Cleveland Museum of Art

Starting with the 2012 Cleveland Museum of Art Chalk Festival, I have created a blog post every year to capture some of the incredible chalk art created on the Fine Arts Garden's stone pathways in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art. This includes both 2020, when #CMAChalkFestival was online only -- "Social Distancing Style" -- due to COVID-19, and 2021, when "a spur-of-the-moment trip south to take care of some family business prevented me from attending," but my son, Kevin F. Smith, saved the day by attending and sharing photos on social media.

I enjoyed creating chalk drawings at the event in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, but have not participated as an artist in recent years.

I am so glad I was able to attend the 34th Annual Cleveland Museum of Art Chalk Festival on Sunday, September 17, 2023 -- my 11th year taking photos and videos of the event. I hope you enjoy what I put together to capture the artwork and the atmosphere of the event.

Chalk Festival

Saturday and Sunday, September 10 and 11, 12:00–5:00 p.m.
Fine Arts Garden

Children and adults enjoy this annual event where community members join professional artists in using the walkways around the Fine Arts Garden as a colorful canvas. Begun in 1990, our festival is a modern expression of a Renaissance tradition from 16th-century Italy in which beggars copied paintings of the Madonna by Raphael and his contemporaries using chalk on the plazas outside cathedrals. Watching the chalk artists and enjoying the entertainment is free.

I was so glad to be back in person after two years!! In 2020, for the 31st annual Cleveland Museum of Art's Chalk Festival, the event went virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year, "I was very disappointed that a spur-of-the-moment trip south to take care of some family business prevented me from attending ... " but "I was rewarded greatly by the Cleveland Twitterverse," who posted their photos online so that I was able to share them in my blog post.

I was so pleased that the 33rd Annual Chalk Festival would take place in the Fine Arts Garden on Saturday/Sunday, September 10 and 11, 2022, rain or shine! These were dates I could attend!!

The following is my eleventh Cleveland Chalk Festival blog post. I really enjoy seeing the creativity each year (which is why I even wrote blog posts for the two years I enjoyed remotely). Please retweet any tweets that have photos of chalk artwork you enjoy to encourage more people to attend and participate in future years!

Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, the second iteration of FRONT International, will run from July 16 through October 2, 2022. Building on the success of the first edition, FRONT 2022 will further the Triennial’s commitment to stimulating new and sustained cultural conversations within the region.

The following blog post is from my tour of FRONT International and CAN Triennial venues in University Circle on several days in July/August 2022, and about the Friday, July 29, 2022, PechaKucha Night Cleveland event. I had planned on publishing this blog post on Friday, August 26, 2022, which is the day I went to the Akron FRONT International venues, but got busy with some family commitments and did not have time to finish writing everything I wanted to add to the blog post.

I have now decided to just publish this blog post "as is" (please read the tweets text to get most of the story) before FRONT International closes on October 2, 2022.

Dear Stuart,

I am excited to share with you an update and an invitation to celebrate the opening of the second edition of FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. Prem Krishnamurthy, our FRONT 2022 Artistic Director, has assembled a brilliant exhibition sprawling across 30 venues in Northeast Ohio and featuring a dazzling array of over 100 artists, including art stars like Julie Mehretu, Firelei Baez, Renée Green, Yoshitomo Nara, Jacolby Satterwhite.

Anticipation is high, and the press is calling FRONT one of the must-see art events of the year, along with documenta and the Venice Bienalle.

The title of FRONT 2022, Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows is inspired by a couplet by Langston Hughes, . . .

Our preview days are July 14 and 15, and we would be delighted to have you join artists and art lovers from across the country to share a packed calendar of events and programming. . . .

Laura and I  would be pleased to have you as our guests for an open house brunch at our home from 10:00 to 12:00 on July 15 and 16. . . .

Of course, FRONT runs through October 2, and we would love to see you any time this Summer. I would love to hear your thoughts and impressions.

With warm regards,
Fred Bidwell
Executive Director

I am grateful that Fred Bidwell emailed me an invitation to attend the 2022 FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art preview events. It was great to learn more about, and get an advanced look at some of the venues before “Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows” opened to the public on July 16, 2022. It runs through October 2, 2022.

As background, I put together both "Preview Exhibition" and "Personal Prequel" blog posts, which cover my interests and activities relating to FRONT International between the 2018 events and the start of the 2022.

The scope of this second FRONT International is so large that the preview barely gave a nibble of the full banquet of northeast Ohio art that is now available for exploration. As I prepared this blog post, I learned more and more, but also realized that there still is much more to learn. In 2018, my wife and co-blogger, Julie, enjoyed visiting and blogging about many of the venues we visited, and we look forward to exploring the new art at the 2022 venues.

