Furpile
July 14th, 2026
The hours are more golden on the South Side, every time I take a walk I feel lucky to live in a place like this. We all crowd in the evening shadow of the Goodwill donation center, one employee watching us from the dock on her smoke break — This could either be a security incident, or a ceremony. I wonder if anyone else will be here, maybe just us who came over from Patrick’s house a minute ago with several dozen priceless art objects in a white trash bag.
Half-drunkenly kissing everyone on New Year’s Eve while snowfall draped the city in TV static; Watching “Furry Fox Tribute”, a YouTube video old enough to vote, in complete silence with my best friends; Finishing off open mic beers while Cass models a high-fashion Halloween costume on all fours. Many of the best memories of my latter-mid-twenties are set on the roof of HQ, the South Side Furry house with the largest living room in walking distance from the most people. That’s where Patrick Totally, curator of Furpile and Whose, currently lives. The apartment he shares with two others earned its name (from me) in a moment of circumstance: “So, are we just meeting at HQ?” And without elaboration, everyone knows what you’re talking about. This is the de-facto headquarters of a very large and active friendgroup/scene/collective, almost entirely Pittsburgh transplants making it here by way of Anthrocon. It’s the party house with an open-door policy, the couch we’ve all crashed on, the place where people will just show up without asking. I heard there’s a Loneliness Epidemic in this country, but you wouldn’t be able to tell: We’re having so much fun, it still feels like Facebook hasn’t been invented yet. Come down for the art show kickback, backrooms-esque hallway gallery, landlord’s fridge plastered over with an erotic vinyl sticker from everyone I’ve met in the last three years. This security deposit is a down payment on our life’s work!
For a couple months, Patrick was running Whathouse, his debut gallery venture, out of a household operating similarly to HQ in Lawrenceville. Whathouse was exciting and new, and taught us everything that first weird, queer kinda-relationship did about ourselves, before it ended too fast and too harsh, with tears and hard feelings lingering. I talked to Patrick while he was coping with the loss of what, at the time, seemed like his only opportunity to have an art space outside his apartment. Winter was rolling in, the news gets worse every day, and the dream of cheap art for fun feels as far-off as it must have in the Reagan years.
The mourning of Whathouse precipitated the formation of Whose, as Patrick brought his energy back to organizing shows at HQ. When Furpile was announced, it seemed like the frustration with the American dream of art curation necessitated a turn back to punk: Screw your white walls and curb appeal, here’s my plan to stand for everything you never will. If you ask Patrick how he got all the work for Furpile, he’ll say something like this: I emailed a couple hundred people asking if they wanted to make a Beanie Baby-sized object for a show in Pittsburgh, and about 70 got back to me, and this is what I got. Each plushie in Furpile is handmade, with no instruction or restrictions given to the artist. They’re kitschy, scary, abstract, and each blessed with some twisted kind of love. Rather than being seated in one gallery for six weeks, Furpile’s open hours took the form of distinct ‘viewings’, which were free to the public all over the city of Pittsburgh. These included a park, public library, carpet store basement, and more. At each viewing, the Furpile is thoughtfully poured onto the floor in the center of the room. The intended method of viewing is to go up, touch a plushie, and repeat.
The Furpile has a green grass, blue sky, won’t you be my neighbor perspective on itself. It speaks through the bespoke, knock-off Ty tags attached to each of the plushies, with a poem to introduce you to them. Commodity fetishism is acknowledged here, as are the inner lives of our beloved objects. It’s is an unexpectedly empathetic take on our condition as consumers; We’re on the side of the objects caught up in the churn, letting them tell their stories. The vision of this collection speaks to the Furry worldview: Art is a thing. If you’re like us, it’s a thing that you hold tight, and feel it held by, the same way you felt your teddy bear hug you back before you knew things couldn’t be alive. This is art that can only be in a no-walls gallery because any other space would kill it. The death cult of the museum was outtwitted by a group of friends and strangers, having a playdate across time and borders.
At the donation ceremony, I saw many locals I had come to recognize over repeat viewings. The number of people was just above twenty, but the fact that there were so many at all made me well up with pride and elation in a way I never have as an adult. The whole crowd shrugged and giggled about how silly and important it, and we, felt. This has been the compound result of many people choosing to go out, to a weird place with weirdos, and enjoy art in the way we know best. We got to play with our neighbors, and it reminded us that we belong in the world just like everyone else. As the last stragglers arrive, Patrick asks everyone to stand at the wall around the corner to get out of the way of traffic, then makes a brisk walk to the guy shoving a donation cart and tosses the garbage bag in.
The crowd doesn’t even know that something’s just occurred, until he comes back to address them. “So,” Patrick says, “this is what happens at the end of every art show.”
Whose gallery can be found at: https://whose.neocities.org/