[View with PicLens]

12►

Photos from the “Third Fridays” art opening “Intrepid” featuring Derek Gelvin (CIA, ’06) and Annie Stimson (KSU, MFA program). Also on display, photography by Peter Gent (KSU, ’73) and painting by Amy Casey (CIA, ’99) — Friday, February 19th, 2010

[View with PicLens]

[View with PicLens]

12►

Photos from the closing night of Eyeball Chatter: Works by Scott Pickering at Brandt Gallery – Friday, February 12th, 2010

[View with PicLens]

12►

[View with PicLens]

Photos from the opening night of Fragmentation: Seed, Spore & Polyp: Works by Jonah Jacobs at William Rupnik Gallery – Friday, January 23rd, 2010

[View with PicLens]

Photos from the opening night of Bold Figures: Works by Hannah Verbeuren, Ken Nevadomi, Barbara Konrad, Claudio Orso-Giacone, and Dante Rodriguez at Wall Eye Gallery – Friday, January 23rd, 2010

[View with PicLens]

123►

[View with PicLens]

Photos from the opening night of Eyeball Chatter: Works by Scott Pickering at Brandt Gallery – Friday, January 8th, 2010

[View with PicLens]

Article and Photos by Dave Desimone

Located just outside of downtown Cleveland, the Clothcraft factory (AKA the Read More Books Building) was operated by the Joseph and Feiss Company from 1846 until 1997. It was one of the oldest manufacturers of men’s wear in the country and one of the oldest businesses in Ohio.

The Joseph and Feiss Company became known for its application of progressive ideas to its factories in the early twentieth century. Managers worked to make the production process more efficient so that clothing could be produced more cheaply and quickly. At the same time, company leaders did much to improve the lives of employees as well. Many of the company’s workers were recent immigrants to the United States and were able to find well paying entry level jobs. They offered free medical care for workers as well as the opportunity to take classes in English and other subjects. The company also operated a library where workers could go to borrow books or to have a quiet place to read.

The property and buildings were sold in 1998 to Beachwood, Ohio developers Ameri-Con for $100,000 with plans to turn the space into condominiums. The project was abandoned shortly after it began. Twelve townhouses in various stages of construction are now boarded up. Another developer purchased the blighted property in 2008 with the hope to resume development of the stalled condominium project. As of now, it appears very little progress has been made.

The building is widely referred to as the “Read More Books” building by many observant Clevelanders because of the massive painting along the roof line by legendary New York City graffiti artist Bookman; AKA Booker; AKA Beans; AKA Bones; AKA Readmore. The building also includes graffiti works by Monster Steve, ASERT, HECK, BEERS, and a slew of other Cleveland and Midwest writers. At one time there was a very large Shepard Fairey OBEY GIANT stencil on the water tower that has since been painted over.

Architecturally, the building is not all that interesting on the inside; however the massive amount of windows provide ample light for photography. A second building on the site was not accessible due to the fact that the first floor had started to collapse.

Story and Photos by Bridget Callahan

Okay… so let’s just say one was to have gone to that Greek restaurant last night. That one in the middle of the CSU sprawl that looks like it’s either a restaurant or a dog fighting club. And you might have walked through the back door of the kitchen, like you’re someone, and it gave you a little bit of a power trip. So you drank a little more than you should of, especially that weird imported liquor that was made in someone’s backyard in the old country and probably peed in by goats.

Then somehow, who knows – you’re over at Lava Lounge spending your monthly gas budget on martinis. There was that guy you were talking to who fights for fun in badly lit back rooms, and you remember telling his friends you totally knew the scariest place on the railroad tracks (cause you’re so hardcore right? Drunk girl?). There’s a blur then, of car seats and running out of cigarettes and that Darude track that drives you crazy when you hear it, for various nostalgic and socio-economical reasons. And then, here you are.

Here being somewhere, in the weeds with bugs – ticks probably. You’re lying a few feet away from the railroad ties, under the shadow of some thick leafy greens. The gravel and dirt is hot, the air is hot, but the shade you’re in is cold.

Scrambling to your feet, it becomes absolutely apparent at first glance that you are in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere being a relative term. There are buildings, and a street, and Downtown is visible in the distance. The real thing that starts a little panic in your throat as you look around is the lack of houses. In fact, none visible, not up the hill. Not down the hill. The open concrete makes you want to scurry into the nearest open door, like a sad little city cockroach. Why are you here? Where are you? Which direction is the lake? You do remember that it’s Sunday, right?

