Pittsburgh Filmmakers

On view through May 16th
Various times
Website

They can be spotted on city buildings or during rural country drives, touting the names of businesses, products or even two short words in faded paint on a barn: Mail Pouch. Hand-painted ghost signs advertised products that are now largely obsolete, but their messages and visual beauty endure, especially on the sides of many of Pittsburgh’s older brick buildings. A new exhibition at Pittsburgh Filmmakers features the work of a local project interested in exploring these artifacts of our built environment.

Featuring new work by artist Kelly Bogel, Palimpsests: Ghost Signs of Pittsburgh includes 30 large format film photographs as cotton rag inkjet prints of ghost signs from the throughout the Pittsburgh region. Each sign was shot on Kodak Ektar 4×5 film with a monorail view camera. Project director is documentary filmmaker Will Zavala, who is an associate professor at Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ School, and who also runs the community-based Documentary Salon exhibition group.

Jennifer has worked at the Mattress Factory, Brooklyn Museum of Art and Dahesh Museum of Art and is co-author of Pittsburgh Signs Project: 250 Signs of Western Pennsylvania. She also is co-coordinator of Handmade Arcade. Musically, she is in a band called The Garment District and is a founding member of Brooklyn's The Ladybug Transistor.