S.W. Randall Toys

S.W. Randall Toys (630 Smithfield St) has been around since 1970, and has a surprisingly large amount of toys considering how small it is.

The toy store was recently featured in the Pittsburgh Business Times:

"While the store’s neighborhood locations in Shadyside and Squirrel Hill continue to target mostly children, the Downtown store now caters to Downtown office workers as well. Jewelry boxes, music boxes, figurines, remote-control toys, Santa Claus dolls, ornaments — (Owner Jack) Cohen likely has stocked it all, offering wide selection instead of focusing on volume sales of a few items the way chains stores often do."

This place is definitely worth the visit, and even though you can't buy Wii games here, you can buy a variety of unique toys and gifts you won't find in any big box store.

If you love jigsaw puzzles like I do, check out their game & puzzle section. No joke- 25,000+ piece puzzles!

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Merry Christmas from Pat!

Click to embiggen!Here is Pat Lewis' awesome Christmas card!

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The New Yinzer Presents at Modernformations Tonight!

For just 5 bucks at Modernformations at 8pm, you can enjoy some fine reading by out-of-town poets John Grochalski and Ally Malinenko. "Also on tap for the evening are the local favorites Ed Steck, Renee Alberts, Margaret Bashaar, Joel W. Coggins, and Jessica Fenlon."
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SPACE opens Behind the Scenes Tonight, Dec 11!

Tonight, get downtown to checkout Space Gallery's opening reception of Behind the Scenes, a show featuring the works of local gallery owners, gallery sweepers, and other employees of Pittsburgh's museums and galleries from Carnegie Museum of Art, Future Tenant, FE Arts Gallery, The Mattress Factory, the Andy Warhol Museum, and Wood Street Galleries. The opening reception tonight will have FREE beer, wine and food! Personally, I think this is a great idea for a show, and a great opportunity for those behind the scenes to shine. These people work to promote other artist's work while being so inspired and passionate about what field their in, and create their own works but run out of time to promote their own work. This is a great chance for those artists to show you what they're capable of. On the other hand, these artists may not be in art shows for a reason, but either way, there's bound to be at least one good piece at the show! Did I mention that there will be FREE beer and wine, food, and live music by Big Hurry and other local bands!


While the festivities are tonight, you can still catch the show until February 13th.

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Link to SPACE
Link to facebook event

SMALL is the New Big at Fe Gallery Tonight, Dec 10!

Click to embiggen!Come out tonight to enjoy Fe Gallery's (4102 Butler St) opening reception for SMALL is the New Big from 7 to 9! Pop City has a nice article about the show, saying:

This month, a new exhibition at Lawrenceville-based Fe Arts Gallery is taking a closer look (you'll have to too!) at the art of intimate objects. When organizing Small is the New Big, gallery director Jill Larson invited 25 of her favorite artists to create 25 works just five inches or smaller. You do the math: that's 625 works of art on display in one 700-square-foot space. Dubbed "25 Squared," the show runs through Jan. 16, 2010.

Hailing from as far away as Germany and as close as Butler St. — not to mention spanning ages 20 to 70 — participating artists work in a range of media, including sculpture, painting, photography and even living terrariums.

So much art in one place! Checkout one of Maria Mangano's rad works that will be at the show tonight, found on her blog!
Link to facebook event

Dead Man's Chest O' Books! Shiver Me Timbers!

Over on John Mander's blog, he posted some great photos of a recent project he did to be auctioned off in a charity event for Beginning with Books. It really looks like John had a lot of fun making this, and I think it would look great in a studio space, or children's room!



Link to John's original post with more pictures!

Chalkbot

Here's a great short video (2 minutes) about the Chalkbot robot that Nathan Martin and David Evans from deeplocal built by hand. The Chalkbot was funded by Nike writes messages with, you guessed it, chalk, on concrete and was featured in this year's Tour de France. It's awesome! Now if only these were affordable I would totally get one and run it all the way up and down Carson and Penn printing images!

WIP's by Susan Constanse

Here are a few very nice new WIP's by the very talented Susan Constanse. Susan's paintings have such fluid, free-flowing lines and shades of abstraction which create a beautiful sense of depth which leaves the rest up to your imagination. Can't wait to see more Susan!
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Autumn&Eve and Cupcake Mountain!

I've been following Etsy-seller Autumn&Eve for a while now, and they just recently opened a second shop, both with awesome, reasonably-priced illustrations. The main shop features prints of a variety of pop-culture celebrities including fictional characters...
...as well as real life, sentimental celebrities.
A&E recently opened up their second shop called Cupcake Mountain. The prints included in CM are a bit more "edgy", and maybe something that erupted from dreams, or maybe nightmares, while still holding a cute quality that may inspire hunger, curiosity, and in some cases, terror!

You might also be interested in checking out AutumnAndEve's blog!

Link to Autumn&Eve
Link to Cupcake Mountain

12x12 at Fast>>Fwd Gallery Tonight!

