A Pittsburgh woman is the latest poet to have her work selected for the Bridging the Gap public art project — an installation which reveals poems gradually by displaying them in large letters on the North Main Street bridge.
The first two lines of Michelle Stoner’s poem “Mile Marker 322,” commissioned especially for the project, will be installed Friday by staff of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art and volunteers from United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Day of Caring event.
Stoner, a poetry instructor, sound engineer and academic program manager, was commissioned to write the poem after being selected to participate in the Bridging the Gap project, which began in 2017 with assistance from the National Endowment for the Arts and the city of Greensburg.
Stoner is the third poet to be featured in the public art installation known as “Analog Scroll,” which is the creation of Brooklyn-based artist Janet Zweig. The museum installation includes aluminum tracks and large aluminum letters designed by Zweig.
“We are looking forward to sharing (Stoner’s) new original poem with the community,” said museum spokeswoman Maggie Geier.
Chief Curator Barbara Jones said she found Stoner’s work “powerful and poignant” when she heard it read at an earlier Bridging the Gap event.
Over the course of a year, the poem will be revealed with new sections of the text installed each month by museum staff and volunteers. Once fully disclosed, the entire poem will appear on the museum’s website at thewestmoreland.org/bridging-the-gap.
Previous featured poets were Jan Beatty and Jacob Bacharach.
