It’s well worth going to see the Lake Effect: Artists from Cleveland Now at the Transformer Station. But doing so also provides a stimulus to do some serious thinking about the challenges of supporting local art and creating a dynamic community of local artists that are raised by the project. Providing recognition to living artists from Cleveland and the surrounding […]
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Terms like heroic, powerful, epic, generational talent, wonderful use of color, funny, exultant, detailed and thoughtful all might come to mind when viewing the exhibition Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors on view at the Akron Art Museum through August 16, 2026. Kent Monkman (b. 1965) is a member of ocêkwi sipiy (Fisher River Cree Nation) in Treaty […]
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Writing about Sltwtr Gallery’s exhibition 250 on the Fourth of July feels right and hopeful. The gallery could be anywhere: It’s in the community-focused building owned by the organization called Loiter, and it houses something absolutely common: a group of artists building community, presenting shows. But it’s impossible to ignore its location on Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland. In the […]
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Julian Stanczak is surely the one painter of recognized international stature that Cleveland has produced. But it’s an unfortunate fact that work has not been very well shown in town. The Cleveland Museum of Art has never staged an exhibition of his work, and those exhibitions that have been devoted to him—for example, a conscientious four-part survey of his prints […]
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In Managing the Darkness, HEDGE Gallery presents a compelling two-person exhibition featuring Hilary Gent and Edward Raffel, on view June 19 through July 25. Together, the artists explore the conceptual relationship between light and darkness, using distinct yet complementary approaches to illuminate both the gallery and the viewer’s perception. It’s a rare moment in that Gent–the Gallery Director and Owner […]
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Are you a street photographer in Northeast Ohio? Do you take your camera out, prowling the city for images that reveal something about where you live? If so, this is for you: CAN Journal seeks photographers for the quarterly Photo Poets series. Photo Poets is a quarterly print feature curated by Aja Joi Grant, highlighting street photography in Northeast Ohio. […]
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Full disclosure, I have long loved Greg Donley’s photography. Why? The way he constructs these long horizontal works creates a left to right cinematic effect with the splicing. Therefore, from a distance, each work creates cool visual rhythms of light and space. In addition, he pairs these works into 8 upper and lower groupings duos, hence the title, 8xTwo. The […]
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A new retrospective at WOLFS Gallery revisits one of Cleveland’s most original Modernists and makes a strong case that Sommer is one of America’s most underrecognized artists. More than seventy-five years after his death and a memorial exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1950, William Sommer is once again commanding attention in Northeast Ohio. William Sommer: Visionary Modernist, […]
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Like discovering a mysterious bruise on your thigh, tilting your nose toward a trail of perfume, or tightening your fist around a receding memory, Things That Ache Softly is an exhibition imbued with the intrigue of trying to put your finger on something you can’t quite name, something you had maybe even tried in vain to forget. At her HEDGE […]
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The March 28, No Kings rally in Cleveland was a visual spectacle led by individuals who may not consider themselves artists, but practice their creative freedoms through colorful, authentic imagery. Their cries bounced off of the Free Stamp — whose gigantic letters spelling the word ‘FREE’ seemingly resonated with the cause. At protests, the signs and art are only curated […]
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