Pictures exhibit captures Cleveland’s faces, portraits, personalities

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Past Present Portraits from the LAND, an exhibit of images curated by Liz Maugans, is opening tonight on the Worthington Yards gallery.

The opening is 5:30 to eight p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22. It runs by way of Saturday, Feb. 28.

It options artists Robert Banks, Bruce Checefsky, Hadley Ok. Conner, Daniel Levin, Bryon Miller, Shawn Mishak, John Skrtic, Peter Larson, Stormy Sweitzer, Bob Perkoski, Anastasia Pantsios, Cynthia Penter and Gina Washington.

The images present a telling mosaic from artists chronicling particular person lives and collective histories. The works incorporate quite a lot of mediums: Black-and-white movie, digital images, hand-tinted photographs and experimental processes.

“Portraiture is always one of those tricky types of things,” stated Maugans, who’s a curator for the Yards Projects and teaches at Cleveland State University.

“We no longer necessarily have those photo albums and those records that are manifested in a sort of public way,” she stated. “That’s kind of interesting to me about the show.”

Some of the artists used darkrooms. Many of the topics are not alive. Some are notable in their very own methods – line cooks to avenue cleaners – and the gathering supplies “this whole variety that really shows this sort of cultural generational diversity,” Maugans stated.

That variety is exhibited by way of the lens of the photographers.

Mishak’s profiles give attention to lots of the people at WCSB, the Cleveland State University radio station whose programming lately and out of the blue was changed by Ideastream Public Media.

Related: What went down at WCSB 89.3FM: a voice from inside Cleveland State’s axed pupil radio station

Anyone who’s on social media is conscious of Skrtic’s images, which seize the faces and personalities of so many Clevelanders. About 145 of his images over time are included on a wall show – “humans of Cleveland,” Maugans describes it.

Pantsios has been following Bella Sin and the burlesque scene and has quite a lot of portraits overlaying a couple of decade within the present.

Levin’s topics embody former Indians Carlos Baerga, Charles Nagy, Sandy Alomar Jr. and Mel Harder in addition to musician Robert Jr. Lockwood, Ten Bucks, Karen McGahan and cartoonist Harvey Pekar.

Checefsky, who was curator on the Cleveland Institute of Art, photographed visiting artists earlier than a extra organized curation took root.

All of the work, Maugans stated, “captures the terroir of Cleveland, what’s in our soil at street level.”

“It’s been a joy to curate,” she stated.

Admission is free.

Worthington Yards is at 725 Johnson Court, Cleveland.