×

Art on Park covers walls with art

The walls of the Art on Park Building will be covered with subjects that are mostly bare in a one-night-only exhibition.

“Nude on Park” is billed as “a celebration of the human form” and will feature more than 50 works by nearly 20 artists from the Mahoning Valley and western Pennsylvania.

The show is organized by Barry Burkey and James Shuttic, who both rent studio space there from the Fine Arts Council of Trumbull County. It follows the Halloween-themed Dark on Park show there last October.

“The whole idea was to do something that would be fun and give artists the opportunity to show edgier art that they might not be able to show locally,” Shuttic said.

“Dark on Park, that was a huge hit. We had hundreds of people that night. We kicked around ideas and came up with the idea to do something that celebrates the naked human form and titled it Nude on Park.

“We allowed artists to work in any medium they wanted, be it two dimensional or three dimensional, to explore the human form however they wanted to.”

Burkey said, “It’s nice because it gives you a place to show work you might not be able to anywhere else.”

The show will feature a variety of styles. Some of the work is more tame than what can be found in the current issue of Sports Illustrated. Other canvases and photographs are more explicit. The more family friendly art will be displayed on the first floor at Art on Park, and the more adult images will be shown upstairs.

One of the goals of the show is to expand the audience for the arts downtown and attract visitors who don’t regularly patronize Trumbull Art Gallery or the art hops sponsored by the Fine Arts Council of Trumbull County. That seemed to happen with Dark on Park, and it can be seen in the artists participate in the nude show.

“Over half of the artists in this show are from the Pennsylvania area,” Shuttic said, and their participation will attract their friends and followers. “We were really surprised how many people from outside Warren came to the (Dark on Park) show. I know those people went to Lime Tree, other places locally to eat. And it’s cool to see people you don’t see at the other shows. One guy who dropped off for this show said he hadn’t been in Warren for 20 years.”

Trumbull Art Gallery will have evening hours Saturday, so Nude on Park visitors can go to both galleries, and Shuttic said they will try to coordinate future shows with TAG openings.

The jurors for the exhibition are artist Terry Polonsky of Sharon, Pa., who is co-founder of the Random Acts of Artists group, and Shawn Carvin of Warren, who serves on the board for TAG. They will select several works for cash awards that will be announced on Saturday.

Shuttic said they plan to have multiple judges for their exhibitions to keep shows from reflecting a single viewpoint.

“With these two judges, it was kind of cool,” he said. “They each had different taste, but there was some definite overlap.”

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
     

Starting at $4.85/week.

Subscribe Today