Connecting to Futures: Zach Repphun, Building a Career by Design

Zach Repphun’s first memory of encountering a work of art was on a field trip to Youngstown’s esteemed Butler Institute of American Art in the fourth grade. He was captivated by Madison Avenue at Speed, Peter Maier’s actual-size painting of Jeff Gordon’s #24 race car that is now part of that museum’s permanent collection. Years later, when Repphun was working […]

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Connecting to Futures: Amber Ford, Taking Her Shot

For those interested in working in the arts, the phrase “day job” often pops up in conversation. It’s the job you do that you might not love so that you can do the work in art that you do love. It pays the bills, even if it doesn’t feed the soul. For a number of years, Amber Ford was lucky […]

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Leader of the Pack

The cigarette tax had two goals: provide funding for the arts and reduce smoking in our region. It worked, but as smoking fell, so did revenue for the arts. Now what? The Ohio legislature, not known for favoring progressive policies, art, or Cleveland, nonetheless responded positively to Cuyahoga County arts advocates’ early-aughts request to create a revenue stream to fund […]

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Emanuel Wallace Pivots

Equally at home taking grip-and-grins for Scene and gripping images of Black life in Cleveland, the photographer has earned praise and gallery shows. Photographer Emanuel Wallace began taking pictures as a young child, brought up spending lots of time alone and feeling bored. He used disposable cameras to capture small still life scenes he’d create in his home. Sometimes these […]

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Nobody’s Baby: Morgan Bukovec’s are you on the menu? Series Needles Service Industry Sexism

Morgan Bukovec has been involved in the service industry on and off since she was fifteen—including working the counter at Rudy’s Quality Meats, her grandfather’s butcher shop in Willowick. But it was in the bar and restaurant biz as a server and bartender—working five days a week and sometimes pulling double-shifts—that she was put through the grinder of sexism, misogyny, […]

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Transformer Transition

In 2011, Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell and the Cleveland Museum of Art announced a unique partnership that allowed the art-collecting Bidwells to launch exhibitions featuring their extensive holdings for six months each year, and allowed the museum to create a permanent presence for contemporary art on the Near West Side—an area long known as Ohio City, recently branded by […]

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The Sculpture Center Abdulla Qamer, Karachi, Pakistan

  Bringing color—and cardboard—to Cleveland The chance that one of the Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland’s clients or a child of a client would encounter the elaborately decorated trucks of Pakistan is pretty slim. Situated on Euclid Avenue at the eastern edge of the city, the Free Clinic provides care to medically underserved populations throughout the area. Pakistan is […]

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Creative Fusion: Sculptor hopes organic forms will build bridges between cultures / Abdullah Qamer / Karachi, Pakistan / The Sculpture Center

The work Pakistani sculptor Abdullah Qamer plans to create during his residency at the Sculpture Center deals with broad, sweeping questions, he says, about progress, and how it is defined and achieved. Using reclaimed materials, he welds and casts large metal pieces to create concave and convex forms, with the effect of turning something hard and unyielding into something that […]

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