Choffin students use talents to brighten up vacant building

'You Can Change Youngstown' is the theme of the student-designed mural.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A group of Choffin Career Technical Center students are doing their part to improve Youngstown's cityscape.
Members of the commercial arts and auto-collision repair classes have been working on a former gas station at 1380 Mahoning Ave., seeking to turn the vacant building into a work of art.
The school took up the task at the request of Youngstown Councilwoman Carol Rimedio-Righetti, D-4th, who wanted to see some project done to beautify her ward while improving an entryway into the downtown area.
The owner of the vacant station, Jenkins Sign Co., agreed to have the property serve as the canvas for some artwork.
Ten auto-collision students under the direction of instructor Robert Posey volunteered their time to wash and prime the building while the commercial art students took on the job of coming up with a theme, designing the artwork and painting the building.
A total of 34 art students were involved in various aspects of the effort, said Romaine Ruffley, commercial art instructor at Choffin.
Theme competition
It became an assigned project with individual students or teams of students coming up with a concept in a competitive process.
"You Can Change Youngstown," a theme developed by juniors Jacob Barbush, Antony Natal and Michael Ciminelli, was selected from all the entries, and the three students became the project directors, Ruffley said.
Some of the students spent evenings and even Saturdays working on the mural.
"They worked tirelessly on this," Rimedio-Righetti said, adding, "The young people in our city schools are really not getting enough good attention."
Other businesses have stepped up to help out with materials and supplies as well as food for the students.
The end result is a random cityscape that, in some details, resembles downtown Youngstown, specifically the Home Savings and Loan clock tower.
Changing cityscape
The mural theme takes the viewer from buildings in various shades of gray to buildings of bright, vibrant colors, showing a changing cityscape consistent with the project theme, according to the three project directors.
"We have good young people in the city of Youngstown," Rimedio-Righetti said, predicting that it is the young people who will lead the way in fulfilling the promise of the city's 2010 revitalization plan.
This is the first of many projects she would like to see students do, noting that the steel retaining wall for Mahoning Plaza along Meridian Road is her next target.
"This is our third mural," Ruffley said. Choffin students have done murals on fire station doors at stations on South Avenue and Shehy Street at Oak Street.
gwin@vindy.com