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Two CIA graduates and two faculty members are among the eight Northeast Ohioans honored with the 2014 Cleveland Arts Prize.

Alumna Valerie Mayen ’05 and adjunct faculty member Brad Ricca are honored in the Emerging Artist category. Mayen is a fashion designer and founder of Yellowcake Shop, a contemporary clothing company of Cleveland’s near west side. In 2010 she was a contestant on nationally broadcast reality show “Project Runway,” and in 2009 she received a Creative Workforce Fellowship from Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC).

Ricca is a writer, comics fan, and instructor of two CIA courses: Graphic Narratives, and Science Fiction and Fantasy. He made international news last fall with the release of his book, Super Boys, about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the Cleveland natives who created Superman.

Professor Kasumi is one of two creative professionals honored with Mid-Career Awards. Cleveland Public Theatre executive artistic director Raymond Bobgan won the other. Kasumi, who teaches in the Integrated Media Environment, is an experimental filmmaker whose digital art is screened around the world. In 2011 she won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a CPAC Creative Workforce Fellowship.

An innovator in the synthesis of film, sound and video, she has presented her experimental films, videoart, and installations at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Württembergischen Kunstverein Stuttgart and at the Chroma Festival de Arte Audiovisual in Guadalajara, Mexico, among many other international festivals.

Kathleen Cerveny ’69 was one of two winners of the Robert Bergman Prize, which is awarded to "exceptional individual/s who has shown passionate leadership and opened his/her field more broadly." Cerveny is the Cleveland Foundation’s program director for arts and culture. She maintained a professional practice as a ceramic artist for more than 20 years, worked as an arts and culture journalist at WCPN, began at the Cleveland Foundation in 1991, and last year was named Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights.

Also receiving the Bergman Prize this year is Deena Epstein, senior program officer for the arts at the George Gund Foundation and a strong supporter of CIA initiatives.

Gallery owner William Busta, who serves on CIA’s Advisory Board, is one of two winners of the Martha Joseph Prize, which is awarded to individuals or organizations that because of "exceptional commitment, vision, leadership or philanthropy have made a significant contribution to the vitality and stature of the arts in Northeast Ohio." Busta has showcased dozens of CIA artists in his 25 years of running the William Busta Gallery. Also honored with this distinction is Pamela Young, executive director of DanceCleveland.

Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque Director John Ewing successfully nominated filmmaker Richard Myers for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Myers, an emeritus professor at the School of Art at Kent State University, spoke at the Cinematheque last fall. Ewing has screened several of Myers’s films over the years.

The 54^th annual Cleveland Arts Prize award ceremony will be held at the Cleveland Museum of Art on June 26 with Ideastream journalist Dee Perry as host. Tickets and information about the levels of support will be available on Monday, May 12, at clevelandartsprize.org.

Pictured above: Kasumi with a multimedia installation she created.