Zine Scene – A Few Words with Phoebe Thomas of the Cozy Up! Collective

Somewhere in my attic there is a box filled with tattered and torn old zines. I’ve held on to these photocopied and unevenly stapled collections of anarchist poems, punk album reviews, crude drawings, and suburban-nihilist thought for over twenty years.  But zines have moved beyond my limited, largely 1990’s perception, and are starting to get their “fair dues” as an art form.  MOCA Cleveland […]

Read more

Must See: Lori Kella in Scale3 at Cleveland Print Room

Lori Kella is so much more than a photographer. There is a bit of magic in the images currently on view at the Cleveland Print Room. “Seven Summits” is her visual interpretation of the highest mountain peaks on each of the seven continents. If you’re not familiar with Kella’s work, she’s known for creating elaborate dioramas, including tiny trees, fake […]

Read more

MAKERS: ADRIENNE SLANE, COLLAGE ARTIST

Adrienne Slane’s studio in Geauga County is perfectly situated in a copse of tall trees, surrounded by marshes and shadowy forests.  It’s the kind of fairy tale location entirely appropriate for the creation of her enchanting cut-paper collages. Clearly a collector at heart, every available surface in Slane’s studio is covered with her coveted items – seashells, postage stamps, buttons, scissors, […]

Read more

Who Rocks Exactly? Dan Graham at Transformer Station

When I saw the title of the new show at the Transformer Station: “Dan Graham/Rocks”, I was excited.  My knowledge of this video/conceptual artist consisted of a grainy documentation of a Minor Threat performance at CBGBs, so I was eager to learn about his connection to Cleveland.  A connection that seemed to be inferred by the title (obviously playing off […]

Read more

MAKERS: Steven Mastroianni, Photographer

When I asked Cleveland photographer Steven Mastroianni why he still makes photographs the traditional way, his answer was all about silver.  For Mastroianni, it’s that moment when the image miraculously appears on the paper that counts. Alone in his darkroom, under the amber glow of the safelight, light causes a chemical reaction on the paper that produces a thin layer of silver – seemingly […]

Read more

New Blog Series: MAKERS- An Examination of Process in 2016, by Brittany M. Hudak

Shortly after leaving his graduate painting program in 1966, Bruce Nauman had an epiphany: “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.” When artists in the late 1960s such as Nauman, Lynda […]

Read more

Dancing on the Edge | Michelle Murphy at 2731 Prospect

    You may have seen Michelle Murphy’s work recently in the NEO Geo exhibition at the Akron Museum of Art, fitting comfortably amongst artists that use geometry and formal elements as a means of expression.  Indeed, Murphy does have definite connections to the famed Op Art school of thought espoused by Julian Stanczak and others at the Cleveland Institute of […]

Read more

SPACES, on the edge of another Renaissance

The first time I visited SPACES was in 2007.  It was a memorable night for two things: seeing the brilliant work of my high school classmate, Libby Black, and trying to hide the giant sweat stains that had formed in my armpits.  The heat was unbearable.  What art gallery of this size does not have air conditioning? And yet the […]

Read more

Creative Fusion Outcomes: MENG-HSUAN WU, Taiwan

Meng-Hsuan Wu came to Cleveland for a Creative Fusion residency at the Rainey Institute in Fall 2013. Her project—designed to engage visually impaired people in partnership with the Cleveland Sight Center– was to build an indoor pond, fill it with goldfish, and invite participants to allow the fish to nibble at their bare feet, recording their comments in the process. […]

Read more

Masked Men, Hatchets, and Bombs: Frank Oriti’s Clarity, Rodin’s the Thinker, and the Silencing of Art Vandalism

It all started on Twitter, of course.  A disturbed visitor to a London museum wrote: “I hope the @metpoliceuk deal with the masked balaclava ‘protestors’ in the national portrait gallery #London bloody terrifying :-(“. This was posted moments after a disturbance on the afternoon of July 5, and the event was made even more unnerving by its proximity to the […]

Read more
1 9 10 11