For the seventh year, Canvas profiles a selection of emerging Northeast Ohio visual artists.
By Amanda Koehn
James Negron
DIY, memory and the color pink are some of the themes James Negron leans into when he’s creating artwork.
The 2024 Cleveland Institute of Art graduate lives and works by the idea that creating art should be accessible to everyone, and as such, dives into mediums and designs that can inspire others to create for themselves.
“I really advocate for its accessibility and having anybody be able to do art because it’s really cathartic, and I think everybody could benefit from those therapeutic qualities that art has to offer,” he says. “For me, fiber is the easiest way to do that.”
Using enticing, bright colors, Janoi Daley’s paintings consider the in-between space of living within multiple identities and cultures. As a Jamaican-American woman, her artwork reflects on her experiences and those who came before her.
“I’d say that my work is unraveling simultaneously to my existence,” she says. “I’m usually painting something that I’m thinking about or something that’s happened.”
Diana Rice draws on a dream-like sense of nostalgia to investigate moments from her childhood, creating connections to the past, present and future at the same time.
Her paintings and drawings are often built into earthy, ruminative quilts, incorporating materials like wood and rope.
“I want to bring back the nostalgic feelings from memories that I have, but also still communicate some kind of story,” she says during an interview in her studio at Summit Artspace in Akron.
Keenan O’Toole uses color and form to create beauty in ceramics reminiscent of things that might be considered industrial, deteriorating or even gross.
The Toronto native is working toward her Master of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in ceramics from Kent State University. Expected to graduate in spring 2025, the artist pushes what is considered beautiful to include “things that are traditionally seen as not nice and kind of grotesque and even things that are ‘disgusting,’” she says.
Over the last few years, Lacy Talley has turned her multidisciplinary artistic skills into partnerships with brands, organizations and causes drawn to highlighting her bright and bold creations.
She’s also used inspiration from her personal mindfulness practice to create exhibits and murals around Northeast Ohio.
A graduate of Glenville High School, the Cleveland native grew up drawing with her artist father. They had a shared book in which they took turns responding to each others’ drawings with new sketches.
James Negron in his home art studio. Canvas Photo / Amanda Koehn
Age: 23 • Lives and creates: Cleveland Heights • Learned: BFA in Sculpture + Expanded Media from Cleveland Institute of Art
DIY, memory and the color pink are some of the themes James Negron leans into when he’s creating artwork.
The 2024 Cleveland Institute of Art graduate lives and works by the idea that creating art should be accessible to everyone, and as such, dives into mediums and designs that can inspire others to create for themselves.
“I really advocate for its accessibility and having anybody be able to do art because it’s really cathartic, and I think everybody could benefit from those therapeutic qualities that art has to offer,” he says. “For me, fiber is the easiest way to do that.”
Growing up in New Jersey’s Somerset County, Negron says he “fell in love with art” after his father died, using it as a coping mechanism. Encouraged by a high school art teacher, he continued to create and initially entered CIA for painting. He switched his major at the end of freshman year to Sculpture + Expanded Media when he realized he liked “making things with my hands and actually feeling the thing and having it take up space.”
Above: “Memory With Love” (2023-2024). Wool, silk, ink, yarn, beads, 52 x 11 inches. Left: “Wetfelt Conversations” (2023-2024). Wool, silk, thread, beads, ink, 6.5 x 5 feet. Right: “James’ Family Portrait” (2024). Paper pulp, paint, flocking, pipe cleaners, 13 x 15 inches. Photos courtesy of the artist.
The DIY style and pink tones make Negron’s artwork look and feel inviting while exploring important topics like mental health, gender, familial relationships, memory and the passage of time. These subjects were addressed in his Bachelor of Fine Arts project, “I (Dont) Want To Remember,” for which the namesake piece is pink-stained wood magnet letters on flocked steel, now sitting in his Cleveland Heights apartment and studio.
His focus on pink also serves as a reclamation of the color, he adds.
“Being trans was not easy, and the color pink and anything that was pink was very pushed onto me,” he says. “It was very forced. And after all these years, despite all of that, I still love the color – and I love it just for being a color and not that it represents anything other than, like, my love and adoration for it.”
While at CIA, Negron also did a project with Neighborhood Pets as part of the school’s Creativity Works program for which students apply their creative skills to real-world issues and causes. As Neighborhood Pets helps support local pet owners, Negron held workshops to teach volunteers how to crochet granny squares which he then stitched into dog sweaters. Also sewing dog beds for the Cleveland nonprofit, he created a calendar of pets wearing the sweaters to raise funds for pet aid. A rescue dog owner himself, Negron says he knows firsthand pets can be costly and this project allowed him to use his talents to give back.
Soon after graduating, Negron won a Support for Artists grant to create a body of work for the Julia De Burgos Cultural Arts Center in Cleveland. Focused on his Latin heritage and family through photos, his project included six screen prints on silk.
Receiving the grant helped instill confidence in his practice, he says, and reassured him he could continue creating art even without the resources and supplies he had in school.
Additionally, Negron recently had an installation in “In Touch: A Hands-On Exhibition” at Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls for which he received the John Bramblitt Award for inspiration and enrichment in art.
“I (Dont) Want To Remember” (2023). Flocked steel, carved wood, magnets, 24 x 24 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Today, he works primarily with fiber, making initial sketches that change in an “intuitive” way throughout the process, he says. Negron is especially into house imagery as the “best metaphorical container for everything that I’m talking about,” as well as hand sewing with various stitching styles contributing to the mood of a piece.
Currently making work without a specific project in mind, at his desk, Negron shows off some “wired readymades that I’m finding at the thrift store” to which he hand sewed patchwork pieces around the frames.
He notes his undergraduate career was very fulfilling in terms of finding a style and subject matter that speaks to him – at least for now – and setting him up for success. However, he’s now beginning to understand the challenges of being a working artist, like finding shows his work fits into and always applying for grants and residencies.
“Between working and trying to keep my practice alive, it’s a lot,” he says.
Recent creations by James Negron in his home studio. Canvas Photo / Amanda Koehn
And as a teaching assistant at the Rainey Institute youth arts program in Cleveland – in addition to working as newsletter manager and development manager for CAN Journal – he is further realizing the importance of making art doable for anyone.
“Especially because I do teach kids and stuff, I know that a lot of art processes are not very accessible and they’re expensive,” he says. “I love fiber arts because anybody can do them.”
Negron’s artistic influences include Sarah Paul, one of his professors at CIA, and his colleague and fellow local artist Gina Washington. He repeats a mantra from Washington that sticks with him.
“What she always says to me, to the kids, to anybody is that she makes art by any means necessary,” he says, “and I absolutely love that.”
– Amanda Koehn
WHAT OTHERS SAY
“James Negron is an exceptional multidisciplinary artist with a fearless approach to material experimentation. From fibers to printmaking to video, I’m impressed with his ability to move difficult subject matter through a wide range of material forms to land on the strongest iterations of that particular thought. He is a deeply sincere and generous person, and I think that really comes through in his work. James is willing to occupy a vulnerable space in order to foster productive dialogue about mental health and healing. Not many artists can do that successfully. It takes an inner strength and genuine capacity for empathy that I have rarely seen in such a young person.”
Sarah Paul, professor of Sculpture + Expanded Media, Cleveland Institute of Art
Diana Rice in her studio at Summit Artspace with an unfinished painting. Canvas Photo / Amanda Koehn
Age: 24 • Lives and creates: Akron • Learned: BFA in Painting and Drawing from The University of Akron
Diana Rice draws on a dream-like sense of nostalgia to investigate moments from her childhood, creating connections to the past, present and future at the same time.
Her paintings and drawings are often built into earthy, ruminative quilts, incorporating materials like wood and rope.
“I want to bring back the nostalgic feelings from memories that I have, but also still communicate some kind of story,” she says during an interview in her studio at Summit Artspace in Akron.
Left: “Paper Quilt 2” (2023). Mixed media on paper, linen tape, twine, found wood and rope, 36 x 90 inches. Right: “Appletree” (2024). Wood, rope and oil paint on canvas, 36 x 44.5 inches. Canvas Photo / Amanda Koehn
Growing up in Lodi with an artist father, Rice always wanted to work in the arts and also considered architecture and interior design. She chose The University of Akron for college in part because it felt like home, she says. Rice also noticed prolific artists graduating from the university, such as Alexandria Couch, who was profiled in Canvas’ Who’s Next series in 2021.
“I went in knowing what I wanted, and I finished knowing what I wanted which is kind of rare,” Rice says of deciding to pursue her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and drawing with a minor in illustration.
Rice’s artwork uses flowy lines and shapes to articulate memories poetically. She often sketches her art in watercolor, then turns it into an oil painting. And as of recently, she sews canvases together to create larger quilted pieces. Her quilts long for the past but reflect on ruminations continuing into the present, using repetition to show the feeling which her observers can then interpret for themselves. She considers them like a sketchbook, where her distinct pieces are connected to tell a larger story, she says.
Top left: “Pixie” (2023). Oil on assembled canvas, found fabric, 60 x 60 inches. Top right: “Echo” (2024). Oil on Yupo mounted on birch plywood, 4 x 6 inches. Bottom: “Sugarcoated Metamorphosis” (2023). Oil on assembled canvas, found frame, 23.5 x 17 inches.Photos courtesy of the artist.
Her process involves writing out memories, which lately have been related to trees of her childhood.
“We had all these trees on our property, and my parents still live on that property and all the trees are just disappearing one by one. It just feels so jarring. It’s like a memorial for the trees,” she says of her recent artwork.
She points to a piece in the works, abstractly depicting a magnolia tree. She’s using a staining technique that gives “a childlike application to the painting – maybe how a child would portray the tree, in a way,” she says.
