Bradley Scherzer

Completed November 2024

The Lasting Light

Bradley Scherzer & Anthony Lee

How upsetting it is to learn that the stars we see in the night sky are often of lights long extinguished. At the same moment, ponder our own star and its life – its every glow and color as it casts beams of light through the shadows, illuminates the clouds, and glows color across the sky. Be this cause to mourn or to celebrate, we cannot overlook the beauty of it all. Even at night, the sun’s light bounces off the moon and in our view, looking up, a lineage of light extending back to the origins of the universe. A lasting light seemingly suspended in time.

This mural and lighting installation is an appreciation of the light in our lives and the immensity of time it represents. In the scope of human life, the light of stars is forever. In that, we experience light from the origins of our universe while simultaneously seeing light that has only just begun its journey.

Anthony Lee captures light in an homage to the Impressionists. His mural captures a moment in time – rendering a painterly image highlighting graceful strokes in the daylight. Bradley Scherzer interprets the images of deep space captured from Earth by NASA’s Webb Telescope. He channels light through his renderings of starlight and projects them atop the mural at night in a cosmic dance.

June 2024

Mural instructors Anthony Lee and Bradley Scherzer, along with eight emerging muralists, worked as a team to bring “Garden Glow” to life.

“Garden Glow” is a collaborative mural designed and painted by eight emerging and professional artists looking to gain experience and knowledge in mural making.

Through a series of in-class collaborative exercises, a playful and fantastic night garden scene emerged as the final proposal. Each artist contributed different elements to the composition, building upon each other’s contributions to organically create a holistic mural. There are many fun details and different-sized scenes for viewers to find and explore, including a gnome riding a ladybug home, a tiny figure rowing a boat through a river, and small self-portraits of the artists.

Portrait of Debbie Augustine looking at the Toledo Loves Love Wall, at Adams & 13th St. Toledo, OH. July 2024.

Freehand Spray Paint Portrait completed in 4 hours.

Mural created for Condado Tacos location #35 on Fremont Pike in Perrysburg, OH. This restaurant is great and looks awesome. Scroll down to see the work of the other artists. Look them up on Instagram and give them a follow: @starbeing @phybr @kodiklotattoos @deano2225 @chilly_rodriguez @curtiselytattoos2

May 2022

Early 2021, I reached out to my friend Jacob Parr with an off-the-wall crazy idea. The Arts Commission would be accepting entries for a phase 2 series of murals alongside the likes of numerous other extremely talented artists. He proposed that we collaborate on a mural and enter as a team. Both of us are always working on at least 5 things at once, and this massive undertaking would require a ton of attention, but as we do, we decided to push forward and make it work one way or another.

From there, we executed some of the best collaborative work I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of. Our individual talents filled the gaps that each other had, and made the ideation, pitch, and execution process as seamless as it could have been. This was a true 50/50 project, as there isn’t a single part of it that wasn’t handled equally by the both of us.

The mural’s phrase comes from the words of Art Tatum, jazz piano legend and Toledo native. He said “There’s no such thing as a wrong note.” Not only did this idea serve the look and feel of the mural we wanted to design, but spoke to both of us in how we approach our own creative endeavors. We completed the mural just a few days prior to what would have been Art’s 111th birthday.

Thanks to The Arts Commission, ProMedica, and the design committee for selecting our work and making this project possible.

Read some FUN FACTS
Follow POOF! on Instagram
Share images with @POOFofJOY and #poofofjoy

Where to see it:
This interactive artwork is now available for booking! Contact us at scherzart@gmail.com

Past Installations:
- BLINK, Cincinnati, MI. October 2022
- DLECTRICITY, Detroit, MI. October 2021
- Momentum, Toledo, OH. September 2019

About this project:
POOF! is a giant creature sporting a symbiotic relationship with humans. POOF! relies on its bright and colorful good looks to get people to feed it. Creating joy and fun for all, the POOF! gets fed all the tasty neon puffs it could ever want! Participants move in and out feeding in new puffs and then watching as they fly out from its heart. The tubes themselves weave and loop making it a surprise where the puffs will come out next. This weird geodesic dome is an imaginative kinetic experience.

POOF! is an existing project that is installed on-site. Powered by a strong fan/blower, the system hurls the soft, lightweight materials (puffs) through transparent tubes in a blur of colors. At night, UV lights surrounding the structure are activated making the UV reactive puffs, funky organs, and the dome itself glow with bright neon colors. The occupants themselves will glow as they chase their colorful puffs through the POOF!'s twists and turns.

The installation is handicap accessible and all interactions take place at a level accessible to children and wheelchairs. The tongue is an ADA accessible ramp!

