Artist and arts educator Sarah Curry has been actively creating thought-provoking, narrative artwork that addresses women’s lives in the 21st century, including topics of gender and racial inequality, reproductive rights, and appearance pressures for female youth. This September, her most recent prints and paintings focused on the diversity of women’s issues, will be on view at HEDGE Gallery in a solo exhibition titled Common Threads.

Her most recent series of work began by exploring commonalities between women with a gap of fifty years or more. She explains, “ By juxtaposing 50-year-old images of women with today’s women, I provide a space for the women to communicate. I wonder what they would say and ask others to envision their interactions. Now that women’s reproductive autonomy lacks federal protection, I am hoping this generation of women will push for more relevance and equality before all rights are erased.”

Sarah continues to develop her materials and styles, and is currently using acrylic, oils, watercolor, alcohol ink and even gold leaf. The use of gold in many of the works references the Japanese practice of “kintsugi” which is over 600 years old. It is a metaphor for transformation through brokenness and restoration, acknowledging that breakage is not the end and allowing room for hope and an invitation for growth.

Nikki Woods opens a solo exhibition of her most recent oil paintings on July 19. Conjuring Images includes paintings and pastels inspired by art history, old Hollywood film stills, and whimsical creatures. A collector of images, Woods masterfully weaves her spectral high-femme visions with sensuous oil painting to connect the past and present simultaneously. Her lush, gestural paintings, though playful and riotous, explore complex ideas relating to the practice of painting, magic, feminine interiority, and what is considered “serious” content. 

Woods states, “I use color, gesture and form to communicate a sense of directness and urgency and see painting as a practice of divination or mediumship, outside of time, …like reading a crystal ball—an image emerges from the canvas.”

She is also collaborating with two painters, Bianca Fields and Katy Richards, on a group exhibit titled Dream Gardens which will be hosted within her show at HEDGE. Pulling from the tradition of floral still life painting as prompt, Fields and Richards bring modern era feminism to the mix. 

Spatial Harmony opens May 17th, featuring recent paintings by Justin Brennan, with Columbus based painter Aaron Troyer and Cleveland ceramicist Kero Johannes. 

Abstracted scenes, spirited color palettes and optical illusions create dialogue between these artists’ two dimensional and three dimensional artwork. The subject matters, whether they be a landscape trope or functional object, are devised in a playful, and slightly humorous way, free from the restrictions of traditional perspectives.         

This Spring, HEDGE Gallery presents a solo exhibition of Rebecca Cross’ most recent projects, Mapping the Sensorial, opening March 15, 2024. Rebecca has created experimental “scores” with manipulated silk fabric that move across or around space, undulating with delicate crests and waves.

The dyed and embroidered silk is sewn directly onto wooden surfaces that she has also drawn and painted on. Others are similarly constructed on foamcore sheets, allowing her to draw on a stratus that resembles the physical object that most musicians experience as “a score”. A large-scale silk and stone installation will accompany the scores, and be incorporated into a live dance performance.

Rebecca states, “I’ve lived my entire life among artists, musicians, and dancers, and have always been inspired by musical metaphors. I was first trained as a bel canto singer, and my husband, the composer Randy Coleman, wrote music that I performed in Oberlin, Cleveland, and Baltimore. We devised unusual programs of modern art music for piano and voice, that we performed together internationally.”

With her passion for musical composition, Rebecca has invited fellow performers to be composer-collaborators during the course of her exhibit, who will respond to her visual and haptic ideas. They will decide how to play her scores during evening performances on April 12 and April 26, 2024 at HEDGE Gallery. Her husband’s graphic scores will be hung as a part of this exhibition too, as he has been a major motivation in her artistic career. 

HEDGE Gallery is thrilled to kick off 2024 with LIFE IS BRUTIFUL, a solo exhibition of Liz Maugans’ recent collage-themed prints and paintings. Maugans processes and organizes knowledge using found materials, collaged monoprints, and screen prints. She often incorporates text to serve as form and function, and her new prints are autobiographical—in her words, “both beautiful and brutal.”

