June + July: The Wherehouse [Part 1]

The 2011 summer was all about the Wherehouse, at least if you knew Dean Cercone or other artists in the East End.

Located on Penn Avenue, between Garfield Artworks and the sprawling Allegheny Cemetary, it was a place of all-night long parties, art exhibitions, noise music, random performances, and fun every Friday of June and July.  It was a place similar to Andy Warhol's Factory, but more real; a place where anyone could present music, art, or themselves any way that they wanted.

Art was presented in an area in the back and rotated weekly; each week was a different artist.
Featured artists included:

Sigh Meltingstar with his child-like wonder and psychedelic spiritualism

Daniel Montano with nostalgic photo/collage/drawings

Deanna Mance with complex drawings that resemble cities, organs, and schematics or Kandinsky's Compositions or Marc Bell's The Stacks

Seth LeDonne with a horde of in-jokes, self-references, ghost-bears, and Christianity

Ron Copeland with a post-apocalyptic compost pile made up of rubble, wallpaper, and ads from the past promising a better future that hasn't appeared yet

and Dean Cercone himself with a new selection of huddled figures and repeated faces securing themselves in the chaos of the world.
You can look at larger versions of those already posted here.
Next we'll listen to some of the music that emerged from the Wherehouse on those cool/warm Fridays this summer and check out some of the disorder and craziness that also occurred.