Art is always about a relationship with the world. Sometimes that means trying to explain it, or re-interpret it, or document it, or comment on it, but sometimes it is simply a way of understanding how the world works. In Memory External—works of Matthew Gallagher and Mike Lombardy, on view now at Waterloo Arts—the key to understanding the works is […]
Read more
The first time I saw Rebekah Wilhelm’s work I was seriously frustrated. The piece was a large installation of tiny scraps of paper strung together like a chain mail screen (above). On each piece of paper was a word, just barely legible in the dim light of the gallery. As I found myself struggling to read the words and piece together […]
Read more
“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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
“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, […]
Read more
“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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
You must be logged in to post a comment.