Fine Arts Greats:

   

Charles Walter Clewell

Born in Ohio oin 1876, Charles spent most of his life in Canton where he developed a process for producing pottery which has a unique metal like patina. Clewell mixed pottery and metal and developed glazes which have never been replicated. He began experimenting with copper, brass and bronze materials and by 1909 had perfected the process. In 1923 he achieved a blue-green colored finish and invented a way to both accelerate and check the color development in the pottery. He produced a prolific amount of pottery from 1906, and received a medal for his work at the Paris Exposition in 1937. He worked for the Timken Roller Bearing Company from 1940 to 1951. The process died with him in1965. Ninety pieces of Clewell's work can be found in the Jessie Besmer Museum in Alpina, Michigan. The Canton Museum of Art has a small collection of his work.
 
Clyde Singer  

Clyde was born in Malvern, Ohio in 1908 and spent much of his youth in drawing and sketching. After graduating from high school, he painted signs for the Canton Sign Company. And in 1931 he entered the Columbus Art School. He studied art under Kenneth Hays Miller, Thomas Hart Benton , and Franklin DuMond at the Art Students League in New York. He was the art critic for the Youngstown Vindicator and assistant director of the Butler Art Institute in Youngstown from 1940. His paintings are topically very similar to the cartoonist George Luks whose work as social commentary he loved. His works often reflect local street scenes in which memories of the Strand Theatre, or the Arcade Market in Canton are found. Street scenes from New York, Pittsburgh, and murals for the New Concord, Ohio Post Office reflect a time gone by. His work has won top prizes in exhibitions in the National Academy of Design, Columbus Art League, Butler Art Institute, Portland Art Museum and Ohio Fine Arts State Exhibition. The Canton Museum of Art has several of his works in its permanent collection.

Larry Pulka
Larry was born in Cleveland Ohio, and later after serving two tours in Vietnam he attended Kent State University. After studying engineering at Kent, he began a construction company in Canton, which became quite successful. In 1976 he began as a hobby the building of ship models, first from kits and then later from blueprints from the Smithsonian. He built the model ships to exact scale using exotic woods from all over the world. Starting from keel up he constructed models of the Constitution and frigates using bone, ebony and bloodwood.The frigates, which were the backbone of the Navy for years, took about three years to build. Larry spends about ten months constructing a to scale replica. He is presently working on the Oregon, a battleship which is cited for its many accomplishments in the Spanish American War. Larry has built many ships under contract, and has over the years developed a nationally significant collection to be displayed in his museum," BLUE WATER MAJESTY," opening in Canton, Ohio on May 1, 2008. The museum sits on land ceded in 1803 by Thomas Jefferson.
 
Henry Mitchell
Henry was born in Canton, Ohio in 1915. After completing high school he went to Princeton University majoring in economics and engineering. After graduating he joined the Coast Guard for a four year stint in World War II. After marriage he worked in a corporate career. However, he decided to return to school to pursue his first love, sculpture. He moved to Philadelphia attending Temple's Tyler School of Art. After graduating from Temple he received a Fulbright fellowship and studied at the Academia di Brera in Milan. He completed several projects in the Philadelphia area sculpting animals. His works include the famous" Impala Fountain" at the Philadelphia Zoo, "Running Free" sculptured horses at Drexel Univerity, the "Betsey Ross House Fountain." He completed the Pegasus statue in the Great Court of the Canton Museum of Art. He is often compared to the sculptors of animal art such as Antoine Louis Barye, Wilhelm Friedrich Wolff, and Edward Kemeys.