CityPaper 2016
A preview of the inaugural Re:NEW Festival of recycled art
Fest includes more than 80 events and exhibits around town, and an international component.
Making art out of old stuff is nothing new. In Pittsburgh, the practice had a heyday in the 1990s, not least due to the Industrial Arts Co-op, which repurposed the copious tailings of vanished local industry and commerce — from scrap steel to old billboards — into public, often guerrilla-style, artworks.
Direct legacies of the IAC include “The Workers,” the large-scale 2012 commissioned sculpture in South Side Riverfront Park, and the giant deer head at Rankin’s historic Carrie Furnaces (completed surreptitiously with materials found on site, now embraced as iconic). Indirect legacies include the work of Bill Miller, an IAC associate who back around 1994 was out scavenging for materials when he ran across some old linoleum. Its pattern impressed him……