Friday, July 17, 2009

TASTE OF TREMONT - SUNDAY 1-8PM


TASTE OF TREMONT IS THIS SUNDAY FROM 1 - 8PM
COME OUT AND CHECK OUT WHAT TREMONT HAS TO OFFER - FOOD AND ART
ASTERISK GALLERY SHOWCASING THE 5TH ANNUAL "19" EXHIBITION WILL BE OPEN SHOWCASING THE WORK OF NINETEEN REGIONAL ARTISTS.

SPACES BENEFIT MEETING

Time to plan, make and create another great party!!

Join us on July 23, 6pm at SPACES (third floor studio)

We have a theme (come to the meeting to find out)
Bring all your creative juices and your friends and let's hash out some ideas.

This meeting is open to all people who like to party and have fun!!!

So bring a friend, a date, roomies, cousin, sister, brother, mother, father, aunt, uncle (you get the idea)

RSVP July 20


Many thanks and hope to see you there

WRUW has extended the deadline for submissions for this years Studio-A-Rama

WRUW has extended the deadline for submissions for this years Studio-A-Rama concert to Saturday July 25th. If you or your band are interested in playing this years Studio-A-Rama, happening Saturday September 5th, then send in a submission. All submissions must contain a CD with at least three songs (can be a burned CD), a band picture (can just be a picture printed out on a sheet of paper), a bio with line-up including full names, a list of relevant websites, and contact info. Send submissions to:

91.1 WRUW-FM
Attn: Studio-A-Rama
11220 Bellflower Road
Cleveland, OH 44106

more detailed info below...

____________________________________________________


WRUW is now accepting submissions from local and regional bands who wish to play Studio-A-Rama this year. The deadline to submit for this year's Studio-A-Rama is July 17th. Seven to nine bands will be chosen to share the stage with a national headliner. Headliners have included The Sadies, Guided by Voices, New Bomb Turks, Naked Raygun, Enon, Magnolia Electric Co, Easy Action, Matt Pond PA, Upper Crust, Glazed Baby, U.S. Maple, and Electric Eels.


WRUW will review all submissions received by July 17 from local and regional bands who wish to play and have not participated in the past 4 years. All types of music will be considered, and musicians that have submitted music in the past, but weren't chosen to play, are encouraged to do so once again.


Interested bands should send a CD consisting of 3 or more songs to: WRUW-FM, Attention: Studio-A-Rama, 11220 Bellflower Road , Cleveland OH 44106.


Submissions should also include a band line-up (full names please) and bio, band photo, website address, and contact information. All submissions become the property of WRUW. Questions can be sent via e-mail to studioarama (at) wruw.org.


Now in its 28th year, Studio-A-Rama is WRUW's annual FREE, outdoor, day-long rock concert, and it's a great opportunity for local and regional bands to showcase their talent and have their music heard. This year's show will take place on Saturday in early to mid-September, just outside the WRUW studios on the campus of Case Western Reserve University . WRUW is proud to simulcast Studio-A-Rama at 15,000 watts over the airwaves as well as on the internet at www.wruw.org.


Since 1982, WRUW has staged this free annual concert designed to thank listeners for their ongoing support throughout the year, and especially during WRUW's annual telethon. An enthusiastic audience response during the annual on-air fundraiser enables WRUW to continue hosting Studio-A-Rama as well as fund live webcasting and support local music and live music. Studio-A-Rama is one part of WRUW-FM's commitment to broadcasting local bands live. The "Live From Cleveland" show broadcasts bands from the WRUW-FM studios every Thursday evening from 10 until 11pm, and WRUW also simulcasts the live music from the main stage of the annual Hessler St. Fair.


As always, Studio-A-Rama will take place in the Mather Memorial Courtyard outside the WRUW FM studios on the Case Western Reserve University Campus. The Mather Memorial Courtyard is located at the corner of Ford and Bellflower Roads, one block north of the Mayfield/Euclid intersection and one block east of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

SPACES EVENTS

Shows closing this Friday, July 17
Don't forget: We're open late on Friday until 7 p.m.!

Main / Internal Compasses
Internal Compasses features visual thinkers who map, code, and catalog experiences and information, then systematically arrange the material evidence according to personal internal strategies. This exhibition takes viewers on a journey through imagination and inquiry by way of pattern and process.

