Quotable :: Tom Farinacci

July 23rd, 2010

Tom Farinacci, general manager of Glidden House in University Circle: “So many people are leaving Cleveland, we wanted to do our part.”

Over the years of shopping for the Glidden House collection, Tom Farinacci found “I learned how to articulate what I like.”

Tom Farinacci on one of his favorite paintings — by artist Lee Heinen — in the Glidden House collection: “It got me started thinking about artwork. That wasn’t really in my job description when I started, but I really enjoyed the process.”

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RED DOT Project is pleased to work with Scion xCHANGE. Help us raise funds for RED DOT Project at the event on Saturday and Sunday, July 24-25 at Phoenix Coffee on Coventry in Cleveland Heights or on our Cause page.

Art Matters :: Tom Farinacci on Investing in Local Art video

July 22nd, 2010

People gravitate to the art.
Tom Farinacci, General Manager of Glidden House in University Circle, Cleveland, talks to Karen Sandstrom on why local art is sought for their collection.

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RED DOT Project is pleased to work with Scion xCHANGE. Help us raise funds for RED DOT Project at the event on Saturday and Sunday, July 24-25 at Phoenix Coffee on Coventry in Cleveland Heights or on our Cause page.

Art Matters :: Tom Farinacci, General Manager Glidden House

July 21st, 2010

Hotel rooms usually suffer from Invisible Art Syndrome.

Generic sailboats against pastel sunsets, carriages bumping along antiqued avenues and mauve abstracts from the ’80s: they’re all typically chosen to be restful, inoffensive and to pick up the bedspread colors.
It’s all different at Glidden House, the boutique hotel in University Circle. Every year, general manager Tom Farinacci budgets about $10,000 to buy paintings, drawings and photographs done by artists living and working in Northeast Ohio. Working with Christy Gray at Red Dot Project, the nonprofit artist registry, Farinacci is building a collection to enliven the hotel’s public spaces and guest rooms.

The art, says Farinacci, “makes us special. We strive to be a special hotel — very boutique in feel, a very high level of service.”

Putting up “real art,” as he calls it, makes a difference.

The practiced evolved after Glidden House, a 1910 house that was home for a member of the Glidden Paint family, switched from a doilies-and-lace Victorian bed and breakfast into a chic, contemporary hotel in the late 1980s. Owner Joe Shafran and Farinacci bought some high-ticket original paintings for the lobby. Those works weren’t by local artists, but the energy they brought to the hotel was clear.

The challenge was how to keep that energy going. The answer: Look for high-quality, original work by Cleveland artists. The side benefits: the purchases would be more affordable than the prints by contemporary masters Motherwell and Rauschenberg, and they’d also support local artists.

These days, Glidden House guests are treated to a brilliant red, almost-abstracted landscape by Lee Heinen and a series of black and white monoprints by Damon Reaves. Artist prints by Karen Beckwith and work by Gray (a fiber artist in her own right) decorate some of the guest rooms.

And there’s more to come. Farinacci will start the process of scouring the Red Dot files for the next batch of guest rooms on the list for art. Farinacci has elected to leave rooms empty rather than to temporarily fill them with mass-produced work purchased out of decorating catalogues.

So how does the selection process work?

Intuitively. Gray visits Glidden House to see the spaces up for an art overhaul. She pre-selects a number of works for Farinacci to choose from based on what she thinks might work well.

“We do a good job together of picking out art that fits the space,” Farinacci says.

He tends to steer clear of work that’s too moody or “controversial,” but he doesn’t simply go for images that read in an instant. The Lee Heinen piece he loves, for instance, bears contemplation for how it walks the line between representational and abstract.

Guests notice this even if they don’t know why.

“We’ll see guests standing in front of a piece for minutes and then moving onto the next one,” Farinacci says. “It’s kind of a gallery feel.”

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To learn more about RED DOT Project, join us July 24 and 25 at the Phoneix Coffee on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights. We are part of the Scion xCHANGE event happening this weekend. We want to hear why Art Matters to you!
Visit our Cause page on Facebook.

