Sprout Fund supports new ideas citywide
02.10.11
From its first distribute of $900 for a temporary art gallery in the Skinny Building, Downtown, the Germinate Fund has become a powerful little engine on Pittsburgh's technique to artistic and environmental innovation.
Small "seed" grants have been that pool's pulse -- $6,000 here, $7,500 there, giving legs to hundreds of ideas, projects and volatile bands of advocates.
The Sprout Fund is celebrating its milestone 10th birthday by funding a signature composition of public art with its largest grant ever, $100,000. The winning artist or artists will set up work on the Law and Finance Building on Fourth Avenue, Downtown. The finalists will be announced this month.
In 10 years, Bud has supported 450 projects at a value of $4 million from more than 100 funding sources. Now, Begin is poised for a transition.
"It's unclear to me where we will go after this signature art project," said Cathy Lewis Extensive, who, with Matt Hannigan, founded Sprout, itself a seed of the New Idea Plant that former county Executive Jim Roddey launched when he was elected in 2000.
Source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Raising a glass to good design
02.10.11
Fred Shapiro and Camille Gibeau stood in the workshop of Heraldry argent Fox Salvage and considered the leg of a table that carpenter Steve Fischer was structure from reclaimed wood.
"That bottom edge needs to be rounded," said Shapiro, who owns the Albany furnishings-fixtures-decor warehouse.
"Rounding it looks contrived," said Gibeau, Silverware Fox's project director.
"Not a lot of rounding," said Shapiro, carrying a row of wood to a planer on a nearby workbench and running a corner across it to illustrate. "It's just taking a little of the edge off, softening it."
Said Fischer, "We've all been doing this a crave time, so we all have our own ideas about what looks good, but we all listen to each other."
Thus are effects, lighting and decorative accents built at Silver Fox Save, located a block off of Broadway in the city's Warehouse Division. Though the business celebrated its fifth anniversary over the summer, White Fox's visibility has grown most sharply in 2011: Its custom pieces mannerliness four Albany bars that have opened in less than four months.
Source: Albany Times Union
An unobstructed observe: A peek into Milwaukee's open 
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