A major exhibition highlight for Rice was her first solo show, held at KINK Contemporary in Cleveland’s Waterloo Arts District in spring 2023. The show, “Notes of Periphery,” focused on her personal history, taking inspiration from poetry, literature, folklore and her own writing. She aimed to reflect her internal memories while also making the art open enough for a viewer’s understanding of the world she created.
Rice calls the exhibit experience “so exciting” as she was able to show at an independent Cleveland gallery solo while still a student, thanks in part to a connection she made with gallery co-owner McKenzie Beynon, who was a graduate student at Akron at the time. KINK Contemporary – which planned to close its storefront Nov. 30 – has been “empowering” to emerging artists, Rice says.
Another highlight during Rice’s time at the university was receiving a travel award to attend the Venice Biennale in Italy in 2022. She says it was “really transformative to see international artists and what’s going on in the world of art. Sometimes it’s hard to get outside your bubble – even your internet bubble – just to see what artists are doing. That was a big deal for me.”
“End” (2024). Oil on Yupo mounted on birch plywood, 4 x 6 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Since graduating in 2023, Rice says a challenge has been balancing her artistic practice while working full time in reception at a hair and nail salon in Wadsworth.
“Time has been a big thing in the past year since I graduated,” she says. “Just trying to make a living and also having time to do my art on the side, it’s definitely more difficult than I thought it was going to be.”
However, Rice has been part of group shows and received an emerging arts residency at Summit Artspace which she began right after graduation. The residency gives her two years of studio space and allows her to participate in shows and sell her work in the arts complex, among other resources. Currently, she has several works on view in the first-floor lobby and is in the beginning stages of planning a collaborative show with Alexia Avdelas, another resident artist at Summit Artspace and 2023 Akron graduate. She’s also working on incorporating more found materials in her artwork, she says.
Moreover, Rice feels fortunate to be part of the welcoming Akron arts community, her chosen home for the time being.
“It’s really close-knit, there’s a lot of activity between the art school and the galleries here,” she says. “… Everybody just helps each other out and shows up for each other.”
– Amanda Koehn
WHAT OTHERS SAY
Photo / Jeani Brechbill Photography
“Diana Rice transforms the poetry of everyday Northeast Ohio life into something extraordinary. Through her innovative blend of intimate drawings, paintings and large-scale paper quilts, she captures the fleeting moments and memories we all experience but rarely celebrate. Her technically skilled work draws viewers in with approachable symbolism while elevating these seemingly mundane encounters and objects into profound shared experiences. Though early in her career, she demonstrates the kind of artistic maturity and commitment that strengthens our regional arts community.”
McKenzie Beynon, co-owner, KINK Contemporary
SEE MORE HERE: Diana Rice has artwork on view in the first-floor lobby at Summit Artspace, 140 E. Market St., Akron, as part of “Wall to Wall,” one of its Fall 2024 shows, all on view through Dec. 14.
Lacy Talley in front of her “I AM Resetting” mural at Public Square in downtown Cleveland this past summer. Digital illustration. Photo / Bob Perkoski
Age: 28 • Lives and creates: Cleveland • Learned: BA in Visual Communication Design from Kent State University
Over the last few years, Lacy Talley has turned her multidisciplinary artistic skills into partnerships with brands, organizations and causes drawn to highlighting her bright and bold creations.
She’s also used inspiration from her personal mindfulness practice to create exhibits and murals around Northeast Ohio.
A graduate of Glenville High School, the Cleveland native grew up drawing with her artist father. They had a shared book in which they took turns responding to each others’ drawings with new sketches.
After graduating from Kent State University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in visual communication design and a minor in Pan African studies, Talley moved back to Cleveland. She got a “really huge graphic design contract,” however, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, she says that contract suddenly became void.
“I never wanted to feel that feeling again as far as someone having control over the work that I do, just being able to take it away so fast,” she says on a Zoom interview. “So, I was like, you know what, I’m going to create full-time now and see how it goes.”
It’s been pretty smooth so far, she says, and she “wouldn’t change it for the world.” In addition to making and selling her own art, she partners to create for brands like Maker’s Mark, teaches art workshops, does freelance digital projects and works with organizations like the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning and Karamu House, both in Cleveland.
Talley works in a range of mediums including acrylic, watercolor, clay, screen printing and digital, and her pieces are usually figure based. Coming up with ideas for what to create is rarely a struggle.
“Creating something new, it will really just hit me,” she says. “I’ll be sitting on the couch … or watching something, and a whole idea of a painting just comes to my mind.” She has to start making it “right then and there.”
Above: Lacy Talley’s “I AM Resetting” mural. Photo / Bob Perkoski. Left: “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Trophy” (2022). Designers of Marcus Graham Project: Jason Garrett, Lacy Talley, James Adams Jr., and Kayla Shine. Photo courtesy of Talley and NBA.com.Right: “The Lady of Abundance” (2022) by Talley. Acrylic, resin, crystals, crushed glass, 36 x 48 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Her artwork is vivid in color with mystical messaging that’s equally lively and motivational. It became that way through her own mental health journey and techniques she’s learned through therapy, she says.
“Right now, a lot of my work is centered around ‘I am’ affirmations and grounding techniques and coping mechanisms,” she says, adding that she’s had to learn how to “self-soothe” and process her experiences and emotions. Through her art, she wants to make those lessons and affirmations accessible to anyone who sees it, incorporating meaningful objects like crystals and aesthetics that draw from movements like Afrofuturism and Surrealism.
Talley takes inspiration from artists like Reyna Noriega, who “show me different things I didn’t know you could do with your art,” she adds. She says she’s learned early in her career the importance of negotiating fair wages for her commissions, and advocating for herself was part of that process.
Among her biggest successes so far, in 2022, Talley was selected for a team of graphic designers to create the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Trophy, an NBA award named after the basketball star to honor other players advancing social justice causes. She learned about and was asked to take it on as an alumni of the Marcus Graham Project, a nonprofit geared toward helping people of color succeed in marketing and advertising industries, she says. She had previously participated in programming put on by the organization and also volunteered for it.
Also through her involvement with the Marcus Graham Project, she was part of a team that designed an artistic press conference table-like sculpture commemorating the Ali Summit, a 1967 Cleveland gathering at which Muhammad Ali and several other top Black athletes came together to support Ali’s choice not to enter the draft for the Vietnam War. The sculpture is housed where the summit took place, now the home of the American Cancer Society of Cleveland.
“Lock and Key” (2023). Digital illustration, 11 x 14 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.
This past summer, Talley’s mural work was in focus at Public Square in downtown Cleveland, commissioned by LAND studio. Her mural, “I AM Resetting,” depicts three “crystal ladies” – characters representing qualities like protection and wisdom, along with a mushroom house and other symbolic scenery, she says. She’s painted in the mural, as is her “bleeb blob” character which she says serves as a “protector” and is in “about 90% of my artwork.” Viewers can try to find the “bleeb blob” in each piece.
“I wanted it to capture a world where I would go to reset,” she says of the mural.
“Bleeb Blob Back,” ceramic. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Her “I AM Resetting” theme will also take the stage at Lounges Content Studio in Cleveland Nov. 30, introducing more than 20 new pieces. And, in summer 2025, she’ll have another exhibit at Lounges, “Crystal Gardens,” an “immersive healing space experience playing off the five senses,” she says. The project is funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation Satellite Fund from SPACES.
“I love trying new things and seeing where it takes me,” she says. “I’ve experienced a lot of happy accidents doing that.”
– Amanda Koehn
WHAT OTHERS SAY
“Lacy is one of those artists that doesn’t fit the mold of any one type of art or medium: she a muralist, a designer, a community builder, videographer, a sculptor, a teacher. Her creativity, enthusiasm and positivity are infectious and are reflected in the art she creates. I’m so fortunate to know her and Cleveland is lucky to have her as part of our creative community.”
Erin Guido, director of arts + special projects, LAND studio
SEE MORE HERE: Lacy Talley will have a solo exhibit, “I AM Resetting,” at Lounges Content Studio,1547 St. Clair Ave., Cleveland. The opening reception is from 7-11 p.m. Nov. 30, on view until Jan. 5, 2025. For more information, visit Lounges Content Studio.
Age: 22 • Lives and creates: Cleveland and Silver Spring, Md.• Learned: BFA in Painting from Cleveland Institute of Art
Using enticing, bright colors, Janoi Daley’s paintings consider the in-between space of living within multiple identities and cultures. As a Jamaican-American woman, her artwork reflects on her experiences and those who came before her.
“I’d say that my work is unraveling simultaneously to my existence,” she says. “I’m usually painting something that I’m thinking about or something that’s happened.”
Born in Jamaica, Daley and her mother moved to Maryland when she was 10 years old to live near family who had moved there in the early 2000s. While she did ballet as a young child, in Maryland, Daley became interested in visual art and attended a magnet high school to pursue it.
She learned about the Cleveland Institute of Art through college recruiters, and although she applied to about 10 colleges, CIA was the only one she had the opportunity to visit before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she says. It made CIA an easy choice.
Starting as a graphic design major, she quickly switched to painting – a medium for which she’d long had a passion. She also picked up a creative writing minor after taking a poetry class and a post-apocalyptic writing class.
Left: “Ascension” (2024). Oil on canvas, 60 x 40 inches. Top: “Rejoice” (2024). Oil on canvas, 60 x 40 inches. Bottom: “Follow the Light” (2024). Oil on canvas, 60 x 40 inches. Photos courtesy of the artist.
Bright, bold colors play a big role in Daley’s art, which she calls “fantasy world-building, figurative work.”