Click for a larger view!So many good things are going tonight that I'm probably not going to be able to post about them all, so make sure to checkout the Upcoming Events list on the right, but one of the not-to-miss events tonight is the 12x12 show at Fast>>Fwd Gallery! Get your drink on and hangout and one of the coolest new galleries in town! Artists participating include:

Christian Breitkruetz:

Ron Copeland:

Zach Coneybeer:

Mike Egan:

Gabe Felice:

Craig Freeman:

Megan Herwig:

Ben Kehoe:

Seth LeDonne:

Jes LaVecchia:

Joe Materkowski:

Joe Mruk:

Steph Neary:

Gian Romagnoli:

Sam Thorp:

Ryan Yee:

Plus Seth Storck, Matt Macri, Nickoli Musaelian, Josh Iddings, Phil Riggi, Jeff Shreckengost, and others(?)!

Link to facebook event

Pittsburgh Sound!

While rap isn't my personal cup of tea, here's a nicely shot video including some sweet shots of the city, featuring rapper Wiz Khalifa and directed by filmmaker Adam Buncher. I have to admit I am kind of digging the song - there's a nice groove to it, me thinks.

The Taste of Metal: Robot Art Demo at CMU Today at 5!

From CMU School of Art:

The Taste of Metal is the first public presentation of The New Artist, a project to develop purely robotic art: art that is made by robots for other robots.

The New Artist takes place at the Robotics Institute and is the result of the collaborative efforts of Ben Brown, Geoff Gordon, Sue Ann Hong, Marek Michalowski, Paul Scerri, Axel Straschnoy, Iheanyi Umez-Eronini and Garth Zeglin. It is produced by Piritta Puhto.

The New Artist has been supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture (AVEK), National Arts Council (Finland), Uusimaa Arts Council, and Carnegie Mellon’s Collaborative Machining Center and STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.

Take the Gates Building elevator to the second floor and follow the signs.

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Jesse Best and Jeremy Beightol at ModernFormations Tonight!

Part of this month's Unblurred is the rad opening of Jesse Best's and Jeremy Beightol's Satan is Real at ModernFormations (4919 Penn)! We love both Jeremy and Jesse's work and can't wait to see the new stuff that they are coming out with tonight. MF says:

Jesse Best and Jeremy Beightol participated in Modernformations 5th Annual Spring Salon: A Juried Exhibition at Modernformations Gallery and Performance Space in April 2009. Jesse Best received the ‘Best in Show’ award with the prize being an exhibition opportunity and representation. Jeremy and Jesse met in Erie several years ago. At that time, Jesse was finishing up his painting/film degree at Edinboro University and Jeremy was doing graphics for a skate company out west. In 2006, they participated in an exhibition in Chicago and a few more group shows in Erie. Jesse then moved to back to his home town of Pittsburgh to pursue a more serious art career. Since then, he has had two solo exhibits in Pittsburgh and three group shows in Philadelphia. Jeremy continued to exhibit in Erie and had a solo exhibit in New York City as well. In 2009, Jeremy moved to Pittsburgh. The artists reconnected when Jesse suggested they participate in the Spring Salon, which has led them to them to exhibiting together in “Satan is Real”.

Jesse:

Jeremy:

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Shepard Fairey Applying on the Brillobox

Here's a fairly short clip of Shepard Fairey (previously here, here and here) explaining a bit about his process, applying his piece on the Brillobox, and briefly what he thinks about Pittsburgh's art community.

Posted by YouTube user Ambulantic. Thanks!

Earthshine Commercial

A recent commercial completed for the store Earthshine, located in Edinboro, by local animator Hasan Odom (previously here)! Checkout more of his awesome work on his website or on his YouTube page!

Philip Mendlow's Body of Work at the American Jewish Museum until Dec 18

As the description says:

The first comprehensive look at his extensive career that spanned nearly five decades (at the American Jewish Museum (5738 Forbes), Body of Work surveys Pittsburgh artist and teacher Philip Mendlow. Drawn from his personal collection, the work in the exhibit represents the breadth of Mendlow's creative output. Revealing the connections and differences in his two and three-dimensional forms the exhibit comprises approximately 50 paintings, works on paper and sculptures.

To give you a little background on Philip Mendlow, he was born in Pittsburgh in 1933. Mendlow studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology where he earned a BFA in 1954, and was greatly influenced by painter and professor Balcom Greene's abstract works. He served in Paris, France, in the United States Army during the Korean War and decided to stay in Europe and study printmaking at William Stanley Hayter's Atelier 17 and later painting and art history at the University of Paris, Sorbonne. He traveled throughout Europe before returning to Pittsburgh, where he taught drawing and painting at La Roche College, Carlow University, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh as well as Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts High School (CAPA). Mendlow was involved with area arts organizations, including the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors, and Western Pennsylvania Regional Scholastics. He died in Pittsburgh in November 2007.


(Video above was posted by YouTube user vmanuelbeltran)

More iPhone Art from Gregg Liberi!

Gregg Liberi (previously here) has been posting more and more artwork that he creates on his iPhone, and they just keep getting better and better. I love how he is just recently introducing color as you can see in some of these latest pieces.







These were created with the Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile app. Loving these!

Link to Gregg's portfolio site

Cant Find Zee SlimeTime!

Looks like Jes is late for work. Great new piece from the very cool Jeshaka!

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Rogers and the Bow

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Live Music Benefitting the Brewhouse at Lava Lounge on Nov 18!

Come out tomorrow night, November 18, to the Lava Lounge (2204 E Carson) to support the Brewhouse in repair costs for their building while enjoying some drinks and grooving to some great tunes by the Short Dark Strangers, Mud City Manglers, and Robot Want Chez!

(Found via the always rad City Creative!)