“Women don’t usually have muses” explains Lissa Rivera, gesturing at her genderqueer partner, artistic collaborator, and muse BJ Lillis during her recent artist talk at the Cleveland Print Room. And of course it’s true – women most frequently are the object of the male artist’s inspiration, the bottom player of a power structure so ubiquitous that it has become ingrained in the very fabric of art […]
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The Dead Boys were probably never your thing. That–based on Billboard charts–is a statistical fact, even in Cleveland, and more specifically even in Lakewood, their home town. Most people certainly knew the band’s name and rowdy fame more than their music. Even “Sonic Reducer,” covered by Guns N Roses and Pearl Jam, and now on occasion by twelve year-olds–their one […]
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How much is too much when everything is not enough? Welcome to the new Gilded Age, to climb onto a trope made famous by economist Thomas Picketty in his 2013 book “Capitalism in the 21st Century.” The original “Gilded Age” (so-dubbed by Mark Twain to describe the last quarter of the 19th century), was shiny and fundamentally rotten, just like […]
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Nothing speaks of mystery with more sibilance than an ancient tomb, where half-seen shapes whisper to the unconscious mind. Ohio University professor Tom Bartel’s most recent ceramic works, glazed with metallic oxides and high kiln temperatures to a cindery brownish-black, mean to evoke just that response. Installed in a small room to one side of a large gallery at […]
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“I don’t see myself as a landscape artist,” admits Eileen Dorsey… I can’t help but chuckle as I look around her space in 78th Street Studios, the walls covered with colorful landscapes. She corrects herself – “I know I paint landscapes, but I see them as something more.” I agree. Dorsey is known for her oil landscapes – usually she depicts deep, lush forests, […]
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“Weaving represents the inherent geometry of life and by stressing, cutting and manipulating this geometry, I constantly challenge and question this reality.” – Jessica Pinsky As I looked at Jessica Pinsky’s stunning weavings in the Sullivan Family gallery at BAYArts, I kept thinking about Greek mythology. Several stories from antiquity include weaving as a motif, but today I’m thinking about Philomela […]
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You’ve seen at least one variation of this idea expressed on bumper stickers: Think Globally: Act Locally. That may mean something different to everyone who reads it, but when it’s stuck on the back of an old, fuel-efficient car along with a bunch of other bumper stickers that say things like “Imagine Whirled Peas,” and “Coexist” (spelled out in the […]
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It could happen here: In 2014, two New Orleans photographers—the husband-and-wife team Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick—showed a series of photographs of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana as part of the art triennial, Prospect. Speaking of their exhibit, called “Slavery: The Prison Industrial Complex,” Calhoun told the New Orleans Times Picayune, “Angola is still pretty much run like […]
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Almost all of the artists that I know who have been successful in our region have been full participants in its art life. They show up at art openings, participate in activities like the Monster Drawing Rally at SPACES or Monothon at Zygote, visit each other’s studios, and populate the boards of art organizations. When their careers were new, it […]
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Cyra Levenson has been in her role as the Cleveland Museum of Art’s director of education and academic affairs for just over a year. Her broad duties include overseeing interpretation of the collection, as well as collaborating in the launch of The Keithley Institute for Art History, which offers object-based learning opportunity for researchers or students interested in museum […]
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