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Shuttered factories, abandoned warehouses and boarded up store fronts are being re-purposed as galleries and performance spaces by people with passion and vision. Art From the Ground Up was created to provide a showcase for some of the most innovative members of Pittsburgh’s emerging arts community.00000176-e6f7-dce8-adff-f6f7706f0000Art From the Ground Up is hosted by Bob Studebaker and is a monthly series highlighting small grass roots arts organizations and individual artists that take non-traditional approaches to the creation, presentation, and even the definition of art.Know an organization Bob should check out? Email him with your suggestions.

'Saints Tour' Journeys Through A Braddock Both Real And Re-Imagined

Courtesy Dorey Whealan

The Saints Tour is a fiction inspired by, and then layered on to real places, and sometimes real people. Playwright Molly Rice creates this fictional history of Braddock around characters she calls “saints.”

“What’s special about saints is they are not angels,” Rice said. "They’re people who just did more.”

The theme is that “saints” are all around us, doing good deeds even if we don’t notice them.

This is a theatrical presentation which takes the shape of a bus and walking tour. A “tour guide” allows all the many parts … characters, visual art, performance art … to work together. The audience is encouraged to participate at several points, and by the tour’s end they will have seen Braddock in ways they never could have imagined.

Bob is a host for JazzWorks. Bob has been working in different areas of the radio industry for 33 years. He thinks “public radio is a forum for ideas and entertainment unavailable on commercial radio and that makes it indispensable.” Bob is a lifelong Pittsburgher who married and raised both of his children in his home city.