DIANE MAKAR MURPHY Sculpture offers students a gateway to art and history

Greg Moring has created several public sculptures including a piece to be placed in front of the Baltimore Convention Center.
So it's not the fact that his latest artwork, a 1,600-pound gate of cold-formed steel, will be publicly displayed that makes it so special. It is the subject matter of his new work.
The breathtakingly beautiful sculpture in metal was Youngstown State University art professor Moring's attempt to capture Youngstown. It, and an accompanying smaller passenger gate, feature bare-armed, muscled steelworkers toiling amidst gear and molten steel. Both will be hung some time this winter at the YSU Bliss Hall addition courtyard, across from Smoky Hollow.
Moring is bespectacled and slim, and when not at the school, typically has his gray hair tucked into a ball cap. He drives a red pickup and spends leisurely hours over coffee at Panera Bread with art professor Christine McCullough. As a sculptor, he is patient, enjoying the process as much, if not more than, the product. He is excited for both the gate and the new arts facilities.
Benefits of addition
According to Moring, the 17,000-square-foot addition at Bliss Hall will give "a graduate-level education to undergraduate students." It expands the existing fine arts area to 50,000 square feet and will serve the program's 400 art majors. It offers improved ventilation and includes areas for sculpting, bronzecasting, glassworking, ceramics, and woodworking. Moring hopes it will expand the university's ability to train art educators as well as artists.
One feature of the addition, a collaboration between architects and art educators, is a courtyard space at what was to be the rear of the facility.
Moring envisioned a walled-in space, hidden from public view, that allowed students to work outdoors -- a place that didn't need to be tidied up after each use.
But subsequent development of the student apartments adjacent to the addition, and projected development of Smoky Hollow, has turned the rear of the addition into what Moring called "a second front."
"I had envisioned an eight-foot wall," he said. "But, they wanted bars all the way down. We compromised."
Now, bars lead to a low wall. "We can still hide some of the mess," Moring said, smiling. But the addition of second front has presented an unexpected bonus -- an ordinary gate wouldn't be adequate. Instead, Moring was commissioned to create something more. And did he ever!
Taking shape
The main gate is still being bent into shape piece by piece and welded together at Moring's downtown art studio in the old Ward Bakery Building in Youngstown.
They will eventually stand 14 1/2-feet tall and 12-feet wide. (The 4-foot-by-11-foot, 350-pound passenger gate is already on temporary display at the McDonough Museum, though it hasn't been powder-coated yet).
By the time it's finished, Moring and his two artist collaborators, YSU instructor Tony Armeni, and sculptor and student Dan Lawrence, will have invested 1,100-man hours. Moring came up with the concept and original sketches.
While the main gate and passenger gate are obviously a visual narrative of Youngstown's steel industry -- the pieces are not strictly historical.
Looking over the work areas in the new addition -- the kneeling oven and "glassy hole" used in glass sculpting, the slump kiln and the bronze casting area -- Moring said, "Many of these artistic processes are workmanlike processes. Especially the bronzemaking is very analogous to Youngstown's steel industry. Even though these are fine arts, the process is very similar."
Said Moring, who came to YSU after teaching in Baltimore, "As an outsider, I am very interested by the history here. Many of my students are tied into [steel making], but they have never done it. I thought it would be great to make that connection for them."
On nice days, students are already flowing down the streets along the courtyard wall. Soon, they'll be walking by a beautiful juxtaposition of Youngstown art and history.
murphy@vindy.com