"Ghost Cats"

art

It's a tried and true fact of urban life: old, abandoned buildings attract copious quantities of cats. So when Fairmount's Eastern State Penitentiary closed in 1971, the neighborhood's furry denizens must have seen the eerie gothic structure as a feline mecca, since some 40 feral cats took up residence inside and quickly repopulated the place. The Spayed Club trapped and neutered the animals to prevent further population growth, and the pack dwindled away until the last one passed on in 2002. This year, instead of live cats wandering the cell blocks, Eastern State will be overtaken by a group of plaster cats. Linda Brenner, a local sculptor and teacher at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, created 39 feline casts with a stark white pallor approximating the body types of the original animal settlers for "Ghost Cats," one of the penitentiary's 2004 art installations. Scattered unassumingly throughout the path of the self-guided tour, the installation challenges attentive visitors to spot all of them; here's a mischievous trio stalking through the rotunda, there's one sitting in a cellblock window! The installation is a testament not only to the ferals, but to the late Dan McCloud, a neighbor who came to the prison three times a week for 28 years to feed them.

"Ghost Cats," April 1-Nov. 28, Eastern State Penitentiary, 2124 Fairmount Ave., 215-236-3300.

—John Vettese

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