Environmental Themed mural series by students

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What would Pittsburgh’s landscapes and communities look like if they were part of a healthy, functioning ecosystem? That was the theme and the title for this series of five murals. Each panel offers an answer to that question. It was the idea of high school student Lucy Newman, of Pittsburgh Obama, who saw the five blank garage doors while she was working at Sylvania Natives, a local nursery. The owner of the nursery had suggested she create her own internship project, and she came up with the plan to do environmental themed murals on those doors.

Kathy McGregor, who owns the nursery, worked together with Lucy and others to develop the question that inspired the murals. As they were potting up plants, Lucy and Kathy would spend hours discussing how to go about painting the murals in a way that is consistent with her business. (An evironmentally responsible nursery, Sylvania Natives grows only plants native to this area.) When Lucy asked her art teacher, Donna Hetrick, for help on paint colors and types, Ms. Hetrick jumped right into the project.

The project grew into a community effort called the Plants and Paints Summer Workshop. Lucy and nine other students from various Pittsburgh high schools participated in the project. During the workshop, the student artists talked with people from Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, Tree Pittsburgh, Clean Rivers Campaign, Sierra Club and others, to learn more about environmental issues. They split into five groups, each in charge of designing and executing a mural for one of the doors. Several local artists - Silvija Singh, Karen Coyne, Clayton Merrell, and Maria Harrington - helped the students with their designs and gave advice on painting techniques.

Mother Knows Best by Heather Harrington, Jordan Schultz–Mcardle, and Lainey Newman.

Artist’s statement for this panel:
In this piece we mainly want it to be thought provoking. We don’t want to tell you if we answered the question or not. Its (sic) up to you (the viewer). Same thing with what we were trying to convey, its (sic) what you want to see, not what we want you to see. This is not some lame excuse to not give you a statement, I promise. However I will give you some of our input. We decided to have the color purple coming out of the silhouettes (sic) mouth because it seemed to convey a better message. Then the purple leads into a green, as you can see the green turns into a milkweed plant. There on the plant is a caterpillar monarch and it leads into the next mural.

Metamorphosis by Lucy Newman and Lainey Newman.

Artist’s statement for this panel:
Monarch butterflies and milkweed plants have evolved together, and now neither can survive without help from the other. Interdependence is common to all forms of life, but the beautiful monarch has become symbolic of such relationships. As manmade infrastructure and introduced species begins to encroach upon natural habitats, the entire ecosystem suffers. In this project, we attempted to envision what our city would look like if it were part of a healthy, functioning ecosystem. Perhaps one day, we will be able to look down from Mount Washington through a thriving forest, at a city composed entirely of green infrastructure. We are not there yet, though we are going through a metamorphosis.

Vision, by Zoe Merrell and Natalie Kandra.

Artist’s statement for this panel:
This mural shows how a street in Pittsburgh would look different if we took steps such as building rain gardens, installing rain barrels and permeable pavement, capturing wind and solar energy, constructing green roofs, making streets bike and pedestrian–friendly, and planting a diversity of native plants and trees. Each of these actions is just a small part of a larger movement to change the way we interact with the earth. If individuals and communities decide to move towards a sustainable model of living rather than continuing to disrupt and destroy the environment, this vision can become a reality.

Untitled, by Clair Holthaus and Kay Hughes.

Artist’s statement for this panel:
Our piece depicts a Pittsburgh fueled by clean and efficient energy, such as solar, wind and hydro power. It also pictures a problem with our energy resources – how to efficiently store large amounts of energy. The trees bordering the city show Pittsburgh heading towards a greener and environmentally friendly future.

Planting a Community, by Myiya Peters and Merryn Spence

Artist’s statement for this panel:
Having a healthy and functioning ecosystem involves everyone working together. Our painting shows that anyone and everyone can take part in helping the environment. It’s a simple yet profound experience. The message we are trying to convey through our mural is that it takes a community to act upon an issue and create change. Through the four colorful people planting the tree, were (sic) attempting to show that anyone from any place can help to make a community more environmentally friendly. We attempted to answer the question What would Pittsburgh’s landscapes and communities look like if they were part of a healthy, functioning ecosystem?, by conveying Pittsburgh as a community with more plants and trees, clean air, and people of different backgrounds contributing to creating this Eco–friendly environment. In order to answer the overarching question, we used collaboration, our creative thought process, and paints!

While not a Sprout Fund Public Art mural, the project was sponsored in part by the Sprout Fund’s Hive Fund for Connected Learning. Hive Pittsburgh is a program of the Sprout Fund that supports connected learning projects that help youth, including tweens, teens and young adults, prepare for college, the workforce, and civic participation. Other sponsors included the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association, Sylvania Natives, the Artist and Craftsman Supply Company, and the East End Food Co–op.

