Community Arts Center

Robin VanLear. The Rhino. 1990. Cleveland.

Cleveland Art Museum has just opened a gallery on West 25th. They wanted a presence in the Spanish speaking neighbourhood. The building had been a sail factory when built. This building has three storeys, and several other occupants. This art space has the same feeling as Community of St. Peter, which is in the former Baker Electric Car Company. Exhibit space is clean, comfortable, spacious.

This is the inaugural show, and it showcases the museum's June Parade the Circle. It is worth the time to see it. It is a happy adventure. I have seen these marionettes, and carnival puppets before; but usually in the hot sun, surrounded by a too close, and jostling crowd. The first parade was held in 1990, and this (then unfinished) rhino was in it. Albrecht Dürer did the famous rhinoceros woodcut and prints in 1515, and this sculpture is an heir.  Robin VanLear was the founder of the museum's community arts programme, she also started and ran the Parade the Circle, I Madonnari Chalk Festival, and Winter Lights Lantern Festival. One work of hers from the parade that was not here was the black, red, and white, Bantu bush cow masks [see].

Robin VanLear made 24 life size puppets, each a different hue, for IngenuityFest. There are three there, together in a row. The orange one is pictured through a window, in an adjoining room. The yellow one is seen from a hallway; especially from this aspect, it is menacing in the manner of an approaching Dalek.

Voz de Silencio. Pedro Adorno & Angel Flores. 2012 parade 

Those are birds on his face. Visually close up, this reminds me of a mediæval green man, and further away the Jem'Hadar of the 1990s teevee show,  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Jem'Hadar were drugged, cloned shock troops. They had horns on their face to look fearsome. The horns were modelled on rhinoceroses, and triceratopses.

Grasslands white buffalo were made for the 2015 parade.

The building has some new wall paintings, and they are worth seeing. This octopus has drawn the outlines of the skyscrapers of Public Square. Debra Sue Solecki acquitted herself well.

She dates the mural, and gives her web address on the pencil. I like it. And o, that is 3B, and not 38. In pencils, Bs are soft, and Hs are hard.

"Limpia, fija y da esplendor" is the motto of the Royal Spanish Academy, the emblem is a fiery crucible. One pedestrian translation is "cleans, fixes, gives splendor". Perhaps a fancier one is "It purifies, it fixes, and it dignifies". The academy exists to codify the Spanish language. This is on the floor leading to the Latin Theatre.