HOWLAND TOWNSHIP, Ohio – Movie props designer John Zabrucky said he was pleased to see items he designed for films and television over four decades on display.
“Sci-Fi + Hollywood: the Art of John Zabrucky,” which opens this weekend at the Medici Museum of Art, will feature props the Warren native and founder of Modern Props provided for films such as “Men in Black,” the “Star Trek” franchise, “Total Recall,” “RoboCop and various superhero films and television shows.
“I think they did a phenomenal job,” Zabrucky said. “Compositionally, each room is about as perfect as could be, and the pieces work in the room. The lighting is fantastic. I think if you live in this area, you’re very lucky to have a museum like this.”
Zabrucky, who donated 13 truckloads of movie props to the Trumbull County Historical Society in 2023, met with area media outlets Thursday to preview the exhibit based on his works, which date back to the early 1980s. The props will serve as the core of the exhibits for the Museum of Science Fiction and Fantasy Arts, which the historical society is developing.
“If you know anything about props in a given movie, if the prop lasts the length of the movie, you’re very lucky,” Zabrucky said. He decided he would design props that would “last a minimum of 20 years of abuse, and most of everything you’re looking at is over 40 years old,” he added.
The exhibit at the Medici came about as TCHS was planning a traveling exhibit with the props, said Ryan MacLennan, the historical society’s director of operations and outreach. Around the same time, the Medici was transitioning from its display of paintings by Norman Rockwell. About 90 items are on display as part of the exhibit.
“At the end of the day, it became a perfect marriage,” MacLennan said.
“There’s something incredible and fascinating about everything here,” said Alex Jesko, Medici exhibit curator. “It was so fun just going around and picking out things that I wanted to showcase.”
One piece stands out to Zabrucki among the various props he has created over the years: the item known as “the Most Important Device in the Universe,” a prop that has appeared in more than 200 movies and TV shows, including the “Star Trek” TV and film franchises, and was listed in the 2024 Guinness book of World Records.
“I don’t know what it is that resonated with a lot of art directors and directors,” he said.
Katelyn Amendolara-Russo, Medici’s director, said she was excited to have such a “nontraditional art display” at the museum.
“We’ve had such a great time working with the props, seeing the art behind and the intricacies behind John’s work,” she said. “My hope is families, children and people in the community come in to visit Medici and are inspired to see such a nontraditional career path within the creative arts from the show.”
The exhibit represents the first time MacLennan is aware of that the props have been displayed in an Ohio museum on a large scale. “So it’s a really wonderful opportunity, not only for them to be seen aesthetically, but to put them in a context and then also promote what we’re trying to build in Warren, Ohio,” he said.
TCHS has adopted a business plan and undertaken a logo design for the proposed museum, and is in the early stages of a fundraising campaign, he said. The city purchased a building in Warren for the museum in 2024, and the hope is to open the museum in the next three to five years.
“It’s really moving along right on track, and we’re really, really optimistic about its future.”
Zabrucky shared how he began his career after witnessing a prop begin to smoke and collapse during a visit to a studio set. A producer on set that day witnessed his amused reaction and challenged him to do better.
“I simply said, ‘Listen, while I’m sleeping I can do better than that,’” he recalled.
He hadn’t been expected to attend Thursday’s preview because his home is in the Pacific Palisades, which has been engulfed in a massive wildfire over the past few weeks. He and other residents of the area were escorted to the area to enter their homes briefly to reclaim medical supplies or other essentials.
“I can’t even explain it to you,” he said. Seeing the area was like seeing photographs of the Blitz in London or bombed-out Germany and Japan.
Also opening this weekend is a collection of works by painter Alex Garant, a native of Quebec who now lives in Canfield. Garant’s style, which she describes as figurative optical illusion art, is “a bit of a mix of traditional portraits and also what would be considered glitch art these days,” she said.
Following a heart attack more than a decade ago, her art became “all about finding a way to express my search for myself,” she continued. “So who am I? Who is my inner self? What is my outer persona?”
Amendolara-Russo and Garant both see the painter’s show and the props exhibit as complementary to each other.
“I’ve seen her work displayed in various galleries around the world and in magazines,” Amendolara-Russo said. When she met Garant locally, she thought her pioneering optical figurative portraiture style would marry well with Zabrucky’s pioneering work, which influenced a whole genre of Hollywood films.
“It just went so well together to exhibit side by side,” she said.
The exhibits are “a great compliment to one another” because both “bring a lot of attention, and they also trigger a lot of conversations,” Garant said.
MacLennan said one of the reasons for staging the exhibit at the Medici was it is an art museum.
“It’s a really wonderful setting to appreciate his works as works of art. And the other thing is just how creative these pieces are,” he said. Zabrucky, in many ways, “helped shape what we think things would look like in the future.”
Pictured at top: Ryan MacLennan, John Zabrucky and Alex Jesco.