“I do everything with the same conviction, whether I’m taking photographs or performing or painting or writing. I’m the same person.” – Patti Smith I doubt it’s very surprising that a musical artist would dabble in other art forms. The Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was also a well-known painter who showed his work alongside Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky, and […]
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“I like making art that makes people laugh,” says Grace Frank in her Lakewood studio, as I’m contemplating a painting of an ice cream cone lounging on a car. It’s great. Then she explains that it was a gift for her boyfriend, and is a self-portrait – inspired by their frequent trips to get ice cream. Even better. Frank has […]
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I remember the first time I saw Amy Casey’s work. It was at the SPACES 30th Anniversary Exhibition back in 2008. I see a lot of shows, and I can barely remember my phone number sometimes, but Casey’s world left a lasting impression. It’s a world of towering buildings, houses stacked upon houses upon houses, buildings swinging in fishing nets, precarious and chaotic, […]
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Arts funding is a hot topic these days in Northeast Ohio. It was only last year that Cuyahoga County voters overwhelmingly renewed the cigarette tax for the arts, but the stewardship of one tiny portion of those funds—grants to individual artists–has become fraught with controversy. You’ll find much more about that elsewhere in this issue of CAN, in essays by […]
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“They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.” You may have seen this popular slogan on posters at the women’s march last week. But the seeds that artist Darice Polo is examining in “Seeds of Colonialism” didn’t lead to unity and peace, but rather a century of oppression, discrimination, and exploitation. Technically, Puerto Rico is a U.S. “Unincorporated Territory”, […]
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The folks at SPACES really know how to throw a good party – and their grand opening weekend on January 14 and 15 did not disappoint. It was two days of performances, temporary installations, delightful food and drink, and of course some dancing. During the Saturday night “Roving Housewarming Party” nearly 30 area artists either contributed art or gave performances; […]
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I asked Cannaday Chapman if he thought of himself as an “Illustrator” or an “Artist”, and without skipping a beat he said: “Illustrator”. I nodded quizzically as I looked over all of the hand-drawn and hand-painted scraps of paper around the room. While Chapman does indeed “illustrate” many things – in particular articles for magazines, newspapers, greeting cards, etc. […]
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As a proud member of the CAN Journal team and an insatiable art-appreciator, I see more art exhibitions than the average person in the course of a year. Personally I’ve never been a fan of end-of-the-year lists, or best-of’s, and when the critics start rolling out their inevitable snoozy inventories I tend to just tune out. But in what has been a […]
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Several Cleveland gallery artists have licensed their work for adaptation as wall covering designs. While the worlds of design and fine art connect and intersect in a multitude of ways, the process of working together often raises questions that highlight the differences between those worlds. This is the story of how one local design firm brings them together. If […]
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Once you are familiar with Jake Kelly’s work you start spotting it everywhere. He is the virtuoso responsible for the giant murals in Melt Restaurants – or maybe you’ve seen his fliers advertising upcoming shows at the Grog Shop, or perhaps you’ve seen his amazing mural inside the Grog Shop, or his serial comic masterpiece the “Lake Erie Monster” made with long-time […]
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