CSU and CIA Come together at The EDGE

Twenty-two students from Cleveland State University and the Cleveland Institute of Art have works on display this month at The EDGE Art Gallery's Third Annual CSU and CIA Student Art Exhibition. The exhibition boasts a diverse range of media including oil, acrylic, pastels, aquatint, charcoal, stoneware, photography, lithograph and some very unique mixed media pieces. Christopher S. Berry and Teresa Hess, both Associate Professors in the Fine Arts Department at Lakeland Community College, had the demanding job of selecting the 44 pieces to be included in the exhibit. "A juror's task is, more often than not, a very difficult one. You cannot measure with one measuring rod when the intent of the artist differs considerably," Teresa Hess said in her juror's statement. Hess explained she was looking for elements such as design, craftsmanship and "visual synthesis" when making her choices. The two jurors awarded eight prizes to outstanding works including best of show and four honorable mentions. Carlos Alvarez, a CSU junior and studio art major, won this year's Best of Show prize for his oil on canvas Fiesta Numero Uno (Party Number One). Alvarez was born in Colombia in 1969 and came to the United States in 1999. Since his arrival he has earned his Associates of Liberal Arts degree in studio art from Cuyahoga Community College. "I take the seemingly minute world of flora and transpose its meaning onto canvas using bold, big scale canvas, deep, and hot colors to express the infinite lines, curves, forms and tunnels found in nature. Some of my work is inspired by the gardens where I live and also some that I have visited," Alvarez said of his paintings. The First Place prize went to Eartha Goodwin, a junior and journalism and promotional communication major at CSU. Her winning work, In the Garden I Remember, is one part of a three-piece study called "Environmental Awareness" that looks at what the artist calls "emotion combined with nature through the use of traditional film and digital images." Two artists from the Cleveland Institute of Art captured second place with their installation piece titled Cupcakes! Ice Cream! You Scream: We're Dead. The artists, Ashley Gerst and Adri Wichert are both fourth year students in CIA's technology integrated media environment program. Their multi-media piece is made from foam spray, cardboard, fur, a variety of brightly colored paint, ice cream cones, fabric and cupcake tins. Denise Stewart, a fifth year print major at CIA, placed third for her moving piece, Requiem. This work is interactive and viewers are invited to don a pair of white gloves and flip through a series of 12 sepia toned photographs. The series of photographs, housed in a box covered in linen and stained with rust, depict a family (probably that of the artist) and with each new page one of the members disappears. "My work is about loss and memory. The box acts as a reliquary for the images of a family that through death fades away," Stewart explained in her artist's statement. Four CSU students, Anna Tararova (Windows), J. J. Thornberry (Reflections), Louis Sanovich (The Creature) and Jayne Sylvester (Missed Communication) were awarded honorable mentions for their pieces. The EDGE, a non-profit gallery and arts resource center, blends in so well with the rest of the surrounding Euclid Avenue buildings that many students and other passersby may not realize it is there. The gallery is one of the area's best-kept secrets in the arts and calls itself Cleveland's only "urban-Christian" arts organization. The mission of The EDGE Art Gallery, opened in January 2002 by Pastor Gordon Jardy, is to "bridge community, education and faith through the visual arts." Jardy's love of art and position as campus minister spurred the gallery's development as a place for creativity and for fellowship. "[The gallery] is part of a faith-based organization although the art is not necessarily faith based," Jardy explained.

The Third Annual CSU and CIA Student Art Exhibition will be on display through Dec. 2. The EDGE Art Gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday by appointment. For more information call (216) 241-7120.