Transformative Arts Fund: Ariel Verguez and the Storer Avenue Phoenix Project

“Long-term transformative change has to start locally,” Ariel Vergez says. He’s the lead artist for the Storer Avenue Phoenix Project, a Transformative Art Fund awardee working in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood. The project was awarded $393,700. After a series of workshops and studio sessions, the project takes flight from 11 am to 6 pm Saturday, September 6, in The Art Garden Festival.

“From my experience in Miami and LA, we found that if artists make a community awesome, when development comes, they’re not part of the equation or the next phase of the development. That’s the difference of a gentrification effort versus an investment in the community, that you outsource the creative and problem-solving versus growing it from within.”

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Miami, Vergez is co-owner and Creative Director at Vergez, Inc..  From 2000 to 2001, he studied Industrial Design at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and then completed his studies by majoring in the discipline at the Cleveland Institute of Art from 2001 to 2005. While there, he maximized the experience by studying a diverse range of art courses outside of his major, including foundation drawing, painting and testing out projects in the print shop.

“I just wanted to learn as much as I could,” he recalls. “I had a great, wide breadth of art experience there that shaped how I work today.”

After graduating, Ariel lived in and worked as an artist and Creative Director for a couple of companies in Los Angeles for 12 years before moving back to Miami for a few years and then relocating to Cleveland several years ago, right when the pandemic hit. He and his wife wanted to find a home and a studio but also a community that needed to be revitalized.

Fully aware that art can bring transformative change to a neighborhood, Ariel’s vision of art propelled his team’s Transformative Arts Fund project that has focused on enhancing and uplifting several neighborhoods along Storer Ave. in Cleveland by creating an Art Garden that runs through Ohio City, Clark-Fulton and Stockyards. The artistic enhancements will feature murals and sculptures.

He and his team have been working closely with Councilwoman Jasmin Santana as their community partner, and her Ward 14 is matching a certain amount of the funds to provide green spaces and other amenities. They are combining their efforts, Vergez says, so that the project will have a bigger impact on those neighborhoods, especially since Storer has been neglected for a while. He also believes developing more local artists who can create murals or sculptures is the key to making neighborhoods more attractive.

The project has five primary objectives, starting with training the local artistic talent. Their “No Pressure, No Diamonds” program guides local artists involved in the project through the mural creation process, from sketching in the studio to painting a wall. The second objective, then, is to have the murals become the fruit of that training and education.

The third objective is to incorporate the “feels like forever” element of sculpture. “It’s important that we provide the catalyst and symbol of long-term investment that monumental sculptures represent, since they will reside in some of the empty lots in that area,” Vergez says.

The fourth objective is creating a community that partners with the Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center on Archwood Avenue and the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Creative Arts Center (Centro de Artes Comunitarias) on West 25^th Street. Working with Councilwoman Santana, they will use those locations to speak directly to the community so they can share skills, have events and celebrate some of the project activities that are happening.

The fifth objective, Vergez says, is to recognize the successes that are occurring with the project: “In September, we want to celebrate the beginning of the Art Garden and ensure that it keeps growing as a healthy garden would.”

Having started the project in October 2024, Ariel knows they’ve been working under a schedule he labels “supercharged.” To complete all of their objectives in under one year has required that they rely on collaborating with several community partners such as the Assembly for the Arts, Cleveland Landmarks Commission and Mayor Justin Bibb’s office.

“The design review office really helped us navigate the bureaucratic elements so that we can complete this project on task,” Ariel explains. “Land Studio connecting us with vendors to help us with the things that are outside of our strengths. For example, I’ve never built a sculpture. We can come up with the vision, design it, prepare it for fabrication, but we need a fabricator, and Land Studio has been instrumental in connecting the dots so that we can get the ground broken pretty expeditiously.”

Ariel and his team also worked closely with a range of local artists on a variety of individual artworks from murals to sculptures located on a variety of buildings and in divergent locations.

“It’s been an amazing journey,” he concludes of his Transformative Arts Fund experience. “As an artist, I can go wherever I want to go to tell whatever story I want because it’s not limited by skill. It’s only limited by vision and imagination.”

The Art Garden: Cultivating Culture and Community
The Pivot Center for Art, Dance and Expression
2937 W 25th St

SPINA PHLORÆ WORKSHOP SERIES: Cultivate. Construct. Bloom Together.
August 10 – Noon – 2 pm
August 15 – 5 – 7 pm
August 22 – 5 – 7 pm
August 29 – 5 – 7 pm
September 5 – 5 – 7 pm

Spray Paint Studio Visit
3018 Twinkie Lane
August 12 – 3 – 6 pm
August 14 – 3 – 6 pm
August 19 – 3 – 6 pm
August 21 3 – 6 pm
August 26 – 3 – 6 pm
August 28 – 3 – 6 pm

The Art Garden Festival: A Living Corridor of Culture on Storer Avenue
11 am – 6 pm September 6
4908 Storer Avenue