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February 2025: Eight Cleveland Area Galleries

Blog Date
Author(s)
Stuart O. Smith, Jr.
Tags
Cleveland
Art
Museums
Cleveland Museum of Art
Picasso
ArtLens
Cleveland Institute of Art
moCa
Zygote Press
Transformer Station
Cleveland Metroparks

Cleveland Area Galleries
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I put together this blog post to share some of what I saw while visiting the following galleries in February 2025. There is a variety of artwork presented which will appeal to different the tastes of different people. I hope this encourages you to visit those galleries that have items of interest to you.

Thank you to the following galleries for an enjoyable month visiting:

  1. Wednesday, February 5, 2025 - Picasso and Paper - Cleveland Museum of Art

  2. Friday, February 7, 2025 - ArtLens Gallery - Cleveland Museum of Art

  3. Friday, February 7, 2025 - Gala Porras-Kim: A Hand in Nature and Harminder Judge: Bootstrap Paradox and Birthing Beautiful Communities: Dear - moCa Cleveland

  4. Friday, February 7, 2025 - Possibility for Repair and Opening Night for Back in the Dayz - Cleveland Institute of Art

  5. Saturday, Friday 8, 2025 - d.a. levy: Subversive Printmaking in 1960s Cleveland - Zygote Press

  6. Friday, February 14, 2025 - Opening Night for Love Is Resistance - Cleveland Institute of Art at Transformer Station (Cleveland Museum of Art Remote Location)

  7. Friday, February 28, 2025 - North Chagrin Nature Photography Club - Cleveland Metroparks

  8. Friday, February 28, 2025 - Opening Night of the 2025 Student Independent Exhibition - Cleveland Institute of Art

If you have limited time, I recommend prioritizing visiting the Picasso and Paper exhibition and the two Cleveland Institute of Art exhibitions at their main campus building and at Transformer Station.

 

 

Wednesday, February 5, 2025 - Picasso and Paper - Cleveland Museum of Art

Pablo Picasso’s prolonged engagement with paper is the subject of the groundbreaking exhibition Picasso and Paper, organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris.

On Wednesday, February 5, 2025, I visited this exhibition for the third time so I could bring my mother and wife/co-blogger, Julie. Be sure to take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see all these Picasso artworks in one place before the exhibition closes on Sunday, March 23, 2025.

I made a point of including the artwork descriptions in my photos, so please be sure to pause the following video if you want to read about the Picasso's work:

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork in the slides!!

 

I have written in more detail about Picasso and Paper in the following two blog posts:

 

 

Friday, February 7, 2025 - ArtLens Gallery - Cleveland Museum of Art

ArtLens Gallery is a multifaceted, innovative experience that allows you, your family, and your friends to look closer, dive deeper, and have fun discovering the museum’s collection using award-winning digital technology. Create your own digital artwork in ArtLens Studio, engage with masterworks of art and touchscreen-free interactives in ArtLens Exhibition, and connect with the museum’s world-renowned collection at ArtLens Wall. . . .

The ArtLens Wall, a 40-foot interactive, multitouch, MicroTile wall, displays in real time all works of art from the permanent collection currently on view in the galleries—between 4,200 and 4,500 artworks at any given time. In addition, the ArtLens Wall displays thematic groupings that may include highlighted artworks currently on loan as well as select light-sensitive artworks that are in storage.
. . .
Standing 5 feet by 40 feet, the ArtLens Wall is composed of 150 Christie MicroTiles and displays more than 23 million pixels, which is the equivalent of more than 23 720p HDTVs. The Christie iKit multitouch system allows multiple users to interact with the wall, simultaneously opening as many as 20 separate interfaces across the ArtLens Wall to explore the collection. Software was written using open Frameworks and runs on two Windows 7 workstations supported by four Linux servers processing the video across the wall, and Bluetooth connects iOS or Android devices.

