Category: Sculpture

  • Wrought Iron in Mellon Park

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    A wrought-iron fence and gate in Mellon Park, surrounded by the rich and subtle colors of early November.

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  • A Fountain in Mellon Park

    Early November: the gaudy colors of the maples have fled, but the oaks and birches take over with richer and subtler tones. This fountain is a bit medieval, a bit magical, and a bit silly, which makes it just about perfect.

  • The Westinghouse Memorial

    Father Pitt thinks the Westinghouse Memorial in Schenley Park is the most effective memorial in Pittsburgh. Instead of a heroic statue of the great inventor George Westinghouse, what we see is a boy, representing the youth of the future, learning about Westinghouse’s accomplishments. Because of Westinghouse, we have safe high-speed travel and electricity in our homes, and many other astonishing things we take for granted today. Thousands of Westinghouse employees, who remembered the founder fondly, donated their own money to keep his memory alive. These pictures, which show only a small part of the memorial, were taken with a Kodak Tourist camera, a simple and very common folding camera that, like many other Kodak cameras of the time, has good optics and a reliable mechanism.

  • Robert Burns Fans: Here’s Your Wallpaper

    Andrew Carnegie and a number of other wealthy poetry-lovers gave us this statue of Robert Burns, which stands in Schenley Park on the grounds of Phipps Conservatory, just at the end of the Panther Hollow Bridge. So I’ve made it into a perfect computer wallpaper for Burns fans everywhere. The wallpaper comes in three different proportions; click on each image for the full-scale version.

    The 1600 x 1200 version can be rescaled to fit 1280 x 960, 1024 x 768, 800 x 600, 640 x 480, or any other 4-to-3 display.

    The 1680 x 1060 version can be scaled to fit widescreen displays.

    The 1280 x 1024 version fits most last-generation CRT monitors at their highest resolution.

  • Spring at Phipps

    The Spring Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory had a whimsically classical theme: Praxiteles by way of Salvador Dali.

  • A Stroll through Allegheny Cemetery

    A short stroll in the snow through an enchanted landscape filled with fantastic temples, angels, and cold beauties with warm hearts.

  • Dead, but Still Busy

    Working post mortem

    Mr. O’Neill is possibly the only resident of the Allegheny Cemetery who is still working at a desk job post mortem. Eugene O’Neill is buried nearby, but not any Eugene O’Neill you know.

  • Guardians of Highland Park

    The elaborate entrance portal to Highland Park at the end of Highland Avenue could never be made today. Think of the protests! It would be called a waste of money, an exploitation of women, or even obscene. In Victorian times, it was probably called “beautiful,” but that is an outmoded form of discourse.

  • Headless

    Headless statue

    A headless statue accumulated from somewhere, now standing up to its neck in Boston ivy outside the Mattress Factory art museum.

  • Among the Angels

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    Two angels from the Allegheny Cemetery, where angels are understandably a popular theme in sculpture.
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