Arts + Culture
About eight minutes into Innerself, our hero is singing down the familiar streets of St. Clair-Superior when a fight breaks out. It’s the first time in the film that the audience hears the whooshing thwack effect of a kung-fu fight scene. It's a welcome sound that confirms the film’s promotional premise: we are indeed watching a “martial arts musical comedy"—and one shot in Cleveland, to boot.
Lakewood is a little more colorful after the unveiling of a new public art piece by local artist Derek Brennan last Tuesday, May 1, at the corner of Warren Road and Detroit Avenue. Brennan’s mural, “Imagination on the Lake,” spans approximately 13-feet by 9-feet over two inset panels of the brick building that houses Area Temps. “
Fresh Water's monthly "Free Stamp" feature rounds up the freshest free events in Cleveland.
This Tuesday, April 17, LAND studio will kick off Inner City Hues, a public art project in Cleveland’s Buckeye-Shaker and Mt. Pleasant neighborhoods designed to unite the community and bring some vibrancy into forgotten parts of the city. The project will pair four established artists with "blank canvases" on existing surfaces, buildings, vacant walls, and abandoned properties—with the goal of enlivening the neighborhood’s commercial district.
Cleveland rocks, and rarely moreso than it did this weekend at the 33rd annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductions. A sold-out crowd of 6,000 people gathered at Public Auditorium to fete 2018 honorees Bon Jovi, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Nina Simone, Moody Blues, Dire Straits, and The Cars, and the show didn't disappoint. Get a sneak peek of the night's highlights from our perch in the press room as we round up the best backstage moments.
From April 4-15, Tower City is set to yet again become a center for celluloid as host to the 42nd annual Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF)—considered to be the world's largest film festival to take place mostly under one roof. This year's installment will showcase close to 500 feature films and shorts from 72 countries, and true to form, Cleveland is well-represented among those ranks.
For some, sixteen candles is the magic birthday number. For the Cleveland Flea, it’s six. The popular shopping event and small business incubator turns six this April—marking the occasion with a new custom-built co-working space, an online creative business school, and an on-site workshop that will soon include retail components.
From Brownie cameras to vintage typewriters, it’s a veritable treasure trove of unique finds and period pieces at the Cleveland Prop Shop—a 1,200-square-foot warehouse space located near I-90 in Euclid. Local prop master Monica Plunkett opened the appointment-only shop last fall to accommodate the city’s theatre scene and what she calls a “growing film presence in Cleveland.”
A beloved University Circle institution is widening its footprint to include Ohio City. This fall, The Music Settlement will open its doors on the ground floor of The Quarter, a new mixed-use development at the northwest corner of Detroit Avenue and West 25th Street.
When creativity, color, and conversation collide, the results can be unstoppable. Just ask community organizer Rachel Oscar, who is leading the quest to create an inclusive community conversation about race and build a mural celebrating all Clevelanders via the Bridge That Bridges campaign.
At Karamu House, necessity has been the mother of reinvention. Several years ago, the renowned 103-year-old performing arts institute was struggling to sustain itself amid funding and administrative challenges, but thanks to a laser-focused strategic plan, Karamu House is starting off the next 100 years on the right note—branding its rebirth as “Karamu 2.0.”
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Rain, shine, snow, sleet, or hail, Clevelanders embrace the unpredictable winter we have come to know and love. Case in point: Brite Winter, a free music and arts festival that defies even the coldest temperatures and invites people of all ages to brave the elements. Slated for this Saturday, February 24, this year’s event features more than 45 bands and is projected to attract 20,000 attendees to the West Bank of the Flats.
Today marks the start of the Cleveland Institute of Art’s 72nd Student Independent Exhibition (SIE). Through March 18, this annual exhibition will be presenting over 100 works of art—from paintings to drawing to ceramics to video—at the Reinberger Gallery. Gallery director Nikki Woods says the exhibition is designed to "remind us of the importance of playful experimentation and the need to take chances, and to question the status quo."
The jurors for this student-organized exhibition include Chicago artist Claire Ashley, Cincinnati artist and "Shark Girl" creator Casey Riordan Millard, and Athens-based printmaker Art Werger.
The exhibition kicks off tonight with an opening night reception from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Reinberger Gallery (11610 Euclid Ave.).
“A lot of people take for granted that this little special Japanese print gallery is in Cleveland,” says Michael Verne, who took over the gallery more than 30 years ago. “This is the one place in the world that you can see some of the highest-quality Japanese prints.”
The Coventry P.E.A.C.E. Campus and the nonprofit groups working out of the building will remain in the former Coventry School building after Heights Libraries opts to buy the property from the Cleveland Heights-University Heights School District for $1, saving the grounds from possible commercial development.
Fresh Water's monthly "Free Stamp" feature rounds up the freshest free events in Cleveland.
It’s Liz Maugans’ first official day as Director of YARDS Projects at Worthington Yards—a bold new space in the Warehouse District that combines four apartment buildings with public art and an art gallery. Her to-do list is long, and it ends with making Cleveland the global arts destination.
Touted as “part play, part town hall meeting,” How to End Poverty in 90 minutes (with 119 people you may or may not know) explores the complex subject of poverty through the eyes of art. A collaboration between Cleveland Public Theatre, United Way of Greater Cleveland, and Sojourn Theatre, the 90-minute experimental play runs from January 24-28 at Gordon Square Theatre and is fully sold out.
When EDWINS founder Brandon Chrostowski told documentarian Thomas Lennon that he was "opening the greatest French restaurant in the country, in Cleveland,’” that alone was enough to pique Lennon’s interest—but then Chrostowski told him the restaurant would be staffed entirely by people just out of prison. “I knew in 10 seconds there was a film,” says Lennon.
From Christina Sadowski’s perspective, there is no better vantage point of the Cleveland skyline than from a purple kayak at the crack of dawn. Her upcoming photography exhibition, “Reflections of Cleveland,” is the product of Sadowski’s kayak jaunts on Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River—and what her camera captured along the way.