Entries in Boring Pittsburgh (1)

Sunday
Jun052011

Un-boring Pittsburgh

The Boring Pittsburgh website posted a fantastic feature on David Calfo's art, entitled Dave Calfo's Heritage of Steel. The writeup featured several of Calfo's pieces, including Every Key, Past Progress and Hungarian Heritage (two of which are still available for purchase since the article's publication). The famous story of David's first piece of salvage artwork, composed almost entirely of rolling papers and made on a dare, was also recounted:

A master carpenter by trade, Calfo created his first piece of art on a dare. While renovating a bar in Lawrenceville and after moving some benches, Calfo and his coworkers found a bunch of old cigarette lighters and some rolling papers.

“A friend challenged me to make something out of it,” he said.

So he did. He took the cigarette lighters and made a frame, then created a collage out of the rolling papers. He had about a dozen old wooden clocks lying around, so he added three of them to the piece – one to represent the past, one for the present and one for the future.

“I called it ‘Changing the Times,’” he said.

He can’t remember who bought it or how much that person paid, but he does remember that the buyer knew the bar that spawned it and that the guy thought it was a fantastic piece. The piece shares a story with most of Calfo’s creations, the majority of which are composed of things most people would throw away.

Boring Pittsburgh is a website/Twitter phenomenon based out of Pittsburgh, covering all things Yinzer since tweeting became the rage. They're also founders of the #WhatToDo412 hashtag, and you can follow them on Twitter here.