Ohio Now: The State of Nature

The idea that Ohio’s art scene looks to New York for validation has some sad truth, but sometimes Ohio brings both the spark and the fuel, and New York is just the place where they meet. Such was the case for an upcoming exhibition at moCa Cleveland, which was conceived during a conversation at Frieze—the international contemporary art fair that draws dealers like Gagosian, Pace Gallery, and Hauser & Wirth, among others, from all over the world. Two museum directors from Ohio reconnected while sitting in the lounge there in May of 2023, when they began to talk about their organizations working together on an exhibition. The directors—Megan Lykins Reich, of moCa Cleveland, and Christina Vassallo, of the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati—had of course crossed paths before. Vassallo was director at SPACES from 2014 to 2019, when she left Cleveland to lead the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. At that time, Reich was deputy director of moCa Cleveland. But when they reconnected, Reich had been promoted to executive director, and Vassallo had taken a new job as executive director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati: two women with Cleveland in common, now leading major contemporary art centers, in opposite corners of the state.

Very quickly after they began talking about putting together a show, Ohio became its subject. So together they built Ohio Now: State of Nature, which ran from May to September at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, and opens a Spring 2026 run at moCa Cleveland on January 30. It’s a group show highlighting current practice of artists from around the state, curated by the state’s two largest contemporary art exhibitors, who probably don’t get enough credit for their attention to artists who live here.

Ohio’s natural and unnatural landscape offers plenty of complexity for inspiration. The wide-open spaces are dominated by farmland, and farming and food processing are major industries here. On one hand, the land is a source of sustenance. But the way it is used can also be destructive, as when fertilizer runoff has made the water of western Lake Erie undrinkable. Likewise, by fracking and other mining operations, miners work to sustain their families, and mining companies to provide energy—but the process strips the land and causes horrible damage. And Ohio’s post-industrial cities struggle against sprawl, vacancy and poverty, the result of which is a whole other set of land issues and possibilities—including urban farms. The state of nature in Ohio can be a source of pride, optimism, and alarm. It’s a theme that allows for a broad range of perspectives and ideas.

The Cleveland connections involved in building the show extend beyond Reich and Vassallo. Northeast Ohio native DJ Hellerman—who earned his MA in art history from Case Western Reserve University and worked at the Progressive Collection here—held curatorial positions in Georgia; Syracuse, New York; and Burlington, Vermont before Vassallo hired him to work at the Fiber Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. He returned to Cleveland when Reich hired him as moCa’s senior curator. Similarly, Theresa Bembnister had already been an intern at moCa before she became curator at the Akron Art Museum, then at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, when Vassallo hired her to take that role at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. The four tapped their contacts for curatorial connections around the state to find artists whose work related to the theme.

There was no call for artists. “Each of us brought our ideas” for artists who fit, Reich says. “We had a theme that was broad enough to allow for a variety of practices and intentions. We were all looking around at who was doing what. Part of the process was us reaching out to other curators around the state to get ideas for artists we might not have known about. Theresa was the glue that kept all our lists together to decide when and who can do studio visits. Our goal was to meet in person with as many of the artists as possible.”

In the end they chose fifteen artists and collectives—nine from Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, and the rest from Bowling Green, Akron, Oberlin, Dayton, Ravenna, and Athens. They include Catherine Clements (Bowling Green), Avery Mags Duff (Akron), Myles Dunigan (Oberlin), Tina Gutierrez (Cincinnati), Brian Harnetty (Columbus), Desert Kitchen Collective: Glenna Jennings, Jalisa Robinson & Friends (Dayton), Keith Lemley (Ravenna), Celeste Malvar-Stewart (Columbus), Lori Nix & Kathleen Gerber (Cleveland), Elena Osterwalder (Columbus), Tony Williams / Praxis Fiber Workshop (Cleveland), John Sabraw (Athens), Charmaine Spencer (Cleveland), Supermrin (Cincinnati), and Amy Youngs (Columbus).

The resulting show, as seen in Cincinnati, is a powerful exploration of relationships to, concerns and ideas about Ohio’s land. Considering a few of the artists shows the diversity perspectives and approaches.

John Sabraw, for example—professor and chair of the Painting and Drawing program at Ohio University in Athens—strives toward a sustainable practice in his abstract paintings. Toward that end he paints using pigment he and collaborators have extracted from toxic acid mine drainage  from polluted streams. Removing toxicity to create pigment and returning clean water to the streams has become a significant enterprise, including a line of pigments available for sale.

