The National Juried Show at the Morgan Conservatory annually impresses by showing the possibilities of paper as a material. That’s true once again in the 2021 version, curated by SPACES executive director Tizziana Baldenebro and University of Akron director of galleries Arnold Tunstall. But this year the exploration of materiality is bolstered by a strong component of text—searing text. In one […]
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The impact of humans on the planet is a great subject for art audiences these days. That’s not just because it matters, which of course it does in an existential crisis kind-of-way, but also because people know enough and are beginning to care enough to relate to it. They’ve heard on the news, and even seen for themselves how […]
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Handmade paper production is a time-consuming and delicate process. It requires patience, practice, understanding of chemistry, proficient color mixing, development of well-tried recipes, great intuition, and a bit of good luck in order to acheive consistent thickness and color of paper. The Morgan is the only non-profit organization in the US producing a large volume of handmade paper for sale […]
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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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Timothy Frerichs has spent the past 25 years using his artwork to address the impact humans have on the environment. His current work addresses human activity as the dominant influence on the environmental problems plaguing Lake Erie and the Great Lakes system. Frerichs writes: “Climate change coupled with other human manipulations are altering the Great Lakes system at an unprecedented level. […]
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“Times are tough, and they’ve challenged everybody,” reflects Tom Balbo, founder and artistic director. “I started with the concept for the Morgan in 2006. This must be unlucky 13.” This summer of closures, postponements, and uncertainties has caused us to realize that often the most memorable experiences of art involve crowded spaces. Back in March, we canceled the opening reception of our […]
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In the middle of the perfect storm that is the COVID crisis and the reckoning with our history of racism, a number of Cleveland art organizations are facing a crisis of another kind: No less than seven important Northeast Ohio, nonprofit visual arts institutions have recently seen their executive directors resign. Most have appointed interim directors. All of them confront […]
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This is not about that old song by the Bellamy Brothers. The Morgan Conservatory scored in a big way last year by landing a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and if you’ve been around the papermaking studio the last few months you’ve probably seen some of the result. Claudio Orso-Giacone, one of the artists supported there […]
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Elsewhere on the digital pages of CAN, Brittany M. Hudak and Michael Gill have written fine-grained and big-picture analyses of the year in Northeast Ohio art. Hudak remembered the year in a series of particular exhibits; Gill contextualized local developments within larger trends in the artworld. This post, then, is calibrated towards the medium scale—events which made a great immediate […]
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The holiday break in the art schedule gives us a minute to reflect on what’s been going on for the last year. While I would never sum up 2019 by saying it was the year of this or that, many of the year’s most significant exhibits and events in Cleveland point to big picture evolution in the art world. […]
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