I just finished reading the January/February 2019 Cleveland Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. The writers put art in context and applaud the artists’ skill while encouraging us to attend the special exhibits, galleries, films, events like MIX which celebrates the visual and musical, and musical performances. Awed by the choices, the magazine inspires me to put something on my calendar every week.
The other thing that happens is this: I want to take classes and make art. The adult studio classes motivate me to sharpen up my drawing pencils and assemble my oil paints in my studio at home. Long before I was writing, I was doing art — a fourth-grade painting made it into the Akron Public School’s annual art show and later, my high school artwork was regularly displayed by the Lorain Public Schools.
I have a deep connection with the CMA. Mr. Hicks, my high school art teacher, took his art students on field trips into Cleveland where we’d go to the art museum, but we also spent a morning drawing under the Detroit-Superior Bridge or sitting on the steps of the Arcade (the 1890 one) downtown. One of my first dates with my husband was when we drove to University Circle from Kent to go to CMA. I’ve taken Drawing in the Galleries with Susan Grey Bé multiple times and have experienced the deep comradery her Friday morning oil painting group has achieved. For me, art is not only to be observed and known, but also to be explored as an artist.
For I feel we all have art inside us, just as we all have poetry. I speak as a true follower of 19th-century British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.
When I observe the offerings at the CMA, my creative expression is awakened. For example, I think about how I’d like to see that mountain behind Georgia O’Keefe’s property and color it with pastels. Or I see how the Uffizi tapestries were restored, and I wonder what kind of patience and skill it takes match the thread colors to the original and weave in new fibers to replace the deteriorating ones. When I follow the lines and charcoal in the shadows of a Greek sculpture, I begin to understand how the sculptor carved away at the marble to achieve the folds of a robe. The art infuses my writing, for I can create a aphoristic poem by observing a Hindu goddess and writing down all I see and feel on paper.
Film, music and multi-media events make us participants in the art. The visual arts light up the light within us, our human need to express ourselves, and that extends beyond our immediate experience of art. The museum does a wonderful job of showing us that art is not just to be looked at, and it’s not stagnant. Ancient art and new art are a continuum of the use of materials and ideas to tell our stories. With meditation and art stories and open studios and book clubs, the CMA also asks us to go within ourselves and open ourselves to possibility, a magical growth experience. At Transformer Station in Ohio City’s Hingetown district, the exhibits tend to focus on the artists and their cultural influences, yet another way art can change lives.
Here’s a selection of what I put on my calendar: Chamber Music in the Galleries on Wed 2/6 @ 6pm (with self-exploration of exhibits before and after); MIX: Media on Fri 2/1 @ 6PM; the film Around India with a Movie Camera on Fri 2/8 @ 7:00pm; the film Paris Noir on Sun 2/17 @ 1:30pm (includes a pre-talk about Josephine Baker); and the Raul de Nieves: Fina exhibit at Transformer Station on a Sunday afternoon in late February.
Art fills up a void within me. On this January snow day when I am thoughtful and reclusive, art sustains me. Now I’m going to go create some art. (And I just did, when I wrote this.)
Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia Taller loves art, writing, and yoga. She awakens the artistic soul through teaching yoga classes and leading creative workshops and retreats. Find out more her books and Igniting Possibilities events at claudiajtaller.com/