Rivers of Steel welds history to artistry with $1.5 million grant

When public artist Ashley Kyber left her job at West Virginia University and moved to Pittsburgh in 2017, the perplexing distinction among the city’s neighborhoods kept her interest piqued.

“I’d never lived in a place where there were these neighborhood lines that were so historically and poignantly held,” Kyber says. “They’re also not racially diverse lines or not socially diverse lines.”

Last fall, Kyber explored those distinctions when she began a project with the Rivers of Steel Heritage Corp. that draws on local expertise and history in Monongahela to create public art and tourism opportunities.

Rivers of Steel’s Partners for a Creative Economy initiative is designed to spark growth in underfunded communities through creative leadership and workforce development, says Chris McGinnis, Rivers of Steel’s arts director and chief curator.

The Appalachian Regional Commission awarded Rivers of Steel $1.5 million through its Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization initiative for its launch.

Some of that funding was used to hire Kyber full time to lead the Creative Leadership Program, which provides administrative and financial support to kick-start heritage tourism in communities.

Kyber’s initial project in Mon City last year was the template for her current work with Rivers of Steel. She and local leaders agreed to develop a parklet along Main Street.

“As all industrial cities did, the river is hidden in these communities,” Kyber says. “So this parklet is a connector between Main Street and the river. And on the river in that location, Monongahela has the Aquatorium, which is a really funky space in and of itself.”

As the community formed an idea of how the park would serve the community, Kyber began calling upon different populations within Mon City to make it visually distinct.

Senior citizens painted local landscapes to which Ringgold School District elementary students added Western Pennsylvanian birds to create a crankie — an Appalachian story scroll. Then, the scroll was digitally scanned to make a banner that covered an old chain- link fence.

Paintings of the city’s history that sat in the Chamber of Commerce were likewise enlarged and mounted on adjacent buildings. Kyber also connected several artists and metal workers to re-create historic light columns that were a part of Monongahela’s “Hometown Days” celebration in 1909.

“It just seemed like an amazing image, so we took that historic column and we re-created it as a solar lighting element for this parklet,” Kyber says.

The planning began in fall 2022. On July 4, 2023, the park broke ground.

“In a turnaround of nine months, we went from building relationships to having a built park,” Kyber says. “That’s the kind of change that the Creative Leadership Program can bring to these communities.

“It’s fast, it’s impactful, it’s got public art in it … and many, many overlapping community partnerships that make it all happen.”

The Creative Leadership Program’s first project in Mon City was funded by a $400,000 grant from the Benedum Foundation. 

With the funds from the Appalachian Regional Commission, Rivers of Steel can expand to new locations with Kyber and also provide financial support through The Rivers of Steel Mini-Grants Program, which offers up to $30,000 a year.

Kyber will spend three years in a community, with each year dedicated to a different small and manageable project. 

While Monongahela winds up for its second initiative, Kyber is moving south toward Brownsville. Residents of both communities can now take visual arts and make-and-take art classes at Monongahela Valley Academy of the Arts.

As the Creative Leadership Program grows, Kyber can draw from a “coalition of creatives.”

The POWER funding also contributes to Rivers of Steel’s workforce development project, which similarly provides preservation jobs to those in regionally historic fields like structural welding, blacksmithing, foundry work and structural engineering, says Rivers of Steel’s McGinnis.

The restoration and redevelopment of the Carrie Blast Furnaces already made use of the model, McGinnis adds.

“It’s almost like a mass weaving project,” Kyber says. “We get this little thread over here and now I’m going to pull in four other threads that I know, and then we’re going to start another weaving here … back and forth until we get a nice matrix going.”

McGinnis says the POWER funding will end in 2026, but the boost it provides gives Rivers of Steel the space to continue pursuing other sources of income.

“I’ll be upfront and say it, it’s not a revenue-based model — it’s always going to require upfront, philanthropic investment,” McGinnis says. “[POWER] is the funding that’s allowing us to launch the program and maintain it into the future.”

McGinnis says grant applications for expansion into other nearby boroughs are underway, but it’s too soon to commit to specific locations.

Until then, Kyber will keep weaving.

“As the world shifts, and the climate shifts, we can move people by giving them access to their own creativity and changing the places that they live in,” Kyber says. “Art is very important.”