The art history students of Case Western Reserve University organized another successful Cleveland Symposium Friday April 15th. The Cleveland Symposium is an annual graduate art history symposium, which takes place at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This year nine graduate students from universities throughout the country presented 20 minute papers. Their papers covered a wide range of historical periods and geographic areas: Italian Renaissance fresco, 17th century Peruvian manuscripts, 18th century French sculpture, 19th century photography, Hudson River School landscape painting, American modernism, abstract expressionism, and contemporary art.

Berkeley artist Jan Wurm was welcomed to Cleveland this past weekend by the Miller Weitzel Gallery with a one-woman show titled “Drawn In: The Seduction of Line.� Wurm initially met the owners of the Miller Weitzel Gallery Online, through a call for submissions. Her 15 mixed media drawings on canvas on view now until April 16th are raw and thought provoking commentaries on the human condition. Hung in two groups of four, and one group of five, they cover such timely -- and timeless -- subjects as war, feminism, and service and the cycle of life. Two smaller works, Samson & Delilah and the Organ Grinder and Monkey, are independent from the three groups. All are recent works on unstretched canvas, tacked to the gallery walls in a manner that conveys the intimacy and immediacy of the artist’s studio rather than the distance of a gallery.

With a major expansion project about to commence at the Cleveland Museum of Art, it is easy to forget about the exciting expansion project going on only 45 minutes away at the Akron Museum of Art. Access to the Arts’s “Arts on the Air� program Monday, March 14th brought much deserved attention to this project through an interview with Dr. Mitchell Kahan, Director of the Akron Museum of Art and Tom Wiscombe, Project Partner of Coop Himmelb(l)au, the architectural firm that designed the addition to The Museum. Steven Litt, the Arts and Architecture Critic of the Plain Dealer conducted the interview before a live audience of approximately 100 in the Ritz-Carlton.

The 29th Cleveland International Film Festival closed Sunday night, March 20th, with 5 x 2, a film directed by François Ozon, and a reception in the English Oak Room at Tower City Center. Hundreds of film lovers packed the elegant, art deco-style English Oak Room for the dessert reception and to hear the closing announcements given by Marcie Goodman, Cleveland Film Society Executive Director, and her staff. While film lovers gathered after the last round of films and enjoyed champagne, coffee, sparkling water, cookies and brownies a PowerPoint presentation played with images of the Film Society staff – and their dogs -- preparing for the Festival that was now fast coming to a close.

Could cultural consciousness icon David Byrne truly " PowerPoint"? Co-founder of the groundbreaking and fascinating Talking Heads, Byrne is known for creating globally relevant music and art, making it surprising he would go on tour championing the close-minded "Office" anti-intellect of big brother champion Microsoft, the icon of anti-culture. Yet, as Byrne posts to his website, I have been working with PowerPoint, the ubiquitous presentation
software, as an art medium for a number of years. It started off as a
joke (this software is a symbol of corporate salesmanship, or lack
thereof) but then the work took on a life of its own as I realized I
could create pieces that were moving, despite the limitations of the
"medium." Before the talk, attendees were treated to some of
Byrne's EEEI PowerPoint art project, which was striking.

Tower City and Tower City Cinemas are often empty and eerily
quiet, even on a Saturday night, but that all changes during the Cleveland
International Film Festival. This past Saturday night the 29th
Cleveland International Film Festival transformed Tower City and its
surrounding areas into an energy infused cultural event that felt distinctly
unfamiliar and un-Cleveland like. A diverse group of thousands of people,
flowed through the building excitedly talking about the films they had seen or
planned to see.

The phrase “lights, camera, action� could be the title for the group show that just opened Friday night (March 11th) at Buzz Gallery on West 25th Street. The works currently on view lack a unifying theme, though together they create a more than satisfying show. The show is curated by co-op member Andrew Kaletta and includes photographs by Steve Mastroiani and Al Fuchs, and lamps Kaletta himself designed and created. Kaletta is also a performance artist. He has scheduled an event for Sunday March 13th that sounds like a happening; anyone who stops by Buzz on Sunday afternoon will be encouraged to play board games.

There was an article posted on the Channel 3 website proclaiming "Graffiti becoming a big problem in Midtown".

A recent report by the Pew The Pew Internet & American Life Project explores the attitude of artists to the Internet. The surprising finding: Artists and musicians are enthusiatic Internet users and they believe the Internet helps them make and sell their work.

I'll start my insight from the 1st CIA Design Conference with a few quotes from the incredible designer James Victore. To artists in the audience, he encourages them to realize the power of their talent, saying "Our opinion has value." "Learn a skill - get a job... learn to think and have a career." He regrets that these days "no one wants to suffer or give up anything" and he demonstrates how, by being different, by being authentic to himself, he has become one of the most important visual and social voices of our time.

