Bellwether Film Series at Transformer Station

Film Still from Teenage, a film by Matt Wolf.

Summer Film Series
On 5 consecutive Wednesday nights during the month of July, film screenings will be held on the side lawn of the Transformer Station following the CMA Ohio City Stages event. The films will be selected by five artists featured in MoCA Cleveland’s upcoming exhibition—Julia Christensen, Kevin Beasley, Lenka Clayton, Jerry Birchfield and Jacob Ciocci.

Screenings will begin at 9:30 p.m., rain or shine. Bring a blanket or equivalent.

For a more informations and a schedule of screenings, visit Transformer Station’s News page.

Carrie Mae Weems at CMA

Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video

Cleveland Museum of Art
Sunday, June 30, 2013 to Sunday, September 29, 2013
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Gallery and Photography Gallery

In keeping with a passionate commitment to improving the human condition though her art, Carrie Mae Weems has produced a broad trove of intellectually challenging and aesthetically compelling work that addresses issues of race, gender, and class and places her at the forefront of contemporary art. Yet to date there has not been a major museum survey devoted to this critically and socially engaged artist. The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, in Nashville, Tennessee, has organized a retrospective exhibition composed of approximately 125 photographs, videos, and installations from more than 25 series created over the last three decades. The works come from major collecting institutions, private collections, and the artist’s own holdings. The Cleveland Museum of Art will be showing a smaller version of this exhibition. The artist was one of two contemporary artists to speak at the museum on the occasion of its east wing opening in 2009.

The first section of the exhibition will feature selections from the 1980s and early 1990s that explore the construction of identity, especially as it relates to race, sex, and class. The next section will feature works made in response to historical situations that have impacted African American identity, as well as that of other disempowered peoples. A third grouping will contain photographs that focus on the role of place in Weems’s examination of the underlying causes and effects of racism, slavery, and imperialism. A notion of universality is present throughout: while African-Americans are typically her primary subjects, Weems wants “people of color to stand for the human multitudes” and for her art to resonate with audiences of all races.

Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tennessee. This exhibition is supported in part by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Cleveland Museum of Art is generously funded by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this exhibition with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

On a related note, Hank Willis Thomas will have simultaneous exhibitions of his influential work at Cleveland Museum of Art and the Transformer Station opening in October. More info on that here.

Around the Block with Fred Bidwell

Transformer Station co-founder Fred Bidwell takes a drive around Ohio City and answers a question about what he looks for in a work of art.

The short version is:
1. Beauty, however unconventional
2. An idea, concept or story

But Fred does a way better job of explaining what that means, AND he doesn’t have an accident during the interview.