Vassallo described how she chose Cincinnati artist Tina Gutierrez, who is known for commercial portraiture, including of musicians of the Cincinnati Symphony, and also underwater photos of ballet dancers. “I happened to be at an artist talk with her, and as an offhanded remark she mentioned she was working on a series of photos of urban farmers who are refugees, and I thought this is perfect. The world was not yet aware that she was working on this series.”

Akron-based painter Avery Mags Duff is an urban farmer, managing gardens for the nonprofit Lets Grow Akron three seasons a year. While their art has for years depicted trees and other natural things in the city—art that “deepens their relationship with plants and their own body”—their paintings for Ohio Now are Duff’s first to directly depict farming—long rows of kale, a fenced field of corn, a gardener tending a varied plot.

Oberlin-based Myles Dunigan’s work is often dark, with his After World series—including Shelter, which is in Ohio Now—incorporating items that are, in his own words, “commonly referenced in Doomsday Prepper circles.” Shelter takes the form of a makeshift pup tent, a canvas stretched with cords and anchored by blocks of concrete, and covered in a camouflage of inkjet print, charcoal, and ink, including torn images of signs that warn against trespassing due to contamination of the soil and water. It has a “real, dystopian feel,” Vassallo says.

A few of the works in the show have already been seen in or near Cleveland, though their installation in different context will change the experience of seeing them. Charmaine Spencer’s Amendment (2018) was first installed on the exterior southeast corner of 78th Street Studios building as a part of CAN Triennial. Its title refers to soil amendment, which is the addition of organic matter to soil as a way to improve it. It’s acknowledgement that the sculpture—made from driftwood, clay, soil and jute—will decay.

And Airing your dirty laundry –a monumental work in fiber dyed with locally grown indigo, created by Cleveland-based Tony Williams and collaborators from Praxis Fiber Workshop–hung like the Jolly Green Giant’s blue jeans from the Detroit Superior Bridge during the events marking the fiftieth anniversary of the infamous fire on the Cuyahoga River, in 2019. It was an enormous group project, beginning with Praxis’s indigo farming on reclaimed vacant lots near the fiber shop, and continuing with the crowd-sourced dyeing of hundreds of towel-sized panels that make up the sixty-by-fifteen foot work. Created for the Cleveland Foundation’s Waterways to Waterways Creative Fusion cohort, it was made from 1500 cotton blocks, applied with Adinkra symbols in public workshops at Praxis.

Throughout the exhibition, some of the artists offer work that celebrates reclamation or actually does that work at some level, while others sound the alarm over problems, and still others do both.

“I think we unfairly turn to artists for this optimistic reading or interpretations,” says Christina Vassallo. “They are humans like everybody else. They are affected by all these changes. On one hand we have climate change deniers, and on other we have people working tirelessly, advocates who are relentless.”

Apart from the content of the show, the structure of its concept—a collaboration by major contemporary art centers in different cities—addresses some of the most important and persistent needs in the Great Lakes and Midwestern art sector. Chief among those are the need to make connections outside of individual cities between curators, artists and audiences; and the need to knit together a broader, regional marketplace for art and ideas. Just as Artists Archives of the Western Reserve did earlier in 2025 with the Buffalo, New York-based Burchfield Penney Art Center, bringing the two regions on the Lake Erie shore together for Common Currents, Ohio Now: The State of Nature helps the region flex and build its creative muscle.

Of course moCa Cleveland has a history of regional shows, but those were not created in curatorial partnerships with other organizations, and didn’t travel. And since 2020, moCa has worked with local collaborators to engage diverse communities, such as the curatorial residency of the Museum of Creative Human Arts, and an engagement with Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center, both of which highlighted Cleveland-based artists. But Ohio Now is different. This is a show created with curators at another major contemporary art center 200 miles away. It’s a show that will introduce both cities’ audiences to artists of the other, and from around the state as it travels between the two venues. Both Reich and Vassallo say the collaboration will continue “as a triennial kind of thing,” and in Reich’s words, “to elevate our relationship.” Vassallo talks about collaboration between organizations as a strategy for solidarity and sustainability.

Audiences, artists, curators in other cities like Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo and Pittsburgh, and the funders in those cities all should be paying attention.

Ohio Now: The State of Nature

January 30–August 2, 2026
moCa Cleveland
Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio

May 2–September 7, 2025
Contemporary Art Center
44 East 6th Street
Cincinnati, Ohio