Modified Mechanism: September 2022
Modified Mouth: September 2021
Created: September 2019

Engine Dwellers

“No one knows how it got there. Maybe it crashed, maybe it was forgotten with time. Over years nature has reclaimed it, as well as the little ones who reside where humans forget to look.”

Materials used include carved foam, polymer clay, acrylic paint, miniature bells, clear quartz points, and various other natural components.

Lilli Recker

Created by Lilli Recker (Toledo School for the Arts Class of 2024) and Bradley Scherzer (Artist/Educator)

June/July 2021

Design for a traffic signal box wrap for the City of Toledo and The Arts Commission. September 2021

Created for Toledo School for the Arts “UNDISCLOSED” fundraiser. Students’ Choice Award winner. May 2021.

Happy Birthday, John.

This is only the second model I’ve ever built and I’ve learned so much. Knowing that John would appreciate every detail, I spent all too long honing each technique to make it from scratch. Then, with the help of his friends and family, I filled the rewiring compartments on the back with small display boxes and tokens personalized by these contributors. Materials: Walnut, cherry, paper, glue, acrylic, plexiglass, xps foam, dehydrated moss, found twigs, Spanish moss, dyed fabric, hot glue, mechanical pencil parts, felt, copper wire, metal screen, spray paint, transparency, cardboard, screws, embroidery floss, and fairy lights.

April 2021

Mural created for Condado Tacos location #24 on Monroe St. in Toledo, OH. This restaurant is great and looks awesome. Scroll down to see the work of the other artists. Look them up on Instagram and give them a follow: @phybr @contron_art @chilly_rodriguez @kodiklotattoos @brianholderman @starbeing

February 2021

Mural commissioned by Toledo Revival to honor the history of the Hotel Royal building located at 337 Broadway, Toledo, Ohio. The mural is full of symbols of the building’s past all melded into a narrative of the building’s co-owner, Erin Claussen, shown dragging it all out.

2020-2021

1) View the Project Page Here

2) See it in Action Here

3) See How It Works Here

“The Aggregate Apparatus for Engaging with the Future” is a call activated mechanical fortune teller which activates 3 mechanical dials and a live audio reading with a virtual fortune teller. The machine links you to the web where you can freely interpret your own fortune as provided by the symbols and information that appears in the machine.

This piece was developed in peak pandemic uncertainty as a means of touchless interaction and a commentary on our want and need to know or even construct the future.

September-October 2020

In June, after protests in downtown Toledo, some windows were boarded up. I reached out for permission to put up murals on just about everything that was boarded up. Councilwoman Sandy Spang connected me with approval from one of the building owners and I was able to create a temporary installation.

In most cases these board-ups only exist for the time it takes to replace the windows. In others, those boards stay forever. In this instance on the Ohio Building, it was only temporary.

View the Other Artists' Posters from the Series

TOLEDO LUCAS COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY

With the Library serving as a hub of activity in neighborhoods throughout Toledo and Lucas County, it was painful to temporarily close in March 2020. We wanted to find a way for the community to still feel connected to the Library and to one another, while also finding a way to share beauty and hope in an uncertain time.

We invited local visual artists and a local poet to create artworks that reflected ideas important to them with the Library as the common thread. The following poem by Jodie Summers served as an anchor for each visual artist to create their personal vision:

YOUR CHAPTER AWAITS

Escape with me into a world where your imagination can take you anywhere.

Printed on the pages of every genre that fit your creative dreams.

An unlimited source of information awaits you at your fingertips. All you have to do... is turn the page.

This poster series is a powerful reflection of the possibilities within our community’s grasp when we have equitable access to resources, opportunities and justice. The designs will be available as posters and small stickers for free at all of our locations while supplies last – display one or all as you think of what chapters await us. You can also see the posters at Boys & Girls club locations, the 577 Foundation, Black Kite Coffee, Levis Commons, all Tony Packo's locations, the Lash Room and the House of Dow in uptown, as well as other numerous locally owned restaurants and coffee shops.

Special thanks to Dustin Amery Hostetler for curating this inaugural community art project. We look forward to working with other community artists for another collection in the near future.

View the Other Artists' Posters Here

“Toledo area artists have been given a chance to express support and gratitude to Glass City medical professionals as part of the new Hallways of Hope project.

The program is the result of a partnership between The Arts Commission, ProMedica and 2-Scale. Nine Toledo artists were commissioned to create pieces of art in honor of healthcare workers as a part of National Nurses Week, which began on May 6. The original pieces are being displayed at ProMedica Toledo Hospital.