The first decision is up or down. Down the hill are warehouses as far as one can see, and they are all probably empty except for security cameras. So up it is. Assuming you’re still in Cleveland, there should be houses nearby. As you start to trudge up the street, a pattern of McDonalds bags and beer cans lights your way, like a bread trail back to fast food, and thusly civilization.

Up the hill you start to wonder if this is Cleveland. It’s looking a lot like Atlanta, or anywhere in the industrial South.

There’s a forest of weeds, vines, and trees overhanging everything. The streets are broken up, disused. Asphalt lying in dangerous chunks haphazardly. Every block or so is one house, maybe two. One with a sign saying “For Sale, $100” and another actually quarantined off the main road with giant concrete barriers – like a #$%^ zombie pit!

There’s evidence of homeless people, but where have they all gone? There’s no one around, and nothing to walk to. Even the trash looks ancient. It’s so abandoned, even the abandoned people don’t live here anymore.

So okay, let’s turn around and go down the hill towards daylight and open streets and buildings. Maybe there’s no one there on a weekend, but there’s the possibility you can flag a car down. You haven’t seen a car this direction in twenty minutes. It’s hot down in the valley, but at least you can see where you’re going. Briefly there’s a thought that following the railroad tracks would be a good idea, but think about where those tracks go. You’d have to follow them all the way to Steelyard just to find something besides the backs of factories. And it’s probably not the safest thing to walk miles down tracks through nothing but bridges and empty land.

Forty-five minutes later, having walked and walked and walked, you’re getting nowhere. Two cars have past, but neither would stop for you. You don’t recognize any street signs (I mean, really, isn’t Harvard everywhere?). You start to think maybe it might not be such a bad thing to just find some empty shack and stay there for while. No rent. No one would even know you were there, for months probably, if ever. You passed some rolls of aluminum earlier, you could use that to tarp up a wall or roof. You could probably also figure out a way to steal electricity from these power lines, and sell scrap for money once a month. Adopt a stray but loyal mutt who protects you, like that girl from Island of the Blue Dolphins – an urban hermit, basking in the lonely spirituality of desolation and industrial decay.

Luckily, as you stand there in front of this shiny blue heatstroke fantasy, dreaming of your future utopia, the security guard starts to come to the gate. And you get to make a phone call.

Above: Cyril Jackson

Living in the burbs, I’ve often noticed that once something closes down – be it a bank, a fast food joint, or a department store, its rarely resurrected to look the same as it once did before. Build something new, watch it thrive, let it die and decay, bring out the bulldozers, and repeat. That’s how they do it out here. It’s a healthy business, birth and dying. There’s a lot of money to be made, and that’s why the suburbs are as soulless as the Wal-Marts that litter their land. But on the rare occasion that something is left for the vultures, there is always a chance that someone will reclaim the space and make it their own.

Above: Dale Hendricks

That’s what happened on a desolate stretch of land bordering train tracks in Brookpark, Ohio. The foundation of a building that once produced light bulbs lays beneath a stretch of power lines that move into the distance clear to the horizon. Blackberry bushes line the edges, deer move stealthily through the tall grass, and the sounds of skateboards cracking the cement shoot through the air. On any given day, you’ll see Anthony Koch, Dan Gaspar or Ryan Kral resuscitating the giant slab of cement with metal railings, parking blocks, and even more cement. They’re masons and artists, shaping man’s forgotten waste into something useful, something vital. If someone won’t do it for you, then it’s time to get off your ass and do it yourself. And for the time being, that DIY attitude is paying off quite nicely for skateboarders around Cleveland.

That’s what is so admirable about skateboarding. No matter how corporate and mainstream it becomes with energy drink commercials, the X-Games, and Tony Hawk, there’s also people like Dan, Anthony, and Ryan who are keeping the original intent and spirit of skateboarding alive. No sponsors, no filming schedules, no worries—only free will to do what’s wanted and the enjoyment of something mutually created.

Above: Adam Aziz

Who knows how long the place will last. It’s on a piece of land that’s indefinitely in limbo. Maybe it’s the power lines, or maybe the trains that blaze by only 80 feet away that keep it vacant—but none of that matters. What matters right now – Saturday afternoons with the grill blazing and friends shredding, and weekdays with a toolbox and a pickup truck. These guys exist to express themselves and create. They make situations a little easier, whether you’re in the city or out in the burbs. They are artists, they are punk rock. They’re doing their thing and making some of our lives a little easier, one nail at a time.

