Shifting the Reality Plane, at William Busta Projects

Framed works of art can be imagined as windows. In art history and criticism, that’s a time-worn perception. Marcel Duchamp turned the idea inside out in his epic Étant donnés, a work of art that presents as a door with peepholes. Looking through the peepholes, the viewer experiences an illuminating, erotic world. Then you wonder what is being illuminated—the tableau […]

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Comet: Matthew Kolodziej at William Busta Projects

When I walk alongside Lake Erie’s beach, I peel my eyes open for rocks of all different shapes, sizes, and textures, keeping the ones most divine to me contained in my pocket. The ones which are flat are perfect forms for skipping across the water, flickering movements which follow. In Matthew Kolodziej’s solo show at William Busta Projects titled, Comet, […]

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Working from Home: Kristen Cliffel, at William Busta Projects

Kristen Cliffel’s delightfully textured ceramics are familiar around northeast Ohio in group shows, galleries, and museums. At William Busta Projects, Cliffel’s solo exhibition, Working from Home, occupies two rooms and is poignant in all the right ways Cliffel’s work is an exploration of what she calls “domestic mythologies.” According to her website, “our culture surrounds us with pervasive archetypal myths […]

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Marking Place and Time with Timothy Callaghan, at Busta Projects

What could be more obvious or more pleasing than paintings of your hometown? Maybe with a comforting recognition of local landmarks? Maybe enhanced with a new flourish? This was the appeal of the Cleveland Calendars published in the 1980s and 1990s by International Printing Company, who commissioned a different artist each year. These annual commissions included Mary Lou Ferbert, Moses […]

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Building and Subtracting – A Retrospective of Prints by Laurence Channing

Laurence Channing had his first one-person show in 1991 at the William Busta Gallery on Murray Hill Road, Cleveland. His charcoal drawings, at once romantic and elegant and disquieting, found an audience in exhibitions that followed in 1992, 1994, and 1995. In 1997 he also presented prints—three drypoints and a lithograph. In the next few years he created five additional […]

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After the Flood: Strange Devotion at William Busta Projects

Exploring lives and culture through the landscape has long been a subject for Jacob Koestler, particularly through  the evidence of human impact and passing time. That manner of storytelling is at the heart of his and collaborator Michael McDermit’s new book Strange Devotion, which debuted in an exhibit at William Busta Projects on Waterloo in September. Its stories unfold in […]

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Among Other Ambitions

  The arts, which have long promoted authenticity and social engagement, have spent the past year bravely extolling their accomplishments in transitioning from direct experience to virtual experience. It is understandable—everyone placed their best foot forward, working with what was possible. Still, as brave as everyone was, it was still life fallen apart. It has been a zombie life—not the […]

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