Veteran Design Team at work

Forest Hills Veteran Housing Public Art

1844 Ardmore Boulevard is the home of Forest Hills Veteran Housing facility.  This award winning redevelopment project was completed in 2018 by ACTION-Housing, a Pittsburgh affordable housing developer.

“In the Shade of Service,” our Veteran designed sculpture, represents Forest Hills’s first piece of public art.

The origins of the sculpture initiative lay with a Veteran cohort from Leadership Pittsburgh’s Community Leadership Course for Veterans™ (CLCV™), a program which aims to leverage the skills and experiences of post-9/11 veterans for the betterment of the broader Pittsburgh region.   The CLCV cohort was assigned to assist ACTION-Housing’s effort with Veteran community impact.

The cohort concluded a Veteran-designed public art sculpture would bring attention to the region’s talented Veterans.  Operation Valor Arts was then contracted to assemble a Design Team to create an interpretive piece of art for the facility.

Veteran Design Teams are guided through every step of the process by an experienced Lead Artist.  Part of the role of the Lead Artist is to educate the team in current trends of public art.  In this case, Carin Mincemoyer, a local sculptor, assisted the group in defining their ideas about what they wanted the public to understand about the Veteran population and Veteran family experience.   Carin used a method called “Human Centered Design” to help the team flush out ideas and use these to arrive at a working sculpture model.

After the model was completed, one team member expressed these thoughts:

“The Team envisions those sitting beneath the sculpture’s protective dog tag leaf canopy will recognize the efforts of our service men, women, and their families to ensure our freedoms.”