Above: Ryan Kral

by SL Makita

The reviews are short. I’m only trying to get out the facts. Who it is. What it is. How to get it. Too many reviewers kick in their own opinions…and they are usually writers with delusions of being someone they are not. Who is to say my opinion is right? Who am I to judge someone’s art?

SKIN GRAFT “Blackout” LP // Tusco Embassy
www.tuscoembassy.net
Blackout is everything you could want and more from a Midwest blue collar noise unit. Skin Graft (a.k.a. – Wyatt Howland) pushes the boundaries of entertainment and pain during lives shows as well as on recordings. To me this record is very much like 80s power electronics – brutal low-end rumbles with highs that peak and hold at the perfect moment. Hunt this record down my friends.

EMERALDS “Solar Bridge” LP // Hanson Records
www.hansonrecords.net
With “Solar Bridge”, the Emeralds are on another journey through space and time in search of new worlds to inhabit and overthrow. This 2 track, solar-blue vinyl platter is layered with both synths and guitars. The guitar tone on this record is beyond amazing…amid Brilliant well executed and constructed walls of droning sound. You know who the Emeralds are, you know what they do, so let yourself be carried away on their electronic drone quest.

WINDSCALE “Self-Titled” Cassette // Actual Noise
www.actualnoise.net 
It’s all here – insane frequencies, vicious bass driven low-ends, vocals that demand you, the listener, to pay attention and decipher what is being said/yelled (like a criminal profiler). Windscale is the powerful thought provoking project of Jim Fellahean and Andrew Nolan -there isn’t anything that can stop these two…not even miles of distance, lakes and border patrol agents. This U.S./Canada team are unstoppable.

QUELL “Self-Titled” 3-inch CD // Fellacoustic Records
www.fellacoustic.com
The sounds on this CD are extremely powerful and sadistic, love it or hate it – that’s power electronics! The lyrical content is in-your- face and presented that way…to disarm even the most hardened personality. The CD is packaged in a zine-styled booklet that has pictures of minority oppression, humiliation and abuse. If you are easily offended, then Quell may be an unwanted challenge for you. This CD walks the line and at times crosses it, but again – if you don’t like it, don’t listen – it’s that easy.

If you would like your noise/sound art/power electronics/weirdo band reviewed in the pages of Pink Eye send me a copy of whatever it is on any format. I will never criticize your work. I will only report what I hear, it’s your art, your creation – who am I to say if it’s good or bad?

Inner Ear Infection
slmakita@vzw.blackberry.net
PO Box 360811, Strongsville,Ohio 44136

Cuyahoga Plains | 48” x 72” 2008 | acrylic and spray paint on wood

There’s something kind of futuristic and Sci-Fi within Mark Keffer’s paintings. Like “2001: A Space Odyssey” Sci-Fi…deep and strange. Otherworldly landscapes filled with blips and bleeps – remnants of the digital age. A neon moon-like terrain dotted with organic forms rendered one-dimensionally…of almost-plants and other sponge-like forms popping out from a mostly cracked and vague background layer. And the juxtaposition of these finely detailed levels of the composition somehow adds to a looser overall look to the paintings. Maybe this is through their seemingly errant placement within the composition, but despite the fact that the lines are extremely clean (sometimes masked) – the feeling is still organic.

Surprisingly, Mr. Keffer considers himself a landscape painter. At first look, most viewers (including myself) will not make the connection. The saturated patches of color and contrasted, optic art elements lend his work to be more identifiable with the abstract movements in art history, than the classical schools of landscape painting. But his work does succeed in forming a perspective based three-dimensionality (with layers and levels creating depth) – only not in any traditional sense of perspective. And that’s kind of the point – it’s a statement on the capacity of human knowledge through our limited, subjective experience.

Like most artists concerned with reality and the interpretations of meanings within (David Lynch comes to mind), Mr. Keffer didn’t really want to reveal too much on that end of things. However, the symbols do stand for “things”, but deciphering their actual meanings in any concrete, understandable way, is to overlook how concrete and understandable these “things” actually are.

It’s a real pleasure to cover the work of artists like Mark Keffer – those who have matured artistically over the years and through their complete understanding of art, where’s it’s been and where they’re at within the scope of it all…have struck out on their own, and put a completely new footprint onto the lexicon of art as we know it. The following conversation was recorded at Mark’s studio…again, over in the Mid-town/Asian district.

Some of Mark Keffer’s new works will be on display as part of a two gallery show which opens on Oct. 9 at Front Room Gallery (E. 36th and Superior) and Legation (in the W. 78th St. Studios Building) dealing with “contemporary takes on landscape painting”. You can see more of Mark’s work at myspace.com/mkeffer.

