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PrintSchooling Georgia. (No, not the U.S. state.)
Ron Pizzuti: More public art. File photo
Renowned art collector Ron Pizzuti, chairman and CEO of the Pizzuti Cos., confirmed to Insider that he’s working to secure a “major” piece of public art for the Scioto Mile, the new downtown riverfront park that should be completed by early summer. He says the piece would go on the Prow, a V-shaped appendage at the end of Town Street with benches and birch trees. Pizzuti declined to release any more details, but boosting public art in Columbus has long been important to him. “This is the largest city in America without a public art commitment,” he says. “I don’t think there is a city our size in the United States with less public art than we have.”
Local music fans might have noticed a familiar face on a recent episode of “Blue Bloods”—or at least a familiar haircut. Zachery Allan Starkey, the ex-Columbus musician and scenester who now lives in New York City, appeared as an extra on the CBS cop show in early April. He didn’t get any lines, but viewers got a quick glimpse of him and his unmistakable spiky hairstyle as star Donnie Wahlberg flashed his badge during a sleezy New York City Fashion Week party.
Columbus is developing an unusually close relationship with Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, thanks to a federal prosecutor with deep Central Ohio ties. For the past year, Dave DeVillers, an assistant U.S. attorney and former Franklin County assistant prosecutor, has been in Georgia helping the emerging democracy reform its court system. He’s also invited colleagues and friends from Columbus to help teach Georgian officials on best practices, including Gail Hogan, the Channel 4 reporter and anchor; her husband, Dan Hogan, a Franklin County Common Pleas judge, and former Dispatch reporter Kevin Mayhood, now in media relations at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The trio made the trip to Georgia in late January to talk about jury trials—in particular, how the media covers them in the U.S. Then in early April, DeVillers led a delegation of Georgian officials to Columbus to learn about alternative sentencing programs. DeVillers and his family expect to stay in Georgia for another year. And it turns out the special Justice Department assignment hasn’t just been fruitful for him. Gail Hogan says his wife, Julia DeVillers, an accomplished young adult author, says she’s probably going to write a book about the experience.
Veteran rocker Ron House added his distinctive voice to the debate over the collective bargaining rights of public employees in March. And in a contrarian twist, the opinionated musician managed to link Senate Bill 5 (now a state law) to the other big Columbus controversy of the moment—the Buckeye tattoo scandal. House recorded a protest song with Moviola at Used Kids Records called “Fire Tressel, Not Teachers.” He sings, “One lies to his bosses and gets patted on his head, the other wants to bargain and is told to drop dead.” The song can be downloaded at moviola.bandcamp.com.
Gavin George made a return engagement to Carnegie Hall in April. For the second year in a row, the 7-year-old Granville-area piano prodigy (“Raising a boy wonder,” February) played the famous New York concert venue after taking top honors in a contest sponsored by the American Association for the Development of the Gifted and Talented. This year, his submission also earned him a scholarship to play the two-week Vianden International Music Festival in Luxembourg in August. t
