Brandon Cartellone - Rally for Justice

Why should you care about Justice for Brandon Cartellone?

Who was Brandon Cartellone?
Brandon was a beautiful young man. He was only 21 years old and deeply immersed in pursuing his dreams of becoming a designer. He had a girlfriend. He had friends and a family who loved him deeply. He was a cut-up. He was known for his kindness, his generosity, his willingness to support others. He lived in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland and was part of the energy that makes that neighborhood so vital. He was like many young people in his sense that he was invincible. He threw his arms wide and embraced life. His promise and the joy he brought to living ended brutally on July 26, 2011.

Brandon was killed by a criminal, without conscious or remorse. We tend to think that things like this can’t, don’t happen to good people – that somehow “me” or “my children, my family, the people I love” won’t be involved in anything that would put them in danger. The fact is that criminals, like the person who killed Brandon, are not concerned about who they kill. They don’t stop to think about the innocent lives they cut short or the families they tear apart. If you need proof of this just consider the career of Whitey Bulger.

Brandon deserves justice. So does our community.

Please let the authorities know that you care about crime in our community, that you demand that they protect the public. Demand justice for Brandon and for Cleveland.

How can you help?

Email your city council person

Email your congressman


Email your local news outlets –

Word of mouth – Tell people about Brandon’s story.

Like the Facebook Page dedicated to Brandon’s memory

Come to the rally bring a friend.
Ask your friend to bring a friend.

Don’t let Brandon be forgotten – talk about what happened to him and let people know what they can do to help.

Let’s build a system that can help protect our community.

Anyone with information about the crime is asked to contact the Cleveland police homicide unit at 216-623-5464.

Donate to the Brandon Cartellone Scholarship Fund at the Cleveland Institute of Art

Read the news account

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

Charlie

incorrigible unabashed fearless unrepentant never a stranger always exquisitely strange ever present. always in the moment. exasperating consternating infuriating He was kind. misunderstood - and he liked it like that He gave it all and then some. a model of giving over honest forthright the real deal unashamed and shameless a baroque swirling filigree of unvarnished truth He is gone ... cut free now from the silver thread that binds ... flying ever into the dream. -- I will miss you Charlie.

Artists Osmievy Ortega and Alejandro Aguilera enrich the community as Artists-In-Residence at Cleveland Institute of Art: the Cuba Project.

Dr. David Hart, Chief Organizer of the Cuba Project, and Artist-In-Residence, Osmievy Ortega, attend the Sculpture X-2 Conference held at CIA on October 15, 2011


Cuban Artists-In-Residence Osmievy Ortega and Alejandro Aguilera have made this a memorable semester for students and faculty at the Institute. Personable and outgoing, they have become vibrant additions to the Institute's community. Both have produced substantial artwork while here. Aguilera recently completed a large-scale painting in his Institute Studio while Ortega has been busy in the Print department producing large-scale relief prints and working with master printer Karen Beckwith. Their remarkable works have provided inspiration for the students working in close proximity with them.

Their personal styles have as well made them exciting visitors for area school children when they recently traveled to Villaview Community School and Hope Academy-East. While there Aguilera and Ortega spoke with young people about their own careers as artists and their homeland of Cuba. Students peppered them with questions about subjects as diverse as "Where did you get their ideas from?" and "Who is the president of Cuba?". Before leaving Cleveland they are looking forward to other such opportunities to engage the public in general and young people in particular.

Plans are currently being developed to exhibit the works of the Cuban Artists-In-Residence near the end of the project and there is still the spring semester ahead when the Institute will welcome its second round of artists. (An exhibition was held at the start of the program at MOCA - Cleveland which presented existing works by artists from the Cuba Project).

The Alejandro Aguilera and Osmievy Ortega will speak publicly at the Institute as part of the Lunch on Fridays series:
Friday, November 18, - 12:15 pm
CIA's Gund Building

Profiles of Aguilera and Ortega:

Alejandro Aguilera is an artist and Cuban émigré to the U.S. Born in 1964 in Holguín, Cuba, he received his BFA from Escuela de Arte (in Holguín) and his MFA from the Instituto Superior de Arte (, ISA,) in Havana. He currently lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia settling there after a period of living in Mexico because of his interest in the region’s history and in its burgeoning Latin community.

Over the last ten years Aguilera’s work has increasingly responded to a number of personal experiences and circumstances including rethinking Cuban identity and the creation of work that engages the conditions of the place he lives in. Working through sculpture, installation and drawing, and employing mechanisms of improvisation, Aguilera explores his relationships to art and its history as it is directed through his condition as an immigrant. The ideas and themes that inform these works are often directed by modern and contemporary works that critique the long history of primitivism in Modernist art. Aguilera has said of his own work, “I intend to expand upon the idea that artistic forms constantly permeated by notions of religiousness, freedom and beauty are never historically definitive.”

Cuba Art NY: Alejandro Aguilera


Osmievy Ortega was born in 1980 in Havana, Cuba. He lives and works in Havana, Cuba.

Rooted in the significant lithographic traditions such as the Cuban “tobacco stamps”, Osmievy Ortega revitalizes the print medium to represent scenes of subcultures, social margins and identity. Ortega recontextualizes the implicit beauty in the natural world through the exquisite handling and execution of his work. The linoleum reduction prints in the Cuba isla Pintoresca series recreate this inherit aesthetic in the rich colors and textured fibers of their organic and animal-like forms. In the series Puntos Cardinales, a labyrinth of lines form floating heads that come into contact with their local and dominating environments, creating a sense of torment and confusion.

