How many times in the last 10 -15 years I have gotten off the highway at the East 72nd Street exit of the Shoreway and winced at how depressing this mostly post industrial, impoverished landscape looks.

Friday night I attended a reception and lecture at SPACES Gallery for select Cleveland organizations with interest in urban planning and sustainability. The current exhibition at Spaces, Shrinking Cities, explores strategies for post-industrial urban areas and should be of great interest to anyone interested in urban planning and sustainability. Terry Schwarz, Senior Planner at the Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio, was to give a tour of the exhibition. My affiliation? I am an energy ambassador at Case. I am also an art historian, and although there are some witty, beautiful and innovative works represented in the exhibition the theme and the messages of the show truly over power the aesthetics. One could easily forget they are in an art exhibition.

Wednesday night's lecture at the Cleveland Clinic with Peter B. Lewis and Frank Gehry was everything I had expected and more. I doubt an audience member left without a new appreciation for the  positive,  transformative power of architecture, friendship and collaboration. It was inspiring just to be in the same room with two people who had made such great contributions to architecture. It was also inspiring to see two people, two friends, who worked so well together as client and architect. A testament to Gehry's fame, the lecture had very few visuals – only a few slides of his most famous buildings such as the Disney Concert Hall in LA, The Experience Museum Project in Seattle, the Guggenheim Bilboa and the unbuilt Peter B. Lewis residence were shown.  Peter Lewis and Frank Gehry each spent 15 minutes discussing some of the highlights of their lives and careers and then they took questions from the audience.

 It is very nice to see my favorite real urban planner Joe Stanley featured on Lee Batdorff's very informative University Circle Blog - and thanks to Joe for mentioning us here at realneo! We set up and host his http://neomainstreet.com site, which is one of the best uses of Drupal in this region, and presents excellent work by a talented planner and designer. Joe is working on all the community development projects I'm involved with, including overall East Cleveland planning and the Star Intergenerational Neighborhood planning and The Intergenerational School, along with other work Joe does independently.

We live in "Forest City" so Arbor Day should be an important holiday in Cleveland. Here is one idea how you might celebrate ...

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Asterisk Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday, May 11, 6-11 p.m.

(during Tremont Art Walk)

May 11 - June 2, 2007

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Cleveland Clinic, Ideas for Tomorrow - a speaker series, Free event featuring: Peter B. Lewis,Chairman of Progressive Corporation & Frank Gehry, world-renowned architect

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"I think Cleveland is a good place. Inner city is rough, but the outskirts is real beautiful, and great schools there. Plus my family, my mom and my sisters, they're all in Cleveland, so it's easier for me to be there than anywhere else." This quote, from an excellent Free Times interview with Charles "Wish Bone" Scruggs, of Cleveland-roots, Grammy award winning, multi-platinum rap trailblazers Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, sings the woes of a place branded as a "Shrinking City", where even the urban hard-core Thugs chose the 'burbs over the 'hood. The result of such out-migration, and downright defection, as is the case with all the other members of Bone, is the subject of a series of art exhibitions and related events taking place over the next month, all over town... which event sponsor Kent Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) introduces by pointing out: "In 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that Cleveland had lost nearly 20,000 residents in just five years. The city’s population of 458,684 was the lowest in nearly one hundred years." Starting Friday, April 20, 2007, at 4:30 PM, with a lecture at CUDC, explore what it means when a city loses its Bones...

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While I don't really care for the Cleveland Institute of Art slogan "Making Art Work" (to me, work is a 4-letter-word, and art is not), the CIA turns out some of the hardest working and most work-force attractive designers in the world, and each year showcases their talent at an annual Design Show. To get a sense of what to expect, here is my preview of the show from 2005 (missed the 2006 show - will be there this year!).

Here's more info from the official invitation...

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Few occassions in NEO or anywhere offer a more diverse and exciting perspective on life and art than the annual CIA BFA Thesis Exhibitions... from the CIA Website: See exceptional work by the next generation of artists and designers as graduating students present their Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis exhibitions. The Joseph McCullough Center will be bursting with energy and excitement as the Institute’s graduating seniors challenge the public with fresh ideas and commentaries on our world. Work will be presented in all media including performance and installation art. The senior thesis project is the culmination of a student’s career at the Institute. Please join us to celebrate their achievements!

Exhibition Hours

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Claes and I were picking up Evelyn at the University Circle Arabica Sunday around 5 and I heard one of my favorite sounds flowing over from my favorite area spot - the Barking Spider - roots jazz. I knew who I would find there... the finest roots jazz musician I know in town, George Foley... so we headed right over. George plays and sings, solo and with many area musicians, in every imaginable combo, all over town, and it is always a fun, uplifting and inspiring experience.

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The question "Am I possible?" is the beating heart of Get Rid of Yourself, and it echoes throughout Bernadette Corporation's existence on the borders of fashion and art.  The group is influenced by Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, and Jean-Luc Godard. They are also interested in new immigrant cultures surrounding their loft "headquarters" on the Bowery in New York City. Bernadette Corporation's interventionist projects function as a critique of our global culture, which constructs identity through consumption and branding.

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The Asian art collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art may be in storage, but this past Saturday, April 7th, Clevelanders had an exciting opportunity to learn about ancient and contemporary Chinese Art and a leading scholar's recent work in that area through the eighteenth annual Harvey Buchanan Lecture in Art History and the Humanities.

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"Absence as Presence: Exploring a Fundamental Representational Mode in Chinese art and Visual Culture"
Wu Hung, distinguished professor of art history, University of Chicago, and associate curator, Smart Gallery, presents the 18th annual Harvey Buchanan Lecture in Art History and the Humanities in the CMA lecture hall. Free and open to the public.  Sponsored by the Department of Art History and Art, Case Western Reserve University.

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TRUE ART GALLERY presents Michaelle Marshall, Jeanetta Ho and Laurel Herbold, April 6 – 30

OPENING RECEPTION, FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 2007, 6-10 P.M.

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Claude Monet. Poplars, Pink Effect, 1891
36 7/8 x 29 1/8, Private Collection

Wednesday night I attended a lecture at the Cleveland Museum of Art, part of the Monet Lecture Series that accompanies the exhibition Monet in Normandy. So far I have attend all but the first in this eight lecture series. I found the previous lectures all to be very entertaining and enlightening. I feel I know a lot about Monet now -- I read the exhibition catalog and gallery labels and I have listened to the audio tour, but I am finding that Claude Monet is a truly fascinating figure and it seems there is always something more to learn about him. Paul Tucker is a  professor at the University of Massachusetts and a renowned scholar on Monet and Impressionist painting. His lecture was titled "Monet, Modernism, Normandy, and La France" -- a title I believe was meant to cover all the bases. What I found most interesting about Professor Tucker's hour long lecture was his insights on some of Monet's late works that become narrow and vertically oriented (such as Poplars, Pink Effect 1891) and the role of religion in Monet's life and work. 

From Groundworks: "a must-see performance". I know my friend Marjorie Talalay is very big on this troup so I believe this must be a must see... I'll try to see... learn more at Cleveland Public Theater... check it out... press release below...

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