This blog post includes both the two days of preview events and the kickoff block party, plus additional information:

• Thursday, July 14, 2022 -
  * FRONT Press Conference - Cleveland Museum of Art

  - Provenance Café and Importance of Accessibility to FRONT Venues
  - FRONT Web Resources
  - Inaugural FRONT Art Futures Fellows

   

• Friday, July 15, 2022 -
  * Director’s Open House Brunch Presented by J.P. Morgan Private Bank - Fred & Laura Bidwell Home
  * Remembering Tamir Rice
  * Friday, July 15, 2022 - Picnic Lunch - University Circle
  * CIA Sparkling Toast Exhibition Preview - Cleveland Institute of Art, Reinberger Gallery
  * FRONT VIP Preview Party - moCa  Cleveland (Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland)
  * CWRU Mandel School & Western Reserve Historical Society Grand Carousel

• Saturday, July 16, 2022 -
  * FRONT BLOCK PARTY - Cleveland Public Square, Gund Foundation Green

I entitled this blog post starting with the words "Personal Prequel," since it covers my interests and activities relating to FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, between the 2018 events and the start of the 2022 events. It certainly does not include all that has taken place between the years of the first event and the second, but instead is my attempt to capture some of the spirit of FRONT International that I enjoy.

I wanted to make a point to thank Fred and Laura Bidwell for opening their home to announce the plans for the next FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art.

I am writing this blog post as we enter the kickoff week of FRONT International. Please watch and share with others the tweets I share as I attend events, and watch for future blog posts. Also, feel free to tag me on Twitter as you explore FRONT International venues and activities, so I can share in your enjoyment, and retweet.

"... reimagine the possibilities for representing motherhood" - . . . You can't experience the depth of Picturing Motherhood Now by looking at photos on a website. You must see it in person to not only study the artwork closely, but also to read the messages that accompany the artwork. I know that I will need to return again to the museum to see the pieces I missed, and to look again at the artwork I found interesting.

The paragraph above is from the blog post that Stuart wrote after attending the Thursday, October 14, 2021, Picturing Motherhood Now Media & Influencer Event and Members Preview Party, where he knew that he would need to use our Cleveland Museum of Art membership benefit to return to see the exhibition again. This blog post includes our @sos_jr tweets and retweets sharing photos from our visit to Picturing Motherhood Now on Wednesday, January 26, 2022.

Stuart enjoyed his return visit, especially since he was joined by Julie, who brought new insight to this motherhood exhibition.

After our visit to Picturing Motherhood Now, we saw a display about the Cleveland Museum of Art's Motherhood Across Time tour in the area adjacent to the Ames Family Atrium. This tour takes you through the museum's collection to discover other works of art related to motherhood. Download the ArtLens App to learn more about museum tours.

This blog post shares what I learned about the Cleveland Museum of Art's Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain exhibition before its opening, and while attending the preview on Friday, November 12, 2021. I was fortunate to be able to tour the exhibition before its opening to the public on November 14, 2021, and I want to encourage everyone to visit before it closes on January 30, 2022.

The Revealing Krishna HoloLens tour was more powerful than I expected. I have tried HoloLens before, but the way the museum used it to tell the story of the Cleveland Krishna statue was excellent. It was a very effective use of this technology to further the story behind the artwork!

I also included information about the historical Christmas decorations I saw at the Western Reserve Historical Society's Cleveland History Center while I was in University Circle.

"... reimagine the possibilities for representing motherhood" - I had received an invitation in early October for the Thursday, October 14, 2021, preview of Picturing Motherhood Now, and started reading about and looking at photographs from the exhibition on the Cleveland Museum of Art's website. Based on what I saw, I developed a preconception about the exhibition, which I have to admit was not on target. You can't experience the depth of Picturing Motherhood Now by looking at photos on a website. You must see it in person to not only study the artwork closely, but also to read the messages that accompany the artwork. I know that I will need to return again to the museum to see the pieces I missed, and to look again at the artwork I found interesting.

I was also excited about being able to enjoy the art as part of a social experience -- being with other people at the Cleveland Museum of Art! The Picturing Motherhood Now preview was not completely part of a return to "normal life," since the COVID-19 pandemic is still with us, but it is a great start. The following reflects the excitement of joining with others to enjoy the experience which is the Cleveland Museum of Art.

I enjoy attending the Cleveland Museum of Art's annual #CMAChalkFestival every year and sharing my favorite chalk artwork on my "Chalk Festival" blog posts. Therefore, I was very disappointed that a spur-of-the-moment trip south to take care of some family business prevented me from attending on Saturday, September 11, 2021.

I asked people on the Cleveland Twitterverse to share on Twitter their photos from the 2021 Cleveland Chalk Festival, so that I could at least attend an online version of the Chalk Festival.

I was rewarded greatly by the Cleveland Twitterverse and my son, Kevin F. Smith.

As I write this blog post, I am very busy preparing for an extended backpacking trip, but I still wanted to get this out, since I had such a great time at the Cleveland Museum of Art. I will let the photos in the tweets tell the story, and I invite you to learn more about this special Cleveland Museum of Art exhibition, Stories from Storage, . . .

As you view the photos we shared on Twitter, please note the incredible variety of artwork presented. We highly recommend seeing the exhibition in person, since photos can't capture all the details.

My mother joined me on my return visits on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, and Tuesday, April 27, 2021.