Lots to do, lots to do … Cleveland Buzzes …

This past week – Thursday, November 29th and 30th – the Hybread show ran at SPACES’ Hotbox. A really remarkable flex space the Hotbox has become a lab for performances and exhibitions that don’t fit neatly into any conventional space. The artists in the Hybread Show – members from Kristen Baumliér’s Hybrid Media course – staged a two-night event that focused on video and digital prints. The show was great … nice, refreshing and beautifully laid out. Impressive -- Some of the artists involved: Andy Hunt, Bridget McGuire, Ryan Samples, Christy Watterson, Jenna Mahoney, Hannah Davis, Angela Daley, Matt Queitsch, Matt Rowe, Jessica Howard, Ben Weathers,Matt Evans plus (I'm making mistakes on the list -- I'll correct as soon as I can).

Another Fantastic event that was on November 29th was at Euclid Tavern - Me, Jessica Sikon and Shimmer Sister Performed -- Organized by Dan Tranberg, the evening was a great occasion to listen to some awesome music and hang with wonderful people.

Kyle and Alex as "Shimmer Sister" started the evening with Jessica Sikon following second and the event was closed by headliner "Me, my self and Matthew Childers". Shimmer Sister provided some ethereal rock 'n roll sounds while Ms. Sikon built on her growing reputation as a signer/songwriter of the first order. Me kicked it out with a sound and look that deserves their frequent comparisons to young Elvis.

The event was free and word on the street is that Mr. Tranberg will be organizing other such events for the Tavern -- so pay attention if you missed this don't next time.

The Euclid Tavern @ 11625 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH --

On Thursday, December 6, 2012 – there’s two nice events to check out – try to make them both.

At the Grog Shop, 2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Hts. – there will be the Brandon Cartellone Memorial Scholarship Fundraiser. Starting at 7:30 pm – a nice way to remember Brandon and celebrate his life.

Description from the Facebook page: Join Brandon's friends and family as they have a gathering to celebrate his life and help raise funds to create a permanent memorial Scholarship at the Cleveland Institute of Art in his memory.

There will be a silent auction featuring some of Brandon's works, a 50/50 raffle, baskets, T-shirts, and music will be provided by Jimmy Jack, Svelton, Right of Indiana, How About No and Ohio Sky.

Cover fee: $10 or $5 with student ID, proceeds to go to the Scholarship Fund.
Doors open at 730, and live music starts at 730!

As you consider your own charitable giving but are unable to attend this event, please consider a tax-deductible gift.

Donations for Brandon's fund can be sent at any time. Please make checks to: Mike Kinsella, Director of Giving & Alumni Relations, 11141 East Blvd. Cleveland Ohio, 44106

Facebook Event Page

And then there’s the Arts Collinwood Mixer also on the 6th – 5 pm to 9 pm

The Board of Trustees, Gallery Committee, and Friends of Arts Collinwood invite you to join us for a Holiday Mixer in celebration of the season. Complimentary appetizers, live music, good company and merriment abound at this hoppin’ holiday happenin’!

The new Callaloo Café, opening in 2013, will serve festive libations and a preview taste of its scrumptious Caribbean cuisine. Don’t miss your chance to check out this hot spot coming soon to Waterloo Road.

See what’s ahead in the Gallery!

This is your opportunity to preview the 2013 roster of Gallery exhibits. Artists and curators will be onsite to mingle with guests and discuss their upcoming shows.

Get a sneak peek at the Holiday Art Sale by renewing your membership or becoming a new member of Arts Collinwood! The price is right, starting at just $10. Be the first to do your holiday shopping in this unique, handcrafted gifts shop extraordinaire.

Chat with Alan Glazen of Project Light Switch and find out what the buzz is all about.

Come share in the excitement of the Waterloo Arts and Entertainment District as we celebrate the accomplishments of 2012 and look forward to 2013.

And then on December 7, 2012 – BLUNDERBUSS – 6 pm to 9 pm
At CIA’s JMC – 2nd floor 201 – 11610 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH

Hey … watch these spaces:

Forum Artspace

Cool Cleveland

and I would like to recommend you get the CoolCleveland ap … check out CoolCleveland.com

Visiting Artists: Jim Campbell and Jill Sigman

Tuesday, Nov. 16
CIA welcomes Visiting Artist
Jim Campbell

5:30 pm there will be an open reception – Lobby - Gund
7 pm Artist’s Talk – Aitken Auditorium


Tuesday is a big night at the Institute as CIA welcomes Bickford and IME visiting artist Jim Campbell. I had the chance to see his work last year and it really is amazing. This is definitely a talk worth coming and ... there will be a full reception beforehand with tons of delicious food from Tommy's! (We love Tommy's on Coventry they've been really good to us.)

So check out Jim Campbell's website and the recent write up on him in New York Magazine.



