If you’re as excited as we are about the solar eclipse on April 8, Shaker Lakes is hosting a session this week to answer your questions. If you’d like to see a Gen Z photographer turn the camera on his contemporaries, check it out at Zygote Press. If you’re aching to hear songs about freedom, hope and peace, Trinity Cathedral’s your place. If you want to learn how to grow juicy tomatoes this year, Summit Metro Park can help.Brite Winter kicks off this week, while Cain Park hosts its own inaugural Freeze Fest; amateur chefs compete at the Great Grog Shop Bake Off; Blues veteran Wallace Coleman serenades your brunch; Holden Arboretum hosts a wine and cheese hike; and CoolCleveland correspondent Liv Ream checks in with some of the actors performing at the midnight Rocky Horror screenings monthly at The Kent Stage.
CoolCleveland correspondent Bruce Checefsky has been attending the Cuyahoga Arts & Culture board meetings and recounts for us the chaos and confusion about the enabling legislation that continues to reign. We seem to be floating between a dysfunctional arts funding environment and an uncertain cigarette tax renewal, causing both the FRONT and CAN Triennials to close their doors permanently. Meanwhile, frustrated artists are gathering at Negative Space in Asiatown for an informal conversation about a potential new citywide arts and culture festival. It’s enough to make your head spin.
In the last few weeks, we’ve learned that both the FRONT International Triennial and the locally focused CAN Triennial, scheduled for 2025, have pulled the plug after two editions. Now artist-leaders are putting out a call for members of the creative community to come to an informal meeting at Negative Space gallery in Asia Town Center to brainstorm about a potential citywide arts and culture festival. All are welcome! Read more.
Last year Cleveland Public Theatre joined with four other small-to-midsize regional theaters to brainstorm about sharing resources. That led to the recent announcement of a $2.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, with each getting $500,000. CPT says it’ll use its share to focus on “deep interconnectivity between communities served and the art on stage,” an expansion of the work it’s already been doing in its outreach to multiple communities. Read more.
CoolCleveland correspondent Liv Ream experienced TheRocky Horror Picture Show presented with a full cast as the Midnight Movie at the Kent Stage, and has been trying to figure out how this kooky, low-budget, B-midnight-movie has transformed into a celebration of the LGBTQIA+. So she thought she’d interview some of the cast:
Jackie, playing Dr. Scott in the February show, calls it, “unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced.” Cassius, acting as the famous intro lips and prop cue card handler, describes the movie as, “alternative weird pride. I remember seeing Frank-N-Furter and thinking, oh, there’s a third option. There’s a middle ground of self-expression and relentless diva energy.” Read more.
The dysfunction and chaos continued at the most recent board meeting of the Cuyahoga Arts & Culture (CAC), the organization tasked with collecting the cigarette tax and distributing funding to arts organizations and artists. Having alienated the very arts community they are required to support, the CAC’s actions are now putting at risk the efforts in 2024 to renew the tax levy itself, which expires on January 1, 2027.
Happy Dog owner/arts advocate Sean Watterson (pictured) said during the public comments period that the public is being misled into thinking artists are being funded when funding is being directed solely to no-profits, contrary to the enabling legislation. “You still believe that the purpose of CAC is to support nonprofit organizations despite the provisions of the law,” he said. “This organization has decided to support only nonprofits, and when we go to the levy, I want people to know what they are voting for.”Read more.
SUN 2/25 Community Comes Together The screening of the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch is only part of an evening of LGBTQ+ community bonding at the Beachland to raise money for its organizations.
TUE 2/27 On the Cutting Edge Ken Vandermark is a leader in Chicago’s experimental jazz community. He’ll be bringing his quartet Edition Redux to the BOP STOP.
