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Dangling nearly 100 feet above the street, Tim Kaulen fearlessly painted four black geese atop a 10th Street Bridge tower one night in the early 1990s.
On Sunday, he returned to repaint them, tethered by a safety harness to the bucket of a 120-foot lift. Now 52 and the father of 11-year-old Sophia, he’s not fearless anymore.
“She changed everything,” Mr. Kaulen said as he prepared to ascend one more time to remove masking tape from the 4-foot-tall freshly painted silhouettes.
The Polish Hill artist/sculptor and an assistant, Brandon Barber, spent more than eight hours Sunday restoring the whimsical — and illegal — public art he created a quarter-century ago. Most of that was prep work — cleaning, carefully placing magnetic stencils, taping around them, then cutting away the stencils. The actual painting took about 20 minutes — 5 minutes per goose, or dinosaur, which is what many fans thought they were.
Nearly 1,000 people signed an online petition at www.thepetitionsite.com to save the “dino geese.” The geese were painted over several weeks ago with the shade Aztec Gold during renovation of the county-owned bridge — officially named the Philip Murray Bridge after the first president of the United Steelworkers of America — between The Bluff and the South Side.
Suzanne Pace, Mr. Kaulen’s wife, remembers the conversation that led to the petition.
“We were driving to our daughter’s soccer game and he was complaining: ‘They’re gonna paint over them!’ He was fuming and frustrated and sad.”
She suggested that he contact Pittsburgh and Allegheny County officials. Mr. Kaulen did that but believes it was the petition that persuaded them to let him restore the 10th Street geese.
“Nine hundred names are really great testimony. The community’s voice is what made this a reality,” he said.
Petition signer Jocelyn H. of Pittsburgh wrote that the geese are “so unlikely. It’s black and gold for a city that has spirit and creativity. It’s a signpost even if you’re just driving through to see a little of what makes us different.”
Sophia Kaulen grinned as her father gestured to her and her mother from the rising bucket.
“This is so exciting!” Sophia said.
Though the bridge is closed to vehicular traffic for renovation, a steady stream of walkers, runners, skateboarders and bicyclists gawked as the two artists toiled alongside Mike Secilia, a licensed lift operator and longtime window cleaner who works at Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. Secilia expertly guided the bucket from goose to goose, trying not to jostle the first-time riders. As the sun finally peeked through gray clouds, he smiled up at the artwork.
“It’s been up there all these years. It sort of grows on you,” he said.
“The dinosaurs are back!” Tony Kostalas, a county bridge inspector, said when four Duquesne University students, all younger than the geese, stopped to stare.
“What does it mean?” one asked.
Mr. Kaulen, who modeled the geese after hunting decoys his grandfather made, said he never expected his youthful statement to have such longevity — or impact.
“This is part of people’s experiences,” he said. “They give it meaning. Artists can’t do that.”
Kevin Kirkland: kkirkland@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1978.
First Published: October 15, 2018, 12:38 a.m.
