Artists that exhibited at YARDS Projects in 2017-2018 were asked to select artists for 2019, in anannual event to be known as Artists Select Exhibition. Artists selected for Artists Select Exhibition 2018, will create an organic, diversity filled, offbeat mix of contemporary art outside the preview of the classic curator/artist relationship. Rather, participants in the show explore the dynamics of the artist/artist cantor, and will include public and private school teachers, artist friends and colleagues, and encourage new comers to the Cleveland scene to participate in the burgeoning art scene.
Media artist Orlando Caraballo was selected by Corrie Slawson while Michael Loderstetdt selected Kent State University printmaking faculty Arron Foster; Amber Ford chose painter Bianca Fields, Tim Callaghan selected photographer Carolyn Ballou and Darius Steward chose painter Michael Meier. Artists selected for the 2018 exhibition will then select other artists for Artists Select Exhibition 2019.
Join us for an Artist Holiday Mixer in conjunction with a public opening to bring communities together and celebrate the holidays!
Carolyn Ballou https://www.carolynballoufineart.com
Carolyn Ballou is a Cleveland-based artist and teaches art and design at Lake Ridge Academy. She has spent the last several years capturing the essence of landscape through photography, focusing on documenting the transformation of this region. Her interest in Cleveland’s abandoned sites lies in the space between what was then to what is now.
The work featured in Artist Select focuses on stories of regional haunted sites and the places that have been known to have paranormal activity. She researches locations like Franklin Castle and the Lackawanna passenger car inside the Midwest Railway Preservation Society's old railroad roundhouse. Through layering and montage, she creates new composites that teeter in the limbo of the incomplete, non-linear and fragmented.
Bianca Fields https://biancafields.weebly.com
Bianca Fields is a Cleveland native and is a fourth-year student at the Cleveland Institute of Art studying painting. Her current works investigate space with familiar cartoon characters that navigate these psychological spaces with an odd, slightly mischievous edge. She celebrates these tensions using thick layers of sensuous paint resembling frosting that are delivered with her swashbuckling gesture.
The figures function as surrogates for her own self-introspection. She uses these cartoons as prompts to more easily empathize and cheer on the motivations in this world of endless possibility where there is no right or wrong. This presents what the "world" of cartoons has over us in real life, as well as how horrific it is that we have a choice to behave, or to be chaotic in our real life. Her work is influenced by painters Chaim Soutine, Philip Guston, and animator, Sally Cruikshank (animator from the Sesame Street shorts).
Arron Foster https://arron-foster.squarespace.com/works-on-paper-2/
Arron Foster received his Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking and Art Education from East Carolina University in Greenville, NC and his Masters of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking and Book Arts from the University of Georgia, Athens Georgia. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Arron currently resides in Kent, Ohio where he is an Assistant Professor In Print Media at Kent State University.
As an artist, Foster is taken by the idea that the land is something that we use to mark time and that through an intuitive approach to observing, studying and documenting specific locations we can be witness to that change. Foster believes that objects and places have the ability to bridge past, present, and future by objectifying and embodying time and change.
His creative research involves the production of artists’ books, prints, drawings, videos, animations and installations that consider the ways in which our perception and experience of place is often mediated by time, change and memory. Specifically, he is interested in creating images that visualize the relationship between time, change, and consciousness through an in-depth exploration of place.
Mike Meier www.michaeltmeier.com
Meier’s drawings and paintings use a multiplicity of styles, effects, and images to present a psychological space inflicted upon by the information age, popular culture, and the 24-hour news cycle. His work is inspired by science fiction, cartoons, and his time in Cleveland’s underground music scene. He currently is a lecturer in painting, drawing, and foundations at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he earned his BFA. He received an MFA in 2012 from Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri). His work has been exhibited regionally and nationally in Cleveland, St. Louis, and Chicago. He was recently included in Full Fathom Five, an exhibition organized by the curators of the Progressive Art Collection. Upcoming in 2019, his work will be featured in Traditions: Compounded at the Spartanburg Art Museum (Spartanburg, South Carolina). Meier’s work is a part of several private and public collections including the Cleveland Art Association and the Progressive Art Collection.
Orlando Caraballo Ortiz
Orlando Caraballo Ortiz is a Cleveland-based visual artist who incorporates elements of printmaking, drawing, painting and found objects into his work. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art’s esteemed Visual Arts Program, Caraballo Ortiz has committed himself to deepening his knowledge of world history and widening his perception of spiritual philosophy. Caraballo Ortiz has shown throughout Cleveland including SPACES, 1 point 618, Reinberger, Zygote Press & Newsense Enterprises. He currently works in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Community Engagement Program and is a teaching artist for a number of NEO institutions.
Born to Puerto Rican parents in Cleveland’s West Side, he quickly realized how different the world can be, from one block to another. From gunshots ringing into the night to stargazing into clear skies next to crackling campfires, the uplifting hymns soaring out from the doors of the local Latino Baptist church to watching drunk men brawl onto car hoods in front of the liquor store, the artist constantly adapted, observing the contradiction of the urban experience, a conflict of values and conditions. Upon closer looking, these jarring contradictions weave together to form a weathered tapestry upon which the artist reflects daily. His current studies include a variety of topics, from ancient esoterica to Quaranic prayers, the transatlantic slave trade to Latin-American revolutionaries, science fiction a la Stapledon’s Star Maker to magical realism a la Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude. Finding, or creating, the place where all of these seemingly disparate topics intersect is the artist’s primary goal.