Liz describes her recent projects: “Making collage mixed media works provides a space to memorialize friends and family members that have passed on. It also creates a greater awareness of the universal cosmic interaction between humans and the world. The beautiful part of my art is sheer play and distraction: pushing things around to generally satisfy myself and tickling the viewer’s eyes to make something a little closer to loveliness.”

HEDGE highlights regional printmakers once a year in a featured exhibition, and is excited to focus on the ever-evolving and prolific work of Liz Maugans in 2024!

Her solo exhibit, LIFE IS BRUTIFUL, will be joined by a book-signing event at HEDGE featuring Octopus Hunting, a mind-bending collection of new essays by Richey Piiparinen with illustrations by Liz Maugans. Piiparinen has crafted fourteen essays that traverse the economy of the Rust Belt and Cleveland, Ohio, from its past triumphs to its current struggles, explaining the issues confronting the region with laser wit and mounds of research.

In November, HEDGE will feature Show and Tell-Domestic Narratives, new paintings by David King.

The inception of King’s new series started from a personal perspective but has evolved into more of a universal reflection on family, allowing interpretation of the stories of both friends and strangers.

King states, “as a father and educator, ‘show and tell’ has always played an important role in my life. It was my favorite activity in elementary school. I love sharing my stories and hearing everyone’s family folklore told through objects and experiences”

This September, HEDGE Gallery is thrilled to open IN COLOR, an exhibition of new work by Mark Howard.

His recent projects include further investigations of abstraction and the interaction of shape and color. Expressive forms reflecting a wide range of emotions are carefully balanced in paintings and collage. While Howard attended the Cleveland Institute of Art from 1981-1986, Cleveland artists such as Julian Stanczak, Wenda von Weiss and Ed Mieczkowski influenced his work. It is perhaps now more than ever that Mark Howard is developing a unique sense of abstraction, instilled in him over thirty years ago during his early art career.

IN COLOR is Howard’s second solo exhibition at HEDGE Gallery, and will include over 20 new paintings as well as a large-scale mural project that has never been shown.

The Gallery will be open for previewing for the exhibition noon-5pm on Friday, September 15 before the opening.

IN COLOR will be on view at HEDGE Gallery, September 15- November 3, 2023

In July, HEDGE features Family Life and Other Fancies (Paintings Then and Now), a collective of recent paintings, drawings and prints by Douglas Max Utter, paired with other selections of Utter’s works that date back to 1980 - 2000. His subject matter continues to consist of portraits, memories from childhood, still lifes and urban scenes, and we will be digging into the archives to choose works that share a common narrative, even if 30 years separate them. 

Sharing stories seems to consume most of the studio visits I have with Doug Utter, while excitedly sifting through stacks of work that manifest themselves like full-color journal entries.

Utter’s artwork comes from a place of raw emotion, or lately, illustrates ethereal images from Cleveland neighborhoods. Whether he is portraying the figure, a bouquet of flowers or an abandoned storefront, unadulterated color and an extensive combination of materials have always permeated his work.

This May, HEDGE Gallery opens Wide Eyed, a rousing array of new figurative paintings by Justin Brennan. Brennan continues his exploration of the human form; dissecting faces, studying the body and portraying the interiors we live in.

He paints with thick, direct brushwork and a diversified palette consisting of vivid fluorescents and traditional colors, combining oils, latex, enamels and spray paint. Brennan, being a mainly self taught artist, states, “My work may be unsophisticated, but it comes from a place of wonderment and is a pure expression of my innermost thoughts.” Brennan helps manage his family catering business, and most days are spent busy in a prep kitchen environment. The hustle bustle of his day job leads to active evenings in his studio where paint and other material are wielded across canvas, creating powerful gestures of figures in motion.

Brennan states, “Some of the variables that directly affect my artwork during this process are glimpses of clarity, moments of struggle, and the discovery of material. At times, the result of this process includes the destruction of the painting - followed either by its death or rebirth.”

In a time where self reflection has become a normal daily practice, Justin Brennan’s paintings are a refreshing take on the human psyche, and offer intuitive insight on how we view ourselves and our peers in a fast-paced world.

This Spring HEDGE Gallery is thrilled to present Pocket Full of Posies, a new series of richly saturated oil paintings by Katy Richards.

