Conneaut Cycle as installed in the Canzani Gallery, Columbus College of Art and Design.

Conneaut Cycle as installed in the Canzani Gallery, Columbus College of Art and Design.

Conneaut Cycle- A Spectacle of an Attraction

The Conneaut Cycle, which explores the idea of a series of paintings moving through time and space and surrounding the viewer. The old cycloramas, like those surviving in Gettysburg PA and Atlanta GA, were popular spectacles that once attracted paying audiences. The huge floor to ceiling paintings surrounded the viewers in a round gallery with an epic event or an impressive locale. Conneaut Cycle plays with this notion on a scale but, instead of depicting a single moment, it is envisioned as a sort of cycle of the Park’s internal life. Each individual painting is three feet high and five to six feet wide and the series flows through changing attractions, the changing of seasons and the changing of light at historic Conneaut Lake Park. This park is a recently reopened, 100+ year old amusement park, hotel and grounds in northwest Pennsylvania.

The painter, Carol Griffith, visited the park as a child. She has returned repeatedly throughout the months of painting this cycle. The cycle has developed largely in real time; each painting was painted in the season it depicts. However, memory mixes freely with the current look of the park and embraces the romance and excitement of a child’s impressions. The series wasbe exhibited in the Canzani Gallery at the Columbus College of Art and Design, where Carol Griffith is a Professor and past Chair of Painting.

Canzani Gallery
Columbus College of Art and Design
Southwest corner of Cleveland Ave. and Gay Street
Columbus OH 43215