Carrick's 2010 Paint Out

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

Melissa Rosenfeld is on a mission to make Carrick’s main drag more appealing, and she has an army of artists and a police detective on her team.

That’s Melissa, almost invisible in shadow crouched in the front row beside Steve Hutter, director of the Elder-Ado Senior Center, whose non-profit status she is piggy-backing on to fund the project. Her daughter Malia is at the far left beside Joyce Wasser then Tommy Mason, Lynsey Kern, and Detective Alphonso Sloan. Gail Matus is in the middle with the baby.

About 17 artists answered the call for work to be displayed in Carrick storefronts. Detective Sloan designed the flier for Carrick's Art Escape Project.

Along Brownsville Road, mostly in the 2600 block, large and small panels of art work block out the emptiness of the stores and suggest possibilities.

Tommy Mason's photography of red and green peppers, for instance, makes the building they are in look potentially like a small grocery. Melissa votes for an Italian market or restaurant. Detective Sloan, who is on the Pittsburgh Police's graffiti task force, said this could be a model for other neighborhoods..

You will be reading more about Carrick's Art Escape Project in the Post-Gazette soon. City Walkabout is an extension of PG beat writer Diana Nelson Jones' coverage of Pittsburgh's kaleidoscope of neighborhoods. Click here to read more at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.