Paintings can foreshorten and remake experience, transcribing in a directly sensual, primal tongue. This ambitious undertaking is often bitter and disappointing — but pocked with thrilling episodes. It’s a search for the kind of truth that immediacy conveys, a body-to-body, first person narrative approach to communication. Either there’s no room for error, or (more likely) the error is all the […]
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The hands-in-pocket, head-tilting, quiet, full-absorption mode happens to me just the same when I visit a gallery with a mask on as it used to without. I was pleased to discover this at Framed Gallery in December. So much of the art that lines the walls, all by African American artists, national and international, called out to me with […]
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A state arts agency might seem pretty distant from the insurrection at the US Capitol January 6. But when Susan Allan Block responded to that event by posting on social media in all caps, NO PEACE, NO UNITY, NO CONCESSION, and called president elect Joe Biden “ILLIGITIMATE,” and referred to vice president-elect Kamala Harris as a “WHORE,” that changed. Just […]
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Wolfs Gallery’s new location is a bit off the beaten track in a commercial/industrial park in Beachwood, but it is worth the visit. It was a treat to walk through the expansive space of multiple connected galleries filled with historic and contemporary art from Cleveland and beyond. Currently, their feature exhibition focusses on portraits of children by William Sommer […]
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One thing is certain about 2020 – it’s the year I saw the least art, well, the least of my entire adult life. It’s not that I didn’t see and enjoy some artsy things, it’s just the shocking realization that I didn’t set foot in an art museum even once, or happily spend most Friday nights bouncing around town to […]
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The novel coronavirus was not only devastating to the art world in 2020: COVID drove evolution, as well. Some strategies artists and organizations invented or embraced were not only innovative in the moment, but are likely to endure in 2021 and beyond. Here are a few innovations, adaptations, and repackaging efforts that got our attention in this terrible, horrible, no […]
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We can learn from people who passed away, even if we don’t always know what. Every life offers multiple perspectives on how to find meaning. To improvise on a theme from Wallace Stevens, twenty people dying are one death with something to teach us, and also twenty deaths with twenty things each to teach us about the value of a […]
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The social media outpouring of grief over the passing of John W. Carlson in recent days provided a small window on the scope of impact made by an artist who loved to engage with people, ideas, and art. John was taken to the hospital in an ambulance Friday night, having had an abdominal aneurism. Officially he died at 2:02 […]
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In addition to all the wretched things 2020 produced, there were some wonderful books by and about Northeast Ohio artists and their works. No matter your interests as a spectator, collector, colleague, or student of the regional art scene, these titles are worth a look and make great gifts. The Flying Banana George Kocar, introduction by Douglas Max Utter […]
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Living in a world where truths are increasingly at odds and facts are believed to be false, I sometimes interpret and apply my personal thoughts and feelings to the art I see. Often, I develop narratives that may not have been the artist’s intent, yet can still be applicable to the work in relation to that of other artists. Keffer’s […]
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