We round out our fall into winter exhibitions with a solo retrospective for new Archived Artist George Kocar, and an exhibition Kocar has curated, Funny Stuff, based on his own personal collection of artworks by regional artists.

Funny Stuff includes painting, drawing, sculpture, mixed media and much more. The show explores distinct aspects of humorous art, from whimsical to dark, and ironic to plain silly. Artists in the show are Angela Oster, Justin Michael Will, Chuck Wimmer, Gary and Laura Dumm, Ron Hill, Victor Melaragno, Leslie Edwards Humez, T.P. Speer, Deborah Banyas, Gerry Shamray, Scott Pickering, Will Wilson, Laurel Herbold, Nina Vivian Huryn, Justin Brennan, Edward Raffel, Gwen Waight, Billy the Robot, Marvin Jones, Annie Becker, Donna Coleman, Pj Halliwill, Scott Kraynak, Pat Sandy, Eric Rippert, Gail Trunick, and Melissa Bollen.

George Kocar is an award-winning artist who has had over fifty solo shows and has been in over five hundred invitational and juried group shows, across the United States, and internationally in Paris and Tokyo. In addition to a lengthy career working for American Greetings, he was commissioned to do illustrations for Playboy, Esquire, The New York Times, and numerous other publications, and has work in many museum and private collections. Kocar’s work is distinctive, and highly recognizable. He uses his original cartoon imagery combined with art historical references, and a mash-up of styles, to make dark, satirical commentary on society, politics, and the general absurdity of life and people. He is an artist who draws or paints every day of his life, as is evidenced by his mad technical skills. His solo exhibition will feature works from the Archives permanent collection, combined with works on loan from the artist.
The Archives celebrates the art of printmaking in 2025. Continuing Conversations is an exhibition formed from the collaboration between AAWR and Baldwin Wallace College organized by Darlene Michitsch and Paul Jacklitch, with help from Print Club of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Exhibition Committee. It is curated around regional printmakers using techniques ranging from woodcut to intaglio, paired with works in dialogue from the AAWR permanent collection. A featured part of this exhibit recalls a past collaboration between AAWR and Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) that occurred during COVID in 2021 and 2022. Conceived by Associate Professor and Department Chair Maggie Denk-Leigh, and former Registrar Kelly Pontoni, the project included students printing restrikes from plates created by Archived Artist and CIA alum, Kestutis Kizevicius (1952–1997), known fondly as Kesty to his friends. A complete portfolio was produced and shared, and will be on display in Continuing Conversations.

Archived Artist and Master Printmaker Karen Beckwith ‘s work will be shown in Remnants, a retrospective look at her work over the years. Ten works from the Archives collection combined with more recent work will be on display. Beckwith is a contemporary artist and printmaker who utilizes her talent to uncover and define visual depths within everyday scenes. A self-identified truth-seeker, she uses her formidable technical mastery to uncover the deeper, often overlooked stories of everyday existence, by exploring spaces within urban and rural settings that manifest hints of inhabitants without revealing their identities. So too does her addition to the museum’s canon shine light on the historically underrecognized contributions of countless Queer artists to Ohio’s rich visual culture.

Beckwith is a CIA alum, class of 1987. In 1998, she became part of a premier group of printmakers who completed the Tamarind Institute Master Printer Apprenticeship. She has since grown into an accomplished and recognized artist, exhibiting widely within Northeast Ohio, as well as abroad in Russia, and Taiwan, where she has been gifted with several residencies. Her work is also within the permanent collections of Columbia College Chicago; Southeastern Graphics Council in Statesboro, Georgia; the Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque; Instituto Chileno Norteamericano in Santiago, Chile; the Fine Arts School in Bangalore, India; the BF Goodrich Corporation in Raleigh, North Carolina; the Cleveland Museum of Art; and the Progressive Art Collection in Cleveland.

ARTISTS ARCHIVES OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
1834 East 123rd Street
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
artistsarchives.org
216.721.9020

EVENTS:
Funny Stuff & George Kocar: Archived Artist Inaugural Solo Exhibition, through January 11, 2025

Art Bites—George Kocar Curator’s Talk, 1-2pm Saturday, November 23

Continuing Conversations: Regional Printmakers and Artists of the Archives of the Western Reserve, January 30–March 22, 2025

Karen Beckwith: Remnants, Inaugural Solo Exhibition as an Archived Artist, January 30–March 22, 2025. Opening reception 5:30-8pm Thursday, January 30, 2025

Artist Talks January 30–March 22, 2025, TBD. Please contact AAWR for dates & times