Better than TNT

Cows have marked street corners in Chicago, Ill. Fish have swum the streets in Erie, Pa. … Cows have marked street corners in Chicago, Ill. Fish have swum the streets in Erie, Pa. Horses have galloped down Lexington, Ky., streets.

Now Pittsburgh welcomes dinosaur tracks in the city streets and parks. The first dinosaur was unveiled at the Carnegie Mellon Museum of Natural History last Tuesday. The intent of this project, called DinoMite Days, is to attract tourists and local residents by connecting education, art and history.

At the unveiling ceremony, about 30 fourth grade students from Burgettstown Area Elementary School in Burgettstown, Pa., anxiously awaited the inauguration of the Tyrannosaurus rex. The students whispered to their teacher, “Mr. Gillen, Mr. Gillen is it time yet?” and the pieces slowly came together.

Patricia Bellan-Gillen was the first artist contracted to paint this giant, fiberglass T-Rex. She and her husband Vince Gillen brought home the dinosaur in their pickup truck Aug. 10. Since then Bellan-Gillen has devoted 10 to 12 hours a day for five solid weeks to this 7-foot dinosaur.

“It feels like an honor to be the first artist on this project and that people at the museum knew my work and thought of me and my work,” Bellan-Gillen said.

Bellan-Gillen said at first she was hesitant to take on this type of commitment since she already had other projects underway. She is an endowed professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art, where she teaches painting, drawing and concept studios. She has taught at CMU for 16 years. These other commitments allowed very little time for such large task. But Bellan-Gillen was inspired after she spent a weekend in Erie where she saw giant fish decorated by Erie’s artists “swimming” up and down State Street.

Although Bellan-Gillen has done sculpture work, she has mainly painted and drawn dinosaurs on flat surfaces. This opportunity to paint a three-dimensional dinosaur was a perfect segue from a flat canvas to a larger than life-size figure.

Bellan-Gillen added various personal touches to this piece of artwork. She integrated her past 10 to 15 years of work and employed animals as cultural and religious figures. The dinosaur displays a monkey, a seahorse, a rhinoceros, a starfish, a human hand, a butterfly as well as other species.

“Everything except the flatworm category!” Bellan-Gillen said with a chuckle.

Connecting these animals are vines and leaves, sprouting from each animal and encircling the dinosaur’s body. She has entitled this T-rex, “Connections.”

Gillen, Bellan-Gillen’s husband, and the fourth-graders’ teacher, had a personal connection to this piece. His students painted self-portraits, which were displayed on an urn placed on top of the dinosaur’s head. The urn is a representation of ancient civilization. While Bellan-Gillen worked on the dino in her Burgettstown barn, her husband taught classes in Ancient Greco art and Mexican pottery and archeology. The urn connects the past with the future, displaying young faces on this historical object.

“Connections” currently stands outside of the Carnegie Museum and is one of the many dinosaurs that will mark the streets and parks of Pittsburgh during DinoMite Days. The official kickoff to this project will happen next May.

DinoMite Days is looking for artists interested in lending their talent to this project. They have extended the application deadline to Oct. 15. Application forms and guidelines can be found at www.dinomitedays.org.