Shown extensively throughout Cuba at the Biennials, Instituto Superior de Arte, and Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam, Ortega has also been a part of several group shows in the USA, Mexico and at the Grechen Biennial in Switzerland. In recognition of his superior print making skills, Ortega was the recipient of the Joven Estampa (Young Printer) in 2009.


Both artists participated in the first Cuba Project Symposium held at the Institute alongs side scholar Alejandro de la Fuente.

Works by Osmievy Ortega:







The Cuba Project is supported by funds from The Cleveland Foundation's Creative Fusions Grant.

Workshops and school visits by the artists are part of CIA's Arts + Achievement Program which is supported through the Key Foundation.

THE CUBA PROJECT

Friday's edition of CIA's Lunch on Fridays features artist Alejandro Aguilera. Aguilera was born in Cuba and currently lives in Atlanta. His talk is part of a week-long residency at the Institute and offers a preview of Cleveland Institute of Art’s Cuba Project.

“During the last ten years, my artistic work has been completely immersed in my experience as an immigrant – something I consider to be a type of condition, which, in turn, facilitates a particular relationship with the world and history of art…” – Alejandro Aguilera.

The Cuba Project is a year-long program that is highlighted by two symposia focusing on questions surrounding Cuba and contemporary creativity. In addition the Cuba Project brings five contemporary Cuban artists to Cleveland to engage and interact with the Institute’s community and the Cleveland community at large. The first symposium is on Thursday, Oct. 13 starting at 5:30 pm and in addition to Alejandro Aguilera will feature Cuban artist Osmeivy Ortega and scholar Alejandro de la Fuente, a Latin American Studies professor with the University of Pittsburgh. He is also the author of _A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba_. The evening’s conversation will be moderated by the Institute’s own David Hart, Phd and will feature a keynote address by Professor de la Fuente.

Cleveland Institue of Art's Cuba Project represents a truly remarkable opportunity for the Cleveland Community and as well as the Institute's internal community. Over the course of the year the five Cuban Artists-In-Residence, each living in Cleveland for eight weeks, will literally become part of Cleveland's daily life. They will be visiting area schools and arts organizations and interacting with Institute students through studio visits and workshops. The first event associated with the Cuba Project is the exhibition currently on view at MOCA-Cleveland ...

The Cuba Project: The Cleveland Institute of Art at MOCA

This extraordinary project has grown out of The Cleveland Foundation's visionary Creative Fusion program which provided the funding to bring these artists to Cleveland. This program brings accomplished artists from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines to Cleveland for extended periods of time. While here they are embedded within existing cultural Institutions through which they become an active participant in Cleveland's Creative Community. The result is an atmosphere which readily fosters fusions in thought and creative thinking and which further energizes Cleveland's already vital Creative life.


The Cuba Project - selected Fall Programming:

Friday, Oct. 7, LOF, 12:15 - Alejandro Aguilera, artist's talk, CIA Gund Building, Ohio Bell Auditorium, Cinematheque entrance

Through December 31 - The Cuba Project: Cleveland Institute of Art at MOCA, exhibition

Thursday, Oct. 13, 5:30 pm - The Fall Cuba Project Symposium, CIA Gund Building, Aitken Auditorium, Cinematheque entrance

Friday, Oct. 14, 9:20 pm - Cinematheque presents the film "Fallen Gods" (Cuba/Mexico, 2008), directed by Ernesto Daranas. Cuban actress Annia du Maure will conduct a Q&A following the film. Note: Adult Content.

Friday, Nov. 18, LOF, 12:15 - Osmievy Ortega and Abel Barroso, artists' talks, CIA Gund Building, Ohio Bell Auditorium, Cinematheque entrance

The Cleveland Foundation - Creative Fusion

Other funding for The Cuba Project has been provided by the Cleveland Institute of Art's Visual Arts and Technologies Environment and its Liberal Arts Environment.

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Sarah Kabot - covert agent?

So, as many of you know, Ms. Kabot went mysteriously missing last spring around mid-term. It had all the earmarks of a CIA covert operation. Rumors were rampant that she was actually part of the team that took out Bin Laden. On her return no additional info was forthcoming which merely confirmed everyone’s suspicions that she was the U.S. equivalent of 007 … a highly trained special agent living undercover as a mild-mannered artist … no doubt working for CIA was a merry ruse designed to throw operatives off the track who might suspect her connections to THE CIA.

Finally though, the truth is revealed … and I’m just saying it doesn’t disprove my long-held suspicion that she’s a covert operative … but now we know … OMG!!! Sarah was a contestant on Season 2 of “Work of Art”!

So now new suspense … DOES SHE TAKE IT ALL???? Tune in to find out.

(yay! Sarah! -- really, really exciting!)
Sarah Kabot's Bio on Work-of-Art

The Cleveland Institute of Art: The Cuba Project - this will be amazing

Over the course of the 2011/2012 year The Cleveland Institute of Art will be hosting a total of five Cuban Artists as part of its Cuba Project. Coming in the fall: Abel Barroso Arencibia and Osmeivy Ortega Pacheco ... and in the spring: Alex Hernandez Dueñas; José Ángel Toirac Batista and Meira Marrero Día.

The Cuba Project represents a coordinated program designed to broaden exposure to Cuban art and life, and to dis-spell many of the myths surrounding life in Cuba. A core component of the program is cross-generational and cross-cultural dialogues. The centerpieces are two symposia dealing with nation and creative generations. The first of these will occur on the evening of Thursday, October 13.

In addition there will be a number of public talks, exhibitions, and other opportunities to engage these artists, their work, and Cuban culture.

CIA Associate Professor David Hart, PhD., is the Project Lead.

The Cleveland Institute of Art's Cuba Project is made possible by generous support from the Cleveland Foundation through its Creative Fusion initiative. (THANK YOU!)