Nigerian activist's work inspires Greensburg Art Center exhibit

“Hope” is the simple title of the current exhibit at Greensburg Art Center, but there are layers of meaning conveyed in that one word.

Featured artists Nancy Rusbosin of Hempfield and Becky Mormack of Unity took their inspiration from the work of Nigerian activist/entrepreneur Olutosin Oladosu Adebowale.

Adebowale not only sells her own artwork to raise funds for projects designed to help her community become self-sustaining, she also teaches others to do the same. Rusbosin and Mormack are applying her example to their work in the local art community.

After hearing about Adebowale from a friend, Rusbosin connected with her on Facebook.

“She was selling art to make money to help those around her,” Rusbosin said.

Adebowale also was teaching young women to create clothing and other items, such as backpacks and bracelets.

“She was teaching these young ladies how to think about supporting themselves,” Rusbosin said. “Becky and I were moved at her get-up-and-go. We loved her mission.”

Adebowale’s work includes supplying elderly women with food and clothing, teaching sustainable farming and establishing schools. She plans to open a palm oil factory in 2024 to help fund the schools, Rusbosin said.

Rusbosin and Mormack created a series of oil paintings for “Hope” from Facebook photos of those older women wearing the clothing supplied by Adebowale. They will donate a portion of sales from those paintings to her.

The exhibit, running through July 28, also features works the pair created while painting en plein air in the local countryside, which also are for sale.

Both Mormack and Rusbosin are members of the Greensburg Art Center’s gallery committee. While looking at open dates on the center’s 2023 exhibit calendar, Rusbosin asked Mormack if she was interested in a collaboration.

“We started thinking about plein air,” Mormack said, due to their shared interest in painting outdoors.

The pair became friends while participating in paint-outs with the Greensburg and Latrobe art centers and with the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art at Ligonier Valley.

“Thinking about plein air, we were demonstrating that art is for everyone,” Rusbosin said. “Her version of it would be different from mine — it doesn’t matter what it looks like, it’s all self-expression.”

Sustaining art

It’s a message they’re trying to spread by bringing new people into the art center, which they see as vital to its sustainability.

“Our whole point is to tell the story of the Greensburg Art Center, to bring in new members and to help them learn how to volunteer,” Rusbosin said. “When we’re out painting, we’re networking constantly, giving people our cards, asking if they know where the Greensburg Art Center is, because it is a little off the beaten path.

“We try to go to all the shows in the area just to support our fellow artists,” she said..

Another way they’re spreading the word is by hosting paint-and-sip nights, which tend to bring in people who don’t normally think of themselves as artists.

Along with their husbands, Ed Kelly and John Mormack, they supply all the art materials, wine and snacks and donate all the proceeds back to the center. They’ve done about six so far and plan to do more.

“It was all because Olutosin gives her whole life to other people. She wrote, ‘A person is a person through other people,’” Rusbosin said. “Becky and I have been teaching each other in different ways how to volunteer, and we’re trying to teach others, and it has worked.”

Mormack, 57, is self-taught other than taking a couple of classes in the Bob Ross painting method when her children were young.

“I got hooked and I’ve been painting ever since,” she said.

She and her husband operated a dairy farm where she did the milking, morning and night, but now are only raising grain crops. Over the years, she also provided care for a number of elderly relatives.

“Painting is my retirement,” she said.

Rusbosin, 67, earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting with minors in drawing and art history from Edinboro University.

She worked for 20 years as a sales manager for JCPenney custom decorating in New England for 20 year, before returning to the area in 1990 to work at family-owned Rusbosin Furniture.

When the business closed at the beginning of the pandemic, she started painting again.