In his solo exhibition at the Massillon Museum, Awaken in the Garden My Love, Davon Brantley extends us an invitation to step into the darkest corners of the mind. Through vulnerable subject matter, we witness as the artist battles his innermost thoughts. Brantley utilizes self-portraiture and psychology to unleash the ugliest parts of human nature, connecting them to the seven […]
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Cleveland-based artist Kristen Newell’s sculptures harness the scent of freshly burnt sage: mild but potent, transformative, warm and redemptive. The figures, animals, and vessels she sculpts all seem to carry the sound of water: rain, tears, the silence of shallow vernal pools, a rushing river, the crash and hush of an oncoming or receding tide. Adamantly whole and conspicuously vulnerable […]
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While we were in the early stages of choosing stories for the Summer 2023 issue of CAN Journal, the prospect of content generated by artificial intelligence was all the rage in media and social media. As an experiment, I considered illustrating the phenomenon by publishing a story generated via AI. How would artificial intelligence navigate the world of regional art, […]
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As this issue of CAN goes to press, curators Tizziana Baldenebro of SPACES and Lauren Leving of moCa Cleveland were on the verge of departure for Italy, where they would oversee the installation of Everlasting Plastics, the exhibition they have built for the US Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale Architettura. Their proposal, via Cleveland-based SPACES Gallery, was chosen by […]
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With an extensive collection of WPA prints, a long record of commissioning art installations and exhibits at the main library, as well as murals at its branches around the city, plus important collections of artist books, art catalogs, art objects, maps, and even chess sets, and with the Lockwood Thompson fund specifically supporting art programming, the Cleveland Public Library system […]
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Morgan Bukovec has been involved in the service industry on and off since she was fifteen—including working the counter at Rudy’s Quality Meats, her grandfather’s butcher shop in Willowick. But it was in the bar and restaurant biz as a server and bartender—working five days a week and sometimes pulling double-shifts—that she was put through the grinder of sexism, misogyny, […]
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The 51st Student Art Show and Merit Scholarship Exhibition at the Galleries at Cleveland State University was a show filled with fresh, experimental works where students–many for the first time–submitted and exhibited art, and some received awards. Eighty four students are exhibiting 166 works, and attracting significant audiences: nearly 1200 attendees since the show opened. The judges were George Mauersberger, […]
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Ray Caspio creates site-specific multimedia installations that are simultaneously immersive and ephemeral. In his most recent work, THE WALL at 1300 Gallery at 78th Street Studios, curated by Kelly Pontoni, he combines the ambient sounds and storytelling in this dynamic exhibition of pandemic-era performance, installation, painting, and other media. His immersive work interweaves sensory and mental information to open new […]
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I had the pleasure of sitting with Key Jo Lee, newly-appointed chief curator at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD) in San Francisco, to discuss her time at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA); her upcoming book Perceptual Drift, Black Art, and an Ethics of Looking; and the way museum curation might evolve. In her transition to MOAD, Cleveland’s […]
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Parade the Circle—the Cleveland Museum of Art celebration of community and creativity, with its iconic floats created by community groups and international artists, its stilt walkers, its festival village, and crowds in the tens of thousands—returns from its pandemic hiatus in 2023, for the first time since 2019. In this comeback year, the museum has named Hector Castellanos Lara as […]
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