The New Now: AAWR at Tri-C East, plus Partridge and Rogers

The Artists Archives of the Western Reserve (AAWR) is pleased to present the best of the Western Reserve in its 2025 iteration of The NewNow. This competitive satellite exhibition is held annually in partnership with Cuyahoga Community College’s eastern campus in the beautiful 3,000-square-foot Gallery East. The juror for this exhibition is Tiffany Gaines, associate curator from the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY. Each year AAWR deliberately seeks a juror from outside the region to select 70 to 75 works from a field of over 500 digital entries. The accepted entries are made public at the end of July, and award winners will be announced at the opening reception on August 28.

In the AAWR home galleries we open three concurrent exhibitions on October 9. Join us for the inaugural solo exhibitions for Archived Artists Wendy Partridge and Phyllis Jean (PJ) Rogers (1925–2014), to celebrate the addition of their works into our collection. Each of these artists has made their mark on NEO as a printmaker, and the exhibited works combine selections from the archives collection alongside works loaned from the artists or their estates. Both artists have won awards for their work, which has been widely exhibited and collected beyond Ohio.

Wendy Partridge is known for her letterpress, pressure prints and artist books. Aside from her career as an art conservator, she is also an active teacher of various contemporary printing techniques at both the Morgan Conservatory of Papermaking and Zygote Press. Her personal practices include letterpress, pressure printing, gelatin monoprinting, and artists books. Her work tends to be made in series and takes inspiration from art history, nature, the urban environment and the short-sightedness of humans.

PJ Rogers was famous for her exquisite etching, aquatint prints, and her artistic reinvention at a later stage in life into digital printing using the computer as a manipulative tool. The breadth of Roger’s oeuvre and her story as an artist are inspiring. She stands as a perfect example in support of the Archives’ mission and the importance of having an institution that preserves not just one or two key examples of an artist’s work, but enough to show their progression and evolution over the course of a lifetime.

In addition to the solo exhibitions of these two talented printmakers, AAWR presents a group show from the Ohio Collage Society. The members of this diverse group of artists will display the breadth of the collage medium. Their varying approaches to using paper as a primary medium of expression will surprise and delight viewers to our galleries during the fall season.

ARTISTS ARCHIVES OF THE WESTERN RESERVE
1834 East 123rd Street

Cleveland, Ohio 44106

artistsarchives.org

216.721.9020

EVENTS:

2024 Annual Members Exhibition, July 17–September 20 in the main gallery. Closing reception & awards ceremony 2-4pm Saturday, September 20

For more information on becoming a member, visit artistsarchives.org or call 216.721.9020

NewNow 2025, August 28–October 9 in Tri-C’s Gallery East, 5250 Richmond Road, Highland Heights. Opening reception & awards ceremony, 6-7:30pm Thursday, August 28. More information on artistsarchives.org

Art Bites – Professional Practices: Legacy Workshop, Sharing Your Story: Presented by Unity Powell, 1-2:30pm Saturday, August 30. Topics covered: How do you document your life and work? Who wants to read it and where do you share it and how? Including biographies, articles, social media, and oral history

Archived Artist Wendy Partridge / The Ohio Collage Society / Archived Artist PJ Rogers, October 9–December 6 in the home galleries. Opening reception 5:30-8pm Thursday, October 9. Eventbrite registration on artistsarchives.org