Inside the old bank on the circle: ArtsaRound Gallery keeps Pickaway County art on the walls

- Advertisement -

Pickaway County

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio — The last building left standing on Circleville’s original circle did its banking for more than a century. These days it holds paintings, pottery, photographs and a vault full of books, and it may be the most interesting room in Pickaway County.

The ArtsaRound Gallery, at 135 W. Main St., is home to about 40 local artists at any given time. The rule for the walls is simple: everything on display is either made by a Pickaway County artist or shows something in Pickaway County. Admission is free, and the gallery is open Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

A bank built on the circle

The building went up in 1848, when Circleville was still laid out in the famous circle that gave the town its name, built on the site of ancient earthworks. It is the last building constructed on that original circle, and while the town squared its streets off in the 1840s and 1850s, the bank stayed. It has not been a bank since 1964, and the floor still shows the divots where the teller line stood. The Pickaway County Historical Society owns the building now, and over the years it has housed the Chamber of Commerce and other organizations before the artists moved in.

Upstairs, where bank accountants once worked in three-piece suits through air-conditionless summers, there is more gallery space, and a large layout shows Circleville as it looked in 1836, circles and all.

The group behind it

ArtsaRound formed in 2001, growing out of the old Circleville Art League, and opened the gallery in 2020. The nonprofit’s work runs wider than one room: it helped raise the money for the downtown murals in its early years, publishes the Images of Pickaway calendar, runs the Best of Pickaway high school art contest, and gives scholarships to local art students every year.

Steve Sawyer, the gallery coordinator and ArtsaRound’s president, is a retired newcomer to running an art gallery. He took up the role after retiring at the end of last year, and his own work is on the walls too: wood carvings, astrophotography taken through a telescope he built as a young man, and lithophanes, an old pre-photography art form where a carving only reveals its picture when held up to the light.

The artists on the walls

Christine Lockard may be the gallery’s best-selling artist. A Circleville native, she lived in Atlanta for 40 years and came home to care for her mother, bringing with her some 1,500 pieces she had never shown anyone. Her corner of the gallery runs from here to the corner, and includes an espresso series painted in coffee and work made from grocery bags. The gallery will feature her work in a solo show this November.

Robert Kroeger, the Cincinnati artist who has painted a historic barn in every one of Ohio’s 88 counties, paints Pickaway County barns in the impasto style, laying the paint on with a palette knife instead of a brush, racing to catch the barns before they come down. His books and paintings are at the gallery, and ArtsaRound has raffled his framed barn paintings to feed its scholarship fund.

Cheryl Cherry, a retired Teays Valley art teacher, paints, throws pottery and shoots photographs. Janet Kent builds her images by painting paper, tearing it up and pasting the pieces back together into a picture. Jan Reid works in the opposite direction, building entire miniature scenes, tiny wedding receptions and place settings, inside glass cases.

Photographers get their share of the walls as well, from award-winning travel work shot around the world to a bald eagle portrait called “The Guardian” that stops people mid-room.

Circleville portrait artist Susi Cantley covers one section with her Real Expressions series of faces, some funny on purpose. Sales from her work support an orphanage charity in Uganda. Zoey Chickadee’s shadow boxes cram buttons, butterflies, doll heads, playing cards and tiny Bibles into frames that reward a long look. And every March, ArtsaRound partners with the Pickaway County Board of Developmental Disabilities on an inclusion show, so artists of every ability get wall space year round.

A vault full of books

The building’s best joke is the vault. Since the place used to be a bank, the old vault is now a bookstore for local authors, shelves of Pickaway County writers packed into the room that once held the money. Books on the floor are free, with donations appreciated.

Pumpkin season, and the murals

October belongs to the Everything Pumpkin show, when the gallery fills with pumpkin art ahead of the Circleville Pumpkin Show. Sawyer figures the gallery sees around 1,500 visitors during the four days of the Show alone, and this year’s extras include Pumpkin Tower diamond art kits, $10 to take home and make or $25 finished.

The group’s biggest project is outside the gallery’s walls. Circleville’s two Eric Henn murals, the Pumpkin Show Centennial Mural painted in 2006 at Court and Main and the Pickaway County Bicentennial Mural from 2010 on West Main, are peeling, cracking and fading. Henn, the original artist and a Circleville native, has quoted $75,000 to restore both. ArtsaRound put in the first $10,000, other donors have added $3,900, and a fund for the rest sits with the Pickaway County Community Foundation. A committee to raise the balance kicked off this fall.

Want to show work, or just look?

Displaying artists join ArtsaRound for $50 a year and pay a 30 percent commission on sales. The scholarship side now has two tracks: a pre-collegiate award covering classes and supplies for students in grades 8 to 11, and a collegiate scholarship launched in 2025 for graduating seniors studying art. The first collegiate recipient was Aubree Walker of Logan Elm High School.

The gallery is at 135 W. Main St. in Circleville, open Fridays 4 to 7 p.m. and Saturdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and by appointment. More information is at artsaround.org or by phone at (740) 672-9634.

Heritage Headlines visited the gallery in September. Watch our video tour with Steve Sawyer on our Facebook page.

Send a tip or correction to info@heritageheadlines.com.

- Advertisement -

Send a tip or correction to info@heritageheadlines.com, or use the contact page.

This Week · Pickaway County archive