Art's impact on Garfield still blurred
Strains of a trumpet filter out onto the sidewalk from an opened studio door in Garfield on a typical "First Friday."
Black licorice meant for guests decorates artists' tables as part of hastily drawn-up soirees. Visitors, with their plastic cups of red wine, peruse a blown-glass exhibit and marvel at some colorfully contoured chandeliers.
Outside, along Penn Avenue, The Horoscope bouncer pats down patrons for concealed weapons before letting them through.
Jeff Blair, 28, owner of Animal's Place, a pet store, said Penn Avenue life continues much the same since the art galleries moved in a few years ago. Nearly 70 new galleries have been added to Penn Avenue since 1998, according to Friendship Development Associates.
But Blair said the only clear benefit is that there are more symbols of hope in Garfield now.
"It makes you think you want to do more in life," he said, looking across the street at the $3 million renovated Pittsburgh Glass Center.
Four years after the formal beginning of "Unblurred" -- the name of the monthly open house for galleries on the first Friday of every month in the Penn Avenue Arts Corridor -- residents, nonprofits and artists are clashing over what the rapidly burgeoning arts corridor should do for the neighborhood.
Blair said that neither he nor many of Garfield's largely black inhabitants have ever stepped foot in the galleries.
A lack of gallery attendance by locals, a still-debated vision for the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative and continuing crime negatively define what has otherwise been a successful reconfiguring of the neighborhood.
"We feel alienated from the participation," said the Rev. Ray Parker, of the Morningside Church of God in Christ. Parker said he stopped going to meetings of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. and Friendship Development Associates out of frustration.
As the co-sponsor of "Unblurred" and the executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., Rick Swartz said he struggles with melding the arts boon and the existing neighborhood.
"We're still coming back to the question, 'Who is the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative intended to serve?'" Swartz said.
Recruitment was a struggle with the Penn Avenue youth arts program, he said, and many residents bypassed First Fridays.
"We see them staring through the windows," said Karen Johnese, executive director of the Pittsburgh Glass Center.
Mary Wilson-Clark, 52, who owns M&G Community Laundry along Penn Avenue, said few black artists are featured along the arts corridor.
"If you're not gearing your arts around me, why would I go?" Wilson-Clark said.
People from all across Southwestern Pennsylvania attend First Fridays, but some residents said they did not think the event was meant for them.
"They never invited us into the art galleries," said Larry Young, 36, manager of Oscar's Barber Shop on Penn Avenue.
Garfield Jubilee executive director Joanne Monroe said there was a lack of communication between the artists, nonprofits and community.
Monroe said Garfield became a largely black neighborhood 30 to 40 years ago after a white migration to the suburbs. The city is now undergoing another change, which prompted tension, she said. "There's mixed feelings about the artists," Monroe said.
There are larger concerns.
Pet store owner Blair's building will be redeveloped by Friendship Development Associates. He said he likely will pay three or four times more rent after he moves. He doesn't know where he'll go.
Jim Kleissler, who serves as the executive director of the Thomas Merton Center, a social justice watchdog group, said he had only been on the job a few months, but he was concerned with gentrification. "We want to make sure the community that is here stays here," Kleissler said.
Swartz said he would work with Blair to keep him in Garfield.
The artists themselves have done their best to fit in with the community.
Ceramics artist Laura Jean McLaughlin, 39, said teens helped create the shiny, colorful mosaic entrance to the Clay Penn, her art gallery. "That totally made it worthwhile," she said.
The most important thing McLaughlin could do for the community, she had already done: Rehabilitate a former neighborhood crack house.
McLaughlin said she still remembers being disturbed after finding crack bags along with baby clothes in the abandoned building she took over.
Friendship Development Associates executive director Becky Mingo said the art galleries had helped Penn Avenue economically, and the studios were lowering a 17 percent vacancy rate along Penn Avenue.
