

Staff members photo / Andy Gray
Katelyn Amendolara-Russo talks about her existence and what she hopes to complete as director of the Medici Museum of Artwork.

A lifetime of activities organized Katelyn Amendolara-Russo for her new part as director of the Medici Museum of Artwork in Howland.
“I’ve usually experienced a lifelong desire to hold growing as an artist, to be a sponge and soak up expertise,” she reported.
Amendolara-Russo grew up in Boardman and graduated from Canfield Higher Faculty. She was concerned with Ballet Western Reserve and other kinds of art as a boy or girl, but it was Mark Shohayda, her art trainer in Canfield, who fueled her passion for visible artwork.
“I will normally give him credit history for opening something I was perhaps likely to shut the guide on,” she claimed. “He brought out that deep appreciation for portray. He sparked that desire and really honed in on my competencies and brought out that expertise in the arts.”
It was specially gratifying a single day when she read a familiar voice at the Medici, and it was Shohayda coming to see the gallery wherever she now worked.
Just after graduating from Canfield, Amendolara-Russo went to Ohio Northern College, in which she analyzed art instruction and graphic style. Prior to she graduated in 2011, she was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Scholar grant for a project on “South Africa: Views on Democracy.”
Earning a Fulbright gave her the opportunity to vacation abroad and deepened her desire to be a lifelong learner.
Right before getting to be director at Medici, Amendolara-Russo taught art for 10 several years in the Jackson-Milton Neighborhood University District. Not only did the task give her an prospect to encourage her pupils the way Shohayda had motivated her — she was Jackson-Milton’s Educator of the Calendar year in 2019 and gained a Most Inspiring Instructor Award in 2018 — it gave her summers no cost to carry on her personal journey and academic pursuits.
Amendolara-Russo researched film images, jewelry style and design and batik painting in Florence, Italy, in 2012 and 2013, and contemporary artwork historical past and electronic images in Venice, Italy, in 2015.
“By attending workshops abroad and skillfully advancing my training, I wanted to set all of those ordeals into one thing on a larger scale,” she reported. “That’s when I achieved John (Anderson, who led the effort to set up Medici as an independent artwork museum). I started out performing facet by side with John final 12 months. He is a wealth of awareness in art and business enterprise and has been a great mentor in providing me with this opportunity.”
Amendolara-Russo designs to use her earlier activities in a wide range of techniques in her new part as director. She will attract upon some of those people contacts in the art entire world to bring exhibitions and programming to Medici. The artists and instructors she analyzed with in Italy could present virtual lectures and workshops for neighborhood audiences.
She also wishes to teach guests to the museum about the artwork on the wall in the exact same way she engaged college students in her classroom.
“The great thing about currently being an educator is looking at the means individuals can clear up a trouble or a kid can acquire info,” she explained. “One of the matters I actually liked with a person who is perhaps not comfortable with abstract artwork is earning connections to activities they’ve experienced, seeing what story the portray tells. It’s about what it will make them truly feel and making an appreciation and understanding.
“The Norman Rockwell paintings (at this time on exhibit at Medici) of course convey to the story of The us and the Boy Scouts, and there is a narrative to that. We as a museum need to have to broaden understanding for all varieties and all variations of artwork.”
She included, “My hope and purpose would be to bring an individual to Medici who does not have a huge art history, but then they could exit our doorways getting an curiosity in the arts and an being familiar with. Art describes civilizations, our heritage. It’s so vital to have an understanding of the root of why artwork existed in distinct cultures.”