YOUNG at ART
Lydia Cherep Becker, guidance counselor at Bristol High School, shows her mother, Mary Cherep, some of her students’ work at the Art Outreach Gallery in Eastwood Mall in Niles. Entries into the 2012 Northeastern Ohio Regional Scholastic Art Awards are on display.
By Robert Guttersohn
Niles
The Art Out- reach Gallery at the Sears wing of Eastwood Mall has dedicated wall space for six years to artists in the Mahoning Valley.
And from Jan. 22 to Feb. 26, the burgeoning talent of high-school artists will be on display, surprising its patrons with the pool of young artists here.
The gallery and anoth-er space across the wing are filled with about 125 paintings, sketches, sculptures and photographs that were entered into the Northeastern Ohio Regional Scholastic Art Awards. About 100 of those will go on to the national Scholastic Art Awards, an organization that has recognized young artists such as Robert Redford and Andy Warhol since 1927.
“To me, it’s imagination on canvas,” said Clem Clausen, exploring the nonprofit gallery with his wife, Nancy, on Sunday.
The pieces ranged in expression from joy to sadness, bringing a voice to the Valley’s youth.
One item in particular caught Nancy Clausen’s eye. A photograph taken by Logan Rance, a senior at Columbiana’s Crestview High School, zoomed in on a woman’s lips. Written in blood across the lips are the words “I said no.”
The Clausens don’t consider themselves art connoisseurs, but they have traveled to other cities’ exhibits and museums not knowing there was such a bundle of talent here.
And the talent so far has attracted about 50 patrons per hour, said Gail Stark, the chairwoman of the gallery’s board. More than 800 people visited Sunday after the awards for the artwork were given at the Eastwood Expo Center.
Most were families with the young artists themselves such as 16-year-old Beata Jagusztyn of Poland. Along with her parents, Edward and Wieslawa Jagusztyn, they came to see her plaster molding of a coral reef.
Throughout the next 28 days, the Valley’s high-school-age musicians will make sporadic appearances on the schedule.
Kicking it off at the expo center Sunday, the Boardman-based band Take or Leave It took the stage, playing 13 songs written by 18-year-old frontman Danny McMaster, a senior at Boardman High School.
It is the first year that Art Outreach Gallery organized the awards for the region, taking on the responsibility from the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University after 20 years, said Stark.
She said the location is much better with the higher foot traffic and visibility the mall brings.
And she hopes it will inspire others.
Art “brings joy to the brain,” Stark said.