The artworks were then reproduced as full-size posters by Holland-based advertising agency 2-Scale. The resulting works will be hung at other ProMedica health care facilities throughout the area.”

A mural with poem by Yusuf Lateef. Created to bring a little light to a nice feature of our neighborhood, a little dock for canoes and kayaks to put in Delaware Park on the Maumee River. It also faces a school playground and is visible from the windows of Harvard Elementary. The mural depicts some reminders for safety - remember a life vest and to stay hydrated!

August 2019

ABOUT THE MURAL

Artist and educator Bradley Scherzer, working in Fremont as a high school art teacher, heard of Bernadine Stetzel’s passing. The stories of her and her work seemed like perfect content for a community mural. He decided to honor Stetzel and her memory theme by mixing her artwork with one of his fondest childhood memories. In his youth, Bradley loved playing the games on the backs of cereal boxes and in magazines, especially the hidden pictures games, as he ate his breakfast before school each day. With that spark, he began the long process of researching Bernadine and learning from her designs. He spent countless hours on his digital drawing tablet – tracing from Stetzel’s artwork and refreshing it with his own style. Scherzer pulled details, figures, houses, and train cars straight from her paintings, reimagining them into a new scene. With a nod to the playful style of her primitive paintings and the importance she placed on childhood, he enlarged the kids to be bigger than the houses. Then with all in its place, he hid all kinds of objects in the clothes, siding, and all the lines of the drawing.

The mural was projected on to the wall with a computer and painted with dozens of cans of spray paint and buckets of house paint. Coincidentally, the artist was painting the mural during the third anniversary of Bernadine Stetzel’s passing; it was painted in four days and finished on August 8, 2019.

 ABOUT BERNADINE STETZEL

Born Bernadine Puffenberger in 1927 on March 12^th (her father’s birthday), she lived 89 years until August 6th, 2016. Bernadine was an American painter who grew up in Tiffin, Ohio and lived most of her life in Fremont, Ohio. A remarkable woman from an early age, she had competing interests in art and architecture. Bernadine was the first in her high school allowed into a drafting class. She graduated from high school in 1946 and three years later married Fred Stetzel. Together they moved to Fremont.

In becoming Bernadine Stetzel, she insisted upon pursuing her own interests. Among her many passions were the artistic expressions of painting, drawing, and woodcut prints, though she also enjoyed sewing, baking, writing, home repair, carpentry, and politics. In her life, she created many things -- from furniture to paintings five-feet-wide. Stetzel published four children’s books; though she wrote and illustrated many more. Her interest in politics led her to paint many of the presidents’ portraits. Bernadine took a special interest in President John F. Kennedy, creating a series of 71 paintings about his life. 

Bernadine painted in the style of realism for years, yet she is most known for the “primitive” style that came after. She found inspiration in a painting created by artist Grandma Moses and with that Bernadine’s creative work changed.

Her illustrations in this primitive style were filled with childhood nostalgia. From baking cookies in decoratively patterned kitchens to depicting school classroom games, and skating on ponds to playing along the snow covered streets  – she painted the story of growing up in the Depression in Tiffin. All rendered in bright colors, Stetzel made hundreds of paintings reviving these pastimes in imagery. This work earned her the title “The Memory Painter.”

ACTIVITY

Bernadine was best known as “The Memory Painter”. She painted and drew pictures of all her great memories. She made images of playing in the snow in her neighborhood with friends, playing games in her house with family, and fishing alongside loved ones at the river. Each picture she made was full of stories of all the people, places, and things that filled her life.

Can you think of a memory that is important to you? No ideas? Try taking a look back at family photos for ideas.

The following are themes found in Bernadine’s artwork; does your memory share any same themes?

·      Happiness

·      Togetherness

·      Belonging

·      Fun

·      Friendship

·      Family

Choose someone to tell about your memory or write about it. Explain what happened in the memory:

·      Where were you?

·      Who was there?

·      What did you see?

·      How did you feel?

·      What made this memory special?

Now, make a picture of your memory. Draw as many things as you can remember to show others what your memory was like. Make your picture tell the story without using words.

*Remember, Bernadine Stetzel didn’t worry too much about her paintings being perfect. What really was important was sharing her best memories.

“It would be a pretty poor sort of aviator who wouldn’t know he was over Toledo” - Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart visited Toledo in 1928, the city was full of excitement for her visit. “More than 100,000 Toledoans turned out to greet her during her stay in the Glass City, where she’d come to open the 12th National Exchange Club conference. Toledo Mayor William T. Jackson decided to forgo the traditional glass key to the city. At a reviewing stand outside the Armory building after a miles-long parade, he presented Miss Earhart and her transatlantic cohorts (Wilmer Stultz and Lou Gordon) with a specially-struck medallion” - Toledo Blade

The famed aviatrix stayed at The Hillcrest Hotel in Toledo in 1933. She had an arrow painted on the roof to assist pilots in locating the local airfield. Explaining her grander vision for helping pilots she said, “it would be a pretty poor sort of aviator who wouldn’t know he was over Toledo.”