“I like to call it very enticing, like it has this sexy aura to it,” she says. “It draws you in because of how bright the colors are,” adding she then wants viewers to be gripped by what the figures are doing in the paintings.
Daley’s process starts with an idea for “how I can make the work very bizarre, or figures doing weird things,” and she also considers their environment, she says. She uses a fluorescent acrylic color – like pink or chartreuse – as the base, then uses oil for her subjects and the majority of the painting. Her method of using acrylic as a base allows her to build especially luscious colors.
“I’ll restart multiple times in my paintings, and that scaffolding is usually shown in certain parts of the paintings after I’m finished – I don’t necessarily cover up my mistakes,” she says, adding she’ll sit for hours and paint, trying to feel what it’s like to be in the piece.
“A Performance” (2024). Oil on canvas, 60 x 30 inches. Photo courtesy of Janoi Daley.
The results are exciting and easily capture a viewer’s attention, allowing you to consider who the people she creates in the paintings might be. She’ll often consider religion and how people – especially women in the cultures she’s part of – navigate identity and hardships in her pieces. While her work may reference and represent herself and women in her family, the subjects themselves aren’t any one real person, she says.
“My work is mainly about identity and culture, and this in-between space where I’m American, but I’m also Jamaican,” she says, “and that feeling of otherness in certain spaces. … As well as being a Black woman, and being Black and also a woman, and how those two things are inseparable and how one can be more dominant than the other at certain times.”
In the spring, her Bachelor of Fine Arts exhibition, “Love, Death, God.,” used the CIA gallery space to create a vibrant experience for visitors. The walls were painted a deep bluish purple, and spotlights covered in fluorescent gels shined onto her artwork. Harsh violin music playing and a book of poems she wrote to explain the paintings helped create a scenario where viewers could “slip into” them, she says.
Daley also had two related solo exhibits at Karamu House in Cleveland and CIA in 2023, both reflecting on motherhood and her community of women. They also served to debunk “this idea of strong Black women and how I’ve been brought up by hyper-independent women – that wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to embody because I think I had to learn … allowing people in and vulnerability,” she recalls.
Left: “Cooking for my Nine-Nite (funeral)” (2024). Oil on canvas, 60 x 40 inches. Right: “Wedding Portrait” (2024). Oil on canvas, 64 x 48 inches. Photos courtesy of the artist.
After graduating from CIA this past spring, Daley is taking advantage of a slower period outside of school, spending more time ideating, sketching and building toward her next body of work. She also has work on view in a Pittsburgh group exhibit through Dec. 28.
Daley says as a young artist, she struggles with everything she doesn’t know. She enjoys learning about art history and fashion, and wants to make related historical and symbolic references in her work. She has to continue to learn to incorporate new references, she tells Canvas via Zoom from Silver Spring, Maryland, where she’s staying with her family for a few months before returning to Cleveland.
She notes her “Wedding Portrait” painting and how during its creation, Daley thought about the “Arnolfini Portrait” by painter Jan van Eyck in 1434, also portraying a couple. Much curiosity still surrounds the Arnolfini piece and its symbolism has been heavily analyzed. That’s the kind of conversation she hopes her own work might create.
“I just love that there are so many different conversations happening with one piece, and I think a lot about how do I connect my culture and my language and my experience to something that is also so broad, and (to) historical canons and symbolism,” she says.
– Amanda Koehn
WHAT OTHERS SAY
“Janoi was an incredible student and is an incredible artist. She is able to distill a lived experience into a kind of poetry that eludes most. Her work is dreamlike and honest and causes a viewer to confront their own questions of reality. What Janoi brings to our creative community is an energetic and dauntless spirit. As an artist, her vision is profound and undeniable. As a community member, she is clear-eyed and indefatigable; deeply committed and caring. We’re pretty lucky to have her.”
Lane Cooper, professor of painting, Cleveland Institute of Art
Keenan O’Toole in her studio at the Center for the Visual Arts at Kent State University. Canvas Photo / Amanda Koehn
Age: 29 • Lives and creates: Kent • Learns: Bachelor’s degree from Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario; pursuing MFA with ceramics concentration from Kent State University
Keenan O’Toole uses color and form to create beauty in ceramics reminiscent of things that might be considered industrial, deteriorating or even gross.
The Toronto native is working toward her Master of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in ceramics from Kent State University. Expected to graduate in spring 2025, the artist pushes what is considered beautiful to include “things that are traditionally seen as not nice and kind of grotesque and even things that are ‘disgusting,’” she says.
“I think I’m drawn to the sense of crudeness,” she says, surrounded by several recent creations in her studio on Kent’s campus.
O’Toole graduated from an arts-focused high school in Toronto. After taking ceramics lessons post-high school, she pursued the medium during her undergraduate years at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario and in post-graduate studies at Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary.
“For me, art has always been a way to negotiate and investigate interpersonal conflicts, and is also a meditative process,” she says. “I’ve just always liked to be creative whether it was performing or building or just collaborating with people a lot growing up.”
After moving back to Toronto when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she helped manage a pottery school for adults, created commissions for restaurants, made her own work and had it featured in shows there.
Keenan O’Toole’s “Inscapes” installation (2024). Ceramic, glaze, paint, plaster, wood, 240 x 120 x 72 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.
As American schools have more opportunities for advanced education in the arts than Canada, O’Toole says she chose to pursue her master’s at Kent for the quality of its ceramics program and the “generous” stipend and support it offers. Still, she says moving to another country and away from her family for the two-year program had its challenges.
Now in her second year, O’Toole has a specific focus on making “almost like industrial inscapes of non-existent architecture.” She takes inspiration from growing up in a city, the scaffolding, piping and unassuming pieces that make it run, and reinterprets and abstracts them into what she calls “disordered cityscapes.” And much like the infrastructure of an old city, she likes to teeter on the edge of collapse, pushing the clay to its limits in size and shape.
“There’s a lot of decision-making while it’s happening,” she says of making her hand-built, pinched clay creations. “… I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about different kinds of layering techniques and color, but I like this idea of pastel and using the surface as a sense of the passage of time. Also, (it’s) like an ode to freezing the firing process. … How can I capture that chemical change and process happening in that kiln, which I try to do with my surfaces.”
She notes pastel shades can create a playful feel to ceramics, but with her industrial shapes might appear more gnarly. They may portray moldiness, abandonment or something that’s deteriorating, pushing viewers to see these qualities in a new way.
Another theme in her work is organizing chaos, referencing the gritty insides of maybe pretty architecture.
“It’s all about the inside of the things that you don’t want to see, bringing it out into the front,” she says.
Artwork by Keenan O’Toole. Photos courtesy of the artist.
O’Toole has had a busy summer and early fall, both showing art and taking workshops. Over the summer, she received a Kent State scholarship to take part in a workshop at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado and participated in the Kent Blossom Art Intensive, a two-week studio art program involving visiting artists, demonstrations, critiques and making new work. In September, she had solo space for her artwork at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York City. Her work was received well there, and it was a great opportunity to show to a larger audience, she says. She’s also recently shown at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati and several galleries in Canada, among others.
O’Toole also recently helped curate and had work on view in a group show, “Yard Work” in an Akron DIY outdoor gallery space, Plzdontmow. And, she’s working on her MFA project for a spring show.
“It will be something with these kind of like larger sculptures, the abstracted industrial spaces kind of thing,” she says. “I’m kind of building up to it now.”
A ceramics piece by Keenan O’Toole in her studio. Canvas Photo / Amanda Koehn
As a graduate student who is also teaching undergraduates and working as a studio assistant at Kent, she notes one challenge of pursuing a career in the arts is balancing creating your own work and teaching, often to supplement income. She says while it’s good there are a lot teaching opportunities now, especially since pottery classes are popular, doing it all can be a balancing act.
Another challenge is her medium itself and striving to shift her process along the way, improving her technique and results.
“Working with clay in general there’s a lot of failure, and there’s a lot of … (having to be) resilient with the material itself,” she says. “Especially building in this way, I have to recalibrate things and pivot.”
– Amanda Koehn
WHAT OTHERS SAY
“Keenan has been an excellent addition to our MFA program and adds so much energy to our community. She is extremely dedicated to her art practice and driven to continually push her work forward. She is fearless in her approach, always willing to try new things and take risks. I think she is making some really amazing and adventurous work right now that blends her drawing practice with her sculptural work. I expect her thesis exhibition in April to be outstanding and look forward to seeing what she does after finishing up at Kent State.”
Peter Christian Johnson, associate professor of art and ceramics area head, Kent State University
SEE MORE HERE: Keenan O’Toole will have artwork in a group show “Juxtaposed: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future” from June 5 to Oct. 12, 2025 at the Massillon Museum, 121 Lincoln Way E., Massillon.
Northeast Ohio’s art scene is vibrant and diverse. It’s also constantly growing, a dynamic fueled in part by the region’s art schools and area galleries that showcase and support up-and-coming artists’ work.
Canvas believes it’s important to champion emerging talent, too, which is why we’re proud to present “Who’s Next,” a section that aims to celebrate and call more attention to artists early in their career.
Years 22 • Hometown Westlake • Creates Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Mich. • Learns BFA in drawing and printmaking from Cleveland Institute of Art; Expected MFA from Cranbrook
Story and photo by Amanda Koehn
The natural-looking forms Cass Penegor creates are familiar, like something you saw in a science textbook, but can’t quite name.
Using gouache, acrylic and water-based inks on paper and making drawings, prints and low-relief installations, the artist relies on repetitive movements. Using their brush or scissors with a machine-like method, the aim isn’t to define the “organic friends,” as Penegor describes them – maybe a cell, virus, geologic matter or even a bubble – but rather to draw you in and reflect on how you might connect to the smaller beings that make up our bodies and earth.
