Edward D. Pinto, Sculptor, architectural restoration.

08/09/2026

Wellllll,
Still not doing any work that’s worth posting about, so I’ll put up some of my favorite subject matter, old steel mills.
Last night I attended Quantum theater company’s production of William Shakespeare’s Tempest, set on the site of the Carrie blast furnace in Pittsburgh.
If you don’t know, the Carrie furnace is a preserved blast furnace complex, run by a non profit organization, (Rivers of steel), dedicated to the preservation of Pittsburghs steel history. You can take tours of their various sites, and I recommend you do. This mill was still in operation when I graduated high school, along with many other in Pittsburgh, and it was a pretty big societal upheaval to see that industry crash as a young man.
I have a mild fascination with theater through exposure as a set builder, and having many friends involved in it, and an interest in Shakespeare through one friend, an interest I would never have thought I’d have, but then, there was a time that I didn’t like pizza soooo…
I’ve seen other of Quantums productions, including Hamlet which they did at Carrie as well, and it’s really an experience. When I saw that they were doing Tempest I was very excited. We went on an evening when Quantum’s founder and director Karla Boos was offering a Q and A beforehand, and that was delightful. As I know little of Shakespeare and less of Tempest, I was eager for any help and guidance in understanding both the play itself and the director’s intentions with the site. I recommend the Q and A highly. I was also greatly helped by having dinner with my companions who included my friend Lori, a long time Shakespearian, who explained the plot to us. Shakespeare is a lot, and being a little bind in one ear and deaf in the other, I sometimes loose the plot trying to follow the language. Just listening to it all is thrilling though, even if you’re just an old yinzer in a steel mill.
Tempest is Karla Boos last production, as she is retiring from the boards, and it is the last play Shakespeare wrote, I am extremely glad to have seen it, and if you are in Pittsburgh, I really recommend it.

08/02/2026

08/02/2026

HOWS YER SUNDAY?!?
I’m just over here hacking on a stone wall into the night…
I swear someday I’ll be back to cool work worth posting about
Maybe even make some art… Eli Namay

07/25/2026

Still not posting much, doing work that’s only moderately interesting, but I did go ahht to see my friends The Polkamaniacs play a show on the lawn of Clayton, Henry Clay Frick’s “starter mansion” here in Pittsburgh. Frick lived here before he sold his coke businesses and moved to New York City where he built a ridiculous house that I believe still houses his amazing art collection.
I’ve toured Clayton several times, it’s not my favorite style, but is incredibly well preserved, having been lived in by Frick’s daughter until she gifted it to the city of Pittsburgh, as a museum. It contains multitudes of the Frick’s personal belongings, so it is not just a building museum, but a museum of how the Frick’s lived.
Clayton is currently undergoing an extensive extensive exterior restoration.

07/12/2026

The Big Boy, rolling past the Emsworth Dam, where Monogahela Sal was tossed overboard in a scheme of romantic betrayal by Moke Stanley, pilot of the Jason, the last paddle wheeler to ply the rivers around pgh. Also, the scene of many of my teenage shenanigans, and next to the mill my dad worked at.
Ida been there, but I’m ahht eatin Pierogies at the Slovenian festival in Youngstown

06/27/2026

I’m still not posting much, I’m insanely busy between my usual work and family work, and I’m barely sleeping, no time at all to edit posts. But a friend sent me a wooden floor grate to rebuild, and it was a a homemade thing, and I told her I could make a better one just as easily, and sent her this video which shows some I’ve built, so I figured I’d post this video.
This house belonged to my dear friend and Mentor Big Len, and I worked on it for probably 15 years off and on. It was on the Brighton Heights (Pittsburgh) house tour last year and I was able to tour it. I’d not been in the house in 20 years, and it was really gratifying to go through it and see my work looking literally as if I’d done it yesterday. I build some nice stuff, but durability is and always must be job number one. Many of the things I point out in this video are things I’d never done before, and I lost a lot of sleep figuring out how to do them through books and magazine articles, (all pre internet), and how to do them so they would last. I work for repeat clients, often the same people on and off for a decade, and I don’t want to walk past some thing I spent a clients money on that failed. I see that kind of work all day long just walking around, and it infuriates me. I was perhaps 22 when I started working for Big Len, and he knew I was just finding my way, deciding what in my career was going to be important, you’ll hear me say in the video about “spending so much time talking in this library” that would have been with Len at his desk, his actual antique “no Irish need apply” sign hanging behind him, (he was as Irish as they come), talking about what should be important in a persons life, and how he and I could work together to achieve those important things in our mutual endeavors. I sure miss that guy.

06/21/2026

SKIMCOATING
I’m up at my dad’s old house today, making it look better to sell, and figured yinz might like to see how I skim coat walls with joint compound.
I talk a lot about the idea that homeowners should learn basic plastering skills, mainly for patching and skimming. There are several ways to address old plaster walls with a lot of hairline cracks, and this is the easiest. These skills transfer to the finish coat of patching as well.