News

By Cindi Deutschman-Ruiz

Through Nov. 15, Beachwood Community Center is playing host to an exhibition featuring nearly a dozen CIA students and graduates “whose work showcases how the process of making art—and the materials used to create it—are crucial to its content,” says the show’s curator, CIA senior Annmarie Suglio.

A double major in Fiber + Material Studies and Sculpture + Expanded Media, Suglio explains that the 10 artists participating in Process & Materiality (herself included) took found materials, and then peeled, stretched, poured and carved those materials, utilizing “lots of repetition, patterns and layers.”

The project features paintings, drawings, prints, collages, objects and weavings, and is the brainchild of Suglio, in collaboration with Beachwood Arts Council Executive Director Leah Gilbert. The two met at MOCA Cleveland last year, when Gilbert was volunteering there, and Suglio was working in the museum shop.

“The Beachwood Arts Council wanted to give emerging CIA students a venue where they could showcase their work as well as offer their work for purchase,” says Gilbert. “I found out that [Suglio] is a senior at CIA and that she is a fiber artist. I asked her if she'd like to curate a show of emerging CIA students for the Beachwood Arts Council, and she agreed.”

Included in the show in addition to Suglio are Abigail Clark, a junior majoring in Printmaking; Jack Sherry and Phong Tran, both seniors double majoring in Painting and Sculpture + Expanded Media; Claire Marks, a senior majoring in Printmaking; and 2014 Painting graduates Bridget McGuire, Jamey Hart, Nicole Mehle, Lauren King, and Ben Weathers.

“To be able to work with the Beachwood Arts Council and exhibit these artists has been such an honor,” says Suglio. “I feel it is important that CIA students have more venues in Cleveland to exhibit their work and expand on their audiences.”

Suglio plans to pursue a career in curating, and hopes one day to host shows in her own gallery/studio.

Process & Materiality opens at the Beachwood Community Center, 25225 Fairmount Boulevard in Beachwood, Ohio, on October 25, with a reception from 5 to 8pm.

Above: Detail from a painting by Nicole Mehle '14 included in Process and Materiality.