Understanding Books as Art: Art Books Cleveland Keeps Tradition and Innovation Alive

As reading material is increasingly digitized, some people wonder about the future of physical books. And yet, books and book art are thriving around the world, and Cleveland is part of that trend. Book art transforms books, emphasizing their structure and design as well as—or in place of—their content. The book becomes an art object, sometimes unrecognizable as a book […]

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Summer at the Akron Art Museum

Dread & Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries June 29–September 22 Dread & Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World brings together the work of contemporary artists who use classical fairy tales to address the complexities of our world today. While some embrace the stories’ promises of transformation and happy endings, others plumb the […]

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Nick Cave: HEARD•AKRON

When I arrived in Akron last Sunday for the Nick Cave performance titled HEARD•AKRON, the skies were grey and there was a chill in the air. I was honestly freezing as I found my seat on the ice-cold concrete of the Bud and Susie Rogers Garden. And then, as if on cue, as hundreds of people waited for the show to […]

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Coloring Inside the Lines: Nicole Schneider at BAYarts

Nicole Schneider likes to court chaos. The works in her new exhibition at BAYarts are all titled “Negotiations” – as if in each work she is negotiating the peace between order and complete bedlam. In the end, a balance is reached – with some fairly spectacular results. It’s hard not to think about the scribbles of children when looking at […]

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Prospect and Retrospect: Rita Montlack at UH

WOKE: RITA MONTACK at University Hospitals’ Trudy Wiesenberger Gallery offers a survey spanning a little more than 10 years of work by a notable Cleveland artist. Ranging from photographs Montlack created soon after she started working in the medium to new directions she is exploring, WOKE presents an overview of the artist’s range of techniques and themes. Reflecting her love […]

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Tombs and Treasures: William Harper at CIA

Initially, William Harper’s new exhibit at the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Reinberger Gallery evokes the inner chambers of a pyramid wherein magnificent treasures languish in wait for their pharaoh and his concubines to arrive in the afterlife. It’s not by accident. “I wanted it to look like a tomb,” Harper says of the exhibit The Beautiful and the Grotesque. To that […]

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Cigarette Tax: A Learnable Moment

Educators talk about “teachable moments”– those times when learning comes easily because something happens that makes information relevant. This is one of those times for people concerned about public funding for the arts in Cuyahoga County. As if to highlight the need to find something other than a cigarette tax to provide such revenue,  a recent State of Ohio budget […]

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Billie Lawless and The Politician: A Toy

  In the twenty-three years since it first appeared, hallucination-like, along Chester Ave., Billy Lawless’ over-sized, playful sculpture “The Politician: A Toy” has become one of Cleveland’s most important pieces of public art. It’s not nearly as sinister as the snaking, twisted steel bar that constitutes Isamu Noguchi’s similarly huge 1976 “Portal”, installed on the sidewalk in front of the […]

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