It was my privilege recently to be invited to an Open House/Work Shop in Bridgeville dealing with an initiative to “celebrate public art and private art sited in public places and to add to it” in the local community. My function was to serve as a source of historical information in support of this project.
The initial group of people involved in this project include long-term Bridgeville residents and newcomers to the community, all of whom are dedicated to keeping “the community vibrant and attractive to residents and visitors”, certainly a noble objective. It is equally certain that providing the community with visual arts, music, and performing arts would achieve that objective.
The spearheads of this project are Guy and Elizabeth (Bitsy) Bellaver. They both grew up in this general area – Guy in Beadling and Bitsy in Upper St. Clair – and have recently moved back to Bridgeville after living in St. Charles, Illinois, for many years. Guy has worked as a sculptor since 1975; Bitsy is the owner of a small business consultancy.
St. Charles, located thirty-five miles west of Chicago, prides itself on being “a treasure trove of public art”, largely as a result of the efforts of the St. Charles Arts Council, an organization the Bellavers helped found in 2010. Today, St. Charles, with a population of about 32,000, is a mecca for people in the Greater Chicago area interested in all forms of art.
The new Bridgeville organization is planning three types of events for 2022 – an outdoor sculpture exhibition, an open-air gallery, and music in Triangle Park. Planning for the sculpture exhibition is well under way. The organization’s initial goal was to exhibit five outdoor sculptures scattered at sites throughout Bridgeville for a year and then to replace them with five different ones. At this it appears that as many as eight different sculptures might be available, as early as June of this year.
The Bellavers distributed a set of photographs of the eight pieces being considered; three of them already have assigned display sites. They run the full gamut from representational (realistic) through stylistic to completely abstract. A preview of this exhibit will serve to exemplify this phase of the overall initiative.
Located in Triangle Park will be “Best Seller”, a meticulously painted, life-size realistic statue of a gentleman fallen asleep in an Adirondack chair. It is the product of Seward Johnson; in 2012 fifteen of his sculptures scattered around Gateway Center attracted attention from passersby who couldn’t believe they weren’t alive.
Another Johnson masterpiece, “Inner World, Outer World”, will be on display close to La Bella Bean Coffee House and Eatery”. It is an equally life-like gentleman sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper. My daughter Elizabeth calls these sculptures “decoys”; she regularly sits on the bench on the Cathedral of Learning lawn which is occupied by a bronze of Dr. Thomas Starzl.
A third exhibit, titled “Bunny”, is a stylized interpretation of a dancer, sculpted by Gregory Mendez, whose studio is in Decatur, Indiana. Appropriately it will be located at the Thomas Dance Studio. Jan Loney, a Pittsburgher, calls herself a “metalier”. Her work, “Flight”, which has been on display at the Carrie Furnace, is on the border line between stylistic and abstract; its Bridgeville location is not yet established.
The venues for the other four works also have not been determined at this time. Possibilities include the Bridgeville Public Library, the Bridgeville Area Historical Society History Center, and the Baldwin Street sites where the FEMA funded demolition has occurred.
These works must be classified abstract, at least by this ignorant layman. They include “Victoria” by Chris Wubbena, a Professor of Sculpture at Southeast Missouri University; “Remembering Youth” by Dan Droz, another Pittsburgher, with ties to Carnegie Mellon University; and two pieces by Alex Mendez, also a Decatur product — “Every Piece Has a Place” and “Heavy Metal”.
Being old and set in my ways it is easy for me to dismiss abstract art and focus on things that have some recognizable theme. However, while browsing through Guy Bellaver’s portfolio on his website, I came across “Reflections”, a large polished stainless-steel collection of warped surfaces that provides an infinity of reflections from every different aspect.
This piece is part of his Quarks series, an exploration of the relationship of positive to negative space inspired by Fermilab photographic images of the collision of protons and antiprotons. That is hardly “abstract”; instead it is a physical representation of events too minute for us to even imagine. “Reflections” is on permanent exhibit in St. Charles; I would welcome the opportunity to see it.
If “public art bridgeville” can pull it off, this exhibit will certainly be a memorable occasion, and could easily be the catalyst for the other phases of their initiative. Music in Triangle Park will be welcome, either on a formal, scheduled basis or informally by volunteer buskers. Jeff Rupnik’s programs there will be missed this summer. I think Pop-up art exhibits are a good idea, too. Let’s start with Bill Winstein’s sports cartoons and then follow up with Andrew Knez Jr.’s series of eighteenth century local history.
Seventy years ago Sylvia Saperstein invited a group of her friends to get together and discuss the possibility of Bridgeville having its own public library. Today the community boasts the most impressive library in the area. Twenty-two years ago Mary Weise invited her friends to an open house that eventually produced the Bridgeville Area Historical Society, also the most impressive of its type in this area. Let’s hope the Bellavers are as successful and that someday Bridgeville boasts the most impressive arts center in the area.