Greensburgh artist Brian McCall sits on his front porch in a chair of his creation. His Hilltop neighborhood home and studio is in the former Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church. THE ARTS PHOTOS: TRIB TOTAL MEDIA ARCHIVES The closest thing to a statue where McCall is concerned appears to be the sculptures he concocts at his art studio in the basement of the con-verted church he and his wife purchased a while back in the Hilltop section of town. “I’ve been here 26 years and I’m still alive,” said the 73-year-old McCall, who wears a small silver hoop earring in his left lobe. “To be working as an artist is to be working anonymously.” After all, he played baseball in anonymity, and mainly because of injuries his career was over when he was 23. Four years prior, McCall hit his only two homers in one game for the Chicago White Sox at Yankee Stadium on the last day of the 1962 season, making him one of three 19-year-old center-fielders to accomplish the feat (The others were newly elected Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. and Bryce Harper, seemingly another prospec-tive Hall candidate.). In baseball, McCall’s name doesn’t measure up. “I’m just trying to make a living,” he said. Art, not baseball, is McCall’s calling. He attended California College of Arts in Oak-land. His work can be seen throughout the region, per-haps most notably his murals in the Baltimore/Washington corridor at the Hyatt Regency and Hyatt Sports Bar — and on Fourth Street in Jeannette, where at least two of his works appear at AB Ceramics and The Keynote Cafe. “I was doomed in base-ball. I didn’t have a prayer,” McCall said. “But life is a dance and you have to figure out how to dance. I began as an illustrator. I did some covers for The Washington Post Magazine.” Discover Westmoreland 2016 | 25
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