The Eyebrows Say “Whoa!” Justin Brennan at HEDGE

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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Of Mirrors and Windows: Sarah Curry at HEDGE

  Artists are also educators, one way or another, whether as a day job or in the sense that they communicate through their art. They have an important role in the great human project of personal growth as they search out the hidden shape of the spirit. In a statement introducing Underestimated, her current solo show (on view through Friday […]

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Epics of the everyday: Pamela Dodds at Suite 215

A contemporary filmmaker has about 30 images per second with which to tell her story. A painter has only what she can fit into the canvas. Therefore, most paintings are not narratives per se. Even when mythological, historic, or pop cultural figures are recognizable in painting, the meaning of the painting is more than just the story of the depicted […]

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Finding the trees in the forest: Eileen Dorsey at the Cleveland Botanical Garden

Two paintings in Eileen Dorsey’s Cleveland Botanical Garden exhibition Wooded Perspectives share the title “Breakthrough.” On one level, the word names the literal contents of those images—the spot where a hiker in thick forests suddenly steps into an open field, “breaking through” the claustrophobia of thick trees. But “breakthrough” also encapsulates an apt response to Wooded Perspectives itself. Here, Dorsey […]

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The Man Whose Head Expanded

Some artists plow the same fields over and over, as it were, working in a given medium for entire careers. That can’t be said of Eric Rippert, whose show The Man Whose Head Expanded was on view June 7 through July 6 at BAYarts. A lot of people know Rippert for his photographic work, specifically for Cleveland landscape photos featuring […]

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Watercolors in the garden: Forever Spring at Bonfoey Gallery

The exhibition Forever Spring by Gary Bukovnik coincides with the release of a luscious book of the same name. Both the show and book celebrate Bukovnik’s watercolor images of floral arrangements. Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Bukovnik is currently based out of San Francisco. For more than three decades, he has painted posters for that city’s symphony. However, he […]

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Sean Wheeler at AO Architecture: Process-Oriented

Sean Wheeler is a teacher who took up painting in February 2016. He says he had painted perhaps ten canvases in his life prior to that, but at that time, at age 42, and without any training, he plunged into painting in a big way. On the heels of a job change, the death of his mother, a divorce, and […]

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Peril, time, memory: BAYArts’ annual juried show

Friday March 8, BAYArts hosted its opening reception for its annual juried exhibition. The exhibition was open to any artist, professional or amateur, 18 years or older. A total of 74 individuals participated. This year, Jenniffer Omaitz and Mark Inglis served as judges. Omaitz is a painter and educator based out of Kent. Inglis is the vice president of marketing […]

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