Author: Erin Hollenbank

Arts for Justice Cleveland Presents We the People… All the People: Portraits by Judy Takács

In her new show at Midtown Collaboration Center, and as the United States celebrates its semiquincentennial, Arts for Justice Cleveland presents works of figurative painter Judy Takács through Election Day, inspiring hope and action through portraiture. Using art as her ammunition by depicting our country’s most vulnerable citizens, Takács issues a call-to-action that presents democracy as a work in progress. […]

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Managing the Darkness: Ed Raffel and Hilary Gent at HEDGE

In Managing the Darkness, HEDGE Gallery presents a compelling two-person exhibition featuring Hilary Gent and Edward Raffel, on view June 19 through July 25. Together, the artists explore the conceptual relationship between light and darkness, using distinct yet complementary approaches to illuminate both the gallery and the viewer’s perception. It’s a rare moment in that Gent–the Gallery Director and Owner […]

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William Sommer Returns to the Spotlight

A new retrospective at WOLFS Gallery revisits one of Cleveland’s most original Modernists and makes a strong case that Sommer is one of America’s most underrecognized artists. More than seventy-five years after his death and a memorial exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1950, William Sommer is once again commanding attention in Northeast Ohio. William Sommer: Visionary Modernist, […]

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Gary T. Erbe- Cubist Influence and Levitational Realism

As I walked through Gary Erbe: Magical World at the Butler Institute of American Art, it was immediately evident that his major influence is Pablo Picasso, emulating many of the modern master’s compositions in several paintings included in the exhibition. Yet nowhere in Gary T. Erbe’s biography or in prior exhibition reviews do the artist or scholars acknowledge Picasso, despite […]

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Frances Benjamin Johnson: Redefining “First Lady”

When you hear the words First Lady and White House, images of elegance and history arise. Jackie, Birdie, Eleanor, Michelle… women whose lives were shaped by marriage and the roles they assumed beside their husbands. Frances Benjamin Johnson was a different kind of “first lady”, however, who arrived at the White House on her own terms and made history as […]

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