First Fridays Downtown Youngstown take place every first Friday of the month in and around Downtown Youngstown at various locations.  During First Fridays, visitors have the opportunity to enjoy live music, shopping, local dining, entertainment, arts, activities, recreation, and more.

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First Fridays- Youngstown
February 7, 2025 "Date with an Artist"
4:30-7:30PM

Butler Institute of American Art | 524 Wick Avenue Youngstown, Ohio

Black History Month Exhibition

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. “The Art is on the Wall, Not the Posters” in Segall Print Gallery in Butler North.

A Bright Day Ahead by Gwenneth Barth-White

The Fond Gazing of a Beauty by He Lihuai

Pastel Society of America’s 52nd Annual Exhibition: Enduring Brilliance!

“The Pastel Society of America’s (PSA) Fifty-Second Annual Exhibition will showcase a remarkable selection of its worldwide membership’s most accomplished works in the pastel medium.

This exhibition, drawn from The Pastel Society of America’s annual fall exhibition, features works by some of the nation’s premier pastel painters. The Pastel Society of America is the oldest organization of its kind in the country. A primary mandate of the PSA is to provide a forum for the exhibition of works by the most accomplished pastel artists in the United States and abroad. Since 1972, the PSA Annual Exhibition: Enduring Brilliance!, held at the National Arts Club in New York City, has been the premier event for pastel artists worldwide.

The Flora B. Giffuni Gallery of American Pastels is located on the second level at the Butler Institute of American Art. The gallery was created in 2004, thanks to the generosity of Flora B. Giffuni, founder of the Pastel Society of America, and is the only museum gallery in the U.S. devoted exclusively to works in the pastel medium. She regarded its creation as a “dream come true” for her. The gallery offers exhibitions of accomplished pastel artists, group shows from the Pastel Society of America, and the display of works from Butler’s prestigious collection.

Allowing for the geographic and stylistic diversity that reflects PSA’s more than 1,400 members, PSA Master Pastelists Kristin Divers PSA-MP (PA), Cristine Kossow PSA-MP (VT) and Margaret Dyer PSA-MP (GA) curated the selection of soft pastel works from 1,500 entries received from all over the United States and 16 foreign countries.

Awards Juror Jeremiah William McCarthy is the Chief Curator of The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

PSA President Jimmy Wright, PSA-MP, HFH, is the exhibition chair.

The year’s Hall of Fame Honoree, the highest honor the Pastel Society of America bestows upon an artist, is award-winning artist and teacher Ellen Eagle.

Nurtured over the years by dedicated PSA governors, volunteers, generous donors, and patrons, and with the support of The National Arts Club, the Annual Exhibition continues to grow and evolve as the premier showcase for the finest examples of contemporary paintings executed in soft pastels, a salutary reminder that before there even were commercial galleries professional and aspiring artists relied on exhibitor societies to reach audiences and to impress peers.”- www.butlerart.com

 

85th Area Artist Annual

“The Butler’s Area Artist Annual is a juried exhibition, held yearly that includes selected original artworks in all media created and submitted by artists residing in Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties in Ohio; Mercer and Lawrence counties in Pennsylvania. Works include paintings in oil, watercolor, acrylic, pastel, drawings, prints, photographs, ceramics, and sculpture.” – www.butlerart.com

Charlee Brodsky, The Moon Was as Full as the Night Was Still, inkjet photograph, 24×20.”

Charlee Brodsky: The Audacity of the Mundane

“Charlee Brodsky, a fine art/documentary photographer and
emeritus professor of photography at Carnegie Mellon University,
describes her work as dealing with social issues and beauty. A selection
of her awards includes the Tillie Olsen Award with writer Jim Daniels
for their book, Street; an Emmy with the film team that created the
documentary, Stephanie, which is based on her friend’s life with breast
cancer; two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships; an Honored
Educator award given by the Society for Photographic Education,
Mid-Atlantic Region. Among the books she’s authored are Knowing
Stephanie and I Thought I Could Fly.

