words and sentences as links between houses” to create a visual array of connections and relationships.  We were there the day the city showed up to sandblast the array of words and phrases off the asphalt.  It was kind of sad to see it destroyed.

In addition to words, several community members hosted entire poems and portraits of poets on the facades of their homes.  So far these have not been removed.
 

The Tom Museum Mural by Tom Sarver

About Pgh Murals
Spreadsheet of Pittsburgh Public Art and blog archives
Map of Pittsburgh Public Art

This house is now a part of City of Asylum, but it started out as a project by the Mattress Factory known as The Tom Museum. A behind the scenes view (like a live reality show) of an artist in his studio.  During it's two year run, it was open to the public on weekends and sometimes included audience participation in an exhibit - like puppet making.  It was an inside look at the creative process. Admission was included with tickets to The Mattress Factory and you could see where Mr Sarver lived and worked on his art. The Tom Museum is now gone, but the mural remains.

In a Post Gazette article in 2006, Kathleen Ganster describes this mural as artist Tom Sarver’s vision of Pittsburgh. Farther into the article Mr Sarver says that he spent three weeks painting the two–sided mural of the city of Pittsburgh. Perhaps the other side is inside? We don't know. We’ve only seen this view from the front.

House Poem by Huang Xiang

About Pgh Murals
Spreadsheet of Pittsburgh Public Art and blog archives
Map of Pittsburgh Public Art


The City of Asylum (COA) is an organization that offers sancuary to writers in exile from their home countries due to thier writing. In the Mexican War Streets area of the Central North Side you'll find several houses where these writers are able to start their new lives free of persecution while they continue to write. The exterior of these houses are adorned with public art that includes text. COA calls them house publishing. Right now there are four published houses on Sampsonia Way, and House Poem was the first one done.

You'll find some information about House Poem on COA's own website.

The first artist in residence for Pittsburgh's City of Asylum was Huang Xiang. Born in Hunan Province, China, he spent his life under communist oppression.  His father was executed in 1951 and he was denied education beyond grade school because of his class and because of his father's political association.  His father had left a hidden room full of college level books and when he discovered them he began to teaching himself at the age of 10. 

His poetry was banned by the government and never published in China, but in 1978 he found himself front and center in Tiananmen Square reciting over 600 lines of poetry to a huge crowd.  His poems were posted on a wall there, known now as the Democracy Wall.  He announced the Enlightenment Society for social reforms and started the democracy movement.  His message to President Carter asking for help and intervention on human rights issues grabbed the world's attention.

Imprisoned six times for his writings and political activism, he spent about 12 years locked up before he finally escaped China in 1997.  He was granted asylum by the United States and in 2004 he and his wife arrived here at Pittsburgh's City of Asylum.  He expressed his joy at the freedom and welcome that he received here by putting his writings on the outside of the house he was living in.  Writing poetry on walls or carving it in stone is a Chinese tradition and Huang Xiang wanted to do that in his new home.  On the door it says "House of a Poet" and "Nest of Dreams".

There is an unofficial translation of this poem, which is titled The Day is Fading towards the end of this article.

An article regarding the house publishings on Sampsonia Way can be found in Pittsburgh Magazine, and here is a good article by Susan Hutton from an interview with Huang Xiang while we was in residence here.

Jazz House by Oliver Lake, Than Htay Maung

About Pgh Murals
Spreadsheet of Pittsburgh Public Art and blog archives
Map of Pittsburgh Public Art

The City of Asylum (COA) is an organization that offers sancuary to writers in exile from their home countries due to thier writing. In the Mexican War Streets area of the Central North Side you'll find several houses where these writers are able to start their new lives free of persecution while they continue to write. The exterior of these houses are adorned with public art that includes text. COA calls them house publishing. Right now there are four published houses on Sampsonia Way.

You'll find the story of Jazz House on COA's own website.

Oliver Lake is a composer, painter and Jazz saxophone player. Than Htay Maung used his paintings to create the mural. This was the City of Asylum's fourth house publishing.

Another good article regarding the house publishings on Sampsonia Way can be found in this article in Pittsburgh Magazine.

The Pittsburgh-Burma House by Than Htay Maung, Khet Mar

About Pgh Murals
Spreadsheet of Pittsburgh Public Art and blog archives
Map of Pittsburgh Public Art



The City of Asylum (COA) is an organization that offers sanctuary to writers in exile from their home countries due to their writing. In the Mexican War Streets area of the Central North Side you'll find several houses where these writers are able to start their new lives free of persecution while they continue to write. The exterior of these houses are adorned with public art that includes text. COA calls them house publishing. Right now there are four published houses on Sampsonia Way.



You'll find some of the story of Pittsburgh-Burma House on COA's own website.

Exiled writer Khet Mar and her husband Than Htay Maung created this mural. She was the third writer to be hosted by City of Asylum here in Pittsburgh. In Burma (now known as Myanmar) she was censored, arrested, and interrogated for pro-democracy activities.  She was tortured for 10 days - trying to get her to identify other pro-democracy activists.  She only gave up the names of friends that had already died.

Sentenced to 10 years in prison, she was put in with death row inmates and endured abusive treatment where the guards would kick her repeatedly.  When she was released by the new general after serving one year, she was grateful.  After leaving Burma and arriving here in Pittsburgh, Khet Mar had a dream, and that's what is depicted here.  The mural was done by Than Htay Maung to interpret his wife's dream and blend the images of Burma and Pittsburgh.  The Irrawaddy River meets the Allegheny River. Vultures become songbirds as the scene changes from tremendous suffering, fear, imprisonment and anxiety to a peaceful, idealistic vision of Pittsburgh.

We searched the internet for hours trying to find a translation of this poem with absolutely no luck.  We finally emailed the City of Asylum and they sent us one, translated by Sao Aung Myint, which is copyrighted unfortunately, so we can't publish it here for you.  I will tell you that it's the story of a dream full of images and feelings, including those of freedom and sanctuary found in the writer's new home of Pittsburgh.

More information is available in Sampsonia Way, and in an article in Pittsburgh Magazine.