Henry Adams, PhD, Author at Collective Arts Network - CAN Journal

Julian Stanczak: Voices Fashioned from Light–Two new books examine the life and work of an under-appreciated Clevelander

Julian Stanczak—surely Cleveland’s greatest living artist–presents a notable case of a painter who is at once famous and unknown—indeed, curiously unknown, even in his home town. He originally burst onto the national scene in 1964, when the New York art dealer Martha Jackson staged a show of his “Optical Paintings” and the artist/art critic Donald Judd shortened the phrase to […]

4(1) Spring 2015

Brave New World: The Changing Landscape of Support for Artists

Henry Adams, PhD

Cleveland ranks very high nationally in its support for the arts—including for individual artists. Only one or two other cities in the United States offer a similar level of support. For individual artists it comes through the Creative Work Force Fellowship Program, which since 2009 has distributed grants of $20,000 to 20 artists, writers, and performers, each year. But that […]

3(4) Winter 2014/2015

Damaged by Hand: Five years after his last solo show in Northeast Ohio, the Akron Art Museum presents a new look at Christopher Pekoc

Henry Adams, PhD

Christopher Pekoc was a high school misfit. Art was his salvation. Today his studio is in an almost windowless basement in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland. It’s filled with industrial file cabinets he salvaged from a store that failed. The drawers are stuffed with photographs that he has taken, clippings from magazines, sheets of unusual paper. He has tools […]

3(3) Fall 2014

Corcoran Fine Arts Presents Richard Sedlon (1900-1992): Painter of Dreams and Pookas

Henry Adams, PhD

In his later years, with his white beard and twinkling eyes, and picturesque wine-colored velvet jacket, the painter Richard Sedlon became a much-loved local character in Bedford, Ohio, where he lived with his wife Anne in the historic Hezeikiah Dunham House, dating from 1832, which is now the property of the Bedford Historical Society. In the back of his house […]

3(2) Summer 2014

Mission Driven: Why won’t the Cleveland Museum of Art bring back the May Show?

Henry Adams, PhD Leave a comment

During a recent lunchtime talk at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Fred Bidwell, acting director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, told the crowd that the museum’s May Show—the display of art made in Cleveland and the surrounding region, last presented in 1993—”won’t come back.” “It’s just not part of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s mission,” Bidwell said. For those who don’t remember, the May […]

3(1) Spring 2014

A Life Cut Short: Edwin Kaufman, 1906-1939

Henry Adams, PhD

Cleveland painter and print maker Edwin Kaufman was just 32 years old, and had already exhibited his work in several May Shows and established himself in New York when he died in a bridge collapse in 1939. CAN Journal recently heard from his sister, Bernice LePan, of Los Angeles, who is looking for a home for her collection of his […]

2(4) Winter 2013/2014

Finding a Place for Hart Crane

Henry Adams, PhD

The placement of public sculpture often says as much as the sculpture itself–rather in the way that the position of people in family snapshots can say a lot about their degree of friendship and their respective roles. A fascinating instance of this is the sculpture of the poet Hart Crane by the late Bill McVey (1904-1995) that stands beside […]

2(2) Summer 2013

WITH ALL DUE RESPECT: Cleveland-based Op-Art pioneer Julian Stanczak should have an honorary doctorate

Henry Adams, PhD

Recently the internationally acclaimed master of Op Art, Julian Stanczak, who has lived and worked for the last forty years in Cleveland, was nominated for an honorary doctoral degree from Case Western Reserve University. We can’t think of a painter who has ever received this award. The man responsible for this initiative is Richard Hanson, istinguished Professor of Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University, and the world’s […]

2(1) Spring 2013

MOCA and the Dome of Heaven

Henry Adams, PhD

A museum of contemporary art should catch one’s eye. Appropriately, then, one’s first reaction on seeing Farshid Moussavi’s new museum of contemporary art for Cleveland is: “What’s that?” With its unusual angles sheathed in dark, mirror-like stainless steel, one might well suppose that it’s not a building at all, but a piece of abstract sculpture. It’s hard not be provoked and intrigued, and it’s hard not to want […]

1(4) Winter 2012/2013

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