Still lifes and the human figure are subject matters for her recent work, and she reveals them under layers of color and floral patterns, almost as if old wallpaper was being removed from the surface of her canvases. 

Symbolism is embedded throughout her paintings, exploring themes of desire, beauty, concealment, death and temporality.  

Katy states, “I use repeating imagery like the skull and flower as a reminder of the inevitability of death, and the fragility of life. The flower's bloom, especially a peony which shows up in multiple works, is so brief. Flowers wither and die, a reminder of our own fate.”

The show's title comes from a verse from the nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie”. According to folklore the rhyme refers to the bubonic plague. Posies are a small bouquet of flowers one would carry in order to mask the smell of death. The contrast between the playfulness of the rhyme and the heaviness of death becomes a theme that Richards’ paintings embody. 

Join us for a Preview Reception on Wednesday, March 15 or the Opening on Friday March 17, 2023.

HEDGE Gallery presents Raw Vision, a solo exhibition of Cleveland artist Dale Goode’s recent projects, focused on printmaking, painting and sculpture.

Dale’s printmaking is the primary focus of this exhibition, created by using spontaneous monoprinting techniques. He uses found objects, utilitarian and decorative materials, inks up their surfaces and repetitively prints them in thick layers of primary colors. Stacked patterns and textures create embossed prints that seem to breathe new life into the discarded objects.

Goode is well known for his large scale painted sculptures which were recently exhibited in an outdoor viewing area on Hough Avenue in Cleveland, and included in the Front Triennial in 2018 and the CAN Triennial in 2022. His found object sculptures will be reconfigured and part of the exhibit at HEDGE, as well as a massive canvas sculpture created with varnish, shellac and latex paint.

The artist obtains his materials in his neighborhood, on the border of Glenville and Hough, which is the conceptual focus driving Goode’s artistic practice. He states that the contrast between the home as a safehaven and the domestic violence he witnesses in his community forms the underlying narrative in his artwork.

Raw Vision will be on view at HEDGE Gallery, January 20- March 3, 2023.

For more details, please contact gallery director Hilary Gent at hilary@hedgeartgallery.com

It was shocking to realize that Randy had been gone for ten years now… other friends and artists have passed since then, but we can forget how quickly time moves along and memories fade. The global pandemic has also immersed us in a new reality during the past several years, with thousands dying around us, leaving the sense of who’s next? Everything has changed so much it’s incomprehensible where the world is going and Randall Tiedman’s monumental, apocalyptic paintings now look like visions from the Ukraine. 

Hilary Gent and William Scheele presented a large retrospective exhibition of Randall Tiedman’s works at HEDGE & Kokoon Arts Galleries to show the public the incredible variety of images he had produced in his lifetime.  We believe it is time to admire and honor his work again and will be curating his figurative, abstract and landscape work as a memorial exhibition.

The exhibition, Randall Tiedman: Ten Years Gone, will be presented in Suite 215 Gallery at 78th Street Studios, from December 1st through the 31st, 2022, with an opening on Friday, December 2nd from 5:00 – 8:00 pm.

Jessica Pinsky returns to HEDGE Gallery with a striking new series of textiles titled “I Can’t Remember Anything” with a preview on November 16, and an opening reception November 18, 2022. 

Jessica Pinsky’s medium of choice is natural fiber because of its connection to skin and tissue, and its relationship to human experience and memory. She began her artistic career as a painter, receiving her MFA from Boston University, and began to learn the weaving process after graduation, exploring dying techniques and learning on a variety of looms. She is now the executive director at Praxis Fiber Workshop in Cleveland, OH which she founded in conjunction with the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2015.

Pinsky’s new weavings represent her mindset during her first year of motherhood in the pandemic. Woven on a TC2 jacquard loom, the original images were chosen by going through images taken on her cell phone from the first years of her twins’ life. She used blurry, indistinguishable imagery of her living room carpet and superimposed them with scans of her twins’ early crayon drawings. During the weaving process, she exaggerates the marks by pulling and altering yarns, creating dimension on the surface of each textile. 

Pinsky states about this new series, “I’m continually interested in creating woven structures that challenge the geometry of the grid while allowing me to reflect on the complexities of life.”