SWAP / Efrat Klipshtien/ Red Winged Black Bird
During her nine-week residency in Cleveland, Israeli artist Efrat Klipshtien created Red Winged Black Bird, a large-scale installation using day-to-day household supplies. The artist stages a dream-like landscape: an imaginary world that pushes the boundaries between artificial and organic.

Read a review by Doug Max Utter from Cleveland Scene

SPACELab / Evan Larson /
Permeability, Transformation and the Neutral
Using techniques such as plaster carving, mold-making, and woodworking, Evan Larson manipulates the existing structures within the gallery to create a seemingly organic and ephemeral space of neutrality between the object, viewer, and space.

To read an interview by the artist, visit our blog.
Space Invaders at The Sculpture Center
This Saturday, July 18, 3 p.m.

REGISTER NOW
Navigating through the alien world of contemporary art: SPACES is headed to The Sculpture Center (1834 E. 123rd St, Cleveland, Oh 44106) this Saturday to fearlessly investigate and discuss After the Pedestal, the 5th Annual of Smaller Sculpture from the Region. No Holds Barred!

Curator of Contemporary Art at The Cleveland Museum of Art Paola Morsiani juried an exhibition comprised of 21 artworks by 16 artists from the region. The three-dimensional works, composed of materials ranging from the ready-made to tradional media used in innovative ways, cover and challenge notions of politics, the environment, and the use of space.

Details
Members: $5; Non-Members: $8

Pre-registration is required. Space is limited to 15 participants per invasion. Please arrive at the host location at the designated time. Further information will be emailed to each participant prior to the event. You won't need to bring anything

Dana Depew shows Ingenuity Fest how it’s done

Dana Depew shows Ingenuity Fest how it’s done
by Tim Russo - Blackheartcleveland.com

I was not going to attend Ingenuity Festival this year. Like most things deemed “important” or “cool” by the well-heeled powers in Cleveland who fund such things with scraps from their billion dollar tables, each year Ingenuity Fest has taken on the increasing hue of an idea chasing money, not the other way around.

Ingenuity gets more underwhelming each year - as you walk through, you can almost see in your mind’s eye the grant application being filled out months ago, check this box, check that one, Gund happy, Cleveland Foundation happy, this billionaire might like that, such and such millionaire will go for that, ok….open!

So I’d given up. But this year, founder James Levin approached Dana Depew, owner & curator of Asterisk Gallery in Tremont looking for more local artists. Asterisk At Ingenuity was born, and unbeknownst to me, my video of Loren Naji’s “Portrait of Obama in Gunsmoke” was included in Dana’s exhibit, next to Loren’s Obama portrait. Loren kept calling me, telling me to come down, and finally I relented, because Asterisk At Ingenuity was outside the admissions gate, so I didn’t have to pay any money.

From the first few minutes inside Asterisk At Ingenuity, it was clear that nothing inside the admissions gate would even come close to what Dana had put together. Over 60 artists, all volunteering their work, all local, packed into the two floors of the dilapidated and abandoned former Christian Science Reading Room and 107.9 WENZ offices on Euclid Ave., across from the State Theatre. Every room was different - from interactive exhibits, to electronic, computer, video, sound, neon lights, smelly stuff, textured stuff, girly stuff, guy stuff, kid stuff, paintings, sculptures - you name it, it was in Dana’s space.

And it all had a very “Cleveland” feel to it, from the moment you walked in. You could have spent an entire afternoon wandering between rooms, staring into paintings, watching films, becoming part of installations…it was deeply Cleveland art done by the curator of the finest gallery in Tremont, and it screamed for attention around every corner. There has been nothing at Ingenuity, ever, in its short history, to even compare. And I did walk through the admissions gate (with my free “artist” badge) to confirm that yet again, Ingenuity itself was a big dud.

I asked Dana how on earth he pulled this together. He had no budget except to bring the rotting space up to code. He was given the keys to the space about 2 weeks before the festival began, and in that time, had to clean out the tons of debris, wire it, paint it, make it safe, and fill it with the most diverse and quality art I have ever seen in one space at Ingenuity, or for that matter, almost anywhere in Cleveland at any time. Dana looked exhausted, and with good reason.

Because Dana Depew’s Asterisk At Ingenuity was nothing short of a triumph.

