by Jeff Sewald

(from the Summer 2010 issue)

Art is about personal expression. Anyone who discovers and practices this has something to live for other than what they have to do to make a living. People who write poetry don’t make a lot of money, but seeing their words on the page provides more satisfaction than any job could offer. It’s the same for a sculptor like me. I worked for the post office. As soon as I got out of there, I went home, cooked dinner for my kids, saw to it that their homework was done, and then headed to the studio. Friends often asked, “How can you do all of that after work? I don’t feel like doing anything.” I would tell them that they were bored, and had become accustomed to being bored.

I was born in New Castle, a small industrial town, and raised in and around that area, more or less. My dad worked in the coal mines for about 40 years. My mother was a seamstress. In those days, the companies moved miners around as certain mines went down and others opened for work. There were four girls and me—I was next to the last—and we all felt very isolated in that small town, especially my mother. She wanted something more, so she took a job and moved from Number Five Mine, near Grove City (where I started school), to New Castle. The separation was hard on my parents and, as a result, when I was about 8 years old, they were divorced.

by Jeff Sewald

(from the Winter 2010 issue)

"What’s it like to be 75? Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve had two knee replacements. I’ve had back surgery. I keep falling down and breaking things: my fingers, my skull. But overall I feel pretty good, actually. I still like to work. I just keep on going. I find some way to continue.

My most recent show was autobiographical, my life story. It began with drawings I made at the age of about four, which my mother saved, and I did some paintings based on them. For one, I used an old, yellowed article from the McKeesport Daily News, the headline for which read: “Boy Explorer, 3, Falls Through Bridge.” That three-year-old was me! My picture was in the paper! A little friend and I had walked away from our houses and took a stroll through downtown McKeesport. I ended up slipping and falling about 15 feet through one of those street car trestles. Fortunately, I didn’t really get hurt.

by Jeff Sewald

(from the Summer 2009 issue)

I arrived in Pittsburgh about the same time that Columbus arrived in America. Actually, it was in 1972, or thereabouts. I was driving through, hustling my work, and stopped at Pittsburgh History & Landmarks to try to interest them in a garden I wanted to design for them. That didn’t work out. But they gave me a tour of the North Side, and it was like seeing someone across the room at a cocktail party and saying, “That’s for me.” So I went home to Birmingham, Mich., put my house up for sale, and bought a house here.

I had family who lived north of Pittsburgh, in Gibsonia: one was Janet deCoux, a sculptor; the other was Eliza Miller (both now deceased). I stopped by to see them on my way to New York, which is how this whole thing happened. Janet and Eliza looked at houses that were available, and then I came and looked at them. There was one on Monterey Street, which is the first house I re-did. I designed and, in some cases, did the carpentry and laid some of the floors, along with a bunch of Carnegie-Mellon architecture students.

by Jeff Sewald

(from the Summer 2007 issue)

I was raised in Squirrel Hill. It was a close-knit community that valued ideas and intellectual activities. For my parents, dinnertime was not only about eating. It was also about talking, thinking and challenging. Any opinion expressed had to be countered with another opinion. My father would always ask, “Why do you think that?” This caused me to learn how to think.

My family was very progressive. We believed that we had a responsibility to work for the common good, for social justice. My grandparents had done that, my parents did it, and so it made sense for my brother and me to do it, too. My first exposure to the civil rights movement, for example, came as a member of a Jewish youth group. We plotted to run away to Birmingham to join Dr. King in the struggle. We were young and didn't get very far, but we clearly understood even then that life was about more than one's self.

My father didn't believe in television, so we didn't have one, which made me such an oddball among my friends. My first act of rebellion was running away to our next-door neighbor's house to watch Mr. Rogers and Josie Carey. It wasn't that my father didn't like TV. He just wanted us to read books, listen to music and talk to each other. Ultimately, we got a television but, by that point, my habits were formed.

by Jeff Sewald

(from the Fall 2009 issue)

I was born in Pittsburgh on Feb. 28, 1916, the fifth of 11 children. My family and I lived at 1520 Wylie Ave. in the Hill District. And we all looked out for each other.

In 1925, when I was just a girl, Mama and Papa took us to the opening of the Centre Avenue YMCA at Francis Street. From then on, I went there regularly to watch the basketball games. They didn’t allow girls to participate back then, but I went because my oldest brother, Robert E. “Pappy” Williams, played there. (In time, he would become the first black police magistrate in the City of Pittsburgh, and the first black ward chair in the state of Pennsylvania.) So you see, the YMCA has been a part of my life for a long time.

My father, Henry M. Williams, was one of the first black registered plumbers in the City of Pittsburgh. His plumbing shop, which opened in May 1919, was on Crawford Street. Papa used to carry all of his tools on his back in this big plumbing bag. When indoor plumbing came along, he was one of the first to do that, including on Polish Hill. Everybody knew Papa. After all, he liberated many people from the inconvenience of the traditional outhouse.