On view at HEDGE Gallery, November 16- December 30, 2022.

A long-awaited memorial exhibition for Cleveland artist John W. Carlson opens this September at HEDGE Gallery and ARTneo Museum featuring paintings, prints and drawings created during his extensive artistic career in Northeast Ohio. 

John passed suddenly in December 2020, leaving behind a remarkable collection of his artwork, some very recently completed and never seen in public.  At the pinnacle of his career, he saw his most well-received solo exhibition, BLUES, at HEDGE Gallery in February 2020. This memorable, nearly sold-out show claims the largest attendance numbers ever at the Gallery for the opening reception and artist talk.

Carlson’s paintings had begun to garner national recognition after exhibitions at Field Projects in New York in 2019, with work purchased for collections at Erie Art Museum in Pennsylvania and Massillon Museum in Ohio. Carlson had been accepted into numerous juried shows including the prestigious Butler Midyear Show at The Butler Museum of American Art and was juried into The Ohio Arts Council Riffe Gallery First Juried Show in Columbus, Ohio, along with Zanesville Museum in 2019 and 2020.

Always artistically gifted, John began his career by attending Cleveland’s Cooper School of Art. He found a balance between expressive drawings and boldly executed paintings, combining oils, charcoal and graphite. The human figure permeated most of Carlson’s work, exploring themes such as family, gender, and relationships. He often sketched from life, capturing the form with energetic lines. His sketches were translated into his distinguished painting style, illustrating passionate emotions through thick, layered brushwork and vigorous mark making.

John Carlson collaborated with his partner, artist Shari Wilkins, on the project titled American Emotionalism founded in 2015. A manifesto of artistic intention was created for this movement, revealing some of the ways that Carlson and Wilkins challenged themselves in their work. Spanning a wide variety of mediums—from photography and music to painting and collage—American Emotionalism was a reaction against the over-explanation of visceral work.

Carlson and Wilkins’ intention was to create work that elicits emotions that arise from instinctive, intuitive feelings, leaving space for viewers’ interpretation with little to no explicit explanation.

This retrospective will highlight Carlson’s most important works dating from 1990- 2020, including early landscape paintings, his black and white figure series, his Woman and Blues series as well as drawings and prints. On view in both HEDGE Gallery and ARTNeo Museum, September 14 - November 4, 2022.

This summer, HEDGE Gallery is proud to host recent work by our represented artists in a group exhibition.

The Gallery began representing regional artists in 2015, and the number has grown to a roster of nineteen—all featured in this summer’s show. Recent work by Justin Brennan, John W. Carlson, Rebecca Cross, Sarah Curry, Matthew Gallagher, Hilary Gent, Dale Goode, Meghann Hennen, Mark Howard, Christopher Kier, David King, David Masters, Liz Maugans, Brian Mouhlas, Jessica Pinsky, Katy Richards, Dott von Schneider, Douglas Max Utter and Nikki Woods will be on view until August 26.

This exhibit will be designed to give visitors a sense of what Northeast Ohio’s finest contemporary artists are currently creating in themes of abstract, figurative and representational work, and will include painting, printmaking, textile, and sculpture.

Join us on Friday, July 15th from 5-8pm for the Opening Reception during 78th Street Studios THIRD FRIDAY Art Walk!

During exhibitions, visit the gallery during business hours on Wednesday through Thursday from 11 am to 6 pm, Friday from 11 am to 5 pm, or Saturday from noon to 4 pm; or contact us for a private appointment at hedgeartgallery.com.

This exhibition will be on view through August 26

Gallery director Hilary Gent will be exhibiting a culmination of her water themed paintings at her HEDGE Gallery (Cleveland) opening May 20.

The meditative nature of water that Gent experiences through Lake Erie has resulted in this body of work. The color palettes are inspired by the reflections of light and landscape on the water. Touch, sound and sight conjure her personal connection with the Lake’s surface, which she translates through the action of pouring and layering latex paint onto canvas. Gent works while the canvas is horizontal, manipulating the paint to interpret the surface of water.