Then don't forget there's still Lunch on Fridays and this week it's Jill Sigman and her talk promises to be really eye-opening.


Body, Object, Material: How I Am My Work
Choreographer and multi-media artist Jill Sigman will discuss her process and projects using her body as a tool for asking questions about the world. Sigman’s work exists at the intersection of dance, theater, and installation, and often involves quotidian materials such as Cheetos, eggshells, wax, and plastic. She is currently at work on The Hut Project, a series of site-specific structures built of found and re-purposed materials, investigating themes of sustainability, real estate, and apocalypse. www.thinkdance.org

LOF and the State of Sculpture and a wealth of amazing events!

The State of Sculpture

Steve Litt's write up on the Conference

SculptureX website

The Sculpture Center - Cleveland

The Institute hosts The State of Sculpture on Saturday, November 6 ... running from 10 am until 8 pm the event is designed to stimulate dialogue on and around the contemporary sculpture as well as to provide and opportunity for artists to network and exchange ideas. A reception at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland closes things with a presentation of new works by a variety of artists including Beth Campbell, who will CIA's Artist-in-Residence in the Spring.

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Remember to take advantage of the wealth of all of CIA's exciting events!!! Here’s a list of reminders to help you do just that …

In association with Case Western Reserve's English Department -
CIA's Liberal Arts Environment is sponsoring ...
Mark Irwin - Poet
Thursday, November 4
5 pm
Guilford House Parlor
11112 Bellflower RD
(Refreshments to follow.)

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Lunch on Fridays
Jenniffer Omaitz – Bickford Painting Visting Artist
Friday, November 5
12:15
Ohio Bell Auditorium, CIA – Gund

Jenniffer Omaitz is a nationally exhibited painter and installation artist. Omaitz received her BFA in Painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA in Painting from Kent State University. Omaitz has been exhibiting her work in Cleveland and Denver since 2002. Her most recent shows include a site-specific installation commissioned for the 2010 Biennial of the Americas in Denver. Omaitz is the recipient of an award from the Sculpture Center in Cleveland Ohio and her installation work will be featured in a solo show at the Center in 2011. Omaitz lives and works in Kent, OH.

The Lunch on Fridays Series is sponsored by CIA's Liberal Arts and Foundation Environments. Ms. Omaitz appears through the support of the Institute's George P. Bickford Endowment for Visiting Artists in Painting and the Painting Department.

Jen Omaitz's website

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Anatomica Aesthetica Exhibition Opening
Friday, November 5
5 pm - Lecture by Guest Curator Laura Lindgren
6 to 8 pm – Opening Reception
Reinberger Gallery, CIA – Gund Building
11141 East Blvd.

The aesthetics of the living body have long intrigued artists working in every medium of art. Are you curious too? Come to CIA's Reinberger Galleries to explore the enduring bond between art and medicine in Anatomica Aesthetica: Photographs from the Mütter Museum and H. F. Aitken Illustrations from the Dittrick Medical History Center. Join us on Friday, November 5 for the opening night. The show will be on view in CIA’s Reinberger Galleries through December 18. Learn more at cia.edu/anatomica.

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Saturday, November 6
The State of Sculpture
10 am to 5 pm Lunch will be served
4th Floor Joseph McCullogh Center – CIA
11610 Euclid Avenue – Cleveland, Ohio

This event marks the launch of the Sculpture Xchange website www.sculpturex.org and in support of the 2011 SuclptureX exhibits to be held at The Sculpture Center – Cleveland, The Erie Art Musuem and curated by critic and author David Carrier.

Keynote speaker: Jeanne Silverthorne, noted artist and educator.

Jeanne Silverthorne is an artist who lives and works in New York. She is best known for sculptures cast in rubber, but her installations often include photographs, videos and kinetic elements as well. She has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Albright Knox Museum, among others, and her work is in the collections of those museums as well the Leum Samsung Museum, Korea, FINAC, Denver Museum, Weatherspoon
Museum, Houston Museum, Sheldon Museum, the Contemporary Museum Honolulu, the RISDi Museum. She is represented by McKee Gallery in New York and ShoshanaWayne Gallery in LosAngeles. Reviews and articles about her work have appeared in ARTFORUM. Art in America, Art News and Sculpture Magazine. A feature on her projects is scheduled to be published in a forthcoming issue of Sculpture Magazine. This year she has been nominated for a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award. Since 1993, she has taught at the School of Visual Arts and for seven years she was on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University.


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Foundation Visiting Artist
Tommy Simpson
Tuesday, Nov. 9,
7 pm
Aitken Auditorium

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LOF – Visiting Artist in Fibers
Jill Sigman
Friday, November 12
12:15
OBA, Gund – CIA


Jill Sigman describes her work as “experimental dance theater” and “movement-based performance.” Trained in ballet, art history, and with a Ph.D. in philosophy, she creates a new process of physical exploration with every piece she creates, whether in residence with Cleveland’s GroundWorks or with her own New York-based company, jill sigman/thinkdance [thinkdance.org].


