ARTIST OF THE MONTH — James Clum’s works includes a self portrait. -- Contributed

STEUBENVILLE — The Steubenville Art Association has named James Clum its Artist of the Month for December. Many of Clum’s works can be viewed at a showing at the Center of Music and Art in Wintersville throughout the remainder of the month. Gerald VanScyoc, art teacher at the CMA, is in charge of the show.

“James Clum ranks up there as one of the best artists ever seen in our area,” VanScyoc stated. “In addition to his talent, he has a powerful style all of his own. He is a master of artistic media.”

“Clum specializes in cityscape oil paintings, with his art exploring the fragile, shifting moments of urban life — those brief instants when strangers cross paths, light fractures across wet streets and the city becomes a blur of movement and memory,” VanScyoc continued. “His subjects are caught mid-stride, half-seen through reflections, dissolving into color and motion. The figures are rendered not as portraits … but through reflections, and as presences, commuters or passersby suspended between destinations. His use of blurred gesture and vivid atmospheric color evokes the sensation of viewing the city through a moving lens, intimate and anonymous.

“Neon reflections, mirrored storefronts and rain-slick pavements transform ordinary scenes into emotional landscapes, where identity feels fluid and time feels stretched,” VanScyoc added. “In his works, the city becomes a living organism of light, surfaces and fleeting encounters. He invites the viewer to enter this shifting world, to notice the moments we usually overlook and to recognize ourselves within the blur.”

Clum is a trustee of the SAA, a member of the Top of West Virginia Arts Council and the Pittsburgh Society of Artists and member of the Summit Art Gallery group. He graduated from Otis School of Art and Design. His art has been exhibited in several juried shows, including the Midyear Exhibition at the Butler Institute of Art. Clum has given several workshops for his fellow local artists during his free time.

He is open to taking commissions for any kind of art, including portraits. Much of the art is for sale and the community is encouraged to stop in the CMA to view the show before the end of the month. His works can be viewed from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.