This is the tale of two Braddocks.

Victoria Hruska was born in 1921 and reared in the Bottoms, a neighborhood south of Braddock Avenue, in a house she shared with her parents, working-class Polish immigrants, and her seven siblings.

At 16, she dropped out of school to work at a lingerie shop on the avenue to support her family, earning a dime's worth of commission for every piece she sold. Life was hard, but she reflects on it whimsically, and her art ­­-- crafts of recycled and found objects -- reflects her modest upbringing. Few of the things she sells cost more than $15.

"I think that all people should own art," she said.

LaToya Ruby Frazier was born 61 years later, in 1982, and grew up during the height of the crack epidemic in the crowded housing project of Talbot Terrace, also in the Bottoms.

Her mother, who struggled with addiction, moved her down the street to the three-story house of her grandmother Ruby Frazier on Washington Avenue when she was 7. Later, the pair moved to Holland Avenue, down the street from Hruska. By age 16, she had graduated high school and was headed to Edinboro University. Her art, mostly photography, articulates her tormented search for her identity and her place in Braddock's history and the strained relationship with her mother and grandmother. Today, she is a photography instructor at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the curator of a gallery there.

The two artists reflect on their experiences growing up in Braddock in the art installation "1921 Braddock Summoning 1982," which opened at the end of July at the Mattress Factory and runs through January. The installation blends aspects of the living room of Hruska's house on Holland Avenue and of the living room of Frazier's late grandmother, who died in January.

Braddock Mayor John Fetterman introduced the two women to each other. He met Frazier when she e-mailed him after seeing him on the national news. Around the same time, Fetterman received an e-mail from the Mattress Factory, asking if he wanted to put together an exhibit. He knew of Hruska, a prominent community figure, and decided to introduce the two artists and to ask them to put together the installation.

"If you add both of their lives together, it really does an amazing job of capturing the arc of Braddock," he said.

Frazier set up most of the space. In one corner is the narrow single bed, with a bare blue floral mattress, that her grandmother spent much of her time in before her death. Atop it sits a television, playing candid videos Frazier took of her grandmother, sometimes superimposing part of her own face on it; and a thin cotton floral gown that her grandmother frequently wore. On the walls are photos of Braddock's distant past: of Hruska and her husband seated on a street bench, of smiling female employees at American Wire and Steel, Co., where Hruska and her sister worked during World War II. Then, there are the school portraits -- redone in black and white -- of a young Frazier, her hair perfectly done up with ribbons and braids. Above the bed hang contrasting black and white portraits, the first of Frazier's grandmother, the thin gown hanging from her protruding collarbones like it might on a hanger, smoking a cigarette in her living room, her dolls staring ominously at the photographer. In the second, Hruska stands dressed in her Sunday best in her dining room, a space so crowded with art and knickknacks that it is a gallery in its own right.

The two dozen or so dolls set up in two of the corners and on the small table in the center are the most striking parts of the room. Black and white, adorned with mink coats or frilly dresses, they once belonged to Frazier's grandmother and crowded the hearth in her modest living room.

In other parts of the room are Hruska's recycled crafts; old CDs adorned with pictures from magazines hang from the ceiling and are posted on one of the walls. On another wall hangs a three-dimensional depiction of a flower painting, its petals constructed of broken eggshells. Hruska, as an artist, said part of her goal is to give objects a "second look."

"When I see an item, it appears to have no value ... but if you give it a second chance, you can make a beautiful thing out of it," she said.

Like much of Frazier's other art, the installation is an attempt to figure out where she fits in her mother and grandmother's complicated histories and in the history of Braddock. Her grandmother was a stoic woman, one who kept a young Frazier behind a fence when she lived down on Washington Avenue and made sure she did her homework and went to church. She rarely spoke about her past, only occasionally pointing out the stores that used to be on Braddock Avenue, now replaced by vacant, broken-down storefronts.

"That's why I make this work today. That's what I'm doing in all of my work is I'm trying to figure these things out and put the puzzles of all of this together and figure out where my identity and my social upbringing comes from," she said.

She knew little about her grandmother, only that when her husband died she was left to rear six children alone and at one point worked at a country club in Sewickley. And she pointed out that the Braddock history books that she took many of the photos from feature few photos of African-Americans.

Her own memories of Braddock are grim. She remembers the rise of the Braddock Crips -- some of the gang's members were her peers -- and the violence that arose with the gang's war with groups in Wilkinsburg. Several of her friends -- "I can't even count them" -- were killed during her high school years. She remembers peeking into Braddock's bars as a teen, searching, sometimes fruitlessly, for her mother, who struggled with a crack addiction. Many of her friends families, like her own, were fractured by a parent with drug addiction, and they, too, were being raised by a grandparent, an aunt or uncle.

"The household was totally disrupted, and the community was disrupted because of violence and gangs," she recalled. "By the '80s there wasn't anything. Crack cocaine was already heavy on the streets."

Hruska grew up during a grim epoch of Braddock's history as well: the Great Depression and later World War II, which stole many of Braddock's men, forcing women like Hruska into factory jobs.

When asked about her life in Braddock, she recalls her first coloring book, which she got when she was 7 or 8 for a dime, and saving her money to attend weekend art classes in Downtown Pittsburgh. She later married and quit her factory job, at times selling her art full time and later going to work at a doctor's office. Today, she sells her crafts, built from a range of materials, from puzzle pieces to magazine photos.

Hruska has no recollection of the world Frazier grew up in, although it was just down the road. She said by the 1980s she didn't go out at night, so she doesn't remember the violence or when the crack epidemic hit Braddock's streets.

But on occasion, although she only wants to tell "nice stories" of Braddock, she relays that life was hard and that's where she finds a common thread between her and Frazier.

"We all struggled. I guess it happens to everyone. But like I said, I'm content now."