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IME and Bickford Visiting Artist
Jim Campbell
Tuesday, November 16 –
5:30 reception, Gund – CIA Lobby
7 pm talk, Aitken, Gund – CIA

Internationally known as an artist working at the edge of electronic media, Jim Campbell holds degrees from MIT in both Mathematics and Electrical Engineering. Born in Chicago in 1956 and now living in San Francisco, Jim Campbell is a former Silicon Valley engineer turned artist who explores the inherent qualities of electronic media forgoing the seductive lure of its capacity through digital to produce high resolution imagery. He instead chooses to investigate the limits of perception working with LED lighting and pixelation. He is most interested in the limits of visual information to transform into meaning. An internationally known artist his work relates to many disciplines including photography and installation.

He shows regularly in New York, Canada, San Francisco and throughout Europe. Most recently his work was on view at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York.

http://www.jimcampbell.tv/


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Visiting Artist in Printmaking –
Suzanne Michele Chouteau
Thursday, November 18
7 pm
Ohio Bell Auditorium – Gund
Free + Open

Manjello, Manjello, Manjello

Right now CIA has agents in Cuba ... really ... we have three intrepid travelers visiting the island nation in search of a future artist-in-residence for the Institute. Its a research trip that's being supported by a Creative Fusion grant from the Cleveland Foundation. Next spring they'll be giving a talk on their adventures so look for an announcement of that coming up.

But currently the scene in Cleveland proper continues to heat up. Thursday night there's the upcoming Manjello performance at CIA's VATe Coventry Center (see below for details) and then this weekend there's The Unsung Torsos Event at MOCA - Cleveland. That's on Saturday the 30th from 7 pm until 10 pm - tickets are just $5.

Unsung Torsos - MOCA - Cleveland

One of the most remarkable performances you will ever witness:

Manjello performed by Canadian artists - Joe Kelly and Jay Crocker
Thursday, October 28, 7 pm
CIA’s VATe Coventry Center
1854 Coventry Rd.

Free + Open

Collaborators Crocker and Kelly will create a real-time drawn-on-film animation with accompanying soundtrack in front of a live audience. Kelly will create evolving imagery on a loop of clear 16mm film, progressively building visuals with inks and with each subsequent pass of the film loop through the projector. Crocker will respond to the developing animation with an array of digital and analogue noisemaking devices. This work creates a transitory footprint of the visual and auditory mark-making journey taken by Kelly and Crocker.

On Friday the pair will appear as part of the Lunch on Fridays Series, giving their audience an overview of their careers and insights into how they make work.

A Canadian and Newfoundland-born media artist currently living and working in Alberta, Calgary, Kelly has made a number of films that have received international awards. He works primarily with film, and has completed and screened ten films on super 8, 16 and 35mm formats. He also creates film and video-based installations and has shown all across North America, from Halifax to Victoria, all over the United States, and in Europe and Asia. His work has been featured in the following festivals: Images, Black Maria, PS1, and Ann Arbor.

Joe Kelly's Website

Jay Crocker is a musical explorer, multi-instrumentalist, analog recordist/producer, and general creative wunderkind. Over the last decade Crocker has been relentless in his contribution to both the Canadian independent music scene as well helping to put Calgary's avant-guard and noise scene on the map. He is best known for his work as a leader, as well as being a full time member in both the trash jazz noise group Nomoreshapes, and the progressive experimental pop outfit Ghostkeeper. His work has received critical acclaim in such publications as the New York Times, the Paris Transatlantic, exclaim! Magazine and countless others. Always searching for new sounds and ways to conceive and perform his work, Crocker is boundless as an artist and performer.

Jay Crocker's Website


These events are made possible by The Cleveland Institute of Art’s Visual Arts and Technologies Environment, CIA’s Sculpture Department and CIA’s George P. Bickford Endowment for Visiting Artist.

New York, New York ... and a giant rat

students viewing Peter Halley at Mary Boone









the rat from the Independent Art Fair in Chelsea

Every year CIA’s Visual Arts and Technology Environment hosts a New York Art Excursion for students. Students from all over the school participate and while there they have the opportunity to engage a board spectrum of contemporary art. It’s a strictly low frills affair but the chance to see work of such scope is priceless and the trip further adds to the sense of a lifelong community among the students.