Half-thought w/ Reverb | 28” x 44” 2008 | acrylic on wood

I RECOGNIZE SOME OF THESE FROM A SHOW YOU HAD AT EXIT GALLERY LAST YEAR…
Yeah, the show was called “Heads” – which the forms started naturally taking on these head-like shapes. Then I started thinking about the distant future and them merging with landscapes, which is to say that we’re generally about as important as a landscape.

SOUNDS A BIT NIHILISTIC…
Maybe existentialist…but those are both funny words.

YEAH THEY’RE BIG WORDS THAT EVERYONE HAS A DIFFERENT IDEA AND PERSONAL DEFINITION OF.
Although, I really connect with a definition of existentialism that I heard which is – “a philosophy of no philosophy”. And that relates to my painting. I’m not so interested in paintings being about something…sometimes it’s done brilliantly, but it also takes art down to a tangible area, and I want my work to really be pushing the fringes of reason and logic. My work is very specifically not logically based, and I think some people really hate that.

I THINK IT’S INGRAINED IN US…THE NEED TO FIGURE OUT THE WORLD AND MAKE SENSE OF IT.
However, there are many aspects that are unknowable and I always connect that with my work. I think of the distant future, where there are things that we are completely unable to perceive. If you think about the most brilliant minds of 500 years ago, there is no way they could perceive, much less understand, something such as satellite communications – information sent through the air from one side of the world to the other. So I dabble in stuff that I can’t get a handle on, as a metaphor of the unknowable.

Landscape/Portrait (unknowable source) | 20” x 16” 2009 | acrylic on wood

WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE UNKNOWABLE, I ALWAYS RELATE THE IDEA OF ETERNITY AS SOMETHING THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FULLY COMPREHEND THROUGH OUR FINITE EXPERIENCE.
Or the limitless expanse of the universe – because it does seem like it is expanding, but that’s from a perspective that there are boundaries. Concrete reality is separate from our understanding of it. We’re bound by our own subjectivity…we can’t really get past it. This may sound silly, but for me, it comes down to what the meaning of the word – “meaning” is. I feel kind of like a landscape painter. When you’re in a landscape, you understand it through your senses. For example, something simple – like taking a walk in the woods at night, in the rain…it can be a really powerful experience. It can be meaningful. A sunset can be meaningful – but not in any literal sense which can be articulated verbally. That’s what I think about. For instance – a giant Jackson Pollock painting may represent the experience of a landscape better than someone making a more literal landscape painting. The experience is what I care about. I don’t care about direct representation or illustrating an idea per se. I think of it as meaningful, but in a different sense – pushing the idea of “what is meaning”.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON THE CURRENT THEME?
My brother has a painting of mine from 2001, when I was in New York, which seems like the start of it. They were organic abstractions that I was taking from medical manuals…representing something in a way that’s completely different than the source. They were basically guts – brains, organs, tissue, capillaries…then I started getting to the idea of the macro and micro of the body – you have this overview that is represented by the macro and then you have some element involved that represents the micro version of it. I started moving away from the source…and that’s how the imagery came about.

IS THERE SIGNIFICANCE IN THE REALLY CLEAN DOTS AND STRIPES WITHIN YOUR WORK?
Part of that is to sort of reconcile the artistic impulses that I have. At a certain point, I was making these things that were finely detailed with a really small brush, and I got to the point where I no longer enjoyed the process. I have these different impulses, some are more hands on – like using an electric sander on the ground. But then I like to be extremely precise at times, so I try to reconcile all the impulses and have the painting naturally exist with those elements. I try to not read anything more specific into that, because it would start to get corny…and I’d rather not go there.

Half-thought w/ Reverb | 36” x 72” 2008 | acrylic and spray paint on wood

YOUR STYLE IS VERY INDIVIDUAL. I LOVE WHEN ARTISTS DEVELOP THEIR OWN UNIQUE STYLE…
Whether I succeed as a painter or fail miserably, I just want to make sure that I’m not painting someone else’s painting. And to some extent, you get yourself in trouble doing that – because a lot of times people like a gallery director or a critic – they have a whole file of work in their heads that they connect to yours. If you are doing your own version of another artist’s work, then it will be understood more easily. And I just can’t do that – I’m stubborn about it! I want to make difficult paintings, and I’m not saying that I’m necessarily original, but at least there’s something of myself in there that I’m adding to the mix. I think that’s all you can do.

Landscape | 28” x 22” 2006 | acrylic on wood