“Some people see bacteria, or something maybe even like a virus, cells under a microscope,” Penegor says. “And those are all the right answers, because they are not any one thing – they are all of the things. It’s really about unity and connectedness between us and nature, how we are a part of these things and they are a part of us, and really taking the time to notice and appreciate that and spend time with the things.”
Penegor started becoming interested in biomorphic art – where sculpture, painting or other media are used to create abstract depictions of natural forms like plants, cells, organisms and body parts – a few years ago during their sophomore year at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
“It was something that I couldn’t get away from, it was always in my mind and I was always drawing these organic biomorphic forms,” Penegor says.
“Agate (4)” (2020). Gouache, 22 x 30 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Although they had an interest in science and nature previously as a high schooler in Westlake, Penegor says they didn’t do so well in those subjects at the time. Instead, they gravitated toward theater and visual arts, and ultimately decided on the latter after getting into CIA.
A spring 2020 graduate of CIA, Penegor began a print media master’s program at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., in September.
Penegor’s work often takes on a blue, moody and intricate palate with patterns similar to a tree ring, yet occasionally will take on a bright color scheme and more circular or unique shapes. The colors and careful shapes have a quality that gives the viewer a sense of satisfaction they can’t quite place.
When Canvas first met Penegor at their CIA studio in March, the artist described a potential interpretation of their organic creations as a “virus.” Just one week later, the entire state shut down due to a deadly virus that eight months later continues to devastate. Now, Penegor says that although viruses’ structures have an intriguing look, it might now be healthier, mentally, to think of their work differently.
“After that, I had to put that out of my brain and focus on some of the other ways that my work is read and interpreted,” Penegor says.
When the pandemic hit, Penegor says the shift to learning and working remotely – while completing their BFA thesis – was a challenge.
“It was extremely stressful, especially as a printmaker and someone who was planning on making a lot of print work for my thesis, I could no longer do that because I can’t make litho prints at home,” Penegor says.
Instead, Penegor ended up shifting toward making more gouache paintings and working on a large installation, which is now up in their studio. The focus of the project was on the biomorphic forms that are, “things that feel familiar, but they’re not directly representing something, so you can’t really name them.”
“Cranbrook Friend” (2020). Hand-cut paper, gouache, digital print, ink, marker, monoprints, spray paint, acrylic paint, desk, folding chair, paper tube, cloth bin and portfolios. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Over their years at CIA, Penegor had several opportunities to show work in spaces like Cain Park’s Feinberg Art Gallery in Cleveland Heights, Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood, Eastern Michigan University’s Ford Gallery in Ypsilanti, Mich., and CIA’s Student Independent Exhibition. Penegor also was selected to be a student curator for the sixth annual Cain Park Collaborative Exhibition at the Feinberg Gallery – in conjunction with CIA – this past summer. However, the exhibit was canceled due to the pandemic.
Penegor says one of their biggest successes as an artist this early in their career has been having the opportunity to be a part of several shows – many of which CIA connections helped facilitate. Among challenges, Penegor points to narrowing their focus and dealing with mental health challenges. They also write poems and personal essays, and their experiences with obsessive compulsive disorder sometimes plays a role in developing creative works.
“OCD is a large part of my work a lot of the time, and the kinds of compulsions to be doing certain things, that can be challenging – and like channeling that into making these things,” Penegor says.
At Cranbrook, the curriculum resembles more of a residency than a normal college program – there are no real classes, students are mostly “in the studio, doing your own thing,” Penegor says, with meetings and critiques interspersed. Penegor says they have also become interested in exploring more video and audio work during their first few months there.
On breaks at home in Westlake, Penegor teaches at a KinderCare day care center, and hopes to stay connected to the Northeast Ohio art scene. For example, they hope to become an alumni ambassador at CIA.
“Hopefully that happens because I’d really like to stay connected,” Penegor says.
Denk-Leigh
“They are passionate about finding themself as an emerging maker and artist, and interested in connecting different groups of people. I think sometimes artists and especially students, they are interested in putting their work out there. I think what Cass was interested in was connecting this group from their life over here, and this group from their life over there, and then this group of artists that they met through school, and they were interested in building bridges. And they did that with their internship project and then they did that again more recently after they graduated.”
Maggie Denk-Leigh, chair of printmaking department, Cleveland Institute of Art
Years 26 • Lives and creates Cleveland’s AsiaTown • Learned Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Ore.
Story by Jane Kaufman | Featured photo by Amber Ford
For printmaker and painter Juliette Thimmig, the artistic process often starts with a walk to uninhabited spaces within Cleveland’s AsiaTown.
She carries a sketchbook with her, along with pencils, pens and sometimes watercolors, using them to make drawings and notes about the slices of the world she observes.
“It’s so quiet down here,” Thimmig says. “There are so many pockets that are seemingly city that don’t feel city at all once you’re standing in them.”
Thimmig’s portfolio includes prints, mostly bold black woodcuts that speak to the state of the world and the environment, and colorful paintings with a powerful use of black, referencing that opaque woodcut style.
Thimmig grew up in Bainbridge Township on the Auburn line. As a child, she found herself drawn to both animals and nature. It was then that she first did observational drawings.
“I really liked growing up in rural Ohio,” she recalls. “It’s beautiful. It’s quiet, lots of frog sounds. And there was plenty to draw.”
Thimmig, who works as a shop technician and shop manager at Zygote Press also in AsiaTown, says it was her grandmother, Heidi Stull, who inculcated her interest in and appreciation for the making of art.
Stull, a native of Germany, opened a gallery in her Bainbridge Township home in 1988 through the early 1990s, introducing friends and neighbors to the works of European artists. Later, when Stull hosted Thimmig and her three siblings on visits, she encouraged them to produce works of art while they were with her – be it pottery, watercolor or prints.
“Rear View Mirage” (2019). Woodcut, 36 x 48 inches. | Image courtesy of the artist
“She really made it a point and made it a priority to make something with our hands,” Thimmig says. “So she kind of gave us the confidence that, if we make something, it’s worth something in the world.”
Thimmig attended Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Ore., where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in intermedia. She is largely a self-taught painter.
As well as giving her a grounding in her art and craft, living in Portland shifted Thimmig’s experience of living in rural versus urban settings.
“I think in the country, it’s easy to feel safe when you’re there,” she says. “And then when you move to a city and you’re surrounded by people, you feel even safer for some reason.”
She says AsiaTown is “insanely quiet.”
“It’s so comforting. The people, the food, the energy, the sounds,” she says. “It’s home for sure.”
“We’ve Forgiven One Another” (2019). Acrylic and chalk on canvas, 24 x 24 inches. | Image courtesy of the artist
After her walks, Thimmig spends time in her studio and plays music while she practices her craft: swamp pop, swamp blues, Motown, funk, blues, Thelonius Monk and Nina Simone.
“It plays a big part in my studio practice,” she says. “It kind of generates the mood and the intention.”
With eight presses available to her at Zygote Press, Thimmig has decisions to make – both about process and technique.
“It’s really wonderful in some ways, but if you are someone that has the attributes of, ‘I really love to learn, I love process, I love labor,’ I tend to try everything and like everything,” she says. “So it turns into a little bit of an indecision sort of situation.”
Eventually, though, Thimmig will settle on a process and begin creating, sometimes with a plan in mind.
“And sometimes that doesn’t even work to try and organize those things,” she says. “Sometimes it’s just a very emotional pull. … So just listen to my intuition, put on some music and get going.”
“Parallels” (detail), 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 60 inches. | Image courtesy of the artist
She said working during the COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging as an artist. While there has been plenty of material to work with, there has also been what Thimmig describes as a heaviness in the air.
“It’s a really odd sort of time because you would think it would be perfect for an artist that is an introvert and wants to be in the studio making things constantly and not worry about … social gatherings and things like that, but I think it takes a toll,” she says.
Thimmig, whose prints particularly say a lot about the state of the world, says she sees art and politics as intertwined.
“Even if you’re making landscape paintings and it feels irrelevant, it’s very much a political statement in my eyes,” she says. “It’s a pause from capitalism. It’s referencing the environment, so it’s got a lot underlying that is political in a sense. … Words right now are really polarizing. So I feel like images, in a sense, are sort of a way to disseminate information a little more broadly and bring people back together.”
Maugans
“Juliette is a rare gem, and like a well-cut diamond, she brings this same integrity and dedication to her craft. This clarity shines in her paintings and prints. Her work deals with difficult themes through the perspective of the millennial generation, where her message is not particularly hopeful. In her painting, she delves deep into depictions of global warming outcomes and manufactured disasters in industrial wastelands like Cleveland. Her vivid relief prints, in contrast, explore cheerier landscapes but with a more uplifting curiosity. Her relief prints explore off-road escape routes through strawberry fields filled with carefully cut botanicals that take you on timeless road trips. Juliette has an innocence and appetite, much like Dana Schutz does, in discovering the stories and narratives of her time.”
Liz Maugans, co-founder and former executive director of Zygote Press, and curator of the Dalad Collection and director of YARDS Projects at Worthington Yards
On View
• View Thimmig’s work in Zygote Press’ virtual letterpress exhibition, “Make Ready for the Revolution!” on view through Nov. 30 at makereadyfortherevolution.tilda.ws.
Story by Amanda Koehn | Featured photo, self portrait by the artist
Da’Shaunae Marisa Jackson’s intimate, bright photos are a product of her ability to capture people in their true, relaxed forms. With each photoshoot, her aim is to make her subjects comfortable and open, allowing them to give more of themselves to the viewer.
“And by giving me more,” she says of her subjects, “I’m just showing their true selves in their most happy or peaceful moments. And I think that says something, I really do. I don’t want people to be uncomfortable when I’m photographing them, I want them to be themselves.”