The title Walking on Water references an idiom used to define performing superhuman feats, or to do something impossible or extraordinary. It is also a theme in the Bible, where the disciple Peter trusts Jesus enough to step out of a fishing boat in a raging storm to literally walk on water (Matthew 14: 28-29). 

Gent explains, “I began painting the surface of water as I dealt with insecurities and hardships in life such as divorce, new relationships, infertility and managing businesses. 

Each time I came to paint a new canvas, the action of studying the water’s movement led me to a mindset of peace. Meditating and praying while physically experiencing the water became a place where coping mechanisms and new revelations made themselves clear. What I deemed impossible was presented as fully possible as I continued to open my heart and mind to what I believe God was speaking while I encountered His watery creation. Like the disciple Peter I felt an ability to “walk on water” so to speak; to trust enough that what I was experiencing was all part of a greater good.”

Walking on Water opens to the public on Friday May 20, 5:00-8:00pm and is on view through July 1, 2022. 

HEDGE Gallery hours are Wednesday-Thursday 11a-6p, Friday 11a-5p, Saturday noon-4p.

For more details or images of work, please contact gallery director, Hilary Gent.

This spring, HEDGE Gallery proudly opens an exhibition of new work in drawing, print, and sculpture by Cathie Bleck, Rebecca Cross, and Taryn McMahon titled Exquisite Attention. The collection of individual and collaborative pieces by these compelling women artists is aimed to raise consciousness about human harm to our planet through the context of contemporary art-making.

The three have never had the opportunity to work and exhibit together, and their collective research and influence of the natural world will address the beauty, fragility, and resiliency of threatened species.

McMahon’s printmaking layers silhouettes of objects found on the shores of the Cuyahoga River, illustrating the current state of entanglement between people and environment.

Cross will be exhibiting her bio-tracings series: a collection of futuristic natural history objects, or “exprints” of imagined extinct plant species, created with silk forms in the process of traditional Japanese shibori.

Bleck’s works on paper form a visual journal of contrasting scale from small accordion sketchbooks to some of her largest works to date in the form of 55-by-170-inch scrolls. Her graphite drawings and clay pigment paintings explore the dualities that exist in nature and our human evolution.

Together, the artists have employed the technique of exquisite corpse drawings for the exhibition as well. They shared inspired imagery on one piece of paper, which is folded into three sections so they are unable to see what the other artist has illustrated. They then traded the drawings in between sessions so that each one has left her mark, resulting in intrinsically experimental forms related to better respecting our natural world.

Join us for the preview reception of Exquisite Attention on Wednesday, March 16, from 5:30 to 7:30pm or the opening reception on Friday, March 18, from 5:00 to 8:00pm.

Exquisite Attention is on view from March 16 to May 6.

HEDGE Gallery’s annual Printmaking Spotlight Exhibition features two of Cleveland’s exceptional women printmakers: Phyllis Kohring Fannin and Lisa Schonberg. Both artists have taught at high school and collegiate levels and use a variety of printmaking techniques that they have perfected in their diligent studio practices over the years. 

Fannin and Schonberg will be showing a variety of work that includes relief, engraving, intaglio, monoprinting and screenprinting, all focused on a reverence for nature and the solace that they find in forests, gardens and the waterfront. 

Fannin’s recent tree inspired series offers a contemporary viewpoint of the intricate shapes in branches, bark and dense thicket. She states that, “the calm of the natural world is a way to understanding life’s cycles and its ever changing rhythms” as she uses the woodlands in Northeast Ohio as inspiration for much of her work. For Fannin, trees serve as metaphors for the resilience of the human spirit surviving the innate challenges and inherent conflicts in the passage of time.

Schonberg pushes the mystical and nods to the meditative notion of earth’s elements in her monoprints, relief prints and screen printing. Patterned and textural layers create reflections of nature’s beauty which she states are not to be taken for granted on this fragile planet. Lisa’s luscious color palettes are influenced by phenomena such as water flow, abstracted and entangled foliage along with other natural ephemera.

From the Ground Up exhibits the glorious diversity of printmaking that both Fannin and Schonberg’s work demonstrates, and celebrates the treasure of the natural world that surrounds us on our human journeys.

On view until March 4, 2022.

