Small Piece, Big History: Last, by Tony Smith

  Gray’s Auctioneers will offer up a host of modern and contemporary art for its upcoming auction, including a unique little sculpture loaded with big local history. In November 1979, Clevelanders watched on as a dynamic public art installation rose before the new Frank J. Lausche State Office Building on the corner of West 6th Street and Superior. While a […]

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Into the Third Dimension: Unknown Terrains at the Morgan Conservatory

The Morgan Conservatory’s mission is the preservation and advancement of “the ancient art of papermaking.”  That mission is well-served by its exhibition opening this week, Unknown Terrain. Breaking preconceptions about paper in the fine arts, the Morgan’s show hosts more than a half dozen large installation made entirely or primarily out of paper. Paper is most often treated as a […]

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A Short History of Time: Matthew Gallagher at HEDGE

“This is a sculpture show,” Matthew Gallagher says of his mini-retrospective exhibit at Hedge Gallery. “Everything is sculpture. There’s no such thing as the second dimension.” He insists on this point (which is perhaps debatable – literally a matter of perspective) because much of what he does as an artist ends up hanging on a wall, yet is more akin […]

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Speech acts: Jonas Sebura and Anthony Warnick at the Sculpture Center

What powers do words have? In a pair of exhibitions now ongoing at The Sculpture Center, Jonas Sebura and Anthony Warnick conduct two very different investigations of this question. Sebura looks at early efforts to manipulate reality directly through ritual and speech in the form of spells, incantations, curses, and prayers. Warnick uses the insights of philosophy of language to […]

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Giancarlo Calicchia at Tregoning & Co: Re-Imagining the Scale and Power of Ancient Mysteries

  In the Odyssey, the Greek word used to describe the wily hero Odysseus is “polutropon” – many-sided, multivalent.  It might also serve as an epithet for the sculptor Giancarlo Calicchia, a man accomplished in a variety of disciplines, whose unique imagery and personal symbols  chip and twist through time, reimagining the scale and power of ancient mysteries.  Calicchia’s sculptures […]

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Emoh: Backward Home Numbers

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 […]

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