While many of her photos evoke a sense of peace and lightness, it’s not because the subjects necessarily look happy or any specific way: it’s because you feel you are getting a snapshot into the life of someone new. That feeling of connectedness to a stranger brings about a sense of satisfaction that Jackson makes easy for the viewer.
Growing up in Cleveland and its suburbs, Jackson says when she was a child, her mother could always be found with disposable Kodak point-and-shoot cameras to snap family pictures. Her mother would send off Jackson to special days of school, like the first day or field day, with a disposable camera of her own.
“I was used to taking pictures that way of my friends,” Jackson says. “And I enjoyed it, I really did, but I didn’t think of it as a career until later in my life.”
After graduating from Garfield Heights High School, she attended Cuyahoga Community College but didn’t finish after an internship helped her get enough freelance work to make a go of it as a photographer. In addition to doing photoshoots, teaching and assisting other photographers, she also creates installations from her photos.
“You Are the Standard of Beauty” by Da’Shaunae Marisa Jackson. Clothing by William Frederick of Cleveland.
A special opportunity came last year when she was one of more than 20 mostly local photographers who documented Cleveland and its residents for exhibit “Cleveland 20/20: A Photographic Exploration of Cleveland.” The project, a partnership between Cleveland Public Library and Cleveland Print Room, sought to capture the diversity and everyday happenings in the city. The photos have been on display at Cleveland Public Library’s main branch in downtown Cleveland since early this year and will be cataloged there.
She says “Cleveland 20/20” was, “a very big rediscovering of what’s here,” that came at the perfect time. It allowed photographers to “fully experience Cleveland,” capturing a moment in history of people at community festivals and gatherings, right before gathering was no longer permitted or wise after COVID-19 hit.
Maryam for “You Are the Standard of Beauty.” The photoshoot was made into a mural in Public Square earlier this year. Photo courtesy of Da’Shaunae Marisa Jackson.
During the pandemic, Jackson has been busy taking portraits and has been hired by national news outlets like The New York Times to take photos in Cleveland and surrounding areas. Her first Times assignment was in the spring, and the demand for her craft grew from there.
“It’s been nice to talk to more people that live here and see what they’ve been going through throughout this time,” she says of her work for news publications.
She’s also created a series called Instax portraits. For Instax, or instant camera stills, she’ll cut portraits taken at various angles of the same person into pieces. She combines them into one re-imagined collage, depicting the individual in a new form.
“I take different options based on my sketches so it comes to life,” she says of the Instax portraits. “I’ll expand from that first piece and then it just blossoms from there, whatever ideas I add onto it or materials.”
Jackson has developed a wealth of YouTube videos of her creating the Instax portraits, which can be viewed on her channel, DaShaunae Marisa, as part of an ongoing project to capture her friends in their natural states. She also teaches instax and digital photography at the Cleveland Print Room in Cleveland.
Another ongoing project involves her own family photos, for which she received a grant from the Cleveland Foundation to create an exhibit at the Cleveland Print Room early next year. The project began as a way to document her family and its dynamics, and morphed after her mother passed away this year.
“It will be interesting, that’s all I can say,” she says of the project. “(It’s) something I believe everyone can relate to, and I hope that a lot of other people will be able to understand and take something from this project.”
Kent State University basketball player Kalin Bennett for an Instax portrait. Photo courtesy of Da’Shaunae Marisa Jackson.
One challenge during the pandemic has been the inability to get people together for shoots, which is part of the reason Jackson has gravitated toward Instax – it only requires her and one other person. Moreover, the events of the past several months have refocused Jackson’s mind on the many issues facing our world and communities, and how she can document them as a photographer.
“I have the ability to really show what those problems are in different ways through the people that are actually experiencing them,” she says. “It’s encouraging me to follow through with the projects that I want to, which mostly have to do with health, basic human rights – all of that stuff – and human connection and being able to connect with your neighbor, because we are all human and we are all going through this together.”
Wilkins
“Da’Shaunae’s work really resonates with me. At the heart of her diverse body of work is the documentation of the world around her, inspired with curiosity in the search of others’ individual stories.”
Years 25 • Lives and creates Cleveland Heights • Learned BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art
Story and photography by Amanda Koehn
Davon Brantley’s portraits can draw in a passing viewer with just three elements: their polish, precise colors and unique textures.
It only takes seconds to see there is so much more going on. A striking combination of mythological and Christian imagery, and complex psychological narratives make it hard to look away.
For the 25-year-old artist who creates out of his Cleveland Heights home, ideas come from personal history and trauma.
Davon Brantley’s portraits can draw in a passing viewer with just three elements: their polish, precise colors and unique textures.
“Where I start is, usually I recount back my childhood – especially the trauma that I experienced,” he says. “When I recount those experiences, I go into my family book which has just general family photos and that kind of stuff, and I’ll pick out which ones have a vibrant or interesting color scheme, and I’ll choose ones that have a great composition – where the people are communicating with each other or they are interacting with each other in a specific way.”
Then, he recreates the photos to express his vision, mood and feelings. He draws from a psychiatric term, dissociative identity disorder, which refers to a mental disorder experienced overwhelmingly by people who have experienced trauma and who psychologically separate into different identities. Thus, some pieces take on a manic, happy personality, while others depict depressive episodes and others, a more neutral, yet hopeless romantic character.
“I see them inside myself, so I manifest it into paintings and drawings,” he says. “But I also see these (identities) as not necessarily a problem, but something that’s common among others as well.”
Brantley says he loved art as a kid growing up mostly in the eastern Cleveland suburbs. He jokes about getting into “a little bit of trouble” as a high schooler, selling his art inside school.
Wanting to “ace every subject though to get a good GPA to get into a good college,” he seriously gravitated toward art during his senior year. He sought a mentor in an art teacher who helped him develop his portfolio, despite him never taking a formal art class.
When he first got to the Cleveland Institute of Art, his work was “surface level,” he says. Dealing with and talking about traumatic childhood experiences, he began to work through them in his artwork.
“I think that I really grew as an artist when I started to discover myself, and I started seeing a therapist about all these problems and just made art my modality,” Brantley says, adding that he sees studying and working in art therapy in his future.
Right: “ON SIGHT” (2020). Sepia conte, pastel and charcoal on sepia toned paper, 70 x 42 inches. The piece was also made into a hoodie. | Photo courtesy of the artist.
Two years after graduating from CIA, the pandemic has been a time of creative inspiration and productivity for the artist. In response to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement that aims to reckon with and reform our country’s long history of systemic racism and racist violence by law enforcement, Brantley saw several opportunities to create commissioned murals. He was among a group of local artists, organized by Graffiti HeArt and Random Acts of Kindness Everywhere, in June that painted a “Black Lives Matter” mural on East 93rd Street in Cleveland.
From that, more mural opportunities came to Brantley, including at the West Side Catholic Center in Cleveland and on a wall along the railroad tracks in Bedford, the latter of which invoked the history of the Underground Railroad in Bedford and was also organized by Graffiti HeArt.
“Then since the murals – that was kind of like a new thing for me – I already had certain exhibitions set up that couldn’t happen when the pandemic started,” he says. “And so after the murals and during the murals, those organizations opened back up their galleries.”
Since, he’s shown his work at the Waterloo Arts DayGlo show in Cleveland, Mahall’s in Lakewood and Artists Archives of the Western Reserve in Cleveland. He also has solo shows planned for Young’s Art Center in Fairview Park in January and BAYarts in Bay Village in August.
His current work is increasingly focused on experiences of racism, colorism, contemplating life and death, “and how being a Black man … kind of gives you a different perspective on how to handle those issues.”
“I’ve created a lot of stuff that deals with those topics, kind of showing people what I actually feel as an African American male, the injustices that I see and I deal with on a day-to-day basis,” he says.
He says some of that work has focused on the idea of “subverting a lot of the dark fantasies” stereotypically attributed to people of color. For example, he points to a painting with themes of lust and greed – but not what one may commonly associate with those words.
“It will be more so about someone’s lust for care, life and having a heart and emotion, and trying to protect that at all costs, even though it seems like it’s pouring out of them at an exponential rate,” he says.
He shows another piece – a 7-foot drawing of himself, made into a hoodie Brantley wears – inspired by religious Renaissance era work. A red dot encircles the subject’s head, which could resemble either a halo or the red target one sees when looking down the barrel of a gun – reflecting how Black Americans are targeted by law enforcement. A black square surrounds his body, as a nod to the “blackout” social media trend to shift attention to Black voices and pain. But in the drawing, “I made the Black body visible, so you had no choice but to see it.”
“And I drew myself in kind of a more classical pose – I’m sitting upright and everything, and it kind of just makes you think about the absence of African Americans in Renaissance paintings, Baroque paintings, art history and in general the lack of the stories being told about us,” he says.
Cooper
“Some artists are really concerned with being trendy with their work. Davon’s not like that. He’s really emotionally raw and real. He’s constantly leaning into his work both in terms of how he makes it and in terms of putting it into the world. His work telegraphs out a very human experience. You don’t meet many artists that are just that forthright. His work is so satisfying to spend time with.”
Lane Cooper, associate professor, painting department, Cleveland Institute of Art
On view
• Brantley’s work will be on view through Dec. 6 at Mahall’s Museum of Creative Human Art, 13200 Madison Ave., Lakewood.
• “About Body | About Face,” which features Brantley and Ohio artists Lawrence Baker, Jacques P. Jackson, Amanda D. King, Yvonne Palkowitsh, LaSaundra Robinson and Tony Williams, will be on view through Jan. 16, 2021 at Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, 1834 E. 123rd St., Cleveland. Virtual artist talks will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Dec. 2 and Dec. 9, with more information at artistsarchives.org.