HEDGE Gallery is elated to present David King’s new paintings, titled Transience and the Gift of Curiosity, opening this November!

HEDGE Gallery artist David King found a treasure trove of family movie reels and had them transferred to DVD. Watching the videos of lives past, he felt the sting of grief over the relentless march of time. As a figurative artist, King’s recent work transforms the nostalgia of old memories into a preservation of colorful, contemporary paintings. He rearranges the subject matter and subtracts from compositions to suggest the fleeting moments of life. 

King’s bold color palettes represent the modern mind breathing life back into images obscured by time's patination.

He states, “Working oil paint onto aluminum panels allows me to stamp words, cut and etch into the surface. Some figures have literally been cut out and left as a void, exploring the fact that we are only here for a short time. Often the literal messages on the panels seem to be whispered from a time past.”

Perhaps in these sometimes unsettling days, paintings like David King’s can help us process our past, cutting out what doesn’t belong in our present day, and allowing room for new hope to heal areas caused by painful memories. 

David King’s solo exhibition opens on November 19 at HEDGE Gallery and is on view until December 31, 2021.

While 2020 ushered in so many unexpected changes followed by new beginnings, Cleveland artist Mark Howard had already begun shifting his practice, instilling incremental new ideas. Much of Howard’s past work maintained a Black sensibility and an urban theme, using life in the streets as his primary influence. He recently began questioning the relevance of figurative subject matter which has been the core of his prolific painting, printmaking and collage work.

He states, “For years, a figurative style was the core of my vision, yet somehow abstraction was always rearing its head as if to say ‘what about me?’”

He began listening to that voice, and soon all narratives relating to the human body began to fade away. Relationships of bold shapes, color and texture are now taking their place.

This fall, HEDGE Gallery is thrilled to feature Howard’s most recent projects, from beautifully-crafted cut paper collage, to textured, large-scale paintings designed with a range of adventurous color hues that are inspired by Kirchner, the German expressionist painter.

Howard says about this change in subject matter: “In my past I ‘cut out’ imagery from the world. Now I do it with abstraction.”

Shape Shifters offers a public preview on Wednesday, September 15, from 5:30 to 7:30pm and opens on Friday, September 17, 5:00 to 8:00pm. On view until November 5.

In her second solo exhibition at HEDGE Gallery, Cleveland artist Nikki Woods creates a series of new, lush and psychologically resonant paintings. Vivid Wild Things features sumptuous paintings that depict subjects ranging from the female form, to ghosts and porcelain tchotchkes. With confident brushwork and an exuberant color palette, Woods deftly negotiates pop culture, art history, and mysticism to conjure a glimpse of another world. 

Nikki’s oil paintings have evolved from a place of ethereal representation to an impressionistic state of exploration. Her interpretations of women, landscape and beautiful objects are loose, adventurous and exactly as the title of the exhibit suggests: “vivid, wild things.”

Nikki Woods is a 2012 graduate from The Cleveland Institute of Art, and currently works as the director for the Reinberger Gallery at The Cleveland Institute of Art. Her work will also be included at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri this year.

Vivid Wild Things opens for Preview on Thursday, July 15 from 5:30-7:30pm and opens to the public on Friday July 16 from 5:00-8:00pm.

It will be on view until September 3, 2021 and open during HEDGE Gallery’s normal business hours or by appointment. An Artist Talk Event date will be announced.

As we launch into the summer season of 2021 and the “new normal”, HEDGE Gallery artists Liz Maugans and Douglas Max Utter present brand new work in an exhibition titled AlmostREAL; paintings, printmaking, and collaged drawings that study heightened observation, sensitivity, expectation and the unbelievingness of our present time.

They examine the role of story-telling and explore how much of our “reality” is really real.

The gallery is thrilled to present our third annual printmaking spotlight exhibition, which will feature new work by artists Karen D. Beckwith and Amber Ford. This exhibit, opening on March 19, 2021, will focus on the evidence of existence with an influence of photography on the printmaking process.

HEDGE Gallery is excited to announce that we are hosting a satellite exhibit of Dale Goode’s work!

