Build It and They Will Come: Cleveland Print Room’s Property Inventory

Take the river of data that maps 163,000 parcels comprising the built environment of Cleveland. Add layers of interpretation from entities like the City of Cleveland, the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, and the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. Then introduce the shimmering catalyst of art to the mix, and explode the reality of place.

Welcome to the Cleveland Print Room’s Property Inventory, a year-long project exploring the intersection of the 2023 Cleveland Property Inventory assessment survey with fine art and documentary photography. Over the next year, seven photographers will stretch the frame of what it means to examine Cleveland’s built environment from an artist’s perspective. It is a project that hopes to move past tired recitations of redlining, white flight, and deindustrialization to present a human-centered conversation about neighborhood, place, and people in Cleveland through images and storytelling.

And it is a project with significant support: CPR’s Property Inventory is funded in part by a $100,000 Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a creative placemaking grants program integrating the arts into local, long-term, community building efforts, as well as support from the Ohio Arts Council and local and regional donors.

“The conversation around place in Cleveland—our relationships to it, the histories embedded in it, and the ways we engage with it–often falls flat,” says Kerry Davis, executive director of the Cleveland Print Room (CPR). “We know the horrifying data; we hear it a lot. So how do we create a deeper, more elevated conversation about where we live? We do not want just better pictures of people’s houses—the built environment has life because the built environment reflects relationships and people. We are all a part of what we are trying to fix.”

Davis saw the Our Town grant as an opportunity to have that conversation. In late 2022 (with the news that the ArtCraft building, their former home, would be renovated as a new Cleveland Police headquarters), the Print Room began working to find a new location, searching the local built environment for a space that would increase access and visibility, and allow for organizational growth. They found it– at 4730 Lexington Avenue– in 2024.

For The Property Inventory project, they engaged the City of Cleveland’s Department of Building and Housing, Western Reserve Land Conservancy, and Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative as advising partners to provide history, context, and data. The project relies on collaboration and co-creation artistically, as well as structurally. CPR chose Theodossis Issaias to help refine and define project parameters. Issaias is the curator at the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art; special faculty at Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture; and co-founder of Fatura Collaborative, an architecture and research collective. When Everlasting Plastics—the Cleveland-born exhibition at the US Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale, conceived and curated by SPACES then-director Tizziana Baldenebro and moCa curator Lauren Leving—traveled to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, he was the curator on the ground there.

Issaias joined Print Room staff members Orlando Caraballo, director of community outreach & public programs, and Jess Fijalkovich, organizing curator, to build the project framework, starting with choosing project photographers. An open call for artists in the summer of 2024 resulted in about sixty project applicants; a month-long review process by a small committee of curators and community partners narrowed down the cohort to these seven Cleveland-area-based artists:

Amber Ford: Winner, Emerging Artist, Cleveland Arts Prize, 2024. Ford describes her digital photography as “pair[ing] imagery and collaborative storytelling to showcase nuanced depictions of Black lives, and to build connections in community.” Her photojournalistic credits include The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR and more.

Jon Gott: An artist, curator, and educator who has created diverse works in sculpture, installation, drawing, performance, video, sound, and photography. He is the co-founder of SHED Projects in Cleveland and founding steward of French Quarter Postal, an experimental curatorial project in New Orleans.

Michael Indriolo: A Lebanese-American photographer specializing in people, found ephemera, and landscapes. “Making portraits showed me that we’re all figuring out who we are. As each of us untangles the threads of identity, I realized, we tie them together to weave the fabric of community.”

Da’Shaunae Marisa: A multidisciplinary artist exploring “the nuance of the connective threads between multiple generations and trauma.” Her work has been featured in National Geographic, The New York Times, Aperture, and Time, and she is a recent Google Image Equity Fellowship awardee.

Arfil Pajarillaga: A Filipino-American photographer who works primarily with analog photography processes. He uses photography, with its gestures of looking and framing, as a way to explore current narratives and challenge perspectives that arise from it. He also facilitates a film photography club focused on newcomers to analog photography.

Vivica Satterwhite: Working in both analog and digital media, Satterwhite’s work “reflects the beauty of life, from vibrant street scenes to intimate portraits, inviting viewers to connect with the stories behind each image. I aim to foster appreciation for the rich tapestry of cultures that shape our world.”

Alejandro Vergara: His interest in the built environment came out of his return to Cleveland after being away for four years, and noticing the changes in the landscape. “Since then, my goal has been to document the shifting and also stagnant terrains while finding quiet moments of introspection within them.”

This diverse group of photographers includes a range of ages, artistic styles and points of view, and includes photographers who are women and people of color, two groups who are often underrepresented in photography.

The CPR team got acquainted with the artists through studio visits in November and December 2024; the artists refined their project proposals with specific goals and areas of support needed, using a CPR-created questionnaire and the instruction “to dream.” In January, CPR convened the artists to meet one another and the entire CPR project team, reviewing all proposals, giving feedback, mapping what this alternative property inventory might look like, and identifying partners and neighborhoods to call on or establish relationships with.

“One of the main goals for this project is for these artists to feel like they are a part of a cohort,” says Caraballo. “We want to build a sense of community so those working in the project feel connected to each other and know that we have each other’s backs.”

Davis notes that the overarching project theme is loose, to allow artists the space to bring very different approaches. “Artists have something to say about things happening around them,” says Davis. “In a lot of places, people take that commentary seriously. I think this is another opportunity for artists to have their say—on what it is, not necessarily that something is good or bad.”

While both Caraballo and Davis stress that the Property Inventory project will evolve and be fluid in what it produces—from a gallery show, a catalog that includes the project’s process alongside essays and photographs, and artist talks, to more civic engagement that might include workshops featuring housing lawyers, lenders, and community resources—the seven artists are beginning with distinct paths:

Amber Ford: Showcase Cleveland churches as houses of worship and community anchors, focusing on Baptist, Lutheran, AME, Church of God in Christ, Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist and non-denominational churches.

Jon Gott: Create a piece of furniture designed in the form of the Cuyahoga River based on aerial maps, inviting visitors to add artifacts, and photographing this process for a larger atlas project.

Michael Indriolo: Explore the myths and perceptions of the Cuyahoga River, how these influence residents’ relationships with the river, and how the river builds social capital.

Da’Shaunae Marisa: Create a visual bridge to answer the question “can a community thrive without the individuals who make it up?” in the Harvard-Miles neighborhood and at a westside location.

Arfil Pajarillaga: Tell the story of community-led efforts, individuals, and organizations that seek to improve and/or reimagine systems in Cleveland while questioning the status quo and celebrating the nuances of the city.

Vivica Satterwhite: Honor local narratives of place—especially those overlooked stories that shape the essence of a neighborhood—through visual and auditory elements that explore the intricate relationships between environment, community, and personal experience.

Alejandro Vergara: Examine new housing and its architectural character, as well as give a visual representation of street trees/urban forestry efforts throughout Cleveland.

Davis paraphrases Issaias and blends their thoughts together in his hopes for what the project can explore: “How does an artist’s work improve homes? How could it prevent evictions? How do we start to use art as a way to invigorate those processes? And how do we bring together people who want to do something different? That’s where contemporary art is: blurring the lines between art, community, and culture. Remember, we do not live in a vacuum.”

Stay tuned for extraordinary results.

To see the interactive Arc/GIS StoryMaps of the 2023 Cleveland Property Inventory, visit the Western Reserve Land Conservancy’s website: wrlandconservancy.org and search for “2023 Property Inventory”