Northeast Ohio’s art scene is vibrant and diverse. It’s also constantly growing, a dynamic fueled in part by the region’s art schools and area galleries that showcase and support up-and-coming artists’ work.
Canvas believes it’s important to champion emerging talent, too, which is why we’re proud to present “Who’s Next,” a section that aims to celebrate and call more attention to artists early in their career.
To select the artists featured, we tapped local gallery directors, educators and other influencers for their expertise and insight. The end result is a group of rising stars who are putting in the work and whose art we feel you should see any time their names are affiliated with an exhibition.
Their disciplines include painting, sculpture and drawing. What they have in common is that they all represent the next generation of talented artists in Northeast Ohio.
Years 28 • Resides & Creates Lakewood • Learned BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art
Story and photography by Michael C. Butz
To indulge in an Alex Overbeck drawing is to enter another world – a complex, multi-layered world in which fantastical creatures traverse landscapes of perfectly patterned shapes and rich, vibrant hues, a world in which tranquility arises from collision between organization and disorder.
The scenes are surreal and unpacking them becomes an enveloping – and satisfying – endeavor.
“It becomes kind of a submersive experience just on this piece of paper,” Overbeck says. “I enjoy that. I enjoy the fact that you can play with everything there in your own way. I’m not really aiming to say anything specific, but I do want people to find a little bit of themselves in the work.”
“Hope to Find What You’re Looking For” by Alex Overbeck. Image courtesy of the artist.
In each piece exists liminal spaces where it isn’t necessarily clear what’s happening but something about it is intriguing. It’s from those spaces Overbeck’s art connects emotionally.
“I try to find this weird middle ground between serenity and mania. That feeling of peace you get from that meditative aspect, meditation, or just in finding some sort of balance in yourself, and then also, the absolute insanity we live in on a day-to-day basis,” she says. “I guess it’s a way of processing that – the insanity I feel inside myself, but I think everybody feels (that) from time to time.”
Drawing has been an interest of Overbeck’s as far back as her childhood in North Muskegon, Mich. Her mother tells her she drew her first face when she was 3 years old.
“It looked like an alien, I won’t lie,” she says, “but it had eyes, an actual head, hair and everything – it’s just really squiggly.”
But when she attended and graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy, a fine arts boarding school in Michigan, it was as a vocal-performance major, and in college, she continued to pursue music.
She left school after a couple of years and later worked in the catering business around Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. While at work, she’d often see Cleveland Institute of Art students carrying their work around the neighborhood, which inspired her to pursue a career in art. When she graduated in May 2018, her BFA was in both drawing and painting.
“I’ve always been more of a drawer than a painter,” she says, “but I wanted to double major in painting and drawing. Drawing was a strong skill set I had but I wanted to strengthen my understanding of color and material handling.”
Overbeck still sings, and in fact, her creativity doesn’t end there. In recent years, she became interested in flow arts – namely hula-hooping. To pursue those interests, she joined Anadano, a group of artists that performs and puts on workshops at festivals. In some ways, she says, hula-hooping provides a brief respite from drawing and painting. Being an architect of artistic worlds can be draining and exacting work.
“Precarious” by Alex Overbeck. Image courtesy of the artist.
As Overbeck begins to execute an idea, she has a sense of what she hopes takes shape but acknowledges the process is pretty open-ended. It begins with general, gestural mark-making with loose ink and unfolds from there.
“It’s a lot of repetitious mark-making, mostly because I love the way it looks. I think it’s stunning. Dot stippling is pretty common, a lot of cross-hatching with some shading. You’ll see it in a lot of this work. It’s all done by hand,” she explains. “It has this sort of ‘staticky realism’ to it with all the accumulated marks, it has this really cool optical effect I’m attracted to.”
Along the way, and in every piece, she says, she discovers something new. That dynamic stokes her creative fire and encourages her to expand her artistic practice.
“I’m always trying to push it in a different way, experiment a little bit,” she says. “There’s so much play with it. I get to play with colors, I get to do whatever I want on this blank surface, and I feel like that’s the most rewarding aspect of it.
“It can be frustrating at times, especially when I’m on deadline and I’m like pushing myself to work hours and hours and hours at a time just to finish it, but seeing the finished result gives me that feeling of satisfaction that I made something beautiful, something cool. … That’s a good feeling.” C
On View
“Emergent 2019” will be on view from April 26 to June 9 at Heights Arts, 2175 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights.
Tony Ingrisano
“Alex’s densely detailed, variegated drawings are portals to secret universes. The profuse mark-making and plays on spatial depth and scale shifts are a primer on world creating. Alex’s work never hesitates to get astounded reactions from viewers. Utilizing chance and gravity as stepping-off points, the artist meticulously builds kaleidoscopic mindscapes where the unexpected is always just around the corner.”
Tony Ingrisano, assistant professor, Cleveland Institute of Art
Years 23 • Resides & Creates Cleveland • Learned BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art (expected May 2019)
Story and photography by Michael C. Butz
To fully appreciate Bianca Fields’ art, it’s best to familiarize yourself both with what’s on the surface and what’s underneath it.
The latter is more abstract but more easily recognizable. Underneath the surface – in the psychological sense – are postcards to Fields’ past, replete with identifiable pop culture references like Pee-wee Herman, various Muppets or Dr. Seuss characters. A recently completed piece, “Boom Boom,” is a riff on the alphabet-teaching children’s book “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.”
“I’m very interested in the feelings of nostalgia. I’m very fascinated in cliché objects and experiences, such as cartoons or such as a book or such as an experience or a stencil of a letter I used to put this painting together,” she says, the latter note referring to “Boom Boom.” “I’m very fascinated in taking those things and bringing them into our reality once again. By the way I’m painting them allows you to be reminded of my visceral experience of those things.”
“Boom Boom” (detail), 2019; resin, acrylic, oil and spray paint on canvas; 52 x 84 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Fields grew up in Northeast Ohio and counts her creative father as an early artistic influence.
“He was a very meticulous drawer and he would always draw pictures of me. It sort of rattled me that he was so good, and that was something I always wanted to become better at,” she says. “He was totally an influence on me.”
In high school, she was drawn to painting, enjoying the challenge of formally learning a new medium as well as the experimentation it afforded her. Color provided a new vocabulary, one she continues to employ to project attitudes or feelings and trigger responses among her audience – and herself.
“I love color because when thinking about color and talking about color in my artwork, it’s sort of an excuse to be able to talk about feeling and talking about what makes me excited about something or what makes me actually feel something or relate to something,” Fields says. “Color has been one of the most guttural or evocative things for me. Being able to do that with my artwork has become something I’ve been able to apply to real life, and I’ve been able to activate color through that.”
That longing to connect, or for genuine connection, also figures prominently. The nostalgia-soaked yearning is at times at odds and also in agreement with the manner in which her generation, she says, is consumed by viewing and presenting itself through the lens of social media. What’s the truth and what’s obscured by filters? The resulting dissension plays out in her art as “visual noise.”
“When making a piece or work, or the way that I paint, it may reference abstract expressionism, neo-expressionism, impressionism – things like that, where you’re sort of responding to painting as a thing,” she says. “For me, visual noise is a way of metaphorically responding, like trying to contain this chaotic noise. That’s why I work in these frames and sort of paint in a very goopy, visceral, tangible way, where it’s almost like you’re trying to choke out a noise and mute it but also the noise is there.”
“Applause,” 2018; acrylic, oil and spray paint on canvas; 38 x 38 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
How she approaches a painting is a point of pride with Fields. This is where understanding what’s on the surface – in a physical sense – comes into play. She’s a maestro with her materials, starting with the literal foundation on which her pieces take shape.
“Surface preparation and building the structure, things such as that, my experience in the wood shop is very important to me. It’s very meditative, and it allows me to care more for the surface I’m working on,” she says. “The surfaces in my pieces are very important and I care for them a lot. Which means that (when) applying gesso, I do that in a very nurturing way. I apply 10 to 12 layers and scrape them off to get the surface to almost be like a dry-erase board.
“When I start a painting, that already allows for there to be a mess. So, when I’m painting, the painting already starts drooping down and warping, and that already takes away the preciousness of making what someone would consider a beautiful painting.”
“Post Ghost,” 2018; acrylic, oil and spray paint on canvas; 40 x 36 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
This summer, Fields will take her talents to Kansas City, Mo., where she intends to mine artistic material from a landscape other than Northeast Ohio. She also hopes to do the same someday in London by way of a residency. Regardless of her environs, her art and her techniques are all but certain to continue evolving in intriguing and fascinating ways.
“When working on a piece in the past, I was very obsessed with portraiture – taking an image, painting it just as I saw it, trying my best to get it there first and then do all of these extra things that implied my hands were in it, such as laying a picture down and then putting words over it,” she says. “Now, I’m really involved with the paint as a material and less concerned with the actual image. If the original image is still identifiable, then that’s an extra layer to the read.” C
Liz Maugans
“Bianca is the real deal. Her paintings are a display, a feast of swashbuckling gesture and varying surfaces and meditations. When you talk with her about her work, she gets excited telling you about all her approaches, journeys and challenges making the canvases. She really throws it all in there – pop culture, nostalgia, politics – and it is her athleticism and confidence that shines in her dance with the paint.”
Liz Maugans, director, YARDS Projects at Worthington Yards
Years 26 • Resides & Creates Kent • Learned BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y.
Story and photography by Michael C. Butz
Ella Medicus wants to make you question your surroundings. Her largely sculpture-based practice revolves around manipulating the mundane to toy with your sense of familiarity and challenge your notions of worth and functionality.
