SitemapThose who drive in and through central Youngstown during the
next few weeks should notice the new public art projects workers are installing
in and near the downtown.
This art, funded by a $100,000 grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts, is the latest chapter in the recent growth of
public art within the city.
Youngstown was the recipient of one of the largest awards of
the 64 cities and towns that received an NEA Our Town grant in 2016. The
$100,000 grant is the largest the city has received from the NEA.
The “Mahoning Avenue Archway” project will also light up at
night, says artist David Tamulonis. He and his team will light an abandoned
railway arch above Mahoning Avenue. “The top lights are going to wash down on
the sides of the wall,” Tamulonis says. “And there’s an LED strip that goes
around the arch on the outside of both sides, going downtown and to the West
Side.”
The lights will highlight what he calls a forgotten
structure, and their orange glow will aim to duplicate the colors of an old
steel furnace. The Mahoning County Building Department’s review of the project
begins Sept. 8 and could run four weeks. The fixtures are scheduled to arrive
the third week of September.
Project member Ian Beniston, executive director of the
Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., sees the archway project as the
perfect example of place-making, a term borrowed from the vocabulary of urban
planning. “That’s why this concept attracted me,” Beniston says.
“For me, it just means making somewhere unique or special,”
he says of the term. “In a lot of cases in Youngstown, these are things that
are already there, but people might not see it that way. Part of what we’re
doing is calling attention to something that’s already there – highlighting
it.” To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here.