Impossible Art, a Gen Z-Run Creative Experiment, Aims to Liven Up Hingetown Arts Scene

The glass-wrapped storefront on the corner of West 29th and Detroit Avenue has long been a sort of retail front door to Ohio City’s Hingetown enclave, housing, in recent years, home goods, cyclist gear, and a Lululemon pop-up.

Starting this Friday, it’s going to be home to something entirely different.

2901 Detroit Ave. will become host to a multi-pronged creative space called Impossible Art, run by a quartet of ambitious guys in their early twenties. One, explained Aidan Meany, a 21-year-old clothing designer and founding Impossible member, that’s applying a sort of co-op, bare-bones complement to larger galleries around Cleveland. Here, he said, “artists run the space entirely.”

“This is just, like, a time,” Meany said, “where we get to kind of kick a door down into a neighborhood that we don’t really feel like we belong in.”

Beginning with a grand opening concert this Friday, Meany and the crew—Jack Romer, Jacob Boarman and Ethan Lindenberger—will be testing out a sui generis business model to enable their pro-artist agenda, while hosting on-rotation visual arts, shelves of local zines and roughly 12 concerts a month. (The space can barely squeeze in “a tight 70” attendees, Lindenberger said.)

By offering artists a $50/month spot on their rotation wall, along with doling out a $50/month access card to subscribers—waving $15 door fees—Lindenberger and Meany claim they’ll be able to both cover rent and allow artists of their choosing to set their own consignment percentages. Such a special access card, an idea which Lindenberger grabbed from a nearby board game bar, will, as of now, give 10 to 15 percent off at certain Hingetown bars, like Jukebox and The Hangar, where Linderberger is a bartender.

“It’s like a Hingetown subscription,” Lindenberger, 22, Impossible’s business guru and mixologist, said. “You’re paying $50 a month, but you’re getting potentially discounts to a majority of the businesses on this block. You’re getting access to events and classes. You’re getting access also, obviously, to the co-working space [Limelight], the retail, and it becomes, like, the community.”

The idea for an artist’s haven off West 29th originated, it turns out, a block away. In October, Meany and Romer formed Found Surface, a minimalist clothing company that prided itself on its green ecology — incorporating recycling and “using color selecting robots to minimize waste with low-impact dyes.”

Shortly after Found Surface found a temporary home at Spaces, the gallery across the street, Meany was approached by Anne Harnett, owner of Harness Cycle, to gauge his interest in opening up a storefront after Him & His, the home goods store, vacated 2901 last January.

“And I kind of slept on it for a little bit,” Meany said. “And then went to Jack, and I was like, our whole mission is to, like, create, to be the glue that elevates the art scene in Cleveland. But I felt like that could only go so far as a brand—as a clothing company can only message that and execute that.”

Romer was intrigued. He had been designing clothing in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator since he was 15, and had moved to Ohio City to pursue the artist’s life. Lindenberger, who lives down the street on Detroit, was brought in as a community liaison; Boarman, a local folk musician, came in as Impossible’s de facto show booker and retail operator.

The four said that the upfront costs were “normal” for a space like 2901, although the four won’t disclose exactly how much.

“It’s enough for four twenty-somethings who’ve been working their asses off for seven years to pull their savings together,” Meany said. (The pine display tables they had custom-made were, he added, “the highest expense” so far.)

It’s probably Impossible Art’s greatest obstacle in the eight, twelve months to come: How to both deal with the subject of money—of profits! of paying bands! of blossoming the hoodie line!—while keeping aligned to their for-the-artist creed.

“Again, we’re going to figure it out day-by-day,” Romer said. “A part of this situation is determined by the community working with us on that. If they decide that this is something they want to keep in Ohio, they’re going to have to pay for it.”

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This article appears in Feb 8-21, 2023.