After decades of workmanlike progress in his career, the late Cleveland-based artist Michelangelo Lovelace had just begun to see his star rise: in 2018, Fort Gansevoort Gallery in New York presented his solo show, The Land. The Cleveland Museum of Art had acquired his painting, My Home Town. Then Lovelace was diagnosed with cancer in 2020, and passed away in […]
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Artists are most celebrated for their big shows at major institutions. Nonetheless, measured in terms of impact on the world, commercial artists and teachers give big names a run for the money. Commercial artists are the image makers who define the look of the world—from the way people are remembered in portraits to the way landscapes are perceived, to how […]
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“Two elder bohemians” is how Stephen Calhoun described himself and John Saile while introducing their exhibit, Luxuries of Being, which opened at Doubting Thomas Gallery June 14 and closes June 29. It’s a quickie, and the middle weekend of the short run was closed in response to Northeast Ohio’s sweltering heat, but you’ve got one weekend left to see their […]
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Arabella and I shared a studio in the Screw Factory for almost eight years. We met in 2004 at Capsule, a futuristic Lakewood bar with glossy white walls where her husband Ben DJ’d and she bartended. Their record label Elephant Stone had signed a band from Cleveland, so they decided to see what the north coast had to offer, moving […]
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A simple, well-told story is worth its weight in gold in this era of overwrought content creation. I’m sure there were prehistoric humans who wished the raconteur du jour would just get to the point already in his insufferably self-aggrandizing and lengthy tale about the big Sabertooth tiger he took down. As a writer I can fall into excess description […]
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After posing questions that the arts sector has faced for years, Cuyahoga County Council unanimously moved Tuesday night (June 4) to put before voters the option to replace the current cigarette tax for the arts. The third reading by County Council makes it official: the opportunity to approve or deny an increase from 1.5 cents to 3.5 cents per cigarette […]
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A group of artists and administrators stepped up to the microphone at Cleveland Heights City Council Monday night to plead the case for the Coventry PEACE Campus, a community hub in danger of closing because of a change in lease terms. Three members of the board of Cleveland Heights-University Heights Libraries also spoke. CPC and Heights Libraries, its landlord, have […]
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Shannon Morris’s current show greets visitors at the entrance to Artful Cleveland: as Mother’s Day approaches, she offers a heroic shrine of trophies stacked to form a pyramid that is both precarious and solid. Shannon, a long time estate sale and thrift shopper, renews the thrifted trophies in a way that reveals presence, strength, appreciation and joy. The word MOTHER is […]
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Here is the quantum of breath held upright before the exhale, here are the questions we all carry underneath: where does that hallway lead to, what’s beyond that door, who is here and who is not. Cincinnati-based artist Emil Robinson explores the graceful yet unsettling nature of inside spaces in his solo show, Interiors at Abattoir Gallery, on view until […]
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The Cuyahoga Arts and Culture board of directors answered a couple of questions that have hung over the public art funding agency for its recent history. In a unanimous roll call vote, the board approved a resolution to put a 3.5 cent per-cigarette tax before voters in November, for the first time committing to when the issue would be on […]
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