Is there a crisis in art writing? Does the American Midwest need more art writing? More art criticism? And if so, why? For whom? And what roles do different types of art writing play? Curator and art historian Indra Lācis, PhD, has observed that urgency around the subject seems to come up every ten years or so. The rhythm may […]
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Flowers escape frames, butterflies balance between celebration and rest, and resurrection arises from grief in The Nature of Healing, a group exhibition co-curated with and presented by Deep Roots Gallery at Cleveland Botanical Garden, on view now through May 18, 2025. Works by 30 Northeastern Ohio artists inhabit the fertile intersection of nature and grief. Cleveland, historically challenged by some […]
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Anyone who has gone through the loss of a loved one will tell you that grief doesn’t come to you in expected or predictable ways. Rather, it hits you at unexpected and/or inopportune times. It also will rear its head one, two, or even twenty years after you’ve lost that special person. It is like living breathing thing that you […]
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The precipice of spring in Northeastern Ohio can be a gray and dismal place. The clouds, the Lake, the asphalt all conspire to monochrome for days that turn to weeks and resolve into months. Into this wash of wipeout inertia blasts a burst of color in Nevertheless, She Created: Encore, on view at the Bonfoey Gallery from now until April […]
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The post-industrial landscape of Cleveland is by now a familiar visual and conceptual trope in the city’s contemporary art scene. Even as Cleveland actively rebrands itself beyond its legacy of deindustrialization, the rust belt’s industrial past continues to shape both the physical environment and materials readily available to artists. In her exhibition Aggregate, on view at The Sculpture Center through […]
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Spend more than a few minutes with the 50-plus selections on view in Moments in the Spotlight: Music Photography by Anastasia Pantsios, and it soon becomes clear that a thread is woven throughout the latest exhibit by the longtime Cleveland photographer. While artists such as Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, and local favorite Michael Stanley can be found, another focus here […]
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For his first photography show in over 25 years, Cleveland artist Jim Lanza dusted off dozens of recently rediscovered negatives of alternative rock bands and fans he shot in the ‘80s and ‘90s. More than 150 photographs make up Fans & Cameras: Jim Lanza – 45 Years of Taking Photos of Unpopular Bands and Weird People, on view at Sixty […]
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Rita Montlack and Meryl Engler both work in print media, and the artists are presented as such at HEDGE Gallery, but they could hardly be more different. Montlack’s work is digital, while Engler’s is 100 percent analog; Montlack’s photo-based works are fully chromatic; Engler’s relief prints sometimes use just one color, and even the multi-color prints have a palate limited […]
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There are tiny stories (an egg, an apartment) and big stories (tyranny, love); there are books to pick up and read and some that are look-at only. Some pages implode in seemingly infinite folds; others explode outward, releasing butterflies that fling themselves over the walls. There are books of threads and narratives shrouding rocks. Reading takes on at least three […]
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Eighty years after Karamu Artists Inc.’s 1941 exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, CMA highlights the collective’s role in shaping Cleveland’s Black arts scene and its broader cultural influence, with Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community. The exhibition opens March 23. In 1938, the United States was enmeshed in unflinching racial segregation and widespread poverty. Black Americans, already […]
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