Don Harvey’s latest exhibition at William Busta Projects might not look like what you expect, and that’s what makes it so compelling. Harvey is best known for his subversive paintings of figures and animals emerging from evocative geometric landscapes. His current work, however, eschews public expectations in favor of deep introspection. Shaking off the burden of representation, Harvey’s new paintings […]
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This is my first one-person exhibition since 2014. That was also in one of Bill Busta’s galleries, the one on Prospect Avenue, which he closed the following year. I began showing in his galleries in 1989 and showed there regularly, usually every other year. I’m so pleased to have this show back in Bill’s fold. These are selections from the […]
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In physics, we calculate momentum by multiplying mass times velocity. In lots of other ways we think about momentum as the tendency of acceleration to feed upon acceleration—in success on sporting fields, in the popularity of a candidate, in the intensity of relationships. Among other things, the experience of Michael Gill’s exhibition is about how momentum and attentiveness interact. As […]
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Timothy Callaghan makes art of the places that he sees in the ordinariness of his life. It is in some ways a contrary to the frequent practice of artists to travel to generate new ideas, looking for the unfamiliar, the dramatic, the exotic. (Admittedly there is benefit to this, as travel is one of the ways that we can see […]
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On view as part of Curlee Raven Holton’s solo exhibition Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit at William Busta Projects in Waterloo this fall, the modest size serigraph relief, A Dance of Joy and Pain (2024), summons the unusually spectacular autumn gracing Cleveland this year. Orange-crimson burns like a flame against a shrinking azure expanse, glow emitting a boundless, jubilant, […]
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Framed works of art can be imagined as windows. In art history and criticism, that’s a time-worn perception. Marcel Duchamp turned the idea inside out in his epic Étant donnés, a work of art that presents as a door with peepholes. Looking through the peepholes, the viewer experiences an illuminating, erotic world. Then you wonder what is being illuminated—the tableau […]
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When I walk alongside Lake Erie’s beach, I peel my eyes open for rocks of all different shapes, sizes, and textures, keeping the ones most divine to me contained in my pocket. The ones which are flat are perfect forms for skipping across the water, flickering movements which follow. In Matthew Kolodziej’s solo show at William Busta Projects titled, Comet, […]
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Since the start of his career in the 1990s, the work of Dexter Davis has been expressive of the emotional and magical core of our humanity. Mostly, his work as been a dissective portraiture, reaching into the complex variability of how we face the world. He constructs, tears apart, rearranges, patches together, shreds and assembles. Much as all of us […]
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Kristen Cliffel’s delightfully textured ceramics are familiar around northeast Ohio in group shows, galleries, and museums. At William Busta Projects, Cliffel’s solo exhibition, Working from Home, occupies two rooms and is poignant in all the right ways Cliffel’s work is an exploration of what she calls “domestic mythologies.” According to her website, “our culture surrounds us with pervasive archetypal myths […]
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What could be more obvious or more pleasing than paintings of your hometown? Maybe with a comforting recognition of local landmarks? Maybe enhanced with a new flourish? This was the appeal of the Cleveland Calendars published in the 1980s and 1990s by International Printing Company, who commissioned a different artist each year. These annual commissions included Mary Lou Ferbert, Moses […]
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