Earlier this week, five tepees, constructed of bamboo and wrapped in colorful patchworks of discarded lumber tarpaulins, stood in the shadow of the Edgar Thomson Works.

They were the work of Sara Witt and Ian Gamble, artists from Greensboro, N.C.

Ms. Witt said the intent of the tepees is to inspire discussion and thinking about "excess and waste ... and just being mindful of what you use."

Each element of the project, titled the "Polymorphic Plastic Parade," reflects this idea, they explained.

"The tarps are what cover the wood that goes into modern construction," said Mr. Gamble. He added that they are typically discarded and that it's waste that the consumer never sees.

And the bamboo was harvested from North and South Carolina, where it is considered an invasive species.

The structure of the tepees, a design Mr. Gamble and Ms. Witt adopted from a book about Sioux Indian tepees, is meant to venerate the resourcefulness of Native American lifestyles, which produced no waste.

The Polymorphic Plastic Parade has made about a dozen stops in its nationwide tour, traveling in a large bus that the artists have been sleeping in along with Jonas Criscoe, another Greensboro-based artist who has been assisting them.

They started out in Greensboro and have set up in New Orleans; Austin, Texas; a cul-de-sac in a suburb of Denver; and a community garden in Chicago's South Side.

The tour gives the artists opportunities to reach out to a variety of people, from grandmothers to a class of preschoolers learning about Native American culture.

And Tuesday, the artists got together with children in the Braddock Youth Project, a summer employment and community service program, and showed the youngsters how to build tepees.

Typically, the artists are in the heart of urban centers with lots of foot traffic, where they can explain their project to intrigued passersby. But given they were set up on the edge of Braddock, most of the traffic they saw came from trucks ambling out of the steel mill.

Ms. Witt called it a "reflective time."

"The tepees are here in this post-industrial steel town, trying to salvage the pieces and reconstruct," she said. "And that's what the project is all about."

Yesterday, the group took down the tepees. Their next stop will be in New York City.