A new exhibit of Cleveland artist Dale Goode's paintings and prints will on view in Suite 215 Gallery at 78th Street Studios

Both figurative and abstract works on paper as well as some of Goode's older, never-before-seen paintings on canvas will be on view through June 18, 2021. 

Dale’s work reflects his boundless energy, created with layers of bold color and expressive mark-making. His materials are made up of various paints, charcoal, pastels, and found materials, and a readymade influence from his three-dimensional work comes into play in his painting and printmaking. 

Suite 215 Gallery at 78th Street Studios is located on the second floor and will be accessible during HEDGE Gallery’s normal business hours or by appointment.

HEDGE Gallery is looking forward to a compelling new year! We will be kicking off 2021 with an exhibition of Justin Brennan’s prolific paintings.

Justin has been producing a multitude of works in his eclectic mix of mediums: oil paint, oil stick, enamel, collage, latex and spray paint. Themes of Pop Art-inspired portraits were evolving in 2019, but as COVID-19 became a reality in March of 2020, Brennan’s work became influenced by in-depth self-reflection. Feelings of unrest inspired his painting styles to bounce from frantic mark-making to controlled strokes; and as the pandemic worsened, the work only got more personal.

Soon a series of portraits developed based on the artist’s face and those of loved ones, rather than found imagery. Justin also created a series of narrative paintings with symbolism, exposing personal-life issues such as mental-health struggles and addictive qualities. His recent neo-expressionistic paintings depict human figures, loosely painted in strident parodies, with underling commentary on current urban culture.

General Maintenance, featuring new paintings by Justin Brennan, will be on view January 15 through March 5.

This Holiday Season HEDGE Gallery is keeping it merry and bright!

Liz Maugans new book Pool Drawings is available for purchase through the Gallery- both online and in-person- for $30. A fantastic excuse to laugh out loud, which we all need to do right about now! Liz will be at the Gallery with us signing her books on Saturday December 12, noon-4pm and you are welcome to pick up your orders during normal business hours.

Maugans’ drawings will also be available individually for sale and will be on view corresponding with the Gallery’s Holiday Exhibit Dive In featuring water inspired works by artists John W. Carlson, Rebecca Cross, Hilary Gent, David King, Bellamy Printz, Katy Richards, Dott Schneider, Douglas Max Utter and Nikki Woods.

Stop by December 9 through December 31 to view this vibrant collection of works and pick up your copy of Pool Drawings! 

Sarah Curry’s recent series of work, titled Underestimated, is both deeply personal and universal, inspired by the lives of teenage girls. Many of the young women she portrays in her wildly colorful, poignant paintings are her students from Brush High School, where she has taught art for nineteen years. The development of this work has branched into a variety of media: alongside traditional painting, drawings, collage and prints, she is exploring installation, including text and sound.

When the Ohio shutdown happened this March, Sarah had to bring her classroom home, teaching in a completely virtual format. In the midst of the challenges of educating online, Sarah continued to produce new work for her exhibit at HEDGE. One series of work is specifically inspired by isolation during the pandemic: portraying full-color portraits of teenage girls suspended—on a flocked black background completely void of color or design—and longing for social interaction.

Curry states that, “To much of the world, teenage girls appear trivial, but I continue to discover a conflicted world in which teen girls are navigating a complex terrain. I see myself in them and remember they are living in what were my most difficult years. I relate to their insecurity; their need to be independent, but not ready to be a woman; their struggle to define, but not limit themselves; their need to be encouraged and guided, but not directed; their realization that they fear a world that fears them back; their attempts to find themselves, fit in, be liked, be unique, stand out, blend in. My process of understanding their complicated journey helps me relive my own experience and support them through it.”

Underestimated opens October 16 and will be on view until December 4

Katy Richards hasn’t let a global pandemic hold her back from vigorously working in her studio and producing an ongoing series of seductive oil paintings. Her recent series focuses on tightly cropped images of the human figure that are both candid and erotic, celebrating our flesh and all its strangeness, imperfections and beauty, with an objective to remove any notions of shame that surround the body. Richards’ process of working wet paint into wet paint creates  saturated surfaces, with a variety of strokes and shifting color. From a distance, her images come into focus with a remarkable photorealistic sensibility.

