PRESS
EN-RICH-MENT awards slate. Canton Repository, November 17, 2023. Vicki Boatright honored as outstanding artist – Vicki Boatright, who creates art under the name of BZTAT, is a longtime Canton-based painter who owns and operates BZTAT Studios, which recently relocated to Market Avenue S in downtown Canton.
Art boom at Canton’s south end. New Canton Creator Space features BZTAT, The CUT Cinema. Canton Repository, November 17, 2023. An old Studebaker showroom has been reborn as Canton Creator Space, a new artist workspace featuring an established studio and independent cinema…Canton Creator Space will introduce the south end to more people while extending First Friday festivities downtown…Boatright also hopes Canton Creator Space, located near the Hercules Apartments, helps establish an identity on Market Avenue S as the city’s “Southside.”
Canton Palace Theatre proposal would raze neighboring building and expand historic venue. Canton Repository, June 16, 2023. “I am a big fan of the Palace (Theatre), and I understand the organization’s desire for expansion,” said Boatright, who is also known by the artist name BZTAT. “I respect their need to grow in order to remain relevant in a very competitive entertainment environment. Even so, I have to take pause as I look at the big picture here. The buildings that they intend to raze for the expansion are not empty shells that are simply in the way. This is a community that is being eliminated, and regardless of the value of the expansion, that is a heavy cost.”
8 things to know about the yarn art in downtown Canton: Colorful display opens Friday. Canton Repository, June 1, 2023. Yarn art is decorating part of downtown Canton for the second summer in a row…Coordinated by Vicki Boatright, owner of BZTAT Studios on Sixth Street, the knitting and crocheting contingent includes a core of eight people, but as many as 20 contributors overall who donated the yarn and artwork. This year’s installation is named “Create the Possibilities Yarn Explosion.“If you can imagine it, you can create it,” Boatright said.
‘A show of exceptionality’: Massillon Museum features work of developmentally disabled. Canton Repository, August 25, 2022. Vicki Boatright, curator of the new exhibition, said the artists were mutually inspired to push each other in new directions creatively. “I think that people don’t recognize the depth and the value of the artwork that people who have disabilities, who look at life from a different point of view, what their work can represent, and it’s important,” she said…“It felt like a conversation,” Alex Coon, executive director of the Massillon Museum, said of the artists collaborating. “You can definitely tell there’s a relationship between the artwork. I get excited when I see artists who I am accustomed to working with for so many years … but they are pushing out and expressing themselves in different ways. The synergy is just evident, the pairings work − it’s exhilarating.” The exhibit proves that the work of outsider artists can “hang next to the artwork of anybody in this county and hold its own,” Boatright said.
What’s new at the Mu? MassMu features Artist to Artist exhibition. Massillon Independent, July 18, 2022. Vicki Boatright, a Just Imagine staff person and local artist known to the public as artist BZTAT, paired professional artists – Sarah Shumaker, Tim Eakin, Emily Vigil, BZTAT, Stephen Tornero, Tim Carmany, David Kuntzman, David Sherrill, Christopher Triner, and Laura Hollis – with Just Imagine artists. Each professional artist was asked to become familiar with the artwork of a paired Just Imagine artist, and each Just Imagine artist was encouraged to study the work of their paired professional. The artists then created artworks inspired by their paired artists’ work. The collaboration lead the artists to create imagery that has similar content, style, or technical approach.
BZTAT Studios opening in downtown Canton with artwork, photography, films. Canton Repository, FEBRUARY 10, 2022. Vicki Boatright isn’t a newcomer to the downtown Canton art scene. A popular painter known for depicting cats, she’s worked out of multiple studios and locations over the course of more than a decade. But through changes and the daunting challenges of the pandemic, Boatright’s passion for art has not waned. More proof is the opening of BZTAT Studios at 209 Sixth St. NW. Collaborators in the new art space are photographer Aimee Lambes and Neil Weakland, who is moving The CUT Cinema, a small theater specializing in independent films, from the former Vital Arts Gallery space to BZTAT Studios.
Downtown Canton artist has a feline focus. Canton Repository, November 2, 2017. Since June, Boatright has occupied the spacious front-window gallery space at downtown Canton’s Avenue Arts Marketplace (formerly 2nd April Galerie) at 324 Cleveland Ave. NW. The artist, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art from Marshall University in West Virginia, has lived since 2007 in Canton, where she’s had several BZTAT Studios in the downtown arts district. Here, she talks about herself and her art… “My main focus is on bright, colorful, whimsical contemporary folk art that’s mostly of pets. I have cats myself, so I often paint what I wake up staring at first thing in the morning. They’re always there and a willing subject….In my animal portraits, I like to capture that human-animal bond.”