Connecting to Futures: Celeste Stauber

Celeste Stauber knows that if the zombie apocalypse comes to a neighborhood near her, she’ll be alright. “Visual art is just about problem solving,” says Stauber. “In any job I’ve had, I’ve been the problem solver and figured out a solution creatively. Plus I can make paper and rope from plants. If I found a team of people I wouldn’t die immediately.”

Stauber is the gallery and store manager at the Morgan Conservatory, the largest arts center in the US dedicated to papermaking, book arts, and letterpress printing. Her days vary: she may go from talking to artists and sponsors about an upcoming exhibit to climbing a ladder and painting a gallery wall, then to contacting volunteers to help with a show opening. From reviewing artist contracts and tracking down shipping paperwork to designing vinyl exhibit signage and writing descriptions for wall tags. From chatting with the current, acclaimed artist-in-residence at the Morgan to pitching ideas for the next exhibit. And that’s just the gallery portion of her job.

Stauber is also responsible for the Morgan’s retail store, a jewel box of handmade papers and gifts. The Morgan’s hand-processed paper—which often starts with the kozo plants growing just outside its doors—attracts artists looking for a medium that is, in and of itself, a piece of art. Stauber runs the store’s point-of-sale system, works with the Morgan’s paper production manager on inventory control, manages a variety of items sold on consignment for artists, and fulfills online sales orders.

“I’ve learned a lot,” says Stauber. “Customers let me know what works and what doesn’t, and there are always a lot of questions.” Continuous learning, welcoming questions, and being open to change have been touchstones on Stauber’s career path. As a child, Stauber “kind of did every kind of art:” piano lessons for eleven years, dance lessons for ten, violin for five, theatre classes, set design classes, and “any art class that I could take that wasn’t ceramics.” Her classical training in music pointed her in the direction of piano performance until a hand injury in high school made her pivot toward visual arts for her future.

During high school in Bluffton, Ohio, a small college town south of Toledo, Stauber took all the visual art classes offered. Art teacher Vickie Garmon helped Stauber discover what she disliked (painting, ceramics) and what she loved (drawing, collage), allowing Stauber to spend all her study halls in the art room—a labor of love as the weather got warmer and there was no AC.

Stauber started thinking about arts management as she investigated colleges. Her parents (both humanities professors) were supportive, with her father encouraging the arts management and administration path. She also had an entrepreneurial drive, busking with a friend at the local farmer’s market and making and selling her own lemon-themed greeting cards as a child.

Baldwin-Wallace University (BW) was just rolling out its arts management program as Stauber was shopping for colleges. In addition to relevant courses, Stauber had family in the area, memories of going to concerts at the nearby Grog Shop and Mahall’s with her mom, and “going to Cleveland didn’t feel like a terrifying move to New York City.” She enrolled with a major in arts administration and minor in studio art, attending her business classes as the only student with blue hair and feeling much more comfortable in the art building.

It was in the fall of her sophomore year that her drawing professor, Kim Bissett, took her aside for a conversation about changing her major to studio art. “It was scary, thinking about going into art as a major,” says Stauber. “How would my parents feel about focusing on the creative side rather than the business side?” Her parents supported her decision to flip her degree to a major in studio art and a minor in arts management, and Stauber found a tight-knit community of supportive, artistic peers—“the weird arts kids with a lot of healthy competition.”

While at BW, Stauber’s work was accepted each year in the annual juried student art exhibitions, and won the academic dean’s award in 2018. She interned with the Toledo Museum of Art and Berea Arts Fest; was a studio assistant at BW; and got to know Rich Cihlar, the office manager of the art department and co-owner of E11even 2 Gallery at 78^th Street Studios who offered Celeste and other art students night classes in framing, matting, and presenting their art more professionally.

After graduating magna cum laude with a BA in studio art in 2018, the rest of Stauber’s career tumbled out of her BW experience. Stauber first worked at M. Gentile Studios, Inc., as a frame specialist, learning more about framing, presentation, and archival materials as she worked. Laid off in 2020 when the pandemic hit, Stauber rode out the storm with a non-art-related stint as on online personal stylist for Stitch Fix (interesting: help me make my ex jealous; boring: help me find a dress to wear), and went to her studio more often, working on her own collages and drawings.

As things opened up in 2021, Stauber and BW classmate Jared Gepperth co-curated a year’s worth of shows at E11even 2 Gallery, scratching their itch to open a gallery. Working with Cihlar and his gallery partners gave Stauber and Gepperth the safety net of an established Cleveland gallery; Stauber and Gepperth brought fresh ideas and artists they had met at school. Stauber learned just how much work—and fun—curation and installation could be, how much it relied on organizational skills as well as artistic integrity, and added these to her skill set.

Which prepared her nicely when the opportunity at the Morgan arose in 2022. Stauber knew about the Morgan from her printmaking teacher, had made paper there and printed on it (“it looked like crap”), and had been encouraged to submit to its juried show (“I never got in”). She saw the job posting on the Morgan’s Instagram and applied, because “I always wanted to be a gallery manager for handmade paper because—we all love a deckled edge.”

Stauber talks about how much she’s learned in her job: the intricacies of making paper, filling the intimidatingly large gallery space as both a curator and an art handler, getting more familiar with how nonprofits work in terms of grants and sponsors. As a self-descrivbed introvert, being a gallery manager has also pushed her beyond her comfort zone, going to other gallery openings to see what is happening in the art world, making connections and having conversations with other artists and people working in all roles of the art world.  She has applied her curatorial vision in other venues, too:  In 2024, she curated Never Ending Cycles: A Laundromat Soap Opera at E11even2 Gallery—a coincidental echo following the Cleveland Museum of Art’s 2023 Degas and the Laundress exhibition.

And she is surprised by how much she likes papermaking. “Painting and printmaking—there are too many steps and it takes too long,” laughs Stauber. “And then I’m working at the Morgan and making paper, which has too many steps and takes too long!” Her voice softens and gets excited simultaneously. “There’s nothing like working on paper you’ve made yourself—you can control the color, the fiber, blend fibers. I’m now embedding my own drawings in translucent paper made out of abaca fiber. Paper can be more than a substrate. It can be a medium in its own right.”

And if that zombie apocalypse comes, Stauber will, most likely, pivot and bring her creative problem-solving and organizational skills to bear. She might also whip up a batch of paper made from the weedy thistles that threaten to take over her community garden patch: using what appears to make new things that serve her well.