After touring the Picasso exhibition and visiting about half of the museum's other galleries, I returned two days later (Friday, February 7th) to see the other half. I ended my day with a visit to the ArtLens Gallery.

Note in the following video of the ArtLens Wall that one of the items I enlarged is Paloma and Claude (cover design for Picasso's Lithographs II), which is part of the Picasso and Paper exhibition. (WARNING: The nature of this video creates a flickering of the images. We are concerned that it could potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy. Viewer discretion is advised.)

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork in the slides!!

 

See more about the history of this gallery in my 13 past ArtLens blog posts that go back to when I was invited to attend its opening in 2012.

 

 

Friday, February 7, 2025 - Gala Porras-Kim: A Hand in Nature and Harminder Judge: Bootstrap Paradox and Birthing Beautiful Communities: Dear - moCa Cleveland

I had planned on attending the January 24th moCa Cleveland Opening NIght celebration, but I had a very bad cold that forced me to cancel. I was so glad to be able to visit on Friday, February 7, 2025, to see their three current exhibitions that are scheduled to be on view through June 1, 2025:

Gala Porras-Kim: A Hand in Nature
Multi-disciplinary artist Gala Porras-Kim’s practice questions how knowledge is acquired and tests the potential for artworks and objects to function as meaning-makers outside of traditional museum contexts. For her exhibition, A Hand in Nature, which originated at MCA Denver, Porras-Kim extends lines of questioning into conservation, preservation, and care to the broader natural world and lived environment. The artworks on view distill natural processes into sculptures, paintings and drawings that will grow, evolve or degrade throughout the span of the exhibition. From sculptures rendered with salt-saturated concrete or copal resin wetted with local rainwater, to paintings created from slow drips of water drawing from the museum’s humidity and projections from light refractions off of brass panels, Porras-Kim’s work imagines what might be possible if natural forces and phenomena had the agency to self-determine.

Harminder Judge: Bootstrap Paradox
Harminder Judge’s first museum exhibition in the U.S. presented at moCa Cleveland, opening January 24, explores themes of alchemy, spiritual processions, and the body’s transformation through death. Judge’s vibrant plaster and pigment works emerge from energetic lines and intuitive processes, where color is embedded into the material, merging sculpture and painting. Influenced by funeral rites and ceremonial burning, his large, dynamic pieces provide a space for powerful emotional responses while exploring the embodied connection between the physical and the spiritual. The exhibition invites viewers to engage with the power of form, color, and abstraction, prompting personal reflection and connection.

 

Of everything that is in this blog post, I want to draw extra attention to the work of Birthing Beautiful Communities. I have known Birthing Beautiful Communities President & Chief Executive Officer Jazmin Long for around nine years, and can't fully express how impressed I am with her team's work in our community.While the Dear exhibition is good for telling the motherhood stories of those families featured, it can not fully present the truly lifesaving and life-enriching work done by this agency. I highly recommend learning more on their website at: BirthingBeautiful.org

Birthing Beautiful Communities: Dear
Dear is a tribute to the strength, resilience, and beauty of Black motherhood and the community that supports it. This exhibition focuses on the Cleveland non-profit Birthing Beautiful Communities, highlighting the significance of care and affirmation in their work. Dear is an ode to the power of community and the enduring bond of motherhood.

Presented in partnership with Birthing Beautiful Communities & moCa Cleveland.
Birthing Beautiful Communities was established to address and improve the systemic and community structures that lead to poor birth outcomes through Culture, Education, Advocacy, Support and Engagement (CEASE). BBC holistically supports pregnant women to deliver full-term, healthy babies, and in achieving equitable birth outcomes.

Here are my photos/videos from my moCa Cleveland visit. I recommend pausing the video to read the artwork descriptions and to learn more about Birthing Beautiful Communities: Dear:

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork in the slides!!

