click to enlarge Exoskeleton by Pam McKee and Kyle Holland
With August officially here, the schedule of art events and exhibitions is heating
up as much as the temperatures. As the month begins, we’ve compiled a list of the most highly anticipated events. With so much to cover, let’s get right to it.
For the past 10 years, local cartoonists and illustrators Ron Hill and Gary Dumm have been collaborating on BB BluesBird, a comic about an avian musician. Dumm writes the scripts for Hill to draw. Each artists is known for their own work. Hill works as an editorial cartoonist for six local papers, and Dumm is best known for his work on American Splendor with the late Harvey Pekar. This month, the Solon Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library presents a retrospective exhibition of BB BluesBird paintings and drawings. The work will remain on view during regular library hours through Aug. 23.
(Solon Branch Library) 34125 Portz Pkwy., Solon, 440-248-8777, cuyahogalibrary.org
Friday, Aug. 12:
The Morgan Art of Papermaking Conservatory & Educational Foundation celebrates the art of papermaking with a new exhibition of twelve collaborations between well-known American paper artists and artists working in printmaking, calligraphy and surface design. These collaborations include prints, books and more. Each work was created utilizing the unique facilities at the Morgan for this special exhibition.
Confluence: Twelve Collaborations opens with a reception from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 12, and remains on view through Sept. 16.
Collaborating teams: Jennifer Baker & Buzz Spector, Tom Balbo & Maggie Denk-Leigh, Tim Barrett & Russell Maret, Shannon Brock & Martin Mazorra, Jim Croft & Melody Eckroth, Kerri Cushman & Monika Meler, Aimee Lee & Beatrice Coron, Tom Leech & Jean Gumpper, Katie MacGregor & Chiori Beck, Bridget O’Malley & Amy Sands, Radha Pandey & Cheryl Jacobsen and Kyle Holland & Pam McKee.
(Morgan Conservatory) 1754 E. 47th St., 216-361-9255, morganconservatory.org
Saturday, Aug. 13:
This month, the Cleveland Museum of Art continues its programming at Transformer Station with Dan Graham/Rocks. Born in 1942, Dan Graham is a conceptual artist, writer and curator currently living and working in New York. Graham works in video, photography, public installations, performance art and more. Dan Graham/Rocks highlights the artist’s interest and involvement in rock music. The exhibition includes both his well-known Rock My Religion, as well as recent large-scale pavilions. Rock My Religion is a provocative and experimental video produced in 1982. The video draws parallels between religion and rock music. The video explores the emergence of rock music as religion to suburban teenage consumers. His pavilions, which combine elements of art and architecture, have been installed in venues such as MIT (Cambridge, MA), Madison Square Park (NY), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY) as well as in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and more. Dan Graham/Rocks is on view at Transformer Station from Saturday, Aug. 13 through Sunday, Dec. 4. Please note, Transformer Station has new hours starting Aug. 10: Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (8 p.m. on Thursdays).
(Transformer Station) 1460 W. 29th St., 216-938-5429, transformerstation.org
Friday, Aug. 19:
From 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19, the Cleveland Print Room hosts an opening reception for its latest exhibition,
Scale3, featuring the work of Toby Kaufmann-Buhler, Lori Kella and Jacob Koestler. The artists will be discussing their work and processes during an artist talk at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 20.
Scale3 remains on view through Sept. 23.
Toby Kaufman-Buhler’s experimental VIDEFILMOTEXT series explores film and text as visual artifacts through video. Working frame-by-frame, Kaufmann-Buhler uses Super-8 film to collect brief quotations from texts of works published by his family. The accompanying audio echoes this deconstructive and reconstructive process with a manipulated and treated musical saw.
Lori Kella’s the Seven Summits and the Lesser Peaks I Remember depicts the highest peaks on each continent, as well as several “smaller” mountains the artist has “scaled.” Through photography, Kella explores the representation of these landmarks both physically, and as a metaphor for her ambitions and disenchantments as an artist.