Her artistic distortion is aimed at everyday objects ranging from elongated bar codes and Amazon boxes to mechanized plastic grocery bags. Each is recognizable but no longer operational – at least not in their customary way, and that’s the idea.
The objects often take on new meanings. For example, that motor-powered plastic bag moved around a gallery floor and was playfully anthropomorphized by viewers rather than avoided, as a wind-blown plastic bag on the street – similar in appearance – might be.
“Elongated Amazon Box” by Ella Medicus, 2018; wood, inkjet print on paper. Image courtesy of the artist.
That’s the type of re-evaluative, perspective-shifting interaction Medicus seeks. In a show on view through May at The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, “SubFunction,” she employs a vending machine filled with snack-like objects to explore themes of worth and the value of art.
“The objects are technically art objects that are being sold out of (the vending machine) because I’ve altered them, and when you think about buying art, there’s a whole realm of who has access to buying art, who’s selling art (and) what are the prices,” she says. “Putting little objects into a vending machine is like saying, ‘Anyone can buy this.’”
In the same show, she uses side-by-side gumball dispensers – one filled with plastic capsules of American soil, the other filled with capsules of soil from Paris, where she recently completed a monthlong residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts – to question Americans’ idealized perceptions of The City of Lights.
“Dirt Dispenser” by Ella Medicus, 2019;
capsule dispenser, capsules, dirt.
“Things from Paris are seen as romantic and special, so I was thinking, ‘How can I talk about that?’” she says. “I was looking a lot at things that were on the ground – the actual soil, litter, things that were discarded – and thinking, ‘What if those things are put on a pedestal instead of the automatic ones, like the Eiffel Tower?’”
Sculpture is the conduit for Medicus’ conceptually nuanced projects but it wasn’t her first medium of interest.
“I thought I was going to be a painter when I went to college, but then I was exposed to sculpture during my schooling and started realizing it made more sense to my mind and I could use objects in different ways,” she says, noting another favored medium is video. “Every project I do is different. When someone asks, ‘What kind of artist are you?’ it’s hard for me to say I’m a sculptor or I’m a video artist because everything is really fluid to me. It really depends on what message I want to have – that’s what determines the medium.”
Process is important to Medicus. She credits conversations with peers – whether her classmates when in school or current artistic collaborator, Eric D. Charlton – with helping her projects take shape. That isn’t to say there haven’t been growing pains. She acknowledges her overall creative process is something to which she’s still adjusting.
“I had a hard time understanding and accepting the way that I work, which is very sporadic. I’ll have an idea or be influenced by something I see, and then things kind of come together,” she says. “I used to think that to be an artist you had to be in your studio laboring away for hours over one thing, and I used to beat myself up about that because I saw a lot of people who did that in school and in life but I could never really make myself do that. And then I realized, ‘OK, I don’t have to do that and can work the way I actually work,’ which is pretty random, and with strange inspiration, suddenly, and then for a while, nothing. (laughs) I’m coming to terms with that.”
Installation view of “SubFunction” at The Sculpture
Center. On the right is “Vending Machine” by Ella Medicus, 2019; mixed media, vending machine. On the left is “Lamp” by Eric D. Charlton, 2019; atex, lampshade, lamp hardware.
If other budding artists are facing similar struggles, Medicus hopes they can follow her example.
“For young artists, if (you) feel stuck in ‘you have to work this one way’ (or) ‘you have to make your work look like it’s made by one person,’ you don’t have to do that. It doesn’t matter. You can do whatever you want – and you should do whatever you want because that’s where something interesting will happen.” C
On View
“Ella Medicus & Eric Charlton: SubFunction” remains on view through May 24 at The Sculpture Center, 1834 E. 123rd St., Cleveland. The show is part of The Sculpture Center’s Window to Sculpture Emerging Artist Series.
“Ella Medicus’ artwork flirts with both humor and the sublime, subtly tweaking mundane objects to unexpected and often hilarious effect. Her work is quiet and initially unassuming, but closer inspection reveals the artist’s subverted sense of humor through mimicry or manipulation of everyday materials.”
Gianna Commito, professor of painting and drawing, Kent State University
Years 38 • Resides & Creates Richmond Heights • Learned BFA from Southern University A&M College in Baton Rouge, La.
Story and photography by Michael C. Butz
Antwoine Washington is an artistic dual threat. A skilled portraitist, his precise, life-like drawings pull people in with rich detail and invite them to relate to the subjects. His paintings, with topics ripped from the day’s headlines, are more visceral, and when he wants them to be, less refined, yet they convey equally compelling messages to viewers. It’s a powerful combination of talents.
“I always say it’s like, using basketball terms, you got a basketball player who can play street ball and he can play in the NBA,” he says. “When I really want to get personal with a piece, or intimate with it, I’ll draw it. It’ll take me longer, and I’m really just fleshing everything out. But when I paint, I use my painting as, like, a lot of emotion. I just want to get it out and I don’t want to waste a lot of time. I want people to see the emotion in it.”
In other words, his paintings earn him a game at Rucker Park in Harlem, his drawings – his primary passion – get him on the court at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
Washington grew up in Pontiac, Mich., and from an early age, he drew Saturday morning cartoon characters for fun. Despite showing promise, he never thought about pursuing art professionally.
“How I grew up in a poor neighborhood, art wasn’t seen as a way out. You either rapped or you played basketball – those were the popular things,” he says. “I stuck with art. I always said I wanted to go to college and do the art thing in hopes it would eventually take me there.”
Even in college, however, Washington often had to be pushed by professors to enter his work in shows or pursue a career in art. Instead, he says he took on 9-to-5 jobs in order to “make some money,” the most recent of which was as a United States Postal Service mail carrier – a job that left him feeling unfulfilled.
To fill the creative hole, he’d come home from work to draw and paint, often posting the results on social media. The chorus of those encouraging him to focus solely on art – his wife, his friends, even his co-workers – grew louder, and he eventually decided to pursue art full time. The results? Fulfilling.
“Powernomics” (Man), 2019; graphite and charcoal on Bristol board; 19 x 24 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
In the first Northeast Ohio show Washington’s work was included, the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve’s “New Now 2018,” he received the People’s Choice Award – Honorable Mention as voted on by viewers. Not long after, he was awarded an honorable mention award at Valley Art Center’s 47th Annual Juried Art Exhibit.
Amid those successes, Washington endured what could’ve been a serious setback. In November 2018, he suffered a stroke that left the entire right side of his body numb, including the hand he uses to draw and paint. He persevered and has since regained full use of his hand. He also gained a renewed sense of confidence.
“I feel like I gained an actual super power with that,” he says. “At first, I’d second guess myself, but I think maybe that part of my brain died and made me feel like, ‘Hey, screw it, I’m going to just go for it and try it and see what happens.’ It gave me … (a sense of) no fear. That super power of ‘no fear,’ I feel like that’s what happened after that.”
From the beginning, Washington’s art has been rooted in personal experience and representative of his surroundings. The 1992 assault on Malice Green by two white Detroit police officers that killed Green, who was black, left a mark.
“That always stuck with me,” he says. “I always said if I ever did art and was able to go into museums and do it professionally, that I’d paint about those types of things.”
“Black Family” (The myth of the missing black father), 2019; acrylic paint on canvas; 24 x 30 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Among the topics he explores in his art is the parallel he sees between antebellum slavery and the disproportionate imprisonment of African-Americans in the United States. It’s a complex subject, he admits, but one – like others – he hopes to make “more digestible” to a broader audience through his art. Washington says his goal isn’t necessarily to change minds, it’s to get people to listen.
“I’m just trying to be a voice for the voiceless,” he says. “Sometimes, people in the black community don’t have an opportunity to tell their stories. So, if I’m going to be in front of people, I feel like, ‘Hey, this is me, I’m letting you know what’s going on around me. These are the people talking through me, from my ancestors to now.’
“When viewing my art, just give it a chance. … Because I talk about some heavy stuff, some people probably are afraid to latch onto it, but don’t be afraid to look past the racial element and find something in it for yourself. A lot of times, like I say, I always speak from my perspective, but you can also get something from it because we all go through the same stuff. We’re all human, so we go through human stuff.” C
On View
“The Art of Realism” will remain on view through Oct. 31 at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (5300 Riverside Drive, Cleveland) as part of the airport’s Temporary Art Exhibition Program.
“Fabulism” will be on view from May 9 to June 28 at YARDS Projects in Worthington Yards, 725 Johnson Court, Cleveland.
“Rooms to Let CLE” will take place the weekend of May 18-19 at various locations throughout Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood.
“seenUNseen” will be on view from Sept. 20 to Nov. 16 at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, 1834 E. 123rd St., Cleveland.
“Antwoine Washington’s art succeeds in bridging cultural divides. Its subject matter is urgent, its delivery impassioned and its ability to spark important conversations significant. On several levels, it connects – and Northeast Ohio is fortunate to be home to an artist of his caliber and potential.”
Years 40 • Resides & Creates Cleveland Heights • Learned BA from Cleveland State University
Story and photography by Michael C. Butz
Danté Rodriguez isn’t new to the scene. He emerged as an artist several years ago, receiving an honorable mention at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s prestigious “The NEO Show” in 2005 and even co-founding his own gallery, Wall Eye Gallery, which showcased artists from 2009 to 2011 in Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood.
Now, the draftsman is re-emerging with experimental and potentially transformative techniques. His art has long grappled with identity – still does. But his focus has shifted from solely exploring personal, relational themes to examining his process and approach to drawing. He’s challenging the identity of his art.
