With a new show at the Cleveland Botanical Garden, Cleveland Heights artist Seth Chwast further establishes himself in the local art scene. That he was diagnosed with autism when he was a toddler only underscores his achievements.

Years in the making, plans for La Villa Hispana – a center celebrating Latino heritage and commerce in the Clark Fulton neighborhood – will be unveiled next month at a City Planning Commission meeting.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA) reopened its doors last Friday after a short hiatus following the wildly successful Myopia exhibit. While completely different in tone from the Mark Mothersbaugh show, the new installations reflect a unique and unexpected study in contrast that stimulates every sense.
 
Visitors are well advised to start at the top, as it were, in MOCA's fourth floor galleries, wherein Wall to Wall: Carpets by Artists unfurls. The contents are aptly described by the title – these are carpets, which sounds mundane at first blush. The content is anything but, with lush and gorgeous images that are beautifully served by the textile medium.
 
A sampling of the 30 works: Faig Ahmed's Oiling (2012) literally melts the concept of a traditional middleeastern rug design while Deep Purple, Red Shoes (Polly Apfelbaum, 2015), invites visitors to walk upon it, provided they remove their shoes. Nautilus shells notwithstanding, Infinite Carpet (Pierre Bismuth, 2008) recalls the golden rectangle. And speaking of arithmetic, Joseph Kosuth's L.W. (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics), 2015, will have viewers indeed believing that "2 + 2 + 2 are 4."
 
Traveling to the next component of the 2016 show sounds benign enough, but – as regular visitors have come to expect – MOCA's Stair A refracts the experience. While attendees navigate the twisting stairs, Anthony Discenza's audio installation A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats advises them thusly:
 
"Think Suicide Girls meets the Pillsbury Dough Boy."
 
"Think Baywatch meets the Cuban Missile Crisis."
 
"Think Jersey Shore meets Stephen King."
 
The deep resonant voice, which is fitting of any voice-over John Q. Public is fed by media sources at every turn, is so convincing, attendees may indeed be inclined to plop down and listen to every suggestion within the 23-minute installation.
 
"Think art deco meets Jurassic Park."

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This weekend, Northeast Ohioans will flock to IngenuityFest for their annual dose of funky fun. The effort is just one popular area project supported in part by Cuyahoga Arts & Culture (CAC). In 2016 alone, the tax-payer funded organization bolstered 152 organizations with $1,651,624 in project support. That's in addition to an array of grant programs and ongoing general operating support for the area's cultural institutions and groups.

To help inform future decisions, CAC is reaching out to regular janes and joes to get their input via a brief online survey. The Help Shape Our Future survey takes just a few minutes and asks about what sorts of things you enjoy and find enriching. The move will help decide how funding will be allocated over the next ten years. The survey closes on Oct. 1.

Other efforts supported in part by CAC include the Historic Gateway Neighborhood Corporation's 2016 Take a Hike Tours, May Dugan Center's Music Therapy for Senior Citizens and the Slavic Village Development's 2016 Rooms To Let exhibition.

Take the online survey before Oct.1.


 

Local artists Gary and Laura Dumm mix the likes of Frankenstein and vampires with pesticides and global warming - along with a side of humor - in an evocative new show.

Cleveland actor Lara Mielcarek's fledgling coalition is bringing Shakespeare – and a new dimension of life – to area inmates.
 

The internationally recognized creator of 'My Friend Dahmer' reveals his complex relationship with the story – from how it saved his life to taking on one of its own in a forthcoming film.

From Business Insider:

According to the US government, there are upwards of 35,000 museums in America. For comparison, there are about 13,000 Starbucks across the country. 

These thousands of museums are filled with countless works of priceless art, historical artifacts, and natural marvels. But, which museums are the best?

Using data provided by Foursquare, INSIDER ranked the top 25 museums in America.

The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) was ranked second only to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Not bad, but for locals, the CMA has always been #1.

Get the whole list here.

Two local record manufacturers are advancing the vinyl renaissance with dazzling multicolored discs. They’re also redefining just what a record can be.
 

This weekend, area zinesters, art aficionados and anyone fond of old school print is invited to browse more than 50 exhibitors from near and far at BOUND, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Cleveland's second annual art book and zine fair.
 
Free and open to the public, BOUND will take place in Gund Commons on the museum's first floor on Friday, Aug. 26, from 5 to 10 p.m. and on Saturday, Aug. 27, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Attendees will have a chance to meet and interact with booksellers, artists, photographers, poets and independent publishers from Northeast Ohio as well as from points across the country. All of them will be offering limited edition art books and zines at affordable prices. In addition, a reduced $5 admission includes access to the MOCA galleries as well as all the programming and talks associated with BOUND. There will also be live music on Friday and DJs spinning tunes on Saturday.

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For those who missed the 6^th Annual Ohio Burlesque Festival last weekend at the Beachland Ballroom, Fresh Water's managing photographer Bob Perkoski offers this photo recap.
 

Cleveland Institute of Art's Biomedical Arts program provides a unique and critically important component to healthcare institutes both local and national.