 

 

Friday, February 7, 2025 - Possibility for Repair and Opening Night for Back in the Dayz - Cleveland Institute of Art

Possibility for Repair is a focused group exhibition that explores how artists consider repair as a prospect. Possibility for Repair will exhibit a range of material and conceptual approaches to artmaking, and will feature work by Lyndon Barrois Jr. (Pittsburgh), Mark Thomas Gibson (Philadelphia), Sarah Kabot (Cleveland), M. Carmen Lane (Cleveland) and Jessica Pinsky (Cleveland). Acknowledging the 2024 election as a backdrop, each artist questions dominant systems and reflects on ways of seeing and experiencing the world in order to inspire new perspectives.
. . .
Possibility for Repair is on view from Friday, November 8 through Sunday, February 9, 2025 in Reinberger Gallery.

Back in the Dayz is the third annual Black History Month exhibition organized by the Cleveland Institute of Art's Black Scholars and Artists students. The exhibition will showcase a series of artworks that respond to the theme of “nostalgia” and what that looks like through the memories of Black personhood.

Back in the Dayz will be on view February 7–28 in CIA's Ann and Norman Roulet Student + Alumni Gallery and the Mary Ann and Jack Katzenmeyer Student Lounge. An opening reception will be held from 5 to 8pm Friday, February 7.

I am so fortunate! I happened to pick the date to visit that was the opening night of Back in the Dayz, and before the closing of Possibility for Repair on February 9th.

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork in the slides!!

 

 

Saturday, Friday 8, 2025 - d.a. levy: Subversive Printmaking in 1960s Cleveland - Zygote Press

ON VIEW: January 17 - March 1, 2025

Gallery Hours: FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS 12-4pm or by appointment during the week (click here to set up appointment)

Zygote Press is thrilled to be showing work by Cleveland poet and printer d.a.levy as part of the new exhibition d.a. levy: Subversive Printmaking in 1960s Cleveland. For a limited time, original works by levy will be on view which have been generously loaned by the Michael Schwartz Library at Cleveland State University. This exhibition focuses on levy’s use of printmaking - specifically his letterpress, pressure prints, photocollage, ditto (spirit duplicator) and mimeographic work. While there has been plenty of scholarship on levy as a poet, there has not been much attention paid to his actual printmaking skills and methodology. This show will explore how levy used these techniques to communicate his ideas, both in populist formats like his many publications, but also in his two Cleveland Print folios, which were very much a fine art enterprise.

In addition, Cleveland poet, artist, and Zygote PROOF Fellow R.A. Washington will be curating an installation inspired by levy’s work. The installation will include two new poems by celebrated Cleveland poets Kisha Nicole Foster and Michelle R. Smith.

On Martin Luther King, Jr., Day 2025, I talked to Zygote Press Executive Director Jackie Feldman, and she invited me to see their current exhibition about d.a. levy's printmaking. I have known about Zygote Press since 2014, but this was the first time I have visited their location.

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork in the slides!!

 

Learn more about Zygote Press in my blog post and on their website:

 

During the time I was finishing this blog post I learned that Zygote Press had a special, free curator talk about their d.a. levy: Subversive Printmaking in 1960s Cleveland exhibition. I recommend watching Zygote Press' YouTube video of the talk since it gives insight into the exhibition and its history:

d.a. levy Curator Talk
Zygote Press
. . . Streamed live on Feb 27, 2025
Join us on Thursday, Feb. 27 from 6-7:30pm for a free Curator Talk! Curators Brittany M. Hudak @marielbritt and R.A. Washington @clevelandtapes will discuss the current exhibition d.a. levy: Subversive Printmaking in 1960s Cleveland.

Zygote Press is thrilled to be showing work by Cleveland poet and printer d.a.levy. For a limited time, original works by levy will be on view which have been generously loaned by the Michael Schwartz Library at Cleveland State University.

In addition, Cleveland poet, artist, and Zygote PROOF Fellow R.A. Washington @clevelandtapes curated an installation inspired by d.a. levy. The installation includes two new poems by celebrated Cleveland poets Kisha Nicole Foster @iamkishanicolefoster and Michelle R. Smith @myprivateinsta927.

