Gene Kangas

Gene was a star track athlete at Fairport Harding High School, winning the State Hurdles championship in 1961 and 1962. He was fourth as a sophomore in 1960. He was also MVP of Fairport’s basketball team and an all-conference NEC football player.

Gene graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. While at Miami he earned a fourth-place finish in the NCAA indoor hurdle championships held in Louisville, Kentucky and a third place in the Central Collegiate championships at Notre Dame University beating out reigning Big 10 and Mid-American champions.

Immediately after receiving a Fine Arts master's degree from Bowling Green State University, he was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship. Gene was a university art professor for 32 years, becoming a nationally recognized artist, lecturer, writer and researcher at both the University of North Carolina and at Cleveland State University. He has written five books, about a dozen exhibition catalogs and over two hundred published articles. Since 1977, Gene has received numerous significant public art commissions throughout Ohio and beyond.

He was also a famous local artist and designer and first director of the Finnish Heritage Museum located in Fairport. He designed the Finnish Monument in Fairport’s main park area and wrote an original poem engraved on the granite sculpture.