Mayor Don Walters has announced a second art-centered community engagement event in partnership with ArtsNow, Collide: Cuyahoga Falls, and Curated Storefront. The event will be held on Sunday, August 14, from 12–3 p.m., at the Downtown Cuyahoga Falls Amphitheater, 2085 Front Street. The event is free and open to the public.
“The purpose of the community engagement event is to garner as much input from participants as possible so that the works of public art showcased throughout the city are true representations of our Cuyahoga Falls community as a whole,” stated Mayor Don Walters. “I encourage anyone interested in public art to engage in these important discussions about public art in the City of Cuyahoga Falls.”
This event is to serve as a community engagement piece of "River in the City," a community-driven, multi-year public art project in the City of Cuyahoga Falls funded partly by the National Endowment of the Arts – Our Town Grant. "River in the City" brings new cultural perspectives to cultural, historical, environmental, and physical connections between Downtown Cuyahoga Falls and the Cuyahoga River. The City of Cuyahoga Falls was awarded a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts in April 2021.
During the event, local trumpeter Tommy Lehman and his band will perform an original, three-movement musical suite about life on the Cuyahoga River, focusing on the past, present, and what the future holds for Summit County. The concert, with music written and composed by Lehman, will feature seven Northeast Ohio musicians. The performance will also include recorded audio and video interviews with community members about the river.
Artist Micah Kraus will lead participants in a drop-in cyanotype workshop. For this interactive, hands-on artistic experience, participants will create a cyanotype print of a photograph of the Cuyahoga River, which they can take home. Cyanotype is a historic photographic process that creates a deep blue and white photographic image using a contact print. Participants will be introduced to wet chemistry photography without needing a dark room or other limiting factors. All materials will be provided to participants.
Additionally, artist Alison Mitner Rich will display a completed painting of the Cuyahoga River. The painting is based on interviews, drawings, and stories collected from community members at the first community engagement event that was held on June 5, 2022. Participants in the event were asked about their relationship with the Cuyahoga River, and its meaning and importance. The painting will be gifted to the City of Cuyahoga Falls at the event.
The purpose of the public engagement sessions is to encourage community involvement and collect input that will inform the creation of public art pieces being commissioned as part of the National Endowment of the Arts – Our Town Grant. As part of the grant, nationally recognized environmental artist Stacy Levy, and Peter Jones, best known locally for his sculpture of the Native American carrying a canoe in the Merriman Valley, will be creating art pieces in Downtown Cuyahoga Falls in celebration of the Cuyahoga River. Installation of the respective works will commence later this fall.