Art Matters :: Bob Peck video

July 15th, 2010

“Art opened the door for me”
Bob Peck talks to Karen Sandstrom about his views on why Art matters.

Quotable :: Bob Peck

July 13th, 2010

Bob Peck on what he does when he’s not making art: “Neurotically thinking about why I’m not. Bicycling. Collecting tattoos.”

Bob Peck on how he chooses titles for his abstract paintings: “Sometimes when I finish a piece, I don’t have a title, but a grouping of words will just appear in my head.”

Bob Peck on the materials he uses to make his paintings: “Spray paint, markers, acrylics. I dabbled with oils, but I’m not where I want to be with them yet. I even use the Crayola washable markers ‘cause you can smear them and stuff.”

Art Matters :: Bob Peck

July 12th, 2010

Bob Peck used to think abstract art was “the ultimate scam.”

Abstraction was what people did if they couldn’t make real art. Maybe it was a joke played on viewers.
Then one day he was preparing a canvas for some of his own work, which had grown out of his years tagging abandoned buildings with graffiti. He threw some colors down as a ground, but before got around to the graffiti, something weird happened: He liked what he saw. So he did a few more.

Friends came over and saw the canvases. They asked Peck what he planned for them.
“I said, ‘I don’t know. I think they’re done,’ “ Peck says. “They’re like, ‘NO, come on, dude, don’t go that route.’ ”

But the dude did. Today the 33-year-old artist, new to Red Dot Project, is finding success where the street meets the gallery. He’s getting commissions, and has done work for Scion, the car company, and Red Bull, to name a few.

His paintings can fill canvases corner to corner with color and line, or they can exhibit a haiku-like restraint. The connection to graffiti is unmistakable when you know Peck’s background, but without the text the viewer is forced to focus on color, shape, the sense of dimension or its lack.

Peck grew up in Lakewood and around Cleveland, and as a kid in the 1980s found that graffiti left him wide-eyed and wondering. He remembers noticing that he’d walk by a tagged building and feel that the work was really big: it took a long time to move from one end to another.

At first, he was young enough that he didn’t realize this wasn’t something done merely in Cleveland. Eventually he started hanging around some of the artists who work working it, got a mentor and learned the ropes.

As he grew from teen tagger to grownup artist, Peck never lost his affection for graffiti. He complains, though, that the Internet has killed regional styles by exposing young artists to a handful of popular styles they then emulate.

Much remains misunderstood about graffiti art, he says.

“I think the funniest thing is (that others) think we’re all a bunch of black and Hispanic guys in gangs,” he says. “That’s the biggest misconception. They have this borderline racist stereotype.”

All kinds of people make graffiti, he says, though it remains more popular among men than women. Younger girls tend to be into street art, he says – making stencils and hanging posters.

And of course, there remains a widely held perception of graffiti artists as vandals. Yet the good ones, Peck says, obey a kind of code of ethics.

“Most of us don’t touch a church, a house, someone’s car, schools. We’re mainly looking for abandoned buildings, some rooftop,” he says. “It’s never like this person’s front porch is going to be a target.”
That doesn’t stop others from taking offense. Peck once spent hours on painting the wall of a business that had invited him to work it.

“Some people loved it, and others came by and said, ‘I can’t believe they’re letting you do that.’ ”
The next day he returned and found someone had tossed a gallon of paint over his work, ruining it.

“At that point I just primed over it,” he said. No sense reworking it when it might again be vandalized.

So the misperceptions continue.

As for his own perceptions – say, about abstract art – they have changed. He maintains that some abstraction still strikes him as not well done. He gets suspicious when artists try to sell their work with long explanations about what it all means.

But through making it himself, he has developed an eye for what’s good. He looks for texture and composition.

Most of all, he says, he looks for beauty.