Sitting with Dana on the roof talking, I was struck at how perfectly his experience represents a microcosm of everything wrong, and all that is right, about Cleveland. A space in the Hanna Building sits and rots, in full view of every single person in downtown Cleveland, at the heart of Playhouse Square, and for the lack of anyone in power with the slightest vision, will do so until it gets torn down. But in 2 weeks, one person is given the keys, and with no money, runs rings around the entire Ingenuity Festival itself, merely because that one person has the drive, the heart, and the vision to make something incredible happen in a snap of his fingers.

All while inside the admissions gate, steps from Dana’s momentary flourish of brilliance in record time, people pay $10 to enter a corporate and foundation funded fizzle that looks more like an excuse to sell beer and pizza than an art festival. It was like the fireworks at an Indians game - why pay for a ticket to the game, which is going to suck anyway, when you can watch the real show for free?

James Levin deserves the credit for thinking of including Dana Depew at this year’s Ingenuity, even if Levin put the best he had outside the admissions gate. If Levin hasn’t lost his soul tailoring his festival to every grant application that he’s ever hunched over, perhaps he’ll learn from this. Let’s hope so.

HOMESTYLE TINKERIN' from Scene Magazine - 7-15-09

HOMESTYLE TINKERIN'
Ingenuity gathers the family around
by Michael Gill

Ingenuity organizer James Levin predicted that Ian Charnas' production Boltz — a campy mix of musical theater, dance and electrical tinkering presented by Case Western Reserve University — would be the iconic event that people remembered from Ingenuity 2009. Hopefully that's not true. The production's music and dance weren't badly realized, and the sustainability message was just about right for an after-school special or a comic book, but the science failed to impress. The electrical spark that was to be the centerpiece just didn't measure up.

Nonetheless, this year's edition of Ingenuity — and even the anticlimactic Boltz — captured the spirit of the festival's name more than previous installments. Roaming the whole scene, Melissa Daubert's horse on wheels amused festgoers with its shaggy fur and whimsical gait as it rolled with electronic clippity-clop accompaniment. It wasn't high-tech but undeniably mixed imagination with mechanics more sensibly than the high-tech, high-concept installations that have attempted to capture audiences' attention in previous years.

The art and high-tech concept is traceable to Richard Florida's book The Creative Class, which argues that software engineers are artists too. But Florida was trying to attract people to cities, not build an arts festival to enhance a city. In that regard, this year's less glitzy, lower-tech Ingenuity Festival was more successful than previous ones.

Cleveland talent ruled. Local bands like the punk-, new wave-, and noise-influenced girl group Hot Cha Cha and the experimental pop trio Mystery of Two rocked the scene not as filler, but on the main stage during prime time Friday night. Original music is a kind of ingenuity Cleveland can understand. And who are we kidding if we're trying to promote Cleveland as an arts destination if we don't celebrate our own?

A festival highlight was Asterisk gallerist Dana Depew's exhibit of work by 50 regional artists, including Scene art critic Douglas Max Utter, Dan Tranberg, Amy Casey, Matt Dibble and many others who showed their work in a building slated for demolition. Depew's work isn't high-tech, but his adaptive re-use of light fixtures, door peepholes and other domestic gadgetry is not at all short on ingenuity.

Next to one of his pieces, Dibble left a handwritten note instructing festival organizers to leave one of the works hanging so it could be demolished with the building around it. There's something endearingly Cleveland about that.

In the All Go Signs Alley, Chuck Karnak featured a collection of Cleveland painters, including the Sign Guy, whose ingenuity is to make his mark on the city with goofy, hand-painted signs chained and bolted around town. If graffiti is like tattoos on the landscape, his work could be considered its jewelry.

