At some point pop history will pick itself up and move beyond robots and rayguns, Mayberry, Dragnet, and the stylized, beaming consumption of toothpaste and toasters. But even in 2017 those cold war era tropes retain an oddly timeless value as currency of the imagination, embedded (however cynically or sarcastically) in the world marketplace of profit and power. Long outmoded […]
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“I like making art that makes people laugh,” says Grace Frank in her Lakewood studio, as I’m contemplating a painting of an ice cream cone lounging on a car. It’s great. Then she explains that it was a gift for her boyfriend, and is a self-portrait – inspired by their frequent trips to get ice cream. Even better. Frank has […]
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Katy Richards’ new work showcases her classic exuberance for the materiality of oils, as well as her obvious firsthand knowledge of her new waterlogged subjects. The paint oozes around the surface of the works, alive, about to swim off the canvas. The scale of Richards’ new work is impressive, with statement pieces like “Dance of the Butterfly” as large as […]
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I remember the first time I saw Amy Casey’s work. It was at the SPACES 30th Anniversary Exhibition back in 2008. I see a lot of shows, and I can barely remember my phone number sometimes, but Casey’s world left a lasting impression. It’s a world of towering buildings, houses stacked upon houses upon houses, buildings swinging in fishing nets, precarious and chaotic, […]
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In a time of crisis, the peoples of the world must rush to get to know each other. – José Martí, Cuban national hero Sometimes, the imaginable is so deeply entrenched and taken for granted that when the unimaginable finally does occur, it almost seemed inevitable. A week before Christmas in 2014, two sovereign presidents, each in televised fanfare from […]
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“Public Conscience,” now on display at Heights Arts, can be thought of as one of two things. First off, it can be conceptualized as a sampling of artistic opinion at the tail end of the grueling, 18-month 2016 general election campaign. Conceived of in October of last year, the selected works are meant to speak to “world issues, popular culture, […]
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BAYarts’ Annual Juried Exhibition, which opened earlier this month, is a great display of various approaches in artmaking and showcases how diligent work in the studio can really pay off. With over 250 pieces submitted, the guest jurors, Daniel Levin and Kristen Cliffel, had a lot to absorb and discuss leading up to their final selections. This collaborative process appears to […]
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For those with a soft spot for the 78th Street Studios , which once was home to American Greetings’ Creative Studios, it’s a particular treat to see “Creative Studios” splashed across the swanky new Crocker Park storefront of Gallery W. And crazier still is to see two of Lane Cooper’s works in the window, familiar faces welcoming the public into […]
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“It’s all about the stairs” said Corrie Slawson as I entered her lovely Cleveland Heights century home where both her studio and her printing outfit “Ping Pong Press” are located. I wasn’t sure what she meant about the stairs until she said, “So I think we should go top to bottom”. So off we went up two staircases to reach her […]
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One of the things people say in describing the magnificence of opera is that it combines all art forms. We think of it as a musical experience, and we remember the composers, but it is also visual, theatrical, dramatic, poetic, sometimes even including dance, and no single component delivers the whole experience. Esther Teichmann’s Heavy the Sea, on view now […]
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