Downtown Pittsburgh comes alive with art

What’s green, blue and aggressively taking over Downtown Pittsburgh?

Combining efforts from… What’s green, blue and aggressively taking over Downtown Pittsburgh?

Combining efforts from local artists and undiscovered musical auteurs with a green, zero-waste initiative, The Three Rivers Arts Festival has the potential to achieve recreational domination by its end date of June 22. Until then, Pittsburghers are receiving daily supplements of a burgeoning art scene.

Most of what spectators will admire can be sensed immediately. As in years past, artists’ vendor stalls are huddled in tent camps at the feet of the Gateway Center high rises. Artists either attempt to balance aesthetics with function, peddling ceramic and woodwork household items, or reach out to pedestrians with renderings of the world through their eyes, commonly with sculpture, canvas or photoprint.

All the looking is bound to make attendees hungry, and the festival stretches a banquet along one side of Liberty Avenue, with vendor stalls that respond to the hungry masses with gusto. The sampling panorama includes expected regulars like pizza and funnel cake but also has choices like Asian noodles and pierogies.

Between the sturdy arms of food-laden Liberty Avenue and art-crammed Penn Avenue is the main stage, nestled against intersecting Stanwix Street. The main stage broadcasts the festival’s presence before attendees have even arrived, its speakers pumping out this year’s lineup of blues, jazz, jam and, of course, indie.

On the main stage last Saturday, jazz and swing group the Boilermaker Jazz Band assembled as fickle skies covered the Golden Triangle. Although Pittsburghers were reluctant to take seats filled by puddles, Paul Cosentino’s clarinet led his band into a performance appropriate for a loaded seating section. When the music unfolded to let Jennie Luvv’s velvet alto ease through, the dark skies became a little more bearable.

But as Cosentino said, ‘The only bummer is the weather,’ and everything else about the festival more than makes up for it. And while blues are a fitting and prominent force at the festival this year, Cosentino was quick to point out the other styles as well, as otherwise there would be little to differentiate them from a blues festival.

‘We strive to present a very diverse array of music at the festival,’ said Lauren Bracey, the manager of communications and external affairs for the festival. Examples of such acts granting more depth to the lineup include electronic-meets-jam-band Lotus, set to play Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., and the thoroughly poppy The Takeover UK, which played for golden Sunday evening skies and a packed audience.

There are more ways to judge the festival’s success than in volume of attendees or music. There’s also volume of garbage.

The zero-waste initiative provides that all disposable dishes and utensils at the festival be either biodegradable or recyclable. Consumers have no need to be wary: A spoon made out of potato starch works just as well as an ordinary plastic spoon. While organizers were hoping for a 50 percent diversion of waste from landfills, they have so far achieved a surprising 82 percent. After a day of squeezing by crowds of Pittsburghers examining vendor menus, it becomes apparent that this is no small achievement.

As if this wasn’t enough of an effort, the festival also displays its earth friendliness in contemporary art, which Bracey identified as following the contemporary trend of making art functional.

The single most visible example is the Dream Machine, the sprawling play construction in Market Square. Created by Nathan Green, a former student at Schenley High School, the project relies on human power to move its central spinning platform, which is a rendition of a merry-go-round. The lights are solar powered.

Nearby are cargo containers that now house installation art. Although they provide a fitting illustration of combining recycling and art, Bracey revealed that more pressing issues were at stake.

‘We’ve been frustrated in years past by limitations on space.’ said Bracey. Each container houses a different installation exhibit, and surrounding vacant storefronts became too expensive to lease for the festival.

The result of using the containers has been more than increasing available space, though – the exhibits this year are definitely statement pieces. The unassuming exteriors and even the diverse interiors together point toward future possibilities of art in public places as well as art that exploits a drive toward a greener society.

‘I was really impressed by what the city did,’ said Cosentino of the zero-waste policy. He noted that Pittsburgh has gone from one of the dirtiest cities in the country to an environmentally conscious one.

Adding further comment to Pittsburgh’s legacy is the Magarac Attack exhibit, also in Market Square. During the steel industry’s heyday, Joe Magarac was a mythical hero working in a steel mill, personifying the immigrant labor force. Interpretive sculptures of Magarac in the square take on a skeletal industrial appearance. They expand beyond Magarac’s European namesake to all different demographics of steel workers that needed a reassuring folk hero in response to repression.

As all the elements of the festival come together, they also construct a distinctly Pittsburgh flavor. While the jazz and Magarac exhibits recall earlier days, the container project and zero-waste initiative look forward to Pittsburgh’s future.

Of course, who could overlook where the festival is placed?

‘Having it Downtown makes it quintessentially Pittsburgh,’ said Cosentino. The PPG building abutting Market Square stands behind Cosentino’s words: It’s impossible to mistake this for another city’s arts festival. Even the music lineup is representative of the city, with 40 of the 55 groups locally based.

With all the action in the Golden Triangle this week, it’s doubtful that anyone going Downtown can avoid the Three Rivers Arts Festival. And as Bracey pointed out, there’s still much more to come, such as the Avett Brothers, a festival favorite from last year, set to play on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m.

However, rock stars can’t take all the credit at this festival.

‘I personally am really excited about the container project,’ said Bracey.