Saturday, December 15, 2007
Her studies aren’t over yet: She’ll now enroll in a YSU master’s degree program.
YOUNGSTOWN— Dagmar Amrhein will get her bachelor of fine arts degree from Youngstown State University on Sunday — 44 years after she first enrolled as a student.
The accomplished photographer and artist took some time off between her first class and graduation to get married, raise a family and pursue a career.
An artist, businesswoman and mother of five, Amrhein said she is “excited and happy” to graduate. “It was a long trek but a worthwhile one,” she said.
Amrhein will be joined at commencement by family members, including two of her children who are also YSU graduates. Her youngest daughter is a first-year YSU nursing student.
Amrhein came to Youngstown from Germany with her parents when she was 5. She graduated from South High School and started at YSU on a scholarship in 1963.
After two semesters, she met her future husband, got married and moved due to his job. She returned to YSU briefly in 1986, but her aca demic plans were put back on hold while she reared her five children.
Amrhein had a new perspective when she returned to campus in 2005.
“As an adult, you appreciate classes more and have so much more life experience to bring,” she said. “I made wonderful friends in my classes, despite the age difference.”
She said she had to learn to be patient with herself about tasks such as memorization, joking that her biggest challenge was “finding my car in the Bliss parking deck!”
“YSU has a superb art faculty,” she said. “Not only are they great artists, but they have the ability to inspire a love of the craft.”
She has been enjoying photography since her father taught her how to take pictures when she was 10. She works in Boardman at the family photography business, Ohio Color, now in its 50th year.
Over the years, she has shown her photography and other forms of art at several regional events, including a solo show at the Butler Institute of American Art. She has won awards at many juried shows, including shows in Pittsburgh and Cleveland.
Amrhein would like to stay in the art department, but it does not offer a master’s degree. Instead, she is starting in the master’s in fine arts program in creative writing here next semester.
“I’ve always loved writing,” she said. “And I can apply the skills I learned in art to words and writing.”
She would like to use her art to illustrate her writing projects. “I want to write more poetry, and also tell the story of my parents’ experience of World War II, and, oh, there are so many people in Youngstown I want to write about.”
Amrhein also teaches watercolor painting at Pat Catan’s craft store, and she recently took a part-time job teaching art at the Mollie Kessler School.
“I’m never bored,” she said.