The Wurster Interviews, Part 13: The Advancing Years of PPE

Read previous installments:     Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5      Part 6      Part 7      Part 8      Part 9      Part 10      Part 11      Part 12

Carson Street Gallery and City Books

We’re at the point in time now where the Famous Rider is gone, Wobbly Joe’s is gone (replaced by a women’s collective, Wildsisters). The first Monday workshop moved from the Famous Rider to the Joyce Building on the South Side, a building of accountants. Our workshop space was donated by David Oster, whom you’ll remember was a major supporter of the South Side Summer Street Spectacular poetry readings.

The next part of the story begins with Carson Street Gallery at 1100 East Carson Street. I was still young, in my 40s, and made it a point to check out anything new opening in the arts scene. Barbara McClure and I hit it off right away. She was a very astute gallery operator. She represented certain artists who sold well, but she would also mount a show that she felt needed to be seen, even though nothing from that show was likely to be purchased.

I remember particularly a show that consisted of only one piece. I thought at first it was a slave ship but it turned out to represent a boatload of refugees fleeing Haiti. I remember another great show she did by Michael Kapelek. Michael did two kinds of art: traditional icons and erotica.

So Barbara put the icons in the front room and the erotica in the back room. The opening for the icon show was Friday night and drew the Orthodox from all over the tri-state area. These faithful were baffled by the stuff in the back room. Saturday night was the opening for the erotica, which drew a more artistic crowd on whom the icons were not particularly significant.

Barbara understood that to sell anything, whether it’s cars, toothpaste, or fine art, you had to bring people into your shop. It was Barbara’s idea to hold a poetry reading in the gallery every other month. Admission was free. Each poet was paid $25, and I was paid $25 per reading for curating. There was always a nice reception featuring wine, fruit, cheeses, and so on.

In addition to the regular press releases, we used a very attractive postcard mailer. We produced 1,000 handsome postcards for each reading — 500 with a handwritten facsimile of a poem by one of the poets, and 500 with a poem by the other. Books by the poets would also of course be available for purchase at the readings. For me, this was one of the high points of the history of poetry in Pittsburgh.

It was also Barbara’s idea to create the South Side Poetry Smorgasbord, which took place each year in October. The Smorgasbord was a series of readings by different poets at different galleries and shops throughout the evening on a Saturday night. It was a way of promoting poetry and a way of promoting the shops and galleries of the South Side. Each reading would be on the hour. Each poet would read for 20 minutes for people to either stick around or move along to the next reading.

Part of the charm of this event was that space was limited and chairs were even more limited. Each reading was packed, and if you were driving up Carson Street the evening of the Smorgasbord, you were apt to see 50 people carrying chairs from one venue to the next. Again, the poets were paid as if they were athletes come to promote the opening of a new furniture store.

Concomitant with the Carson Street Gallery experience and the South Side Summer Street Spectacular was a burgeoning of arts and poetry on the South Side. Mention should be made of the Brew House, an artists’ collective in the old Duquesne Brewery Building where both arts and poetry were committed.

City Books at 1111 East Carson Street became a vital part of this scene. It produced a literary magazine, Café. Frank Carroll was the editor. I was the poetry editor (copies are still available if you are an “insider.”) Café saw two splendid issues, then folded due to the inability or unwillingness of anyone to sell advertising.

When the Joyce Building was sold, City Books welcomed our first Monday workshop, which continued there for many years.

For many years, every Saturday afternoon I would drop by Carson Street Gallery and/or City Books and just hang out with the various artists and people who were of like mind to hang out at Carson Street Gallery or City Books on a Saturday morning. It was truly a family, a community.

Nothing good lasts forever, they say. We mourned the closing of Carson Street Gallery when it happened, but our poetry events were for the most part absorbed across the street at City Books. The continuing story of South Side as an arts community is more a story of decline than of change.

 

Next in issue 17: City Books, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, etc.