Ms. Brodsky’s most recent work, The Audacity of the Mundane, is a series of still lifes and was exhibited at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in 2021 and in 2024 it was exhibited at The Pittsburgh Botanic Garden, Sunnyhill Unitarian/Universalist Church in Mt. Lebanon, PA, and BE Galleries in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In 2025 the work will be exhibited at the Butler Institute of American Art. You can see more of the Still Life series at charleebrodskyphotography.com. BE Galleries handles her work.” – www.butlerart.com

Food & Drinks at the Butler Institute of American Art

Please note: Quantities will be limited.

Vegetarian Rolls

A Fresh Wind Catering- Youngstown

Charcuterie

The Sprouted Table-Youngstown

Live Music & Live Artist at the Butler: 5-7PM

Violinist- Erick Ramos

Erick Ramos, began his musical studies at the age of 11. At the age of 12 he began with the violin within the El Sistema Program. Later he joined the Monagas Youth and Children’s Orchestras. Erick studied violin and chamber music with Maestro Dr. César Suárez and Neisser Lucena and received lessons with some of the most important teachers of the Latin American Violin Academy. In 2015, he joined the Simón Bolívar Conservatory to study with maestro Efraín Lara in Caracas while performing with Monagas State Symphony Orchestra and Maturín Chamber Orchestra, which had a Tour to the island of Santa Lucia, in the Caribbean, doing also pedagogical activities with the students of the Saint Lucia School of Music.
 
In 2016 Erick moved to Peru, and became a member of the Bicentenario National Youth Symphony Orchestra where could share stage with important international artists such as Nicola Benedetti, Leonard Elschenbroich, Alexei Grynyuk, Anna Netrebko, Yeol Eum Son; and masterclass with the famous violinist Vadim Repin, in 2017.
 
In Peru, Erick was an instructor at Orquestando Educational Program, as well as music academies and organizations dedicated to cultural development. He joined the National University of Music of Peru, in which he participated in different violin recitals, masterclasses, and chamber music. Erick has participated in important international festivals such as: The 14th and 15th FEMUSC of 2019 and 2020 (Brazil) and Projeto Serioso, Concertmaster at the International Festival of Música Guaranda 2019 and 2020 (Ecuador-Colombia), the 50th Campos do Jordão International Music Festival of 2019 (Brazil) and the VI Gramado in Concert of 2020 (Brazil).
 
He was a student of the violinist Samuel Vargas at the Samuel Vargas International Music Foundation, and a member of the Mentors Program. He promoted the initiative and development of the social project “Hojas Blancas” runned by this organization.
 
Currently, in the U.S, Erick is continuing his studies in the Dana School of Music at the Youngstown State University where has been awarded as the Dana Young Artist Concerto Competition Winner 2022 and the Agnes Fowler Scholarship Winner from the Ohio Federation of Music Clubs 2024. On the other hand, during summer 2023 was part of the Colorado MahlerFest, and Concertmaster at the Miami Classical Music Festival. In 2024 performed at the The Next Festival of Emerging Artists in New York City. Erick also performs with area orchestras such as the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra.

Pianist- Aaron White

Aaron White, from East Liverpool, Ohio, is a third-year Music Composition major at YSU’s Dana School of Music. He studies jazz piano with Jackie Warren of Cleveland and classical piano with Dana piano faculty Dr. Oltmanns. He has composed for and performed in YSU’s Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Combos, and has composed in other genres such as chamber music. He has studied jazz and composition with Drs. Dave Morgan, Kent Engelhardt, and Bryan Kennard.

Daniel Rauschenbach- Live Artist

Artist Statement:

Daniel Rauschenbach draws inspiration from the natural world, capturing the essence of landscapes that resonate with the viewer’s imagination. His work is characterized by bold colors, intricate patterns, and a distinct sense of movement that reflects the ever-changing dynamics of nature. Rauschenbach believes that landscapes are not just physical spaces but emotional experiences that connect us to our environment.

