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Late historian Joseph Jesensky's images are online
By Bob Downing
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Tuesday, Oct 14, 2008
The colorful artwork, many featuring the Cuyahoga Valley, is the newest link at the Akron-Summit County Public Library's Summit Memory Project.
Jesensky, a well-known local Cuyahoga Valley historian and artist, died June 19 at the age of 101. He was the author of Joe's Place: Conversations on the Cuyahoga Valley.
''It's a fantastic collection,'' said Joanne O'Dell, project manager of the Summit Memory Project.
The copies of Jesensky's work were provided by Maureen McGinty of Metro Parks, Serving Summit County.
Jesensky's son, Larry, retains the original artwork.
Anyone with a computer can check out Jesensky's 148 sketches and paintings at http://www.summitmemory.org/cdm4/browse.php.
People can examine the artwork in the library's special collections.
The collection includes numerous sketches from along Tinkers Creek in Bedford, a favorite stomping ground for Jesensky during his explorations of the Cuyahoga Valley.
There are also profiles of Gypsies who had camped in Bedford, along with mills on Brandywine Creek and in Peninsula, tugboats in the Cleveland harbor, Cuyahoga Valley waterfalls and gorges, abandoned barns, fields at night and locks and dams along the Ohio & Erie Canal.
The collection also includes cartoons and profiles from Jesensky's days as an art lithographer at Goodyear Aerospace.
Natural history
Most of the paintings are from Northeast Ohio, and much of Jesensky's artwork dates from 1923 to 1933.
''It's fabulous artwork and very good,'' O'Dell said. ''Most of the artwork deals with natural images, not buildings. . . . It provides us with a look at the natural history of the Cuyahoga Valley, and we don't have much from that time.''
The Summit Memory Project with its photographs, documents and artwork is growing, she said.
The 18 online collections include information on Barberton founder O.C. Barber; the Doodlebug disaster, a 1940 train wreck in Cuyahoga Falls; Akron's Cascade Locks Park; the U.S. Naval Air Station that operated in Akron during World War II; postcards collected by Ruth Wright Clinefelter; photographs from the High Bridge Resort that operated in the 1880s in Cuyahoga Falls; and Tallmadge's history.
There are photos from Akron in the Civil War; local banking history; newspaper clippings on Goodyear and Firestone dating back to the 1930s; The Informer, an African-American newspaper in Akron from the 1950s; and transportation photos from Akron Metro RTA and Akron Fulton International Airport.
Project grows
The number of partner institutions and agencies has grown from three to 17. That includes the Summit County Historical Society, Cuyahoga Falls Historical Society and Barberton Public Library.
The project got under way in late 2007, funded by a $150,000 grant from the Robert W. Little Foundation. Little, a local historian, worked at B.F. Goodrich before becoming a librarian. He died in 2000.
The collection is approaching 6,000 items, and 30,000 images per month are being examined by online viewers, O'Dell said.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.
Get the full article here.
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