For the past few months, a couple of dozen mostly visual arts
organizations have been meeting under the moniker SALT (Sustainable
Arts Leaders Talks) to figure out ways to cooperate, save money and
ensure that they last a long time.
Some of the participating groups include BAYarts, Zygote Press,
Art House, Arts Collinwood, the Sculpture Center, SPACES, Cleveland
Arts Prize, Kokoon Gallery, Chagrin Valley Art
Center, Cleveland Boys Choir, the Lit, HeightsARTS, Cleveland
Public Art and the Red Dot Project.
Among the ideas they’ve discussed are a visual-arts portal — a
website that would open the door to a multitude of organizations
throughout the region — and an e-mail listserv modeled after the
regional-theater network NEOpal. Another idea: a possible collaboration
with the Lit (formerly the Poets and Writers League of Greater
Cleveland) to develop a critic-in-residence program.
The SALT participants are throwing a coming-out party of sorts this
weekend at BAYarts. They’ve got the global neo-soul grooves of Moko
Bovo and boxed picnic food available from Vento La Trattori. It’s from
7-9:30 p.m. Sunday at BAYarts (28795 Lake Road, Bay Village, bayarts.net, 440.871.6543). It’s free.
Lakewood-grown jazz saxophonist Joshua Smith returns this
week from San Francisco, where he’s now based, to play with some of his
favorite local collaborators — drummer Carmen Castaldi and
bassist Jeremy Bleich — at a CD-release party. They call
themselves the Cleveland Trio, which is also the title of the CD. An
unmastered preview of the disc is full of high-energy improvisational
playing as the three musicians push and pull each other in all
directions. Lakewood artist Ben Dewey provided the cover art. They’ll
release it during a performance from 9-11 p.m. Saturday at the Phoenix
Café (15108 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, 216.226.4401, phoenixcoffee.com). The $12 cover
includes food and a copy of the CD.
Fiber artist Carol Hummel is kicking off her August residency
at Heights Arts Gallery in a public way, with
Knitscape, a temporary community public-art
project that will create a visual line of color and pattern in the
Cedar Lee and Larchmere business districts by covering parking-meter
poles and trees with knitted and crocheted sheaths. If you want to get
your needles and hooks into this project as a participating knitter,
e-mail leea@shad.org.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2009.