Who New?

If you have a lot of love for mid-century modern decor and furniture, you have to check
out Who New if you haven’t already! They have an amazing collection of hard to find
items and probably things you never saw before. I could spend half the day in there and
even if you walk around once or twice, you are bound to find something new that you
missed the first time around.

While visiting Pittsburgh a couple years ago before I moved back, I made it a point to
check this store out. I had been hearing about the new things that were happening in
Lawrenceville and all the new shops that were making the neighborhood their home.
I have to admit, the New York Times article that ran in 2007 gave me that extra push
to go. Years before when I left Pittsburgh, it wasn’t all that great of a neighborhood and
there wasn’t too much happening except once a year with the Art All Night event.
You knew that it had so much potential but just wasn’t quite there yet.

When I walked into Who New, I instantly fell in love with the selection they had. It was
one of the places that inspired the idea to create the Steeltown Anthem site. I thought it
was so amazing that this furniture store actually existed in Pittsburgh. I had seen other
places like this but in other cities.

Now that I have moved back, I was waiting for the perfect time to post photos of this
place. We went over last weekend and Roger who is one of the owners let Kristy and
I take photos of whatever we wanted and was very welcoming to us.

Bearded Studio

All photos are courtesy of Bearded Studio

Have you heard of Beardeds? Well it’s not just a term for facial hair anymore.
Bearded Studio was founded in November of 2008 and is off to a great start!
They just moved into a new location on Penn Avenue, added a new “bearded”
(Matt Braun) and their portfolio is constantly growing.

I love Matt's business card!

Raymond & Minette’s

Creative couple Raymond and Minette let us invade their house on Penn Avenue
over the weekend. The couple is involved in several different creative projects
such as Ray-Min Shoulderware, < C > Space Collective and Raymond runs a
record label called Sort of Records.

They both gave us a great tour of their place and let us take photos to give you a
sneak peek inside their home.

Entry Way

Living Room

Christian Breitkreutz

Local artist Christian Breitkreutz has a lot of great pieces. His work reminds
me of folk art but he definitely adds his own imaginary style and grittiness
to his paintings. I posted some of his work for you to look at.

16" x 20" Acrylic on Wood Panel

(none of them are in a particular order).

Saturday Finds: Jan 29

I’m starting to get that edgy feeling where I want spring to automatically
appear so I can go to yard sales and flea-markets. That’s one of my
favorite things to do. I think I will be creating and posting a weekly
flea-market / yard sale list when the time comes.

For now, here are the Saturday Finds! I didn’t go crazy this week but
there a few good items listed here for reasonable prices.

Take a look!

Must Have Pittsburgh Books

I think the one thing that sets us Pittsburghers apart is how proud we are
of our city. There are a lot of books out there about Pittsburgh but I decided
to compile a list of must haves for your bookshelf or coffee table:

David Edwards: Art Energy Design

David Lee Edwards is one of those guys in Pittsburgh where I don’t know
how he finds the time to sleep. He wears many hats and is involved in
a lot of community projects as well as creating his own paintings and
sculpture work.

He created the company Art Energy Design and the concept here is:

to integrate sustainable energy technology with a variety of artistic designs
and contexts. Power Flower public art sculptures are one example of our
mission specific design series. Power Flower is intended to demonstrate
surprising and thought provoking ways wind, solar and recycling technologies
can be integrated into the urban landscape.

He emailed me a few photos of his studio and living area.

“Star Trek Quilts” at WildCard

I received an email about the Star Trek Quilts that were created by Elliot McNally.
These look really interesting and remind of my dad’s obsession with Star Trek.

Here is the basic information:

WildCard presents artist Elliot McNally’s Star Trek Quilts.
Opening reception is on Thursday, January 28th from 6 to 9pm.
The artist will be present for the reception.

Hop on over to Pittsburgh Craft Collective for even more info about the artist
and the series.

Living Green in Highland Park

The house on 1422 Greystone Drive isn’t your typical home in the Pittsburgh area.
Nathaniel Glosser and Lissa Rosenthal took this house in Highland Park to a whole
new level of being green when they completely renovated it. The home was in Glosser’s
family since 1942 and probably was in some need of updates. They took it upon
themselves to re-do their entire home with green amenities and technology during the
years 2006 to 2007. Glosser told me “it was Pittsburgh’s first total-gut green renovation.”

The home’s decor theme is mid-century modern with Japanese influences. The before and
after photos of the outside of the house are the most shocking to me. I have been looking
around at homes to buy in Pittsburgh and I always come across a house that looks exactly
like the before photo above. Before seeing the 1422 Greystone Dr. home, I had hard time
envisioning what you could do different to the outside of the house to give it a more
updated look.

Seth Clark

I came across Seth Clark’s work by accident which is always a fun surprise!
He saw that I posted his link here on Steeltown and contacted me directly.
I came to find out he is new to Pittsburgh and made it his home only a year
ago!  Seth works in every sort of medium you can imagine, it would take me
too long to list them here. I love that he does a lot of self initiated projects
and they are all really interesting to look at. I also noticed he has a bit of an
obsession with houses and rooftops.

All photos are courtesy of www.sethsclark.com

Seth agreed to do an interview with me and tells us why he ended up here, why he
loves our city and what current projects he working on.

Hire Me, Pittsburgh is a self promotional book I made when I first moved to Pittsburgh