now showing

Exhibit A

July 20 - August 27, 2022

Imagine an ornately decorated cookie tin.  It has pictures of the cookies that should be inside on the lid.  A kid waits for their grandmother to turn her back and attempts to steal a cookie.  As the kid wrestles the lid off the tin a collection of spare buttons, pin cushions, needles and thread spill out all over the floor. There are no cookies in the cookie tin.  We could use the cookie tin to tell the story of the butter tub that didn’t have butter in it, but leftovers from some other day.  From the kid’s perspective this is a story of deception and disappointment.  But it’s really “Exhibit A” of how my

Strange Mechanisms

September 7 - October 15, 2022

Showing in the Burton D. Morgan Space at Akron Soul Train

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Steven Mastroianni and Palli Davene Davis will be exhibiting their residency work in a combined exhibition titled Strange Mechanisms.  Steven is a Cleveland-based artist who works in large scale cyanotype prints.  He begins his compositions with assemblages of stencils, found objects and sketches on light-sensitized paper.

He states, “The new body of work created during my artist residency consists of large scale, multi-panel cyanotype prints. This work draws inspiration from sources as varied as the James Webb Telescope, Harold’s Purple Crayon, 18th century opera arias, mechanical drawings, Byzantine icons, the geometry of pasta, and the subconscious. Evocative of watery depths, imaginary galaxies, and mysterious maps, these luminous images create an immersive dimension with their own rules of scale and space. Like dreams, these

objects seem familiar but weird; letters that don’t exist, mechanical forms floating in dark space or deep water, math problems that don't add up, and overlapping patterns that follow their own logic of space and dimension.” 

Palli comes from the Oberlin area and has won the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence award four times during her career.  She works in wood and stone sculpture to solve a single problem: How to hold a stone.  In her words, “I am an object maker. I need form. My hands need touch telling me how an object is becoming what it is to be. The Holding Stones Series has been my primary body of work since 1993. There is only the simplicity of 3 materials, wood, stone. Together they build a visual vocabulary to consider objects as metaphors for Earth & Man. Stone is the found object, gleaned evidence of the planet's alterations and endurance. Wood, victim to the hand work of man.”

Featured in the capsoul gallery

Glacial Uprooting of a Cotton Candy Dream

September 7 - October 15, 2022

Showing in the CapSoul Gallery at Akron Soul Train

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The CapSoul Gallery space was established at Akron Soul Train in 2020 to provide emerging artists with additional exhibition opportunities.  An Exhibition Committee of visual artist volunteers was formed to curate shows, and Akron artist Lauren Baker was invited to exhibit.  

Lauren received her BFA in Sculpture from Kent State University and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.  She will be exhibiting her new installation piece titled “Glacial Uprooting of a Cotton Candy Dream”.  The exhibition will be on view from September 7 - October 15, 2022.  

She writes, “Existing in the space between familiarity and fantasy, the organic and the contrived, “Glacial Uprooting of a Cotton Candy

Dream” focuses on ideas of the simulacra. When peeking into a microscope, dendrites become tree roots, osseous tissue become cave formations, and zygotes become astronomical orbs. Visual similarities, linking the human body to growth structures in nature are studied in a quest to understand the intangible universe beyond the self. Rooted in playful imagination and contradiction, “Glacial Uprooting of a Cotton Candy Dream” strategically deviates from mere imitation. Recycled and highly synthetic materials falsify the natural, posing larger questions about the reciprocal relationship between human beings and the environment to which we inhabit.“

Film Screening by artist-in-residence, Latecia Delores Wilson

Images of the past blend with the present resurfacing memories embedded in place in the short film REMEMBERED. What once was begs to be remembered and the truth of what took place exposed. Howard Street was a mecca in Akron for black businesses and artists. Urban development bulldozed black success and ownership, nearly erasing the memories of George Matthews, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald and hundreds of Akron families. This visual is a reminder of what was, what is and what can be; honoring the black excellence of Howard Street, the black excellence systematically erased throughout.

Film screening Tuesday, Oct 4th at 6pm at the University of Akron Myers School of Art auditorium.