Scion x-change Drives Support to RED DOT Project

July 9th, 2010

Art Matters! Scion x-CHANGE is matching donations made to selected arts-based nonprofits by up to $30, 000 this year, and RED DOT Project is proud to be one of the selected 30 non-profits in over 30 cities.  Scion believes artists drive the cultural identity of a city, and that this support provides the necessary workspaces, materials, educational opportunities and support platforms to these artists. The company also recognizes that brand awareness can be more than purchasing ad space… it can be a catalyst for community support and artistic expression.  The Scion x-CHANGE Program connects people, online and on-the-streets, to these featured nonprofits. 

Save the weekend of July 24 and 25 and join us at Phoenix Coffee House on Coventry to drive for x-CHANGE and support your artistic community and plan to hear more in the days and weeks to come.

Quotable :: Rene Culler

July 8th, 2010

Rene Culler On the Importance of Art:
“It’s probably the closest thing we come to godliness, if there is such a thing as God. To me, art is about the union of the head and heart, the intellect with the emotion. We can’t really put a price on that, it’s incredibly precious because it can have so much meaning.”

Rene Culler On Her Dream Commission:
“I’d love to be in the Cleveland collection. When I was accepted into the May Show a few times, I was on Cloud Nine.”

Best Moment as an Artist:
“I felt really great seeing my work on display in the Smithsonian. They made a purchase of a sculpture about 6 or 7 years ago.”

Art Matters :: Rene Culler video

July 6th, 2010

Exuberant. A great word to describe Rene Culler’s work. Rene talks to Karen Sandstrom about why Art matters to her.

Art Matters :: Rene Culler

July 4th, 2010

Glassblowers are sometimes thought of as the hotdogs of the art world, acting and reacting quickly to coax molten glass into a thing of beauty before temperatures dip or the bubble bursts.

Cleveland Heights artist Rene Culler knows the process well and uses it, but for her the blowpipe is sometimes just part of the story.

“I like to blow glass, but for me it happens too fast,” says Culler. So some of her work involves stacking blown-glass objects into architectonic sculptures that she then fuses together in a kiln.

Architecture, Byzantine art, textiles and tile traditions are among things that inspire Culler, whose work has been shown at the Renwick Gallery of American Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution; the Corning Museum of Glass; the May Show, formerly a staple exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art; and numerous galleries across the United States. Culler, who also teaches in workshops and university art departments, has been a Red Dot Project member since 2006.

A 1992 graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, Culler earned her master’s degree two years later at Kent State University. She’s attracted by color and dimension, by history and legend, but even as a kid she noticed the one quality that made glass special. “I think it’s the way glass uses light,” she says. “Painters try to simulate light, but if you make glass you can actual use light as part of your palette.” Culler also is drawn to the philosophical idea of light as wisdom.

These days her two main bodies of work are the sculptural series that involve blown glass, and flat pieces for the wall. The sculptures – often looking like totems built from color-infused cups — tend to be work well in galleries. The flat works, full of color and the artist’s sense of connection to drawing and painting, have attracted commissions in businesses and among private collectors.

Culler’s gallery work allows her to follow her own interests and ideas, but commissions are satisfying in other ways. For one thing, they help fund the gallery glass. But in addition, she says, the new parameters inherent in a commission often lead her to creative places she wouldn’t go on her own.

Lake Effect (detail), copyright 2008 Rene Culler

When someone commissions work, Culler has a new criteria to consider, including the space, the interests of the buyer and sometimes the kind of work that’s done in business settings. She did work for a surgery center, for instance, where the buyers knew that the use of red in her glass would conjure unsettling thoughts of blood. The people who want original work also tend to be thoughtful and intelligent, she says. “They want something that’s meaningful, that they can relate to that’s creative in their space instead of just buying the same old Monet print.”

Culler understands the power of art to inspire, to transform a space or elevate a ritual. One of her favorite objects, she says, is a ceramic coffee mug made by friend and studio-space partner Susan Gallagher. She uses it every Sunday. “It kind of undulates, it’s kind of Gaudi-esque,” she says. “I have some nice prints and photos, but I just really love that cup.”