At Bidwell Training Center, Orchids Inspire Passion and Promise
By Melissa Meinzer, Pittsburgh City Paper

You wouldn’t expect to find Eden tucked away behind a UPS facility in Manchester. On a chilly January day painted over with Pittsburgh Gray, there isn’t much to inspire warmth at the Drew Mathieson Center’s acre-sized lot. If you didn’t already know the center’s greenhouse was housed in its strip-mall-like location amidst the grit of the city’s North Side, it would be easy to overlook.

And when you pass through them, the front doors seem like any other secure office building: You need a code to enter the lobby, where a receptionist sits behind a desk. But past her, and past a whiteboard with watering schedules and other notes, suddenly you’ve entered a green — and blue, and purple, and red — wonderland….

For the complete Pittsburgh City Paper article:
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A59332

By Kurt Shaw, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

When I was a student at Carnegie Mellon University in the mid-1980s, one of my instructors, Color Field painter Sam Gilliam, often made the connection between his art and another distinctly American art form, jazz.

So it is that the art exhibition, “Seeing Jazz,” currently on display at Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild in the North Side, makes perfect sense, at least for this reviewer….

For the complete Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_611825.html

New MCG exhibition explores creative interplay between art and jazz

Seeing sound and hearing color: The visual arts and jazz have long served as each other’s muse, from the improvisational way a paint brush sweeps across a canvas to the angle of a photographer’s artful lens. Now a new exhibition at Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (MCG) pairs the work of visual art pioneers like Romare Bearden and Faith Ringgold with jazz-themed photographs from the archives New Pittsburgh Courier and Carnegie Museum of Art. The finale? A live set by an all-star lineup of local jazz luminaries….

For the full PopCity article:
http://www.popcitymedia.com/popfilter/mcg0204.aspx

By Suzie Boss, Edutopia.com

…At the core of Strickland’s vision is a community arts center, the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (MCG), just blocks from his old high school on the north side of Pittsburgh. Wedged between warehouses and a noisy freeway overpass, the center offers a contrast to urban decay: No bars on these big windows. No graffiti. No metal detectors. And some 900 students coming through the two-story brick building each year for serious art study…..

For the complete Edutopia article:
http://www.edutopia.org/manchester-craftsmens-guild-arts-mentoring