New art greets those outside Butler YMCA
Sewage access dictated the location of the latest street painting undertaken by the Butler Art Center.
Specifically, a manhole cover was necessary.
“We needed a location where a manhole cover was on a sidewalk and not a street,” said Stephen Haley, gallery director at the Butler Art Center.
Haley and his friend Andrew Parker painted the green, bespectacled creature eating an Oreo cookie, the manhole cover making up the top of the sandwich cookie. The corner on Penn Street near the Butler YMCA was the perfect spot, Haley said.
He said Jeff Geibel from Edward Jones and the Butler Downtown association helped with the location for the mural. “The YMCA was very generous by allowing us to do so,” Haley said of painting there.
Haley said he kind of liked the idea of a cookie monster chowing on an Oreo right outside the gym.
But the name cookie monster is already in use by the “Sesame Street” character. “I always like to have somebody name the pieces we are doing,” Haley said. “That's how we have Dexter Covey, the sea monster by Domino's and the Ruffles and Truffles building (on Main Street) and how we got Geoffie the Oreo Monster.”
The children participating in the YMCA's day camp were walking by as the painting was being finished, he said, and “when I asked the kids if they could name him, in a split second one of the kids said Geoffie the Oreo Monster.”
“It would have taken us two weeks to come up with something,” Haley said. “That's why kids are the best artists. They aren't old enough to let their brains get in the way. They just feel it and let it fly.”
The next mural after the one at the YMCA is called Stevie Ray Jazzhands, underway on the side of Main Street's Butler Beauty Academy building. Haley and Parker along with the Art Center's assistant gallery director, Mary Oswald, have been working on it.Mr. Jazzhands utilizes a pipe sticking out of the wall painted yellow to look like a saxophone, as his musical notes drift up the wall. He still needs hands and his tuxedo complete.“He came to fruition due to the philosophy we have imposed into the entire project and that is to take objects that already exist and incorporate them into the actual piece of art,” Haley said. “The pipes on the side of Butler beauty school were the canvas and the epitome of potential.”A plan is in progress for a Butler Street Art Fest on Sept. 25, 26 and 27.Haley said, “we are getting a bunch of artists to sign up and hit numerous locations around town.”He said the goal is to get a bunch of murals done in one weekend, describing it as “a way to have a festival without having too many people in same location and to beautify Butler even more!”Visit ButlerArtCenter.org or call 724-283-6922.
