This issue of CAN marks the beginning of our sixth year. Depending on when you start counting, our fifth anniversary is either just about to happen, or came sometime during the last six months. On this occasion, we can’t help explore who we are, and why we are here. And in light of the national and international political climate, with […]
Read more
Wednesday morning—a few hours before about 60 artists would gather at the Happy Dog’s Euclid Tavern location to talk about Cuyahoga Arts and Culture’s individual artist grants–Zygote Press director Liz Maugans asked me what was my greatest concern about the controversy at hand. For those who have not been following, the controversy is over a proposed new direction for CAC’s […]
Read more
Maybe no two words have more in common while meaning completely different things than “art” and “design.” Artists and designers share many of the same technical skills. Both are likely adept at using color, drawing, manipulating materials, and maybe even using a sharp knife. Trained artists and designers may take many of the same classes to learn their trade, and […]
Read more
The first time I saw Jimmy Kuehnle, I bumped into him literally, but we didn’t meet. We were at the same party in 2011, the Cleveland Urban Design Center’s Hipp Deck, which was on the top level of a downtown parking garage, at East 9th and Euclid. This was as hard and gray as an urban landscape gets–a concrete floor […]
Read more
By now, thanks to USA today and multiple other news outlets, tens of thousands of people across the country have read that Loren Naji’s “Emoh” is named for the word “home” spelled backwards. And they know Naji’s intent by living for a few weeks in his eight-foot sphere–cobbled together with debris collected from abandoned homes in Cleveland and Detroit– is to […]
Read more
The recent announcement that FRONT Festival will take place in Cleveland (July 7 – September 30, 2018) is not just the promise of another festival, but one that looks beyond our beloved region, outward to the world. It gathers a dozen mid-sized to major institutions, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, as presenters of work curated by Jens Hoffmann (who […]
Read more
When we talk about race in Cleveland, conversation runs quickly toward headline stories, especially of white police officers and Black men or boys. Thanks to a couple of high profile shootings and the way the justice system responded, the city had a major role in the national discussion of race-related violence in 2015. That was the context in which I […]
Read more
And the voices keep coming – Throughout Cleveland’s history our cultural legacy has been built by people from around the globe. From the dozens of immigrant nationalities that designed, sculpted, and maintain the cultural gardens of Rockefeller Park, to the music performed at Severance Hall, to the Asian collection and the rest of the vast holdings of the […]
Read more
Maybe this is a good time to talk. Just over 75 percent of the people who cast ballots in Cuyahoga County in November voted in favor of renewed public support of the arts and culture through its 30 cent per pack tax on cigarettes. That’s an overwhelming number. And a few months earlier, when the County Council discussed putting the […]
Read more
Nothing could be more emblematic of the churn on Cleveland’s art-walking scene than the coincidence of the Little Italy and Tremont art walks one Friday in October. Both neighborhoods once were the edgy hot spots of the Cleveland art scene. Each of them once defined the term “Art Walk” in Cleveland, and together they are responsible for establishing here the idea that artists […]
Read more