Artists Amy Garbark and Rachel Pfennigwerth arrived in Lawrenceville more than a decade apart — but both found a place to create and thrive.
Meet Two Artists in Lawrwenceville
According to Amy Garbark, Lower Lawrenceville in 2005 was the kind of neighborhood where $2,000 covered half of the closing costs on a house — and it was a time in her life where that was the biggest check she’d ever written.
“I was sewing and making jewelry out of bike tubes and art out of bike chains, all the free things that were around me,” she says. (After she closed on the house, she went on a cross-country bike trip — and returned with $2 in her pocket.) She opened a shop, Garbella, on the fledgling platform Etsy in 2006 and worked in an after-school program as a teaching artist.
By 2009, she was worn out on the nonprofit world and, while showing her work at Handmade Arcade, she thought, “I think I could try to make this work.”
She set up a salvaged screen-printing press in her basement and leaned into Pittsburgh-themed home goods: an assortment of pierogies, bridges and typewriters that read, “Dear Pittsburgh, I love you.” Three years later, she found a perfect building in Upper Lawrenceville to use as a studio — for just $25,000. That led to a period of intergenerational connection among neighbors and artists, she says; while she has grown and thrived with the neighborhood, she misses those days. “Where there’s something gained, there’s still things that are lost. It was such a special time, and I loved that point in the neighborhood.”
From Handmade Beginnings
In 2020, Garbark was ready for another change. She expanded into natural dyes and cyanotype printing. “I’d sort of felt a little locked into what I was doing,” she says. “You know, this is what Garbella does.”
But Garbella is Garbark, so it can do whatever she wants. Now that means growing cosmos, coreopsis and indigo in her garden to turn into dyes and using other botanicals and found items for prints.
It’s a more subdued risk than the ones she took in those early years, but the bundles of fabric on her worktable and the jars of dried plants on shelves by the studio door are the same act of faith in herself and her art.
Actress Rachel Pfennigwerth’s Return to a Transformed Neighborhood
When Rachel Pfennigwerth moved to Lower Lawrenceville in 2018, she hadn’t been to the neighborhood in about a decade. She immediately clocked how different it was from her prior visits, exploring the neighborhood as a student at Point Park University.
These days, she lives in Upper Lawrenceville, surrounded by a mix of longtime residents — “They know the stories of all of the different houses” — and young families. “The short answer is, ‘I love it,’” she says.
Teaching and Community-Focused Creative Work
Pfennigwerth, an actor by trade, can’t resist a walk down Butler Street to Row House to catch a movie — anything from classics from her youth to collections of Oscar-nominated shorts. In her favorite role, she portrayed a trio of women in The 39 Steps, a frenetic parody of the Alfred Hitchcock thriller. She recently joined Dark History PGH, which offers haunted walking tours and scary-story performances.
Her love for acting also has her busy in the multifaceted role of standardized patient. In that, she plays people with different backstories and ailments, helping medical students practice their diagnostic skills.
Off stage, Pfennigwerth is a teaching artist with Bricolage Production Company; she works with middle and high school students to write and perform radio plays. She even teaches them old-fashioned sound effects — like blowing bubbles in a cup of water to bring a laboratory to aural life.
Everyday Life, Walkability, and Neighborhood Change
Back in Lawrenceville, she enjoys the variety of dance and music venues all within a 20-minute stroll. Walkability, she says, is the thing she loves the most about the neighborhood. Pfennigwerth also likes that her street isn’t the evening hotspot that the rest of the neighborhood is; she can come home to quiet after a night out — although she feels the change that is inevitable in such a busy area. “My street in particular seems to be going through a little bit of a transition. There’s definitely starting to be a mix of kind of flipping the houses.”
For now, she has no plans to leave. Someday, perhaps, she’ll be an old-timer herself — with stories of how the neighborhood used to be.
Story by Amy Whipple
Featured Photo by Matt Dayak