Cleveland painter Frank Oriti recently moved into a new studio in the Screw Factory. Much larger than his previous space, sunlight pours into the room through an immense wall of windows. His tools and easels are all carefully set and at the ready, and giant heaps of oil paint wait for his brushes. I have been an admirer of Oriti’s portrait paintings […]
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Somewhere in my attic there is a box filled with tattered and torn old zines. I’ve held on to these photocopied and unevenly stapled collections of anarchist poems, punk album reviews, crude drawings, and suburban-nihilist thought for over twenty years. But zines have moved beyond my limited, largely 1990’s perception, and are starting to get their “fair dues” as an art form. MOCA Cleveland […]
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For many people, the blank page can be an intimidating place to start. Whether you are a writer or a visual artist, the bleached sanitized glow of a white piece of paper can be paralyzing and anxiety-inducing. Where do I start? Where do I end? The initial marks seem so important and influences every mark moving forward. Yet, Darius […]
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During her Creative Fusion Residency with host organization Cleveland Public Theatre, Brazilian artist Ananda Nahu has been paired with award-winning Cleveland artists, Gary Williams and Robin Robinson of Sankofa Fine Arts Plus. Gary and Robin are muralists that paint mostly portraits. They are behind the powerful Our Lives Matter mural on East 105 Street and Yale Avenue. They first began working on […]
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CPAC–the Community Partnership for the Arts and Culture–released eight timely videos today. Artists and their work are the subject–specifically winners of the Creative Workforce Fellowship, the program of public support for individual artists, funded by the cigarette tax through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, and administered by CPAC. That program has always been about public benefit. To readers of this blog, it […]
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One of the great challenges in museums is telling a story. The recently opened National Museum of Industrial History—a Smithsonian affiliate, located in Bethlehem, PA—gets some story telling help from sculpture by Cleveland Schooler Max Kalish. The piece is on loan there from a private collector in Chicago, via Cleveland-based Corcoran Fine Arts, until February, 2017. The loan sheds interesting […]
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Lori Kella is so much more than a photographer. There is a bit of magic in the images currently on view at the Cleveland Print Room. “Seven Summits” is her visual interpretation of the highest mountain peaks on each of the seven continents. If you’re not familiar with Kella’s work, she’s known for creating elaborate dioramas, including tiny trees, fake […]
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The recent announcement that FRONT Festival will take place in Cleveland (July 7 – September 30, 2018) is not just the promise of another festival, but one that looks beyond our beloved region, outward to the world. It gathers a dozen mid-sized to major institutions, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, as presenters of work curated by Jens Hoffmann (who […]
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The Trudy Wiesenberger Gallery at University Hospitals may be the busiest gallery you’ve never heard of. Curator Thomas Huck says 300 to 400 people pass through every hour of every day, with greater numbers at lunch, as as patients, their families, doctors, nurses and other staff make their way between Lerner Tower, Lakeside Hospital, Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, and […]
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In the months just after I started work at the Cleveland Museum, I struck up a friendship with one of the guards who was always impeccably well-groomed and well-dressed and always had something interesting to say. He seemed both gentle and genteel—someone with whom one might comfortably have a drink at a neighborhood coffee house. Only later did I discover […]
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