Castle Shannon resident aims to ‘brighten someone’s day, one rock at a time’
Amelia White concentrates as she creates.
Marqua Howard adds some details to her rock.
Eden Carriero gets serious about painting her rock.
Working on their rocks are Ava Davis, left, and Marqua Howard.
Working on their rocks are Marlana Howard, left, and Madison Cowan.
Eden Carriero gets ready to paint some more.
Eden Carriero concentrates on her work.
Elayna Jochen takes a look at her work.
Amelia White gets ready to add more brushstrokes.
The creation of Marlana Howard
Layla Jochen, left, and Amelia White work on their creations.
Ava Conner adds some flourishes.
Mathilde White selects her next color.
Eden Carriero shows that she has paint on her hand, to the amusement of Pittsburgh Paints Rocks founder Cynthia Golebie of Castle Shannon.
Emma McGinnis rinses off her brush to try another color.
This rock was found in South Park.
If you come across a golden nugget in the near future, thank Madison Cowan. Then go hide it for someone else to find.
Madison was among the participants in a recent Pittsburgh Rocks painting session at the Schoolhouse Arts Center in Bethel Park, and she chose to coat one of her garden stones with Scrooge McDuck’s favorite color.
“I think it’s relaxing,” the Castle Shannon youngster said. “It kind of calms you down, if you have a tough day at like a sport or something.”
She also was looking forward to placing her rocks – another was snowy white – for some observant folks to locate outdoors.
“It will make other people get interested in it,” she said.
Interest certainly has been piqued for Pittsburgh Rocks, which the group’s founder, Cynthia Golebie, describes as “a random act of kindness to unexpectedly brighten someone’s day, one rock at a time.”
“On a daily average, we get anywhere between 50 and a hundred and some new members,” Golebie, who also lives in Castle Shannon, said. Membership now exceeds 7,000.
The concept is simple: Find one of the painted rocks, take a photo and post it to the Pittsburgh Rocks Facebook page. Then put it back in the wild, so to speak, for someone else to find.
Or keep it, if you’d prefer.
“I have a gentleman who lost his mother the week before,” Golebie said about a finder, “and he was going for a walk at South Park. He found this inspiration rock, and he says he has not been able to give his rock up yet.”
Golebie lost her daughter Amanda, 24, in August 2015.
“I just didn’t know what to do with myself,” she said. “It took every ounce just to get out of bed. And then when I saw this and started working on it, and then seeing the smiles on the kids’ faces: How can that not brighten your day?”
She and her husband, Mark, were walking in a park in Ohio when she came across a colorful rock in a tree trunk.
“I thought, that’s odd. So I picked it up and turned it over, and it directed me to take a picture of this rock, and go on Northeast Ohio Rocks and post the picture,” she recalled. “On our walk that day, I ended up finding like five more rocks. I kept one, and that’s my inspiration rock.
“I started thinking, it’s something I wanted to bring to the Pittsburgh area,” she continued. “So I took about two-and-a-half weeks and painted a little bit over 200 rocks. I went out and placed them, and then I opened up my site. And it has taken off since then.”
She encourages each painter to place a label on the bottom of a rock providing instructions plus an individual hashtag to help track its whereabouts. Hers, in tribute to Amanda, is #ALGRocksPGH.
“I started at the local parks here in the South Hills,” Golebie said, and the idea is spreading around the region. “We have great members now, a lot of new painters who are bringing it to their communities.
Golebie has been conducting community rock-painting sessions at venues such as local libraries and the types of stores where she purchases garden stones, as she discourages taking them from their natural locations. She also provides the paint, and she would welcome donations of supplies.
Her visit to the Schoolhouse Arts Center was hosted by the Bethel Park Historical Society, which is working on renovating and restoring the former Bethel Park High School on South Park Road.
“The whole goal is to make this a cultural center for our community,” society member Bill Haberthur said. “To bring in young kids who get a sense that they’re sitting in a classroom that’s 112 years old, to expose them not only to the arts but also to the history of their community, combines everything that we’re trying to achieve.”