8 baseball paintings on display at Mill Creek fields

YOUNGSTOWN

Of the eight newly installed paintings on display at the Mill Creek Junior Baseball League fields on the city’s West Side, one stands out in particular to Janet Kramer Helsel, whose father, Robert Kramer, helped found the league more than 60 years ago.

“It would remind him of his wife,” she said fondly of a striking portrait of a red-headed woman winding up to swing a baseball bat. The painting, which now hangs near an office building named after Helsel’s father, is one of eight reproductions of baseball-themed paintings at the Butler Institute of American Art that, thanks to the work of several local nonprofit groups, are on display at the fields.

“I am an artist myself,” Helsel said. “So when this came about, I was just thrilled to death. ... To have it down here on the fields – it just makes my heart feel good.”

Representatives of the league, the Rocky Ridge Neighborhood Association and Museum Without Walls on Friday unveiled the public art project that was funded by the Raymond John Wean Foundation.

Read more about it in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.