The Sky Beneath Our Feet by Clayton Merrell

About Pgh Murals
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Covering almost an acre and a half, this artwork is the largest piece of public art in the Pittsburgh area. When the original flooring at Pittsburgh International Airport needed to be replaced the Airport Authority decided to commission an artist to design the new one. So... instead of your average, bland, tile flooring we now have approx 69,000 sq feet of functional art!

I was fortunate to attend an art tour of the airport where Mr Merrell gave a talk about this project and the process involved. Most of this is written from notes I took during that talk, and observations made while I explored the installation.

The design incorporates five silhouetted images of local neighborhoods with landmarks. The artist included places that would be readily recognized: The Carrie Furnaces , Monongahela Incline, Smithfield St Bridge, the sports stadiums, Cathedral of Learning, Phipp's Greenhouse. Those silhouettes are positioned at the perimeter (by the entrances to the different concourses and the food court). A blue sky with scattered clouds takes up the bulk of the scene. Contrails zig and zag across the floor connecting different areas of the terminal. Several aircraft silhouettes are inlaid along the flight paths, adding interest to the scene. Looking down on the terrazzo flooring from the second floor gives you a sense of the overall design, although you still can't see the entire mural. It's a good place to watch people staring and interacting with the design.

Clayton Merrell has done a lot of paintings with the sky as the subject. Many were done from the perspective of someone lying on the ground looking up, with elements of the horizon at the perimeter of the canvas. Until The Sky Beneath Our Feet, his largest painted had been 8 x 10 feet. Extrapolating his vision to a canvas of this size required several steps.

The project started in the Spring of 2013 when Clayton Merrell was one of the three artists (out of an initial group of 10 artists) selected to pitch their ideas. His previous work was well suited to this venue, and his proposal incorporated all of the elements he liked to use - such as movement, or indications of time passing. He was fond of depicting wide open spaces framed by detail, and incorporating light, weather and astronomical events. His previous work also used lines or trajectories and he liked to explore the way these elements represent connectivity.  



Clayton Merrell explained how the arching flight paths were a reflection of the architectural lines of the terminal building and helped to tie the artwork to the structure. They also connect destinations within the terminal, flowing between shops and concourses.

 To come up with the details for the horizon, the artist spent time around the city photographing landmarks and neighborhoods. He pieced the photos together, made a digital trace of the image and converted it to a vector image before coloring it in.

The finished floor has only 13 different colors, but fine tuning those colors took a lot of trial and error. Terrazzo flooring has been used for centuries and these days includes several different materials (glass, granite, quartz and marble). Adjusting the amounts/ratios of those materials changes the floor's appearance and coloring.

After creating the design, local architects (LGA Partners) worked with the artist before the plan was turned over to the installation team (Mosites Construction and Roman Mosaic and Tile Company). They were able to place the design into a 3D model of the terminal to preview how it would look in place. The design had to be printed out full size to check for problems. To transfer the design to the floor, a stencil had to be created which was used to paint the outlines. Each color in the flooring is contained by a zinc border. Each piece of zinc was hand bent and then epoxied to the floor. Once one color was poured it had to set up for 24 hours before an adjacent color could be poured. During the process, the airport had to remain operational, so the flooring was done one section at a time in a long, slow process. Most of the troweling was done by hand and the terrazzo had to be polished with increasingly finer grit until smooth and then sealed and polished to a high shine. It took almost two years to complete the installation.

 Within the design are several aircraft including the space shuttle, the Wright brothers' first plane, and a blimp. The details for these aircraft were too small to shape with the zinc strips, so instead they were made of aluminum and precisely cut with a water jet.

Something that worried the artist from the start was how the Alexander Calder mobile Pittsburgh would display above the new flooring. The mobile is designed to move with the air currents and Mr Merrell did not want the floor to detract from the mobile. In the end the floor design complements the mobile very well. Although the design of the floor sounds busy in a written description, in reality the clouds, contrails, aircraft and silhouettes are well spaced apart and subtle. If I hadn't been told that there were 13 different colors in the flooring I would have guessed that there were only four or five. The artist said that with the changes in lighting, shadows and reflections that it seems like there are actually more colors. It does reflect every light and sign so I can see his point. I would expect that it could look different at different times of day and depending on the volume of people walking across it at any given time.

In the food court the design is a little bit different.  One of the other ideas Mr Merrell had for the floor was a topographical map of the area, and he decided to make use of that idea within the food court.

Terrazzo flooring is very durable and when cement-based it should last longer than the building.

The other interesting result of the new floor is how the people interact with it. Kids of all ages follow the lines and explore the designs. Adults stop to stare, admire, and try to identify different landmarks. It's a beautiful way to introduce visitors to Pittsburgh, and a much quieter one without the loud click-clacks of luggage wheels across grout strips.