LIFE THROUGH THE AGES

Natural History Art has always been a strength of the gallery, and this exhibition illustrates the variety of techniques  that artists have developed throughout history to portray animal life. Classic 19th century works by Alexander Wilson  and John James Audubon pay attention to details in depicting American wildlife as it was being discovered and  identified.

Charles R. Knight, followed closely by Zdenek Burian and William E. Scheele, pioneered the visual restoration of  prehistoric animal life, based on their knowledge of contemporary animal anatomy and a vivid imagination.

The process continues today in the work of their admirers – Mark Hallett, William Stout, John Gurche, Doug Henderson,  Tony McVey and Mauricio Anton. Eugene Seguy worked as a museum entomologist in France and created beautiful  pochoir prints of the beetles and butterflies he loved.

Robert Hainard was one of Europe’s 20th century promoters of ecological awareness and developed an intricate  echnique of color woodcut printing. Cleveland School artists Henry Keller and Paul Travis often chose to portray  animals in their prints and paintings, with Travis focusing on tigers in the 1950s. Local contemporary artists Larry Isard, Mary Wawrytko and Ralph Woehrman have visualized animals in bronze, enamel, prints and drawings for decades.

THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

A sideshow of amazing specimens and artworks to capture the imagination!

ALTERED CITY

Michael Nekic’s composite computer images, which begin as formal experiments that revel in the geometric lines and  volumes of Cleveland’s iconic buildings and public art, its factories and warehouses, bridges, rusting industrial  machinery and abandoned homes, always metamophose into visual essays filled with a yearning for the Cleveland of the  artist’s childhood. Whether sepiatoned or bursting with Pop Art color, the images are often mournful and uncertain about the city’s future, occasionally hopeful about its recent revitalization, but always respectful of its unique Rust Belt  beauty.