Joe Imel/Daily News

When Spencers Coffee House on College Street opens early Tuesday morning, those in search of a hot cup of joe will also get a feast for the eyes. Photographs, paintings and other works of art will adorn the walls of the shop in the name of late Bowling Green Commissioner Mark Oval Black, who died last year from complications of meningitis. The Mark Oval Black Juried Art Exhibition is being sponsored by the International Festival, which will be held in downtown Bowling Green on Sept. 21.We feel its an honor that (exhibit organizer Andee Rudloff) wanted to have it here, said Jean Murzy, who co-owns Spencers with her husband, Paul, her daughter, Tara, and Taras husband, Jeff Leake, an adjunct art professor at Western Kentucky University. Leake and Rudloff will be hanging choice exhibit entries at Spencers Monday morning. Jurors Landry Butler, a Nashville artist, Miranda Pederson, a Daily News photographer, and John Oakes, a professor of art at WKU, will be jurying entries tonight. We wont be able to fit everybody in, Leake said. More than 80 artists had contacted Rudloff by Thursday night to say they planned to enter the contest by the end of the 4 p.m. deadline today. Rudloff credits information on the International Festival Web site with getting the word out about the exhibition to artists from all walks of life. Ive gotten e-mails, phone calls and some of the people Ive gotten e-mails from are people who barely speak English, she said. Its something Black would have liked. For three years he chaired (the International Festival), Rudloff said of her friend. And he was pretty involved in it even prior to that. Blacks death at age 34 shocked citizens in Bowling Green. The day I found out I was driving to North Warren Elementary to do an artist-in-residence (job) and I heard it on the radio, said Rudloff, who for years has created the International Festival mural on the side of a Park Row building. My heart sank. Now, I really feel his energy working. When Rudloff told workers at arts businesses in Bowling Green about a reception for the Mark Oval Black exhibition Sept. 20 at Spencers, they agreed to stay open that evening for an arts tour. Pots Place, Lot 916, The Capitol Arts Center, The Boomerang and a new studio opened on 12th Street by Bowling Green artist Marsha Heidbrink will be open to the public that night. Its going to be a big arts night, Rudloff said. Leake thinks the evening will help bring awareness to the arts and new artists in Bowling Green. Hes been trying to do the same since Spencers opened last year by hanging a different exhibit in the coffee house each month. Im an artist myself and (helping other artists) is something I enjoy doing, he said. Spencers is not charging the International Festival for the exhibit reception or gallery space. Its so good to see all the arts businesses come together, Rudloff said. And its even better because its in the name of Mark, a person who could organize the impossible.