The local impact of NEA grant cancellations has been a mix of real financial damage, fear and uncertainty, along with tentative hope due to the timing of the cancellation, and the timelines of affected grants. The whole dynamic is complicated by the slow pace of bureaucracy, the requirement of matching funds, and the lag time for the period of activity […]
Read more
Mark Common paints landscapes almost exclusively, and he says in a statement on the wall at ArtiCle Gallery, “I sometimes derisively mock my work as just pretty pictures.” He adds, “on a certain level, I hope that is true.” And in fact it is, as you can see if you check out Mark Common – Oil Paintings at Article Gallery […]
Read more
Before 2025, Shawn Mishak’s most recent solo show took place at Brandt Gallery in 2008. So for the last decade and a half, Mishak has been best known for putting together exhibitions of other people’s work, especially at doubting thomas gallery—notably his multi-year project built around the classical elements, earth, air, fire, water, and spirit—and also for his long-running band, […]
Read more
Is there a crisis in art writing? Does the American Midwest need more art writing? More art criticism? And if so, why? For whom? And what roles do different types of art writing play? Curator and art historian Indra Lācis, PhD, has observed that urgency around the subject seems to come up every ten years or so. The rhythm may […]
Read more
Rita Montlack and Meryl Engler both work in print media, and the artists are presented as such at HEDGE Gallery, but they could hardly be more different. Montlack’s work is digital, while Engler’s is 100 percent analog; Montlack’s photo-based works are fully chromatic; Engler’s relief prints sometimes use just one color, and even the multi-color prints have a palate limited […]
Read more
At press time, it’s come to this: under a new White House administration, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has revised the guidelines for its primary grant program to say funding preference will be given to patriotic art, in the form of projects that “celebrate the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity by honoring” its 250th birthday, in 2026. […]
Read more
Buffalo artist Gary Wolfe met Cleveland artist John Sargent in 2012, when Sargent briefly lived in the Queen City. Both were involved with the Buffalo Society of Artists—an organization founded in 1891 to help advance the cause of artists in that part of the world. They got to know each other over the space of about six months, and kept […]
Read more
The excellent title of Harminder Judge’s exhibition, The Bootstrap Paradox (on view January 24 – June 1 at moCa Cleveland) might seem at this point in history to be an economic reference to the elusive American Dream. In this country we have the illusion that poor people can “lift themselves up by their bootstraps” and start companies, work hard, and […]
Read more
The Cleveland Institute of Art’s Love Is Resistance, which opened on Valentine’s Day at Transformer Station, is in a multitude of ways The Kind Of Show We Need Right Now. After a year with no visual art programming at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s West side exhibit space, after decades during which Cleveland artists have pined for any measure of […]
Read more
Donald Trump’s executive order terminating “diversity, equity, and inclusion discrimination in the federal workforce, and in federal contracting and spending” will have broad impact on the arts and culture. That begins with the National Endowment for the Arts’ recent announcement that, abiding the White House order, the Challenge America Grants program had been cancelled, and its funds re-allocated to support […]
Read more