Student Holiday Art Sale December 3rd, 6-9pm; December 4th, 10am-9pm; December 5th, 1-5pm, Gund Bldg., Room 111, 11141 East Blvd

Location

Student Holiday Art Sale December 3rd, 6-9pm; December 4th, 10am-9pm; December 5th, 1-5pm, Gund Bldg., Room 111, 11141 East Blvd

Location

Student Holiday Art Sale December 3rd, 6-9pm; December 4th, 10am-9pm; December 5th, 1-5pm, Gund Bldg., Room 111, 11141 East Blvd

Location

Thursday, November 18th at 7pm - STELARC is
an Australian-based performance artist whose work explores and extends
the concept of the body and its relationship with technology through
human-machine interface incorporating medical imaging, prosthetics,
robotics, VR systems and the Internet. The interest is in alternative,
intimate and involuntary experiences, Ohio Bell Auditorium. More info
at www.stelarc.va.com.au/. See image.

Location

The First Annual Cleveland Institute of Art Design Summit
FREE AND OPEN TO
THE PUBLIC

What I Learned From School

Location

Rarely have I been as overwhelmed by the visual impact and
intellectual excellence of an art exhibit as I am with the current photography
show at Reinberger Galleries, Cleveland Institute of Art: Shimon Attie: The History of Another: Projections
in Rome from November 10 through December
23, 2004.

Mel Chin's presence at the CIA
"Aesthetics and Consumer Culture" symposium showed art and artist at
their very best, inspiring attendees to make Cleveland a more
valuable community...help save the world. Some concepts he presented from his work that we should embrace in our community include:

1. Use art to give all Clevelanders a voice throughout the community
   and beyond
2. Create collaborations of art, science and technology for
   environmental good
3. Realize our poverty is a Weapon of Mass Destruction and use art to
   go to war against that
4. Add more cultures to our "Cultural Gardens" and interconnect them all with all our people

Transcending the artfulness of the event was the reality of art as social activism, which
inspires a more intelligent vision of the human role in Earth's future, being for global benefit. Chin’s impact
is that important - as is the realization everyone here may be as impactful. Read on and learn from the best of art...

Art and creative industies represent $ billions in economic activity in Northeast Ohio, and the CIA is the greatest fuel we have for that wealth engine. Not only does the CIA provide the region with great creators - fine, design, graphic and craft artists and entrepreneurs - but CIA brings to town monumental art and events that generate cash for our economy. Most important, CIA is developing programs that raise awareness of social issues essential to improving the quality of life and prosperity of all our residents. Read and contribute insight gained from experiencing CIA enlightenment here.

People who complain there aren't leaders in Northeast Ohio fighting each day to improve our economy and quality of life are themselves ignorant and to blame for the problems in this community. Innumerable exceptional, dedicated, capable and effective leaders fight day in and out to improve everyone's lives here, every day - it is the people who do not participate actively in this process who are our region's "quiet crisis"?. Each day we have opportunities to be solutions - visit the REALNEO calendar frequently to get up to speed and learn where, when and how to make differences in the future of this community, participate in forums on-line, find and share insight with our community leaders, and take personal responsibility, now.

For the past several years, one of the hottest topics in NEO economic development circles has been the value and future potential of our "creative class" - Cleveland State recently estimated Playhouse Square's contribution to the economy at $43 million per year, and CPAC finds just arts and culture creates $1.3 billion a year in econopmic activity in Cuyahoga County alone - but creative class guru Richard Florida only ranks our creative class at 30th out of the 49 largest regions in America, and all local economic development thinkers think we have lots more value to capture. REI Director Ed Morrison projects that "Creative" industries are in fact our next "Steel", and he and other creative leaders here are doing lots about forging more value in this sector of the new economy, including hosting a session at REI November 9 about harnessing more of its horsepower. Here are my notes from the session:

Building a creative industry base in Northeast Ohio requires us to think in new ways. We're lucky, in that a number of other regions -- mostly in the U.K, Australia, and New Zealand -- have been moving in this direction.

11/06/04 - 11:20 AM - 12 PM
Adrianne
Santina, University of North Texas
Plains
Tipis, Kitsch, and the Fashioning of American
Identity

11/06/04 - 10:30-11:30 AM Presentation by Irene Sunwoo, Architectural Association, London
Object and Icon: The Farnsworth House as Architectural Collectible

We were fortunate to have join us, from London, England, architecture historian Irene Sunwoo, discussing an innovative concept, being a house as an art object desired by collectors and brokered as a collectible - in this case she profiled the controversial Farnsworth House of Mies Van der Rohe, 1946 - 1951, which was sold in 2003 as lot 800 in an auction at Sotheby's, for $7.5 million. The winning bidder was the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, which will now operate the house, hailed as an architectural masterwork.