Pop-up art spot fills space on Main Street
Local artists recently came together to turn a vacant space on Main Street into a pop-up art gallery with various pieces on display through this weekend.
Paul Means and Tom Panei, both local artists, worked with the owners of Miller's Quality Meats to make the pop-up art spot a reality in time for the Bantam Jeep Festival.
“I just love it,” said Donna Baccanto of Butler who was browsing the temporary installation on Tuesday afternoon.
“When I heard about it, I thought, 'what a great idea for downtown.' To promote local artists in one place like this is just wonderful. I hope they do more pop-ups like this. I'm proud of my downtown.”
Diane Smith, one of the artists whose work is on display, was excited to have her pieces shown alongside local artists.
“It's nice to see what other artists in the area are doing,” Smith said. “We don't get to very often.”
Smith, who has lived in Butler for the past 10 years, started drawing when she was 5. While she said it's now just a hobby that comes and goes, she really loves the process of drawing.
A lot of her illustrations on display were commissioned and depict familiar scenes in Zelienople and Harmony.
Means invited Smith to be part of the display.
“He can just take an ordinary scene in Butler and make it beautiful,” Smith said of Means' work. “The way he captures it just makes you look at it with a different eye.”
Carol Means, Paul Means' wife, helped to put the display together and enjoyed seeing her husband's work hung up for everyone to see.
“It's awesome,” she said. “You can actually see it from a distance here.”
She said Paul started creating art when he was very young as well. He served in the U.S. Air Force and attended the Ivy School of Art in Pittsburgh.
Now, a lot of his work consists of landscapes as well as murals for people's businesses and homes.
Some of his landscape paintings, including several depictions of McConnells Mill, lined a section of one of the walls at the installation.
Bill Secunda, another local artist, created a steel sculpture of a cowboy riding a horse that sat outside of the pop-up gallery, attracting people walking on the street.
Other local artists who have work on display include Jason Ruggiero and Damian Skal.
WHAT: Pop-up art spotWHEN: Through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.WHERE: 138 N. Main St., ButlerNOTE: Gallery is open until 10 p.m. Friday
