McDonough opens 2022 with four new exhibits

Four new exhibitions exploring the pandemic, childhood, identity and intimacy open Friday, Jan. 21, in the McDonough Museum of Art on the campus of Youngstown State University.

The exhibits run through March 5. The museum is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Admission is free. An opening reception for all of the exhibits will be 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 21.

• "Open Storage" is the title of an exhibit by Matthew Kolodziej, whose paintings explore themes of time, dislocation and forming perceptions using reference to architecture and archaeology. Currently a professor at the University of Akron, Kolodziej has been exhibiting his work since the mid 1980s in galleries and museums around the country and abroad, including recent solo exhibitions include work at the Carl Solway Gallery and The Painting Center in New York. His work also was represented in group exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Rockford Art Museum, the Akron Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. Kolodziej will give an artist talk on Jan. 27 at 5:10 p.m. in the museum.  
• Artist Piotr Szyhalski created COVID-19: Labor Camp Report at the start of the pandemic in March 2020. What started as a single drawing slowly morphed into a daily practice, a way to reconcile and record the thoughts, feelings, and change being wrought in the world. Szyhalski is a professor of media arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the recipient of the 2009–2010 and 2017-2018 McKnight Artist Fellowships for Visual Artists. His work has been exhibited worldwide at such venues as the International Center of Photography, the New York Expo Film Festival, Siggraph, ISEA Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.
• "A Day No One Will Remember" by Donald Black Jr. is a series of photographs created in Black’s hometown of Cleveland that show ordinary days that are filled with childhood play, imagination, quiet, creative expression, and innocence. Black will give an artist talk on Feb. 23 at 5:10 p.m.
• "There are seams in purgatory" is the name of a collaborative exhibit between the five woman-identifying artists that make up Carnegie Mellon University’s MFA Class of 2023. Sarah Bowling, Han Diaspora Group, Laura Hudspith, Rosabel Rosalind,and Rebecca Shapass engage in a cross-disciplinary dialogue that spans sculpture, drawing, painting, installation and performance.