What started as a decluttering project in Juliana Sadock Savino’s University Heights basement evolved into an inspiration that became an impromptu art installation at the former Westinghouse Electric factory building on Ashland Road, between Cedar and Central Avenues in the Central neighborhood.

One of the places she frequents on her bike is the Westinghouse property, which she calls “tag museum with certain mysterious aspects” for the tremendous amount of graffiti on the ivy covered ruins, and it fueled her inspiration for an art project on the exterior façade.

Westinghouse art project“I’m 70 years old—I didn’t go inside,” Savino says.

But she did transport three ceramic heads, her “Bad Art” pot she made years ago while studying art with Andrea LeBlond at Cuyahoga Community College, and an old globe down to the site.

The project provided a use for the five items Savino wanted to get rid of while purging her basement, and the substitute teacher at Cleveland Heights-University Heights School District and retired bass player went about creating four installations around the grounds.

Last week, she placed the globe on a stand in a stone graffiti-covered archway; placed the Bad Art pot on a crumbling brick wall; and, using bed springs, tucked the ceramic heads—one embedded in a box—between the ivy crawling up a brick wall.

When Savino later returned to admire her work, someone had painted the eyes silver on one of the heads, and she says the pot and the globe had been “curated.” Luckily, photographer Glenn Petranek had stopped by the site in time to shoot the ceramic heads.

Savino says she is not upset about some of her art vanishing.

“I did this for fun,” she says. “It’s something playful I did. People don’t usually vandalize that space—it’s kind of an impromptu art space.”