Fun facts enhance children's picture book illustrations in 'OHIO: The Start of it All'
LANCASTER — Who knew that the very first speeding ticket in the United States was handed out in 1904 in Dayton? The perp was traveling an obscene 12 miles per hour.
Or that America’s first junior high school was approved by the Columbus Board of Education in 1909?
Or shock of shocks, Ohio State University didn’t march the first Script Ohio. That premiere was performed by the University of Michigan band as a goodwill gesture at the 1932 football game.
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These curious facts, and many more, are paired with children’s picture book illustrations in the inventive exhibit “OHIO: The Start of It All,” continuing through Dec. 31 in Lancaster’s Decorative Arts Center of Ohio. The more than 60 original works from children’s books are from the University of Findlay’s Mazza Museum, home to the first and one of the largest collections of original picture book art.
Mazza Museum Curator Dan Chudzinski assembled the exhibit with a similar theme to one that appeared in 2016 at the Riffe Gallery in Columbus. Each image is paired with a “first” fact from Ohio history and organized by theme in five galleries in the Decorative Arts Center’s home in the historic Reese-Peters House.
“My goal was to make it impossible for anyone to say that nothing ever happens in Ohio,” Chudzinski said.
Included in the exhibit is Fred Bender’s whimsical illustration of a firefighting frog from his flip-book “Ribbit!,” accompanied by information that the first professional and fully paid fire department in the U.S. was established in 1853 in Cincinnati.
Gorgeous, two-panel acrylic, graphite, and pen-and-ink depictions of the Wright Brother’s flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina — one successful, one a crash — are from the Alice and Martin Provensen book “The Glorious Flight.” With Dayton as the birthplace of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Ohio claims to be the birthplace of aviation.
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The speeding ticket fact is paired with a Steven Kellogg illustration from “Barney Bipple’s Magic Dandelions” showing a policeman stopping a child driver in a yellow convertible. In real life, the offending driver was not a child, of course.
Accompanying the information about the first junior high school is a classroom scene from Marc Brown’s “Arthur’s Tooth,” and the Script Ohio fact is paired with a cheerful watercolor of a marching band of horn- and drum-playing children in Ted Rand’s book “My Shadow.”
Ohio’s participation in the Underground Railroad and other aspects of the abolitionist movement are noted in several illustrations, including Floyd Cooper’s beautiful watercolor and graphite depiction of a boy in a cotton field, “Juneteenth for Maize.”
There are many more facts and illustrations in this friendly exhibit that makes viewers want to stop and examine works longer than one would expect.
The Mazza Museum — which began in 1982 with an idea by its late founder, Jerry Mallett — today has 18,000 works of picture book art. The museum presents regular exhibits and programs.
Running concurrently with “OHIO: The Start of It All” is an exhibition of art from the “Highlights for Children” magazine, whose business office is based in Columbus. The exhibit includes a copy of the first issue in 1946.
At a glance
“OHIO: The Start of It All” continues through Dec. 31 at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio, 145 E. Main St., Lancaster. Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Admission is free. Call 740-681-1432 or visit www.decartsohio.org.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: OHIO: The Start of It All exhibit blends artwork with historical facts
