Public Art and Civic Identity at YSU
CUDC Quarterly 4:1 - Fall, 2004

Youngstown will always be a steel town at heart. The evidence is still to be seen in the hollows of the valley where now idle factories once rattled and hummed. Today, Youngstown State University is actively reshaping itself and in turn, reshaping the city. The role of the public artist in this process is to understand the city’s heritage and aspirations in creating tomorrow’s sites of memory and celebration.

In the YSU plan, public art comes in a wide variety of scales and genres: tremendous landscapes, narrative installations that recall history, as well as some more light-hearted but uplifting sculptural moments. While these installations serve to beautify the campus, they must serve to identify YSU as a catalyst of growth and a cultural anchor.

At the largest scale, expressive opportunities can be found in the landscape. The rolling hills of the Mahoning Valley afford striking views and overlooks. The YSU plan calls for opening up many view corridors across the valley, back to downtown, and down the avenues. Many of these views will be framed with evocative landscape treatments. One of the bigger moves is the opening of a view corridor connecting the cathedral and downtown to the south campus gateway.

Another opportunity is along 5th Avenue. A new median and lush landscape treatment acts to tame an unattractive fast food edge. As the roadway crowns at the stadium entry, a gateway and fountain mark a ritual beloved by Youngstowners – tailgating. In keeping with the spirit of the football fans, these interventions can be whimsical, even a bit overblown, precisely because people love their team and will take them to heart.

Above: a proposal for one of the campus entries off of Wick Avenue includes a median with a rown of steel trees and heraldic penguins anchoring ornamental plantings.

Right: Greg Moring’s gateway to the YSU Art Department’s sculpture studio.

The materials used in public art are loaded with memory and symbolic importance, and steel, of course, is the material of Youngstown. Several interpretive steel sculptures can be found throughout the campus. YSU art professor Greg Moring, who recently finished a lyrical steel gate for the sculpture facility, spoke to me of his narrative work and his intentions for an upcoming sabbatical. He hopes to elevate the presence of public art throughout the YSU campus. For him it is a delicate balance of understanding the cultural landscape and finding substantial means of celebrating, uplifting, creating hope and boosting pride. His imposing steel gate tells the story of laboring in the steel mills. The images are robust and elegant, confident and aspiring, and the community has responded well to them. More public art like this could make a great impression on the campus and the soul of the city.

Moring also spoke of the violent local reaction to a piece by an internationally famous artist, George Segal. Several years ago Segal set several of his trademark white, resin-cast figures (steel workers in this case) in an enormous chunk of one of Youngstown’s defunct blast furnaces. This somber installation elicited a negative reaction from citizens who had just endured another steel plant closing. According to Moring, Segal’s sculpture was vandalized repeatedly, and no one in Youngstown seemed eager to come to its defense. Apparently it spoke to a memory that was still a little too raw. The sculpture was removed and stored. Recently, it was re-installed in a landscape setting as a memorial for a city that is making peace with its recent past. —Stephen Manka