Monday, July 13, 2015

Cleveland- a Town for Art

photo of exhibition at Heights Arts
In "28 Days in Cleveland," Mogran Meis, first writer in residence at SPACES from June 15 – July 12, 2015, finds Cleveland a great town for art.

"...That stubbornness, I submit, has something to do with northeast Ohio. Can we all agree that it takes a bit more than the average amount of willfulness to choose Cleveland? For a normal person with any amount of artistic talent, the first instinct might be to get away from northeast Ohio, to go somewhere with greater resources for creating artistic careers.
"But the artists who have chosen to stay have, with a kind of devilish cleverness, hit upon an otherwise hidden benefit of a city that everyone else has been leaving for decades. If you are just bold enough to actually believe in your art and your ability to create what you want, Cleveland becomes a kind of secret utopia. No one outside of Cleveland gives a shit what you do inside Cleveland, so you can do it to your heart’s content. Add to this the fact that Cleveland is an extremely affordable city and you have a recipe for almost total aesthetic freedom."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank God - more outside validation that this place is not the cesspool for the arts our everyday experience would otherwise lead us to believe.

Do cesspools have potholes?

Geoffrey A. Landis said...

hey, and it's the best beer city in America, too!
America's Best Beer Cities, as Chosen by Beer Experts

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau