Book captures signs of ’Burgh

Everyone from a 9-year-old to professionals submitted Pittsburgh photos.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Signs for bars and restaurants. Signs for businesses and services. Signs for motels — many in neon and harkening back to an era before the bland sameness of modern lodging.

A new book celebrates the signs of the Pittsburgh region for what they say beyond their design and text: the sense of place and time they provide, their uniqueness and the entrepreneurial spirit they capture.

The “Pittsburgh Signs Project” is also an example of a democratic art project, said Mark Stroup, one of the book’s four editors. The book evolved from an online virtual gallery that essentially allowed anyone to become a collaborator by submitting photos.

Stroup, who works as an instructor at Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania, came up with the idea for a Web gallery documenting the region’s signs several years ago after seeing other crowd-source projects online.

The Web project led to a poster, then a gallery show. Stroup; his wife, Elizabeth Perry; Jennifer Baron; and her husband, Greg Langel, eventually teamed up for the book project aided by a $50,000 grant as part of Pittsburgh’s ongoing 250th birthday celebration.

All four are fellows at the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, which fosters the exploration of art and technology.

Baron, a longtime sign buff, discovered the Web site and began submitting pictures she had snapped. (On road trips to gigs when she was in a band a number of years ago, “I would be the one saying ‘Pull over, I need to take a picture of this neon sign,’” she says.)

There are similar visual projects, but Stroup said they tend to be of a more singular vision: say, a book devoted to neon signs.

“Those things come from one person or a small group of people saying: This is what we conceive to be” whatever the subject, Stroup said. “We said: You send us what you think are the signs of Pittsburgh and the area.”

“We’re part of something; we’re not inventors of something,” he said.

The resulting book contains pictures taken by dozens of people of 250 signs in 14 counties in the Pittsburgh region. Submissions came from everyone from a 9-year-old boy to professional photographers.

At 7 inches wide by 81‚Ñ2 inches high, it’s more espresso table book than coffee table book. Signs of all types grace the pages, surrounded by ample white space.

“We intended for the signs themselves to be the star. It’s not laden with a lot of copy,” Stroup said. Photographers and sign locations by county and GPS coordinates are listed at the end of the book.

The signs range from unique renderings in neon and on lightboxes to ones painted simply on the sides of buildings. Some depict businesses that no longer exist, including some signs that vanished between being photographed in the past couple of years and the book’s publication.

Often, the images evoke emotion, even to readers without tangible connections to the subjects. A sign for Pittsburgh Paints, its letters an array of colors, hangs from a wooden building, its white paint harshly weather-worn, in one sad but beautiful photo.

Baron, a freelance writer and editor of an online magazine for Pittsburgh, said she loves hearing the stories of people’s connections to the signs. They’re the stories of communities, business owners and customers.

“This project speaks to the celebration of the region, but it speaks on a more national level of main streets,” Baron said.