“Throughout art history, people have always questioned the idea of painting. ‘What is painting?’” says Rodriguez, noting the degree of experimentation the medium allows. “I want to do the same thing for drawing. I want people to question the reality of what I’m presenting, if it’s a drawing, if it’s a sculpture. The new work is related to that. Just, think differently. Shift your thinking a little bit. It still can be considered a work of art, for sure. A drawing? Maybe, maybe not.”
His boundary pushing can be seen in his “fur drawings,” recent works in which he cuts intricate designs into canvases of faux fur. The concept was inspired by his mother, a beautician.
“I was thinking, ‘What else can I use to draw?’ And I was thinking about barbers – they cut into people’s hair, but it’s temporary. So, can we make it permanent?” he says. “I was just drawing with clippers instead of charcoal.”
“Self-Portrait,” 2017, charcoal and linseed oil on Yupo paper. Image courtesy of the artist.
Rodriguez’s latest body of work involves yet another unique medium: charcoal mixed with linseed oil. He’s applying his “charcoal paint,” as he calls it, to found wood panels, metal objects, paper and fiber to conceal the identity of its form in a uniform black coating.
The masking darkness of that medium is intentional. In stark contrast to an earlier series consisting of brightly colored portraits of various Latino identities or his vibrant 2018 mural “La Ofrenda De Xochipilli” in the Gordon Square Arts District, both of which outwardly celebrate Latino culture, these new works – his Black Sun Series – convey sorrow, gloom and introspection stemming from personal hardships. The relatable emotions emanate from his canvas and swirl in viewers’ minds and hearts.
“I’ve been going through a dark period of my life for the past year-and-a-half that has culminated in ending of my marriage,” he says, adding he’s also still coming to terms with learning at 21 he was adopted. “I’m also learning about how many of us adoptees experience trauma when we are separated from our birth mothers at birth.
“So, this new work is delving into my subconscious to face a reality that I’ve been fearful of facing. Between the trauma of discovering late in life my adoptive status to my current divorce, this new series of work has taken on a therapeutic nature of healing for me,” he says. “The feeling of covering objects or boards in black is symbolic of my memories and feelings buried deep in my subconscious.”
In that way, art is a safe space for Rodriguez. In the wake of learning of his adoption, as he wrestled with questions of identity and belonging (he was raised by a Puerto Rican family in Lorain but learned he was born in Mexico), art afforded him an opportunity to express himself and share his journey.
“Being 12,” 2017, charcoal and linseed oil on Yupo paper. Image courtesy of the artist.
When he isn’t making art, Rodriguez is helping display it at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where he’s a mount maker within the exhibition and design department. In that role, he makes armature, custom brackets or whatever other support structures might be needed to make safe the relics the museum receives and displays.
Rodriguez credits having so many different materials in his hands at CMA with challenging him to try different things in his own practice – one of many inspirations that lead him to continually reinvent himself and his artwork
“One of the biggest critiques I got from one of the professors I loved was, ‘Danté, you have to pick a style and focus,’” he says. “You know, I’m not interested in creating a brand of my art, I’m just interested in exploring what I’m feeling, what I’m thinking – because how I thought 10 years ago is totally different from now. We’re constantly growing and always gaining new knowledge or insight, and I want my work to express that. … I don’t want to be stuck.” C
On View
“Fabulism” will be on view from May 9 to June 28 at YARDS Projects in Worthington Yards, 725 Johnson Court, Cleveland.
“Unidos per el Arte” will be on view from May 17 to June 21 in Gallery 215 at 78th Street Studios, 1300 W. 78th St., Cleveland.
“America’s Well-Armed Militias” will be on view from Aug. 16 to Sept. 27 at SPACES, 2900 Detroit Ave., Cleveland.
Adam Tully & John Farina
“Through his search for better understanding his identity, his journey has brought him into multiple art mediums. If you viewed his work during the CAN Triennial, you would see brightly colored faux fur works that were intricately shaved and layered. Also around that time, he dedicated time completing a mural next to Astoria Market in Detroit-Shoreway that depicts of Xochipilli, the Aztec god of beauty, poetry and dance. His homage is beautifully rendered in his striking color palette and the piece seems to undulate on the wall. We have been collectors of his work for years. We’ve seen his ideas change, but each time we see something new, we see something more refined and interesting.”
Adam Tully & John Farina, owners, Maria Neil Art Project
Years 59 • Resides & Creates Moreland Hills • Learned BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art
Story and photography by Michael C. Butz
Kimberly Chapman remembers well the moment she decided to leave behind her 25-year career in marketing to become a full-time artist. The fateful encounter occurred at Ursuline College in Pepper Pike, where she was marketing director.
“There’s a woman there I really admire, Sister Diane Pinchot, who came over for lunch one day. When I answered the front door, she had a beautiful pot she’d made and had kiln-fired – I swear it was still warm when she brought it – and I looked at that pot and thought to myself, ‘That’s it, I’m going back to school,’” she says. “It was black with these beautiful metallic blues. I just fell in love with it immediately and thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’ It was almost an immediate decision. She left after lunch and I called CIA.”
Fast-forward a few years and she has a BFA in ceramics from the Cleveland Institute of Art. And Sister Pinchot’s pot? It’s now in Chapman’s home studio.
“Heard ‘Em Coming Reliquary,” 2019; porcelain, glaze, luster; 15(l) x 8.5(w) x 6(d) inches.
Nearly as swift and certain as her decision to pursue art has been her ascension within the local arts scene. Within the first four months of 2019, her work had already been accepted into shows at Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls, Heights Arts in Cleveland Heights and BAYarts in Bay Village – and with good reason.
Her porcelain work is hauntingly beautiful. It’s both eerie and elegant, as moonlight and shadows, and its unearthly aura captivates. Chapman’s connection to the clay and her craft is evident in every piece.
“There’s something about clay, there’s something about ceramics – it’s very tactile. You always have to touch it; you always have to hold it in your hands and feel it,” she says of her medium of choice. “It’s so personal. Clay is a very personal medium. … It has such an incredible capacity for memory.”
Chapman’s work is turning heads across Northeast Ohio. In fact, one of her pieces was recently awarded best in show at the BAYarts Annual Juried Exhibition.
“I always thought if I could get best of show maybe just once in a lifetime, wouldn’t that be amazing?” she says. “The jurors for that show really gave me a vote of confidence I don’t think I had before. So, you start skipping around thinking, ‘Wow, this might be possible for me to be a ceramic artist and to show my work and to have a message.’”
“‘A’ is for Active, ‘S’ is for Shooter” Series (combo image), 2018; porcelain, glaze; average 7(l) x 7(w) x 5½(d) inches.
Messages are central to Chapman’s art. The piece that won was from her “‘A’ is for Active, ‘S’ is for Shooter” series consisting of three pieces named “Sitting Duck,” “Be Brave” and “M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E Gas Mask” – costumed figures that represent children’s vulnerability and uncertainty at school that offer poignant commentary on the state of school safety. Other narratives include domestic violence and immigration.
“What I’m most interested in is looking at situations where people are in a very difficult situation and how they survive. How do the asylum seekers survive these terrible trips they make to come to America or other countries in search of a better world? How do parents survive after losing children who’ve been killed in a shooting spree at school?” she says. “One of the things I’ve always been interested in is what’s left behind. When everything is over and finished, what’s left behind? What are the feelings that are left behind? What are the actions one might take with what’s left behind? I think I really like looking at struggle and human nature. How can you persevere against impossible odds or sorrow or loss?”
“Ghost Ship” & “Star Gazers” (combo image), 2019; porcelain, glaze, luster; “Ghost Ship” 24(l) x 22(w) x 6(d) inches / “Star Gazers” average 4(l) x 3(w) x 4(d) inches.
Chapman’s early success may make it easy to forget her art career is so young or overlook the fact that she earned her BFA not as a 20-something but at the same time she became a grandmother.
Her age and experience were assets. A strong work ethic and skills honed during her previous career – organization, writing, networking – have all helped her as an artist. She says she’s an advocate for education at any age and encourages others considering late-in-life career changes to become a nontraditional student like she was.
“Go for it,” Chapman says. “If you have the opportunity to go back to school, take it, because there’s nothing like it in the world. It will expand your horizons and make you a better artist.” C
On View
“Observation/Conservation” remains on view through May 8 at Valley Art Center, 155 Bell St., Chagrin Falls.
“Emergent 2019” will be on view from April 26 to June 9 at Heights Arts, 2175 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights. Chapman will also take part in related programming – “Ekphrastacy: Artists Talk + Poets Respond” – at 7 p.m. May 23.
“2019 Summer Mash-Up” will be on view from June 7-28 at Ursuline College’s Florence O’Donnell Wasmer Gallery, 2550 Lander Road, Pepper Pike.
Mary Urbas
“Balancing beauty with the macabre, Kim’s nonfunctional porcelain sculpture centers on ‘what’s left behind.’ Childhood and ancestral memories loom large with a strong sense of home. Kim has an affinity for pure white, translucent porcelain clay because of its soft, sculptural and ethereal nature.”
Mary Urbas, gallery coordinator and exhibition curator, Lakeland Community College
Northeast Ohio’s art scene is vibrant and diverse. It’s also constantly growing, a dynamic fueled in part by the region’s art schools and area galleries that showcase and support up-and-coming artists’ work.
Canvas believes it’s important to champion emerging talent, too, which is why we’re proud to introduce “Who’s Next,” a section that aims to celebrate and call more attention to artists early in their career.
To select the artists featured, we tapped local gallery directors – both independent and university-affiliated – for their expertise and insight. The end result is a group of rising stars who are putting in the work and whose art we feel you should see any time their names are affiliated with an exhibition.
Their disciplines include painting, photography, sculpture, drawing and fiber arts. There’s even some stage acting involved. What they have in common is that they all represent the next generation of talented artists in Northeast Ohio.