Biography:

Daniel Rauschenbach is from Youngstown, Ohio. With a Masters from Youngstown University, Daniel’s professional career has been spent throughout the country with the year spent between Ohio and Maine creating. His artwork is in private collections throughout the United States and Europe. With his wife Emily they spend half the year painting and living in Maine.

Before heading over to the Butler Institute of American Art be sure to stop across the street at the McDonough Museum of Art and the Solomon Gallery-Bliss Hall to enjoy even more Art!

The McDonough Museum of art will host “five dynamic exhibitions. Julia Betts’s The Dams are Broken, Anna Chapman’s Underworld/Otherworld, Emerging Artist Abby Cipar’s Sometime, Somehow, For You, Will Hutnick’s QUEER HORIZONS and Sidney Mullis’s Caught Skies and Pillowed Pines (Black Forest) will be on display January 21 through February 28. A closing reception for all the exhibitions will be held on Friday, February 28 from 5-7pm.
Of her work for this exhibition Julia Betts states. “The Dams are Broken oscillates between containment and release, shifting fluidly between abstract and recognizable forms. It explores the body as a fragile vessel—a container of identity that delineates the self from the world beyond. Yet within it stirs a restless desire: a hunger to rupture those boundaries and let identity spill forth, dissolving into something limitless and unconfined.”
Anna Chapman is an artist and educator investigating transformative approaches to art-making, community practice, and connection to land in light of destabilized socio-ecological contexts. Chapman describes her work in Underworld/Otherworld declaring, “Death is an undeniable aspect of all our lives. Yet there is little space carved out in culture to process personal, collective, and environmental loss. To grieve is to love. Grief has the power to rearrange us; to ground us and to give us wisdom. Preparing us with integrity for what comes next. How do we move through the underworld to meet the Otherworld?”
Emerging artist Abby Cipar states that the artwork presented in Sometime, Somehow, For You is “Performing as stand-ins for my own, trans-nonbinary body, my work is that of an assembling. I am thinking about the simultaneous strangeness and beauty of my body, as it exists in a pre-medical, not-quite-there-but-getting-there state of transition and affirmation.”
Will Hutnick’s work vibrates at the intersection of the natural environment, digital spaces, and queerness. According to the artist, “the disruption of a heteronormative sense of time – and by extension, sense of place – is inherently queer, oscillating in a present tense that is not fixed. We’re moving at a pace that is becoming ridiculously challenging to keep up with, which, it seems, has little hope of slowing down anytime soon. The present is right now and just out of reach.”
Sidney Mullis says of her work that, ” the installation, Caught Skies & Pillowed Pines, is a make-believe forest. It is an invented landscape to think about childhood selves and to find where they retreat to in adulthood. The forest–often considered a transformational space in children’s stories–is built of many parts that come together as sculptural installations.” -McDonough Museum of Art

McDonough Museum of Art

Spring Exhibitions Open till 4PM Fridays

Crystal Miller- Adornment

Black History Month Exhibition

Solomon Gallery-Bliss Hall YSU

Open till 7:30PM during First Fridays

Ward Beecher Planetarium

Planetarium Show 8-9PM

NEW! What are we made of? Where did it all come from? Explore the secrets of our cosmic chemistry and our explosive origins. Connect life on Earth to the evolution of the Universe by following the formation of Hydrogen atoms to the synthesis of Carbon, and the molecules for life.

About Downtown Youngstown Partnership (DYP)

The Downtown Youngstown Partnership (DYP) is a component of Youngstown CityScape. This stakeholder group promotes and supports downtown businesses, hosts events and encourages area-wide involvement of fun, community building activities. DYP rotates its quarterly meetings from member to member, sharing news, exploring projects, and creating events downtown like our upcoming First Fridays. In conjunction with the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, DYP helps organize “Happy Birthday Youngstown!” an annual party celebrating the city and offering walking tours. The group also conducts service projects downtown, planting bulbs, removing graffiti, and cleaning sidewalks. We hope you’ll consider joining DYP as we bring more live music, fun, food, and exciting events downtown!