Michael Weil’s recent photographs of Lake View Cemetery remind me of Alvin Langdon Coburn’s 1917 comparison of photography and “black magic,” but not exactly because Weil’s pictures were taken at night and include a great deal of black. Coburn made this connection to introduce his “Vortographs,” some of the first photographs ever conceived as abstract art. In a period of […]
Read more
A typical photography exhibition features pictures taken by a professional, or a group of them. What happens when you give disposable cameras to everyday people and a few pros? The answer has been brought to life in an exhibition at the East Cleveland Public Library, thanks to LYLESART. The Artography Cleveland Street Photography Project is the brainchild of artist Julius […]
Read more
In 1858 the French photographer Nadar did the unthinkable – using a hot air balloon, he took a camera up above Paris and shot the very first aerial photographs. Photography itself was only a few years old, and already someone was attempting to capture images of the world from high above. Anyone that has ever flown in an airplane has […]
Read more
Two paintings in Eileen Dorsey’s Cleveland Botanical Garden exhibition Wooded Perspectives share the title “Breakthrough.” On one level, the word names the literal contents of those images—the spot where a hiker in thick forests suddenly steps into an open field, “breaking through” the claustrophobia of thick trees. But “breakthrough” also encapsulates an apt response to Wooded Perspectives itself. Here, Dorsey […]
Read more
Every year the Sculpture Center holds a Juried Exhibition dedicated to small sculpture, called “After the Pedestal”. The rules require that each work be smaller than 3 x 3 x 3 ft., all dimensions added together. Initially I found it odd that a separate show is required to feature diminutive objects, but if you do a bit of digging, you begin […]
Read more
Some artists plow the same fields over and over, as it were, working in a given medium for entire careers. That can’t be said of Eric Rippert, whose show The Man Whose Head Expanded was on view June 7 through July 6 at BAYarts. A lot of people know Rippert for his photographic work, specifically for Cleveland landscape photos featuring […]
Read more
Liz Maugans, known over the past twenty five years as a power-house of inspiration and sustained effort behind the developing Cleveland arts scene, is also one of the region’s most admired visual artists. Her prints, collages, and drawings document her commitment to personal freedom and the complex emotional and cognitive problems of life in our times – as a […]
Read more
The exhibition Forever Spring by Gary Bukovnik coincides with the release of a luscious book of the same name. Both the show and book celebrate Bukovnik’s watercolor images of floral arrangements. Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Bukovnik is currently based out of San Francisco. For more than three decades, he has painted posters for that city’s symphony. However, he […]
Read more
Gallery W might not be on your radar, but it should be. For nearly three years, this large space in the ground floor of the new American Greetings Corporate Headquarters at Crocker Park has held many truly excellent exhibitions, featuring work by prominent area artists like Jenniffer Omaitz, Corrie Slawson, Libby Chaney, Eva Kwong, Eric Rippert, Christi Birchfield, Bruce Checefsky, and […]
Read more
The photo exhibit A Collection of Stories, which was up at the Cleveland Print Room May 31-June 14, was divided into 7 titled sections. You could say it was like looking at the subject from seven different angles, in a Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen-Ways-Of-Looking-At-A-Blackbird” kind of way: the content and intention of each section were unified, but distinct, like seven […]
Read more