Cleveland is a city buoyed and inspired by a workforce of artists We have always contended that art is a part of public discourse, and not just the writing and conversation about art, but the art itself. It’s not merely decorative, though it can be. It is not merely promotional, though it can do that, too. Rather, by presenting the […]
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Commissioned in bulk, murals have recently proliferated around Cleveland At least one thing is happening very fast at City Hall: October 19, Mayor Frank Jackson’s office announced an extraordinary opportunity for a Cleveland artist—to help celebrate the tenth anniversary of our sister city relationship with Rouen, France, by traveling there to paint a large mural, eighty feet long by […]
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Each issue of CAN looks ahead to a new season, but this time we’ve got to take a minute to look back on what just happened in Northeast Ohio. The FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art is winding down. The inaugural CAN Triennial is behind us. Did Cleveland make you proud? In our view, the most important thing about […]
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Before the internet spread aerosol-painted, hip-hop style across the world, the word “graffiti” did not instantly conjure the wildly colorful, mural-sized graphics that all but define the term these days. Graffiti is as old as walls, of course, and its history is woven with diverse threads and intentions. A deeply informed exhibit at the Massillon Museum of Art explores one […]
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In the afternoon before the opening of Lakeland Community College’s May Show, the poster that would later greet visitors was covered in brown paper to keep the identity of the Best-In-Show winner a secret. During a walk around the galleries that afternoon, it was impossible to ignore Mark Giangaspero’s imposing pastel portrait in grays and blues, Altered Identity. The image […]
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MORE THAN A BORDER OF FLOWERS In April, William Busta brought to the CAN office a yellowed, newsprint tabloid we had never seen before. The Guide to Cleveland Art Week was published September 19, 1980. The occasion was a week-long celebration of art coordinated by NOVA—the New Organization for the Visual Arts—in cooperation with the Cleveland Press. The Guide offered […]
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“I always like to say I am a painter,” says Jen Omaitz, standing in her kitchen. She lives in Kent with her husband Steve Collier, and two large dogs—an Akita and an Alaskan Malamute—in a house surrounded by oaks and pines. Inside, there’s plenty of evidence of that medium: in addition to works by several other Northeast Ohio artists, the […]
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An artist’s residency, if it is defined by a finite (and, face it, usually short) period of time, can only have lasting impact if the community is engaged, and if relationships are formed, and if both the artist and the host community learn something in the process. Since last fall, we’ve been following the Madison Residents—a group of national, international, […]
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The number of artists who applied to the curated CAN Triennial exhibition was enormous, and the range of their experience and accomplishment, the diversity of their techniques and perspectives all were inspiring. We should not be surprised: this is emblematic of the energy and intensity visible every week in the Cleveland art scene. In all, curators William Busta, Angelica Pozo, […]
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When an object has the power to compel a closer look, it is almost always has something to do with the way in which it was made. Paintings draw us in not only with their content, but with their brush strokes. Prints cause us to consider the cuts in a wood block, the burr on the edge of a dry […]
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