A Hand Painted Blog of Views of the Cathedral of Learning, originally uploaded by IheartPGH.

This series of painting is "One A Day: 365 Views of the Cathedral of Learning, 1997-1999"

One of the first things I noticed when I arrived at Pitt’s Alumni Hall today was this wall of paintings – each with very recognizable locations from or near Oakland. I spent some time looking at the dates below each canvas – dates are in order but the year varies between 1998 and 1999.

These scenes are painted but from just a few steps back they look like photographs of the neighborhood. What I didn’t realize until I read the description is that each of these is a different view of the Cathedral of Learning.

As I was sitting here waiting to hear the winners on this round of the film factory contest and thinking about the book in my bag "Crush It" by Gary Vaynerchuck – which is about using social media to tell the story about something you are passionate about. I was just wondering what blogs were out there for people who are passionate about filmmaking. I was thinking of how I want to profile more blogs about very specific topics – I am fascinated by people who are using blogs to document specific things – check out blogs like "cake wrecks" or Scanwiches.

Before I opened my book to get back to reading, I wandered over to read about these little paintings – coincedental timing that I stumbled upon a hand painted verson of what would also make a great blog about views of the Cathedral of Learning.

Each of these was painted by Felix de la Concha, a spanish artist who came to Pittsburgh to visit his girl friend who was studying at Pitt. He started the paintings but didn’t have a visa to stay in the US for a whole year so he completed the series over a couple of years.

The series was origonally displayed at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1999.