Ingenuity doesn't have to go high-tech or import high-concept headliners to live up to its name. It's unfortunate that finances are what drove programming this way. But here's hoping that no matter how the money shakes out, the festival continues to show off Cleveland — and that crowds are interested enough to keep coming back.

mgill@clevescene.com

DIBBLE @ ASTERISK - OPENING AUG14


Matt Dibble will be showcasing new works in a solo exhibition at Asterisk on Aug 14 - from 6 - 11pm
fellow artists, we've been recognized by the Cleveland Scene Magazine blog. Check it out -fifth paragraph:http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2009/07/13/festivals-prove-that-local-is-better#more an even better description of what Dana and we artists pulled off in record time can be found at:http://www.blackheartcleveland.com/2009/07/12/dana-depew-shows-ingenuity-fest-how-its-done/ here is what i wrote my friends about it, from a personal perspective. hats off to all of you! there is not one whit of exaggeration in the descriptions contained within the blackheartcleveland blog. the transformation of this space in mere days was no less than miraculous. i know, because i was there the first night that clean up and room assignment began, and i couldn't really fathom how we could ever make it presentably clean, or even well illuminated. those first days were pretty much all devoted to harvesting fluorescent bulbs from the third floor and trying to get the fixtures in the 1st and 2nd floors to fire up, not to mention the unending loads of debris, and miscellaneous crap to be moved and disposed. then over the several weeks, as the artists began to bring and install their work, the common areas seemed to become even more trashed and unpresentable. i'm not trying to take any credit here,,, i spent several hard nights but many others did much more, and Dana spent literally every waking hour there, except when he was also curating and setting up his important, annual "19" show at his real gallery in Tremont! the difference between how the place looked when i finished my room on Tuesday, and how it opened Friday night was astonishing, even though i'd seen the gradual progress and most of the art beforehand. frankly, i'm surprised Dana still has his day job and his wonderful and understanding new bride, Lauren. or should i say saint Lauren! another miracle was Dana's ability to marshal the artistic and construction resources [for no remuneration] to whip this space into what has to have been, one of the most amazing temporary art galleries ever created in under 20 days. the 60+ artists showed incredible skill at creating art of all types, many created for just the spaces allotted them, mostly cramped former offices. i'm honored to have been a part of this event and it was truly an unforgettable experience. thanks to all of you who came to share this with me, especially denver dell who ran sound for my performance, and our friend jordan dunkel, who helped me set up my installation -pedro

ART DWELLERS SHOW

For Immediate Release:


SpringBoard Artists Presents:


ART DWELLERS SHOW
A Collaboration of Local Artists


July 24-25th, 2009

6pm-11pm


SIN FACTORY

1668 East 40th
(corner of East 40th and Payne Ave.)
Cleveland, Ohio


Sponsored by:

SPICE OF LIFE Catering Co.& Pabst Blue Ribbon


Over 15 Local Artists
Refreshments will be served both evenings!



Please contact Jeannie Oakar for more information
440.503.3884 jeannieoakar@msn.com


SpringBoard Artists Inc. was put together for artists by artists!
We are proud to support Cleveland artists and our mission is
to keep local art alive!


PLEASE SUPPORT CLEVELAND ARTISTS!

Monday, July 13, 2009

Asterisk @ Ingenuity

By far the most impressive project was Asterisk at Ingenuity, an instant gallery curated by Dana Depew of Tremont’s Asterisk Gallery in an empty building that used to house alternative rock radio station the End. In two weeks, he and his crew rehabbed the long-abandoned space and filled it with the work of 60 local artists. A majority of the space is tiny former offices and artists took them over, tailoring the spaces to their own needs. The range and quality of the work was breathtaking ranging from traditional work by noted local artists like Amy Casey, Dan Tranberg and Douglas Max Utter to installations like the evocative “Dream Guests,” by Brandon Brennan, Anna Tararova and sound artist Creep, who created a gently unsettling nighttime landscape. Many of the works involved televisions, including one that was nothing but a dark room with a single TV showing old footage of Big Chuck and Little John. Another, called “The Death of Terrestrial Radio,” was inspired by what the End staff had left behind. DePew’s own sculptural assemblages of light bulbs and glass lampshades, carpet, clocks, old photos and postcards and other memorabilia of 20th-century life were a high point: Depew has a distinctive style and vision that jogs complex feelings about the uses of the past and its leavings.

A New York-based artist, Erwin Redl, also had a piece called “Speed Shift” in the Asterisk Gallery. The rumor was that, although the local artists weren’t paid for participating (although they could sell their work if they chose), he was paid a five-figure sum to install this light-based piece that was so bland I entirely missed it the first night. With area artists like Depew and Jeff Chiplis doing far more interesting things with light, it seemed entirely unnecessary. In fact, it’s emblematic of how Ingenuity should forget the high-priced imports — not just for economic reasons but for artistic ones — and expand its reach into the local community. — Anastasia Pantsios