Richards explains that "My paintings create an intimate space where viewers can closely look upon the body. Zoomed in, the compositions present little distance between the viewer and the subject. Reveling in both vulnerability and confidence, the paintings are pro-physicality. The work speaks to our shared corporeality and the desire for connection with one another.” 

Katy’s paintings couldn’t be more relevant in a time where many are sensing their skin rebelling against seclusion. People are craving human interaction, and in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, this new exhibit boldly addresses the necessity of social and emotional touch and how it affects on our emotional state of mind.

Richards’ will be exhibiting a total of fifty-five new oil paintings in an exhibition titled See Myself Something Different, opening August 19 and on view until October 2, 2020.

HEDGE Gallery re-opens with Cleveland artist Matthew Gallagher’s exhibit Research and Development, a body of work reflecting on Gallagher’s experiences with the beauty of nature. Gallagher’s new pieces capture the awe inspiring emotions evoked by animal and plant life, honoring complexities with each nuance in their multi-disciplinary work. The exhibit is a combination of 2D and 3D work, enveloped in research and experimentation, which presents refreshing notions of new ideas developed by the artist during the Gallery's shut down period.

Gallagher practices art making with paint, ink, iron, bronze and encaustic wax, often combining mediums to build dimensional paintings and sculptures and experimenting with materials to expand their process. The color palettes in Matthew’s new work are expanding into more iridescent and acid tones, touching on the essence of nature we don’t normally experience, perhaps underwater or deeply embedded in rain forests, or with new life forms of the future.

Matthew states, “The most beautiful, complex, and magical things I have ever seen were not created by humans, but by the interconnectedness of energy, matter, and the inherent organization of our universe--nature. It is my mission to mix self-expression with the influence of natural forms. My processes provide another perspective on the astonishing beauty of the forces that surround us and are too often taken for granted.”

Since 2011, Matthew Gallagher has been using self-developed methods combining physics, chemistry and mathematics to create art. The extent of Gallagher’s work extends beyond various art mediums and formats; it is also entangled in community practices, a profound love for animals, and with people through performance, sound experimentation and recording. Matthew supports the work of experimental artists at their Cleveland studio and living space, R & D, which offers residencies for local, national and international artists.

Research and Development will be on view until August 7, 2020.

We're thrilled to be launching a new video project featuring an overview of Matthew Gallagher's current exhibition at the Gallery, Research and Development. ⁣ ⁣ Cleveland artist Don Harvey, who was a visiting professor at Oberlin College during Matthew's time there, joins in on the conversation. Don Harvey and Hilary Gent openly discuss the artwork in our current exhibit with artist Matthew Gallagher, and also share their experiences in art viewing and the evolution of our creative community during the pandemic.

John W. Carlson explores the history of Blues music in this new exhibition at HEDGE Gallery, portraying images of African Americans in both the present and the past engaging with landscape, family and musical themes through his distinct expressionistic style. He captures emotion, gesture and spirituality with heavy oil stick drawings, impasto layers of oil paint and even collaged found objects in some of his more recent canvases.

The artist has been inspired both by other creatives to explore this theme, and by his recent travels to the Mississippi Delta region. Carlson attended a talk at Oberlin College featuring choir director Jessie Reeder, who spoke on the origins of Slave Songs and Spirituals. Carlson has interviewed Reeder for his BLUES project, and her voice was part of the exhibition during an artist talk at the Gallery on March 5, 2020. The following links will take you to You Tube videos by Robert Banks who captured the Artists discussing their work, as well as Carlson performing with Kerry Davis:

During the summer of 2019, Carlson took several trips to Mississippi to the towns where Blues music was born. He desired a full sensory experience, and wanted to explore for himself the mystery and spirituality of these places. John has incorporated subjects of his travels such as the sound of insects, the unrelenting heat, smells of the river and the vastness of the fields into this recent work. He intends to take viewers on a visual journey to the places in our souls where the stories of survival, love, loss, and joy come from.

Artist Shari Wilkins will accompany John W. Carlson’s BLUES exhibition, with selections from her series Promised Land which portrays photographic images of homes from her father's hometown, Cairo, Illinois, many on instant film and handmade paper.