 

 

Friday, February 14, 2025 - Opening Night for Love Is Resistance - Cleveland Institute of Art at Transformer Station (Cleveland Museum of Art Remote Location)

Opening the CMA’s 2025 Transformer Station Exhibition schedule is an exhibition showcasing the art of Cleveland Institute of Art | College of Art + Design (CIA) students, faculty, and alumni. Curated by CIA faculty and Reinberger Gallery staff, the exhibition features artists’ responses to artworks from the CMA’s collection that engage with the concept of resistance from an art historical perspective.

Love is Resistance is an exhibition of art and music centering love as a radical form of resistance and an expression of community support.
. . .
Inspired by social critic bell hooks’s definition of love as “a combination of care, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust,” artists from the CIA community—working across disciplines and at different stages of their careers—were invited to create artwork that responds to the present moment. Artists were encouraged to connect their work to objects from the museum’s collection that engage with resistance and love from an art historical perspective. Through mining the lessons of art history and applying present-day perspectives, artists continue to create transformative new visions that resist systems of oppression rooted in hate, fear, division, and injustice.

I really enjoyed the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) student, faculty, and alumni artwork at the Love Is Resistance exhibition opening at Transformer Station. I highly recommend seeing this exhibition which runs through Sunday, April 6, 2025.

I enjoyed talking to a Cleveland Institute of Art alumnus who my son, Kevin, and I met at the reception. He told us about his current, creative work. I also talked to a Cleveland Museum of Art staff member, and learned about more exhibitions coming on a regular basis for the rest of the year. See details here: ClevelandArt.org/Transformer-Station

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork in the slides!!

 

Learn more about the exhibition in this Collective Arts Network Journal article:

 

 

Friday, February 28, 2025 - North Chagrin Nature Photography Club - Cleveland Metroparks

Tell us in pictures the facts, stories, and beauties of the cold season where much of life is dormant or absent, but some remains.

A friend of mine, Howard Kass, is one of the leaders of the North Chagrin Nature Photography Club, and invited me to their Winter Scenes event on Monday, February 17, 2025, but the in-person meeting was canceled due to a winter storm warning.

Since Howard Kass was so kind to invite me, I decided to go to see the exhibition on my own at the Cleveland Metroparks North Chagrin Reservation Nature Center on Friday, February 28, 2025. I also took a photo of the geese on the frozen over sunset pond, and then stopped to take photos of the park's Squire's Castle:

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork in the slides and to scan the QR code!!

 

If you want to see more of my Squire's Castle photos, please see the blog post:

 

 

Friday, February 28, 20255 - Opening Night of the 2025 Student Independent Exhibition - Cleveland Institute of Art

Now in its 79th year, the Student Independent Exhibition (SIE) is an honored tradition at the Cleveland Institute of Art. The exhibition showcases work from all areas—from visual arts and craft to digital art and design—all selected by jurors chosen by CIA students. Prizes are awarded during the opening reception thanks to generous donors.

Join us Friday, February 28 from 6 to 9pm in Reinberger Gallery for the SIE 79 opening reception. Awards will be announced at 7pm. The show will remain on view through April 6.

I was so pleased to end February 2025 by attending the opening night of the Cleveland Institute of Art's 2025 Student Independent Exhibition. It is a must-see art show that will be on display through April 6, 2025.

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork in the slides!!

 

Here are my photos and videos that captured some of the Awards Ceremony:

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Note that this video is 12:20 minute long video, so you may need to give it time to pause to let the video load after you click play.

 

Related Blog Posts

I always like to include in my blog posts a list of related posts that may be of interest to the readers of this blog post.

 

You can find more related past blog posts under the following categories:

 

I am grateful that we have so many galleries to enjoy in our area. I hope you take time to visit the institutions I mention in this blog post and more! Have fun!!!