chriscondello

Sunset, on a partially frozen Lake Arthur.

A lot has changed since this was written… I got married In the Summer of 2016… My wife and I bought a house way out in the country… I now work on a farm as a field manager… I am in the process of rewriting this bio… So consider the site under construction…

My name is Chris Condello, and this is my corner of the Internet. I am an artist living in Wilkinsburg, a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. Wilkinsburg is considered by many to be one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Allegheny County, but I feel it is important to remember communities that experience great decline, will often experience an even greater renewal… I am just a tiny sampling of the people responsible for the renaissance Wilkinsburg is currently experiencing, in my eyes this community is about to come alive!

I am an urban gardener/farmer, guerrilla gardener, Penn State Master Gardener, photographer, environmentalist, naturalist, activist, writer, but most importantly… I am an artist… I have no education beyond high school… I’m just trying to figure this shit out as I go… As far as the information contained within my blog is concerned… The only thing that I can legally claim is that I am not an idiot… I will let you be the judge…

I have only been writing for a couple of years now… Prior to being a writer… I was a full-time heroin addict that could only be considered a lost cause… That has changed… I am now clean and experiencing life with the curiosity of a newborn… As I experience things… I tend to write about it… I guess that is why I consider myself a writer… Dare I say an author…

My blog is primarily geared towards gardening… But ultimately it is a collection of my personal work… Gardens… Poetry… Artwork… Sculpture… Photography… And prose… Although I am a gardener… I actually consider myself an artist that uses plants as one of my mediums…

When I am not working in my gardens… I am often in the woods creating sculptures of sticks and stones… I like to let the land guide me… I often have no idea what I will be working on when I leave my house… It is not until I find my location… And locate my medium… That I realize what I will be creating… Many of my natural creations have a limited lifespan due to their locations… My photographs will typically be the only evidence of my creations…

I used to consider myself a “food farmer” exclusively, when I built my last little urban farm all I was interested in was food. I was only interested in the physical yields that my plants could produce, it wasn’t until recent years that I began to feel the real power that a tree or plant can yield. I would like to see all gardeners recognize the true yield potential of a plant or tree, to look beyond the physical and begin looking at the meta-physical yields. We have a unique opportunity as gardeners to sculpt and shape the landscapes of our future, we are after all, installation artists.

Although I am a gardener, I am also an artist… I love to paint… I apparently love to write… And I love to create… But gardening is my favorite… The land is my canvas and plants and trees are my medium. I don’t just create my artwork for the physical yield I receive, I do it for the mental and spiritual yield I receive from it… and that is one of the things that will set me apart from the rest… one day at least… I hope… being a starving artist is not easy… well I guess I can’t say “starving” artist!

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

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