Down the River ~ 3

Here’s the entrance gallery, on the top floor of the Weston. You can see Richard and Doug Harned’s “Water Theatre” to the left. This shot was taken during the artist presentations session one evening in April.

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Here I am at the top of the stairs that go down into the other gallery spaces. “Down the River: Muhammad Ali threw his Olympic Gold Medal into the Ohio” was made for the staircase. You can probably see the street windows to the side and behind me with the smaller birds perched there.

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Over in the Carnegie Library archives, you can find a collection of the original “Navigators.” Kind of like farmer almanacs, on a yearly basis, boatmen would chronicle the twists and turns of rivers, as well as the development of army posts and towns along the riverfront. The Navigator that I used for the map panels was published in 1818. It took some work to determine where current state lines would have been drawn.

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This is the starting point of the journey down the river. I just love old maps, and this one of Pittsburgh is awesome. The colors are aesthetic choices on my part, although as we go further south, state colors get redder and redder. The printing is direct to foamcore with just a mild sheen.

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