Tremont Art Walk Turns 20, With David Novak and Craig Matis at Brandt Gallery

The Winter 2013 season at Brandt Gallery will be a historic one, celebrating a landmark anniversary with two local  artists: a photography exhibit by a Brandt Gallery regular, and a book installation by a Brandt first-timer, whose work is  informed by music and travel narrative.

TREMONT ARTWALK TURNS 20!

Co-founded by Sandy Rutkowski and Jean Brandt, Tremont ArtWalk began on February 12, 1993, when seven businesses   combined resources to begin the monthly second-Friday promotion. Since then, more than 100 Tremont businesses  have participated, showing more than 1000 different artists’ work.

Tremont today has more than 20 galleries, merchants, restaurants, museums and churches participating in Artwalk  every month. New businesses and residents have brought their own energy and spin to the neighborhood through  annual events like July’s Taste of Tremont, the August Arts in the Park festival, and the September Tremont Arts and  Cultural Festival.

Much of this activity would be hard to imagine without the ongoing monthly energy and creativity of local artists making  Tremont ArtWalk the premier event in an original Cleveland Arts neighborhood.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID NOVAK 

JANUARY 11–MARCH 2, 2013 

David Novak began photography in the 9th  grade when he found an old Brownie camera, complete with film, in the  family’s basement. He took pictures of his sister (then twelve) and her new kitten, had the film developed, and found  there were pictures on that same roll of film from when his sister was six. Like a Twilight Zone episode, he had stepped  back in time and was instantly hooked.

Following up on the Euclid Park Beach photographs he took with the 201 Minolta he got in college and exhibited  at Brandt Gallery in 2010, Novak’s new exhibit explores shadows in the digital age. Noting that “digital color is so honest, it  can be unforgiving,” Novak explores how the shadows so integral to the black-and-white medium of 50 years ago return  to impact the digital print.

CRAIG MATIS

AUTISM: A MEXICAN ADVENTURE

MARCH 8–APRIL 4, 2013

This mixed-media book-work installation, Matis tells us, “is a series of panels relating the story of an American father and  his autistic son traveling through Mexico to help cope with his wife’s death. Using music, narration, and a mixed media  technique of folded paper and 3-D pencil drawings, the story describes a surreal journey that invites the viewer to learn  a little about the difficulties in raising a special needs child, all set in a Mexican landscape.”

Matis explains the occasion for this unique combination of arts and media: “In its very early days my band, Uzizi,  incorporated its songs into a visual format. I created slide visuals of original artwork that were used in the band’s live  shows, as another means of telling the stories behind the songs.” Later designing ‘songbooks’ as “a natural extension of  the band experience,” Matis continues to push his work though media/ genre boundaries.