The force of creativity pushes through the cracks that occur in the daily. Sometimes it looks like self-sufficiency: homegrown, repurposed, often awkward yet surprisingly stunning. Sometimes it beckons like light on water glimpsed out of the corner of the eye. Sometimes it’s the tenacity of the weed through the concrete, and doing the work on the regular. The creative force pulses with energy from a place that is deeper than can be imagined. And sometimes that imagined place is rooted in the real.

The Beauty and Influence of Appalachia, now on exhibit at The Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, explores this confluence of creativity and place. Curator and artist Lisa Kenion places the boundaries of Appalachia wide by taking into account the origin of artists’ families, encompassing artists who now come from Southern Ohio and Pennsylvania, Western New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Northeast Ohio and Cleveland are Appalachian-adjacent, as many folks born in Appalachia proper traveled north for job opportunities as their farms and mines and mills closed throughout the twentieth century.

This exhibit features works of Karen Beckwith, Patricia Bellen-Gillen, Tory Casey, Connaught Cullen, Ross DiPenti, Adrian Desjardins, Kevin Enoch, Barbara Ery, Susan Feller, Kathy Guest, Brooks Gulledge, Lauralee Hutson, Peter Jones, Lisa Kenion, Joy Moser, Ann Overton, Robert Peppers, David Savage, and James Shirey, working in a range of media.

“I spent a lot of time in my childhood and early adulthood camping in the Appalachian Mountains,” says Kenion, whose maternal grandparents came from the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. “There is a spirit there that is unmistakable and deep. It is one of the oldest mountain chains on our planet, with the second oldest river, the New River. I hope this exhibition reaches people with both that ancient energy, as well as the remarkable cultural amalgam that has been forged through the generations.”

The exhibit resonates with vibrant mix of cultures comprising Appalachia. Peter B. Jones’ pottery, pit-fired in traditional Iroquois style, is both ethereal and stoic. “Missing and Murdered,” which presents a wall of closed-eyed faces, hits the sternum like Tibetan throat singing, terrifying and fascinating. The banjo, an African instrument brought to America by enslaved people, runs through Appalachian folk music and up into blues and rock. Red abalone inlay and boxwood shimmer and wink from two banjos built by Kevin Enoch, born in Cleveland to a West Virginian family, and whose Maryland studio creates inlay and engravings for Deering Banjos and C. F. Martin Guitars. A series of black and white environmental portraits by Dennis Savage freezes strong faces in place (these are the people who meet your eyes and do not particularly care who sees them), while Tory Casey’s electric acrylic paintings, most in bird’s eye view, swirl with place-specific events—“Fire on the Mountain, Run Boys Run”—as well as the repeating horror of public violence—“Thoughts and Prayers.”

And then there are the trees, with canopies of enlaced branches and tangled roots. Forests and trees consume artists Connaught Cullen, James Shirey, and Ann Overton, who render these intricate webs through painting, fabric applique and quilting, and photography. In each case, trees become ever-so-much-more-so: ropes of communication lines, fingers stretching for more, or that elastic lace that delicately and deliberately keeps one in.

Tropes of the natural world run through Brooks Gulledge’s “For Stacy,” a stunning large triptych collage  of a golden river’s winding tributaries and fish, its lush organic matter spattered on its banks. The implacable elegance of Ross DiPenti’s sculptures magnify a redwing blackbird’s wing to wall-size, unfurl a nautilus made of found turtle shells and burned pine (Yakisugi), and dangle massive found rocks with natural holes from an assortment of antique iron chains.

Exuberant and eloquent assemblages run throughout the show, bubbling with alchemy that turns bits of one thing into something completely new. Adrian Desjardins stratifies gauges, hinges, knobs, and wire into mandalas simultaneously elusive and ponderous. Karen Beckwith’s print collages mix windows and doors with ordinary views of laundry and signs that bubble and coalesce into dreamworlds. Robert Peppers’ series of eight boxes dance with glitter, cowrie shells, and secret apertures that lead deeper beneath brains, lungs, and symbols. Kathy Guest builds tension among layers of paper, balancing the strictures of accordion folds with the soft weight of embossed and molded forms.

The delicate structures of Lauralee Hutson’s metalworks—which depict extraordinary organic forms in precious metals and stones—elevate and freeze flowers, waves, and imagined places. Susan Feller’s textiles are an amalgam of craftivism (crafts + activism), using traditional hooked rug techniques to amplify messages of equality.

Despite the range of media and subjects, works in the exhibit have a quality which cements them in the now, speaking for each artist. There is a sense that if you cannot discern their gift and unwrap it to learn more, so be it. It will be said nonetheless. Most pieces are from the collections of the artists; many are marked “NFS.” They are interconnected and absolute.

The Beauty and Influence of Appalachia is on view until November 2, 2024 at The Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, 1834 East 123^rd Street, Cleveland, Ohio, 44106. Open Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Saturday, 12 to 4 p.m.