Cleveland artist Amy Casey and her high-flying city scenes have been attracting quite a bit of attention.

Casey, a 33-year-old graduate of the Cleveland Institute for the Arts, was recently named the recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize’s Emerging Artist Award and a Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture.
Her work is on display this month at Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland‘s “There Goes the Neighborhood” exhibit.
She was featured last week for Scene Magazine.
Scene had this to say in the story: Her latest series of acrylic-on-paper paintings …

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a city built by steel. The belching smoke and fire from the great mills was an omnipresent reminder of the area’s dominant industry. Pittsburgh’s vast steel operations played a large role in building the nation’s infrastructure; at one point, half of the country’s steel came from the three rivers. The city’s mills were at the heart of a war machine that won two world wars and made America the manufacturing envy of the world.

However, a confluence of events in the 1950′s and 60′s exposed fatal chinks in the armor …

Take a look at the photos of industrial decay highlighted by this blog.
There are an amazing amount of photos on here. My one teeny complaint is that I would like to know a little bit more about where some of the pictures were taken. It’s still well worth a look.
-KG
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Photographer Camilo Jose Vergara has been photographing the desperately poor neighborhoods of New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and 16 other cities for more than 30 years.
The creator of “How the Other Half Lives” maintains a Web site called Invincible Cities, which allows readers to interactively tour Camden, Harlem and Richmond, Calif.
A lot of this poverty and blight looks familiar.
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My friend Claudia, who is originally from England, wanted to take a trip to Detroit. On Saturday, I volunteered to be her “guide.”
Our first stop was the city’s famed Eastern Market. We took a guided walking tour of the neighborhood with Preservation Wayne, a group that offers a number of tours of the city.
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These days, all eyes are on Detroit for all the wrong reasons. I’m keeping my eyes out for dialogue that is constructive.
This is a refreshing take on the city’s problems from those who know it best: city residents.This video features Detroit rappers Invincible  and Finale as well as members of the community sharing memories about the decline in Detroit and their dreams for the future.
Continued after jump…
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Rust Wire has previously featured the work of Lorain, Ohio, native Nick Kowalczyk, a writer who is working on a book about his hometown.
Kowalczyk, an assistant professor of writing at Ithaca College, will be returning to the city to do some research this summer and is looking to speak to Lorainites. (Click on the above link for his contact information.)

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When I was a little girl my mom used to sing me an old cheer called “We’re Strong for Toledo.” My grandma used to sing me John Denver’s “Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio.” The songs portrayed two very different cities: one a proud metropolis, the other a laughing stock.
I thought it might be interesting to look at the most famous songs devoted to Rust Belt as a way to examine how these cities are portrayed in pop culture, and also how that image has changed over the years.
For example, the …

We brought you this story over one month ago, but it’s nice to see the trend of artists recolonizing foresaken Rust Belt neighborhoods is garnering some national attention.
The Wall Street journal reports today on a New York couple who purchased a home in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood, converting it into a home/studio/band space.
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Wow. Check out this slideshow by two French photographers about decline in Detroit. Amazing.
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