OHIO

Frank T. Bow Federal Building, Canton, OH
Steel Industry by Glen Shaw, 1937

A series of thirteen, powerfully composed, murals each depicting a different facet of the steel industry that is so important to cities of Northern Ohio. The scenes are rendered in a complex of oil paint, charcoal, resin and metal leaf on canvas. The murals are 11 feet high and range in width from 4.5 to 7 feet. These murals were commissioned in 1937 under the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP) which operated between 1935 and 1938 as a federal relief program for unemployed artists.
Work on the mural involved the removal of a 60 year accumulation of dirt and soot; the mending and disguise of tears and bulges, and the repair of damaged plaster behind the canvas murals.

About the Artist:
Glenn Shaw was born to Arthur B. and Grace Moore Shaw in Olmsted Falls, Ohio, on February 6, 1891, and lived in Lakewood, Ohio. He studied at the Cleveland School of Art (currently the Cleveland Institute of Art). Shaw later became an instructor at the Cleveland School of Art for 35 years, from 1922 to 1957. He served as the head of the Mural Painting Department from 1937 until his retirement in 1957. His wife, Elsa, whom he married in 1917, also taught at the Cleveland School of Art. In addition, Shaw taught commercial art at the John Huntington Polytechnic Institute in Cleveland. He was president of the Cleveland Society of Artists, the Ohio Watercolor Society and the Cleveland Fine Arts Advisory Committee.

A prominent artist, Shaw received commissions for several murals in Ohio including: the post offices in Perrysburg and Warren; the Central National Bank and the Statler Hotel in Cleveland; Lakewood High School; and the Old National Bank in Lima. He also completed murals for the Lincoln National Bank in Fort Wayne, Indiana; the Federal Reserve Bank in Pittsburgh; and the Statler Hotel in Buffalo. Shaw’s work was included in exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC; the Whitney Museum in New York; and in traveling exhibits of the Cleveland Museum of Art, which currently owns five of Shaw’s works in its collection. Shaw was also a participant in the famed Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago in 1933.

Glenn Shaw moved to Sun City, Arizona in 1968. He dies August 22, 1981 at the age of 90.