Staff photos / Andy Gray Jacob Harver, owner of the Knox Building, talks about a painting by Dylan Weaver, one of the living artists featured in the group show “Youngstown Art Legacy.”

YOUNGSTOWN — During his life, James Lepore was a champion of the arts in Youngstown.

It only makes sense that his memorial service would expand into an art exhibition celebrating “Youngstown Art Legacy.”

The exhibition, which runs 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday on the second and third floors of the Knox Building, will feature the work of Lepore and other area artists who’ve died in recent years — Al Bright, Frederick Molden, Scott Pergande, Sarena Polite, Maple Turner III and Chris Yambar.

Lepore died June 12 at age 93. His family decided to wait until December to have a memorial service to give friends and family plenty of time to attend but also so the family could spend one last Christmas at his home.

“He called it the house in the woods in Canfield,” his daughter, Michele Lepore-Hagan, said.

The Butler Institute of American Art was the perfect place for that memorial service.

“He would tell us stories about going to the Butler as a child and studying art. And he would talk about Joe Butler (the son of the museum’s founder),” Lepore-Hagan said. “He would be sitting downstairs and smoking cigars with the guys, and this was my father’s first experience with the world of art. It was so important to him … To him the Butler was, and is, very special.”

Jacob Harver, owner of the Knox Building, was approached because the family was looking for a place to gather following the memorial service.

“There also was an idea floating around,” Harver said. “My buddy, Jason Van Hoose, had mentioned we recently lost Maple Turner III, a great artist, and we were talking about doing a tribute to him as well. We kind of combined the ideas into doing a group show as a tribute to the artists we’ve lost recently and also featuring a lot of their friends and students. Jim Lepore was a professor at YSU, and he was an instructor of a lot of the people we feature in the show including Maple Turner and Frederick “The Count” Molden, who we also lost in the past couple of years.”

Lepore was living in California when Jon Naberezny invited him 64 years ago to come back home and teach at what was then Youngstown College.

“It was the golden age of the arts in our community,” Lepore-Hagan said. “A lot of people passed through his classes, all of their classes — Jim Lucas, Russ Maddick, Dick Mitchell, Al Bright, Jon Naberezny, Susan Russo, Mike Moseley. It was an incredible amount of people whose lives were changed and altered. They had careers they never thought they would have because they were influenced by this gang of artists. And my father was really one of the forefront leaders of it.”

Some of those artists have built national and international reputations, and many have remained in the Mahoning Valley. Living artists featured in the group show include Eric Alleman, Nicole Emery, Michael Green, Jimmy Lepore Hagan, Lezlie J. Morris, Jim Pernotto, Daniel Rauschenbach, Dylan Weaver and Van Hoose.

“It all kind of represents our arts community here in Youngstown,” Harver said. “We’ve all kind of worked together for a long time. YSU has been really important for fostering those relationships, and that’s what’s really heartbreaking about, in recent years, all the drastic cuts in arts programs at YSU.”

Harver said he left it up to the artists what they wanted to display.

“Lezlie Morris is currently reinstalling a maze she constructed for us for the 10-year anniversary show of having the building, and then she has a whole new installation as well,” he said. “Nicole Emery is bringing down a couple of new pieces. We really just leave it up to the artists. That’s what’s great about having this building is we have two floors dedicated to the show, so there’s plenty of space to leave the creative process to the artists and how they want to see their work portrayed.”

Lepore-Hagan said the family tried to give a broad representation of her father’s work.

“We wanted to get pieces from different eras, different periods of his process,” she said. “There’s some works from the early ’50s and then ’60s and then ’80s. The Butler Institute has a piece in their collection they’ll bring up.”

“Youngstown Art Legacy” is only planned to be open on Sunday, but Harver said those who can’t attend on Sunday but would like to see the exhibition can email him at jlh@knoxbuilding.com to schedule a viewing.