Submitted photo This self portrait painted while in graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University is one of the pieces featured in “From the Berlin Wall to the Bayou: A Celebration of the Art and Life of Amy Beth Novelli (1963-2025),” which opens Saturday at Trumbull Art Gallery.

Trumbull Art Gallery displayed Amy Novelli’s work several times, starting with a student show when she was at Warren G. Harding High School in 1981.

The creations of Novelli, who died last December in New Orleans at age 61, will be featured in “From the Berlin Wall to the Bayou: A Celebration of the Art and Life of Amy Beth Novelli (1963-2025),” which opens Saturday at TAG. A memorial/celebration of life is planned at the gallery from 6 to 8 p.m. July 11.

Gallery Director William Mullane said, “Her memorial was in Tucson, (Arizona), which excluded most people — classmates, old friends, people who have collected her work here, some family members — so we thought she’s been part of TAG since she was in high school, it just kind of made sense to do it.”

For those who didn’t know her personally, Novelli’s most familiar work is the mural she was commissioned to paint in 2015 that faces North Park Avenue in Warren on the Scott Street NE building that is now Franky’s Pizza and Delicatessen.

Novelli earned her master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University, Mullane said, and it was there that she evolved from primarily a painter to a more cross-disciplinary path. In addition to painting murals around the country (and painting on the Berlin Wall as it was being torn down in 1989), she designed and built floats for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York and the Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans.

Novelli had a solo exhibition at TAG in the late ’80s when it was located at the Gillmer House on Mahoning Avenue NW, and she had a homecoming exhibition at TAG in the early 2000s when it was located on East Market Street.

Mullane said gathering enough of her work to put together an exhibition wasn’t difficult. Along with those that were privately owned, some also were in storage locally as her career took her to different locales.

“The earliest piece would be a piece she did in 10th or 11th grade, and then there is a self-portrait she did just as she entered graduate school,” Mullane said. “We have a number of the figurative works, and then there was a series called ‘The Jack Rabbit,’ which is this huge expressionistic rabbit-type figure.”

Novelli also loved horses, and some of her horse paintings will be included as well.

“Her things were pretty bold, and her surfaces were always interesting,” Mullane said. “She painted on doors, she painted on barn siding, she painted on painter’s cloth. She was really into surfaces, and she was also a great printmaker. She did beautiful line etchings, wood cuts. She kind of did it all.”