TRUMBULL ART GALLERY YSU professor's works to kick off exhibitions

Al Bright sees strong links between art and jazz.
WARREN -- For its initial exhibition of 2006, Trumbull Art Gallery will showcase the talent of artists present and future.
Opening Jan. 15 with a reception from 3 to 6 p.m. will be a four-week exhibit titled "Beyond," by Youngstown State University professor of art Al Bright. Two gallery talks, each from 2 to 4 p.m., are scheduled for Jan. 22 and Feb. 11, at TAG, 196-198 E. Market St. in downtown Warren.
For more than four decades, Bright has explored abstract expressionism. The paintings on view will be from his personal collection and include recent work. His impasto technique involves applying then integrating layers of color onto skillfully blended oil-painted surfaces. The results are visual expressions meant, in his words, to "parallel the rhythmic quality of jazz music in its purest form."
Performance art
A pioneer in "performance" art, Bright says in a YSU campus newspaper interview, "I have painted to the live music of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Wynton Marsalis, Robin Eubanks and Jimmy Owens." He sees art and music "as inextricably tied. Both art forms share a common lexicon of color, harmony and composition."
Born in 1940, Bright graduated in 1964 from Youngstown University with a bachelor's degree in art education, completed a master's degree in painting from Kent State University in 1965, and has been a YSU faculty member since.
He has taught intermediate and advanced painting, given studio and portfolio review classes, and continues to follow developments in black art.
Bright's work has been exhibited widely, and hosts to his more than 50 one-man showings have included the Akron Art Museum, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Canton Art Institute and numerous colleges and universities. Internationally, he is represented in permanent, corporate and private collections.
TAG's youth gallery will feature the work of 18 Howland High School students from the classes of instructors Holly Schaeffer and Shirley Omogrosso.
Showing ceramics will be seniors Sonjia Ferenac, Barbara Hartley, Kara Killin, Jessica Lackner, Mike Pennick, and Courtney Walker; junior Jackie Teuber; and sophomores Jillian Parker, Alysha Percy, and Sam Sager.
Illustration art will be by senior Rebecca McCullough; jewelry by junior Leana Teuber; acrylic painting by seniors Amy DaMore and Marnie Schwartz; painting by sophomore Rachael Vesia; and printmaking by senior Lauren Hunt, junior Darien Brucoli, and sophomore Reuben Shaw.