Heights Arts Summer Exhibitions Explore Disability, Cultural Identity & Youth Creativity

Summer at Heights Arts is filled to the brim with new art perspectives across three exhibitions. Colorburst, open May 21 through June 14, showcases the annual high school student-curated show exploring the expressive power of color. On view from June 18 through August 16, Beyond Perception brings together artists whose work is shaped by experiences of disability, illness, and recovery, alongside Amelia Casiano’s storytelling of cultural identity in the Spotlight Gallery.

Open May 21 through June 14, this year’s student-curated show, Colorburst, explores the expressive power of color. The student-curated show is part of the high school internship program at Heights Arts, which fosters youth leadership in the art world.

The group show, Beyond Perception, shifts the perspective of disability as limitation. Instead, it positions it as a generative force: one that reshapes how art is made, experienced, and understood. Artist Marissa Nicole Stewart will exhibit photographic and conceptual work rooted in themes of Black family, matriarchal lineage, and health. Stewart’s practice examines the quiet, often invisible labor of survival during illness.

Meg Matko’s interdisciplinary work uses sculpture and performance to explore the feminine body as narrator, interpreter, and weight-bearer. Ceré Bellow’s multimedia work touches on ecological awareness with personal healing. Following experiences of trauma, art emerges not only as expression, but as necessity. Visually impaired self-taught finger painter Regina E. Dorfmeyer’s work redefines the relationship between sight and creation. Her process is tactile and immersive as she describes: “Finger painting allows me to connect directly with the surface, feeling each…texture, and layer as the work unfolds.” Andrew Reach’s 21-year career in architecture was cut short by spinal disease. Prompted by a profound shift in medium and perspective, he turned to digital art as a form of survival. What began as two-dimensional experimentation evolved into hybrid sculptural works he calls “ART-itectures”. Kristi Copez, advocate-artist, ceramicist, and chronic illness survivor, presents a series of her open prayer vessels.

Also opening June 18 is the Spotlight Exhibition featuring Amelia Casiano. Drawing from her Puerto Rican heritage and Cleveland upbringing, Casiano’s mixed media works use vibrant palettes and layered textures to explore themes ranging from womanhood to climate change. Her paintings function as dialogues: between cultures, between internal and external worlds.

Together, these exhibitions create space for dialogue, reflection, and new ways of understanding one another through art.

HEIGHTS ARTS
2175 Lee Road
Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118
heightsarts.org
216.371.3457

EVENTS:

Colorburst, May 21–June 14. Opening reception 3pm Sunday, May 24. Closing reception 5pm Friday, August 14

Beyond Perception, June 18–August 16. Opening reception 5pm Thursday, June 18. Closing reception 5pm Friday, August 14

Spotlight Gallery: Amelia Casiano, June 18–August 16. Opening reception 5pm Thursday, June 18. Closing reception 5pm Friday, August 14

Ekphrastacy: Artists Talk & Poets Respond to Exhibited Work, 7pm Friday, July 24