This year students were doubly lucky in that both the Whitney Biennial and the Armory Show were available for viewing. In addition students visited the Metropolitan Museum and walked the Chelsea Galleries with CIA Professor Saul Ostrow who also happens to write for Art in America and is the Art Editor for Bomb Magazine.

a great week - Steve Kurtz; Benjy Davies and Jenny Mendes

This past week The Cleveland Institute of Art played host to a ceramicist, Jenny Mendes; a printmaker, Benjy Davies; and the Bickford Visiting Artist, Steve Kurtz. In addition Cinematheque screened the film “Strange Culture” and the Painting Department conducted a panel featuring the artists from “Light of Day” – an exhibition currently on view at William Busta Gallery here in Cleveland.

(Weeks like this remind me what an amazing environment I have the privilege to work and teach in. There is such an abundance of energy and so many creative minds.)

All of these events received high marks from those in attendance. Steve Kurtz gave a particularly powerful talk. With great wit, he spoke about his career and the difficulties his encountered through the course of his work.

Kurtz, for those of you who weren’t able to attend, is, along with his late wife Hope, a founding member of the “tactical media” protest and performance artist collective, the Critical Art Ensemble. The group’s work has dealt with, among other subjects, issues of biotechnology. The Ensemble has authored several books including “Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media” and “Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas.” The groups’ work has been presented at such prestigious venues as The Whitney Museum, The New Museum in New York, The Corcoran, The ICA in London, the MCA in Chicago, the Musee d’art de la Ville de Paris and the London Museum of Natural History.

As detailed in the film “Strange Culture” by Lynn Hershman Leeson, from 2004 to 2008, Kurtz had hanging over him the threat of a 20 year prison sentence. These charges came about as the result of an investigation relating to the death of his wife Hope due to heart failure and were the product of a gross and rather sinister misinterpretation of the work he and his wife were doing. Over the course of those four years, and in the shadow of his tragic personal loss, Kurtz has persevered in the defense of his own civil liberties and by extension in defense of the rights of all other artists and free thinkers. It has only been since late May of 2008 that the Buffalo Prosecutor’s Office declined to reopen the case which had been dismissed. Steve Kurtz is now free.

** Special thanks to Sarah Paul for acting as liaison with Steve Kurtz.

http://www.critical-art.net

http://www.critical-art.net/biotech/sra/SRAweb/index.html

http://www.strangeculture.net/

http://www.cia.edu/academicResources/cinematheque/filmSchedule.php?action=upcoming

You Shouda Been There - Report: the Cleveland Institute of Art Recent Artist's Talks

Last Friday, February 27, CIA’s Lunch on Friday’s Series presented Chadd Lacy a local but noted glass artist (http://www.chaddlacyglass.com/). The series has been lucky to have the support of the glass department this semester with Brent Kee Young (http://www.jsauergallery.com/sagemoon/artistPages/bky_lg.html), the head of the glass program, speaking on February 13. The Cleveland Institute of Art is noted for its glass program, as well as its many other craft-based disciplines. These two artists (Lacy works as the department’s Technical Assistant) make it abundantly clear why the school maintains such a strong reputation.

Young spoke to a full house and gave a talk that allowed rare access into the creative process of a committed glass artist. Through video and still images he step by step revealed the source of his nature-based and fossil inspired forms as well as his technical process for realizing these works. An affable speaker, his generosity of spirit was made clear in his willingness to openly share his methods for achieving the stunning visual effects of his work.

The evening of February 27th also saw Nina Katchadourian speak as Foundation’s Visiting Artist. Nina is a wonderful artist and we were lucky to get her. If you didn’t get to go her talk you should definitely check out her website - http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/

Katchadourian is diverse in her approaches to making working work using installation, photography, video and sound. She has shown internationally including such prestigious venues as PS1/MoMa, Artists Space, and the Palais de Tokyo. In 2006 the Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs presented a 10-year survey of her work and published a monograph titled “All Forms of Attraction.” She is currently represented by Sara Meltzer gallery in New York and Catharine Clark gallery in San Francisco.

On February 20, 2009 Charles Tucker (www.charlestuckerart.com and http://theaestheticcompass.blogspot.com/) and Saul Ostrow took the stage in CIA’s Aitken Auditorium to present “The Rehetorical Model and the Aesthetic Compass: Systems of Research.” This talk was a presentation of their collaborative work begun spring 2008 during their joint residency at the Banff Centre located in Alberta Canada. Well attended, the talk made clear the depth of their own researches. While still in progress, what they have produced are conceptual devices that allow for systems of analysis helping to locate the position a given work is attempting to advance. In other words the device attempts to clarify points of articulation (things one can talk about) in relation to a work and to test the validity of what is said about that work. These systems seek to reconcile qualitative and quantative information.

Ostrow and Tucker will be returning to Banff this spring as organizers of the Analgous Fields residency.

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Watch this space and become friends through facebook with Vac Lane and Lane Cooper for other updates.

Thanks to -- Anna Cottos; Tom Hamilton and Marc Tomko as well as speakers for their assistance with the Lunch on Fridays Lecture Series...