PART 4

. . . Some people feel absolute horror when they find themselves alone in the woods, it is as if to step off a sidewalk and onto a trail is to invite an inevitable heinous result of an encounter with the evil that lurks in the tangles and hollows. There is no amount of reassurance that can make them feel safe, their minds filled with visions of shallow graves or drainpipes and their own misshapen selves stuffed haphazardly inside. It comes naturally for these individuals to think the woods are refuge to thieves, rapists and murderers, that some nefarious human element means them harm and stalks them like easy prey from behind every shrub or bramble, and to let the mind wander in solitude is just simply impossible. It would seem that enjoying the natural is almost pointless when it requires such a high degree of vigilance, but the drowsy woman—who was still drowsy but for other reasons—felt rather fascinated but the the sudden absence of ambient sound. She would have stayed longer if she wasn’t getting such a chill, which always made her want to curl up and sleep. And so she went home as night fell. . .

PART 3

. . . With their seemingly endless pallet for similar patterns and colors, the woods of Winter can overwhelm the eye and confuse a person, and in the open woods it is not uncommon for someone to stray too far from the familiar and disappear as if into thin air. If you stay still for a but minute or so, the mind wanders, the senses heighten and then one begins to be hypnotized by the unfamiliar sensation of absolute awareness. Every single thing in its place.Without even a breeze to rustle twig upon stick upon leaf upon stick jutting from the ground, the park was profoundly, oddly, silent. All at once she felt a strange sensation, as if she were being watched, but there was nothing to be seen or heard, not a bird, not a squirrel—no one walking, jogging, no dogs crashing through the undergrowth, their owners far behind. . .

PART 2

. . . In the afternoon after she’d taken a long, luxurious nap, a drowsy woman went for a walk on the long path that runs through the large park near her small house. It was cold but not so cold as to freeze the creek that ran like a thick black vein through the hardwood forest drained of color, like a meticulous, obsessive graphite sketch. There were a handful of others in the park but for the most part she was alone, and this solitude led her to daydream and wander further than she’d originally intended. . .

PART 1

It had snowed New Year’s Eve. Not very much but enough to add the much-needed contrast to the wintry skeletons of trees that painted the region in mournful tones of gray and black. The sun had come out on New Year’s day, painful illumination for the boozy revelers who woke late, but a reminder for most that spring was months away and there would be surprises in store before the bleak month of January was finished. . .

BRADDOCK

About 4 miles south of where we live in Wilkensburg is Braddock, a once-thriving steel town that with the demise of the mills found it’s population dwindle down to somewhere under 3,000. From the right angle Braddock looks like another riverside mill town, busy, determined, salt of the earth. Yet it’s really something of a strange and beautiful artifact, a post-apocalyptic vision with blocks of empty storefronts, filled with the remains of their occupants, collapsing in on themselves with their own sad neglect. So bleak is the impression it’s small wonder the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road had some filming done here. Unless otherwise informed, one could easily overlook it’s hidden history of French-India war battles featuring the future president George Washington and the country’s first Carnegie library, complete with empty basement pool that once hosted splashing aquatic enthusiasts. It’s a haunted place, of memories and people who once tread it’s sidewalks in happier more economically viable times, where now it’s no surprise to see a drug deal or feel the urge to stay away as night falls. Now artists have moved in, promoting a revival through art and the promise of cheap studio space, and their work pops up in hidden places, like the plastered image by Brooklyn-based artist Swoon who's done some work here. The same library mentioned above hosts a dedicated ceramic studio in it’s former public bathhouse, and the two enthusiastic gentlemen who run it are active participants in the ceramic water filtration project promoted by Potters For Peace, manufacturing these simple, effective devices for shipment throughout the world. Braddock demands repeated visits and a closer look.

THE BARN

UNTITLED