Only four years later, she vanished while attempting to circle the globe.

This project is partially funded by an Arts Commission Accelerator Grant made possible through support from ProMedica and the Ohio Arts Council

February 2019

I was commissioned to use a Jeep’s grill to create an artwork for auction. I designed this digital composite from Jeep’s advertisements and slogans throughout time. Lined it with LED’s, the interior of the grill glows with color. As it transitions, it breaks down the image to reveal only one slogan at a time. “Go Anywhere”, “Do Anything”, “JEEP”

I demonstrated the process live during the Arts Commission’s Art Loop in Toledo, Ohio. I taught people on the street to make designs and then we tested them out inside of my artwork under the lights.

July 2018

2-sided signage on barrier in the “first Rusty Taco this side of the Mississippi!”

April 2018
Acrylic & Aerosol

Corrugated surfaces can really be a pain for signage. There really is no substitute in these cases for a hand painted sign.

2018 Mural for AR Marketing, Findlay Brewing Co. Findlay, OH. Collaboration with Ken Dushane III. Artwork by AR Marketing.

With one week’s notice PHYBR and I stepped up to do a wrap of this whole (TWO - 160ft long walls) grocery store in 24 hours and in below freezing weather! We snow suited up and worked through the night…. hand warmers and tube socks for our cans.

Thanks again to:
Client: Great Scot Community Markets
Agency: AR Marketing @ARMarkting
Illustrator: Lindsy Warnecke @LindsyMairi
Art Director: Blake Martin @BlakeRMartin

2018 Mural for AR Marketing, Great Scot Community Markets. Findlay, OH. Collaboration with Ken Dushane III. Artwork by Lindsy Warnecke.

2017 Mural, for Fowl & Fodder, Toledo, OH. Collaboration with Jacob Parr. Assisted by Mr. Taylor

Mural Expansion, for Ohio Arts Council & WSOS, at Share & Care, Fremont, OH. Collaboration with community teen artists. Summer 2017

This work explores the intersections of nostalagia and architecture as well as pride, vulnerability, and greed. More to come.

A mural memorializing Elroy Kern, a paratrooper and war hero from WWII, and his life.

Mural, for Elroy’s Deli Market, Fremont, OH. June 2017.

16 artists face off in a non-stop 3-Hour painting competition.

Battle of the Hands is an illustrative style battle of characters, line work, imagery, use of lettering, patterns, etc… all aimed towards the theme of the party: Botanical – anything related to the flora of life including: patterns, lettering, and imagery. Begun in Detroit, this is the first time Battle of the Hands will take place in Toledo. Artists from the Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio will create live for an audience, demonstrating the talents and generating excitement for the craft. The crowd will award prizes and get an opportunity to purchase the works.

STREET STAX is a project I started in 2016 using a rotating stack of forms to serve as a structure for collaboration, juxtaposition, and viewer interaction. This stack is a collaboration between myself and PHYBR (Ken Dushane III)

Mural, for Ohio Arts Council & WSOS, at Share & Care, Fremont, OH. Collaboration with community children and fathers. Summer 2016.

Portrait of Kathy Steingraber, at Adams & 13th St. Toledo, OH. Collaboration with Lindsay Williams. October-December 2015.

This is a narrative mural on the theme of pet rescue and adoption created for Doug Shelton and coordinated by Art Corner Toledo. The image is a continuous narrative consisting of 11 scenes and the repeated use of the same characters. This style is reminiscent of Egyptian pictographs and Trajan’s Column. The wall tells the story of a dog that loses it’s family and is aided by a stray cat. The story ends with the rescue of them both and the cat’s adoption.

Mural, for Art Corner Toledo, at Adams & 13th St. Toledo, OH. Fall 2015.

Mural, for Toledo Museum of Art and YAAW at The Arts Commission, Toledo, OH. Collaboration with teen apprentices. Summer 2014.

Five Murals for Starr & Main Mural Installation a project I co-coordinated through LeSo Gallery as a means to combat blight in the community. Located at Starr Ave. & Main St. Toledo, OH. Summer 2014. (This project has since been de-installed and the buildings have been renovated.)

The project included a memorial portrait of “Baby Elaina” a local girl who’s life and death affected many of the community. Collaboration with Amber LeFever