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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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“It’s kind of like I’m a human seismograph, and I capture the instantaneous spirit of the motion,” artist Robert Wright said, responding to a question about how different types of dance affect his work. But even if it is inspired by dance, and represent its movements, and is actually inseparable from it, what the painter does is not dance notation. […]
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If art is a way of understanding the world, or about revealing the world anew, then it has to be about crossing lines, adventuring into the unknown. That means reaching across cultures, and it’s never been more important than now. The exhibit Womanism–works of Nana Kwesi Agyare-Ansah, on view at East Avenue Gallery in Akron—is like that. Nana is grom […]
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It was perhaps an hour after leaving George Kocar: A Retrospective, on view at Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, that I saw one of the artist’s best-known works silk screened on a T-shirt, worn by someone who didn’t know Kocar’s name. The art was the old Cleveland: You Gotta Be Tough graphic, featuring Cleveland’s skyline in the year of […]
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It’s become CAN’s holiday tradition in the second half of December to let you know which of our stories were the most-read in the last year. In 2024, money and the art world version of “hard news” dominate the list. That’s a stark contrast to 2023’s list, when highlights included Erin O’Brien’s report on artists painting recycled wind turbine blades […]
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[NOTE: This is a dated post; for this year’s date and time, check current listings.] Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night is a Christmas-adjacent, strolling musical performance that combines December festivity, the need for community and tradition, with an aesthetic and rules that accommodate the changing times. New-York-based / Cleveland-born artist Andrew Ratcliff has hosted performances in Tremont since 2021, and will […]
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Against all odds, taking no commissions, and without a website, set hours, or staff, doubting thomas art and free verse space is almost a quarter century old. No commission. No website. No set hours, and no staff to keep them. Artists on the edge of homelessness sometimes sleeping on the church pew. “Expect miracles” has become a mantra for the […]
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This essay was written for The HeArt of Cleveland, Volume II, an anthology of art and writing organized and published by Scott Kraynak, and surveying the creative scene in Cleveland. It’s published with permission. The HeArt of Cleveland, Volume II debuts in November at HEDGE Gallery, with an exhibition of works by artists who contributed to images and text to […]
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