Elm Street gates will tell story at YSU

The gates will boast 15 steel figures representing the steel industry and education.

By Harold Gwin

Greg Moring Sculptor

Video

Greg Moring a sculptor and YSU Associate Professor of Art at work on a steel gate.

YOUNGSTOWN — The steel industry laid much of the foundation for the Youngstown community, but it will be education that revives it.

That’s the theme Greg Moring, associate professor of art at Youngstown State University, has in mind for the Elm Street Gates Project he is now building.

The 16-by-25-foot gates will be installed on campus at Elm Street and Lincoln Avenue, a key pedestrian entryway to the university.

The gates, fashioned from 1‚Ñ2-inch and 3‚Ñ4-inch steel purchased through Cedar Steel of Youngstown, will feature 15 figures, some depicting the historic work and sacrifice made by those who built the steel industry here and others showing various educational aspects tied to the community’s future, including young people reading books.

The goal is to have the project finished and installed by spring or summer 2010.

Funding is being provided by the university, Moring said.

The gates are being built in four panels, each 4 feet wide. The two center panels will actually swing open, serving as a portal for the community to come in as well as a link joining the campus with the downtown community.

It’s an effort that began as a public art project in 2005, Moring said.

He joined YSU in 1996 and has done other large art projects at Bliss Hall, including a gates project that marks the entrance to the sculpture garden on the east side of that building.

They seemed to touch some feelings in the community, he said, so he came up with a much grander design that he gradually condensed into the 16-by-25-foot concept.

Moring said he first took his idea to George McCloud, vice president for university advancement and former dean of fine and performing arts at YSU, telling him that he was building the gates and offering it to the university.

McCloud liked the idea and immediately presented it to David C. Sweet, university president, who has supported the concept as well, Moring said.

He understands public art and how it can be used to celebrate the tradition and history of a community while pointing the way toward its future, McCloud said.

The work helps forge an identity for the campus and the community, he said, adding that he is looking forward to the Elm Street Gates dedication.

Moring has about half of the figures complete, finding time to work during campus breaks, over the summer and on weekends. He’s applying for a faculty improvement leave for this fall to push the project and hopes to be able to secure the aid of a research assistant at that point.

It’s a painstaking process that involves drawing the figure on paper and then transferring that image to full size on cardboard.

Individual pieces of steel are then cut and shaped to the design, and each figure can easily have 50 separate pieces.

Once the pieces are welded together into an image, the sparks start to fly as the steel is cleaned and the welds smoothed using an electric grinder.

It takes between 100 and 120 hours to complete each figure, and each weighs around 150 pounds, Moring said.

Once the figures are done, the rest of the gates will essentially be assembled around them.

The trick, he said, is to make the gates tell the story while also serving as a structurally sound entrance to campus, Moring said.

Although the design and most of the work will be his, this is really a collaborative project involving a lot of people at the university, he said.

The administration has been very receptive to having public art on campus, he said, adding, “It’s part of the quality-of-life issue.”

gwin@vindy.com