Jacob Koestler’s Black Body is a single-channel video loop, and part of
The Natural Bridge, a larger multimedia exhibition created between 2012 to 2016. Channeling Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Koestler utilizes a video feedback loop to re-shoot and project large-scale photographs of caves throughout Appalachia. In Black Body, Koestler explores the “gray area” between still and moving, perception and reality and inner and outer space.
(Cleveland Print Room) 2550 Superior Ave., 216-401-5981, clevelandprintroom.com
Saturday, Aug. 20:
In celebration of Mark Mothersbaugh’s Myopia, currently on view at MOCA Cleveland and the Akron Art Museum, the partnering organizations are hosting a Magical Myopia Bus Tour. Beginning at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 20, guests will explore MOCA’s exhibition with a guided tour of the Cleveland portion of the exhibition. Afterwards, guests will be transported via bus to the Akron half of the show for another guided tour at the Akron Art Museum. Although Mothersbaugh himself won’t be onboard, organizers promise a few surprises. Tickets are very limited. Admission is $20 for members, $30 for non-members, and include museum admission, lunch and round-trip transportation.
Although both venues will showcase Mothersbaugh’s visual and sound-based work, each will present distinctly different collections from Mothersbaugh’s extensive oeuvre. Myopia in Cleveland focuses strongly on sound, sound-making objects, and artworks inspired by themes of correspondence, communication and technology. In Akron, Myopia showcases Mothersbaugh’s daily visual art practice. The Akron Art Museum’s exhibition includes an installation of 30,000 postcard-sized drawings created throughout his career. To reserve your seats on the Magical Myopia Bus Tour, call MOCA Cleveland 216-421-8671. Myopia remains on view at both venues through Aug. 28.
(MOCA Cleveland) 11400 Euclid Ave., 216-421-8671, mocacleveland.org
(Akron Art Museum) 1 South High St., Akron, 330-376-9185, akronartmuseum.org
Friday, Aug. 26:
Following its nationally acclaimed RNC-related programming, SPACES is ready to unveil its latest projects. Opening on Aug. 26,
Hidden Assembly explores the invisible production of the objects that populate our surroundings in a capitalist society. The project examines how factors such as global outsourcing, technological advances and the rise of precarious work have obscured or eliminated our perception of the creation of these everyday goods, and explores how factors such as increasing geographic distance have shrouded global labor. Curated by Yaelle S. Amir, the exhibition includes artists/projects: Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Art Handlers Alliance (AHA-NY), Gulf Labor Artist Coalition, Joao Enxuto & Erica Love, Marisa Jahn (Studio REV-), Betty Marin, Huong Ngo & Hong-An Truong, Laurel Ptak/Wages for Facebook and Andrew Norman Wilson.
Meanwhile, SPACES’ Vault presents
Moving Anthropologies, videos by three Portugese artists: Maria Lusitano, Mónica de Miranda, Rui Mourão. Curatoed by Mourão and José Carlos Teixeira, these videos present fragmented prespectives reflecting issues of memory, identity, history, otherness and cultural difference.
Hidden Assembly and
Moving Anthropologies remain on view at SPACES through Oct. 21. Following its run in Cleveland,
Hidden Assembly will travel to Newspace Center for Photography and Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR on Nov. 3.
(SPACES) 2220 Superior Viaduct, 216-621-2314, spacesgallery.org
Friday, Aug. 26, and Saturday, Aug. 27:
MOCA Cleveland continues its busy programming schedule with BOUND: Art Book + Zine Fair. This follow up to last year’s highly successful MIMEO REVOLUTION highlights creators of some of the area’s best zines, comics, books and more. This two day event includes DJ sets, video art, artist talks and workshops. BOUND is curated by TR Ericsson, and includes more than 60 self-publishing and small press writers and artists. For a complete list of participants, visit mocacleveland.org. The event takes place from 5 to 10 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 26 and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 27.
(MOCA Cleveland) 11400 Euclid Ave., 216-421-8671, mocacleveland.org
All events are free and open to the public unless stated otherwise. Of course, there’s much more going on throughout the month. Be sure to stay tuned for more information on these events and more.