Pleasing eyes and mouths

An area woman will compete nationally after a hot dog topping contest win.
By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- With many different offerings of food and visual and performing arts, visitors to Youngstown State University's annual Summer Festival of the Arts should be hard-pressed not to find something to their liking.
Among Saturday's performances at the Fountain next to Kilcawley Center, for example, was Youngstown Area Community Concert Band, followed by Tropical Winds Steel Drum Orchestra.
Offering their pottery in various forms were Columbiana sisters Kathryn Holm and Margaret Wade, who decided last year to quit their jobs and pool their creative talents and love of pottery to start their own business, Cabin Hill Pottery.
They said didn't have bad jobs, but their jobs did not give them any outlet for creativity. They said they learn a lot by trial and error and get inspiration from other potters, because potters all have different styles.
Planning to come back
Tim Martin of Piqua put the YSU festival on his tour schedule for the first time this year and said he will definitely return. Martin tours the country year around with his copper and brass ornamental pieces such as wall hangings, yard ornaments and fountains. One of his larger pieces is a fountain with a large piece of driftwood at the center.
He is impressed with Youngstown and the festival, and early Saturday afternoon had sold more pieces than he had during the previous week.
A former store manager for a pizza chain, Martin said when he spent Thanksgiving Day 1993 in a friend's garage in Seattle instead of watching football, he was on his way to a major career change.
"My friend took me to the garage to show me his art work," he said. "We stayed out there working, and I really liked it. I never thought I'd make this a career. It just happened."
Sculptor Jeannie Baroutsis of Slippery Rock, Pa., enjoyed helping children try their hand at chiseling a piece of stone at her tent. Baroutsis said she has been a stone sculptor for 19 years and doesn't plan to quit anytime soon.
An art major in college, she switched to education and biology, but eventually found her way back to her heart's calling.
"It's in your soul and you can't ignore it," she said.
Stone carvings of cathedrals are her signatures pieces, influenced by the many cathedrals she saw on trips to Greece and Italy.
"I've done more than 200 and they're all different," she said. "The stone makes them different."
Hot dog contest
Art of another kind -- culinary art -- may make a Berlin Center woman $25,000 richer next month. With a winning combination of cole slaw, cheddar cheese and potato sticks, Michele Dolenic and two friends will fly to Minneapolis to compete for a $25,000 grand prize in Ball Park's Great Hot Dog Taste Challenge.
The art of creating a hot dog topping representative of the Mahoning Valley's local flavor was one of the many activities Saturday.
Dolenic said the hot dog topping is patterned after the Pittsburgher, a hamburger with cole slaw and fries on the burger instead of on the side. She said her boyfriend's mother, Mary Ann Schaper of Boardman, asked her to enter the contest because she had two recipes she wanted to enter. As it turned out, Schaper's presentation of chunky salsa, whole-kernel sweet corn and black beans was the second-place winner.
Ball Park representatives have traveled to Charleston, S.C., Raleigh, N.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia and will make their way to Detroit and Chicago, with the final competition in Minneapolis Aug. 11. The winners at each local event will compete for the grand prize Aug. 12 at the Mall of America.
A hot dog recipe contest in the Mahoning Valley was appropriate because Harry Stevens of Niles is credited with inventing the hot dog.
Gregory Williamson, tour manager for Ball Park, said he was impressed with the number of people who brought their own condiments from home and put some thought and effort into their recipes. There were about 40 entries in Saturday's competition, which he said is about average for the stops so far.
Judges were Clarence Boles, editor of the Buckeye Review, and Heather VacLav and Patrick Matey, both of Boardman and both summer interns at Clear Channel Radio.
"I'm going to enter the hot dog witness protection program," Boles quipped after sampling hot dogs for three hours.
Williamson said Dolenic will be competing against such local favorites as a crab-topped hot dog from the Baltimore winner, and a Philly Steak dog from the Philadelphia winner.
The Summer Festival of the Arts continues today from noon to 6 p.m.