The Kent Community Poetically Reflects on Thirty Years of the Haymaker Farmers' Market

Jessica Jewell, MFA, PhD

This past summer, the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University created Market Stanzas (haymaker.marketstanzas.com), a community arts project in partnership with the Haymaker Farmers’ Market in celebration of their thirtieth anniversary. Funded by the Kent Rotary Foundation, MarketStanzas placed Kent State University undergraduate students at the market throughout the summer to collect community stories, memories, and other creative writing about the Haymaker Farmers’ Market. Each visitor’s contribution was then uploaded to a growing community poem.

Summit Artspace Expands Partnership with Kent State Through Faces of Akron Project

Grace Carter

Internationally-renowned artist and beloved Kent State University faculty member Kirk Mangus (1952-2013) loved painting people he knew from memory. “When I go into the studio, I paint and draw from memory, observations, and interpretations. This process transforms the images into an abstract realm—a dream world where memory and legend take on a different perspective. Anything is possible,” Mangus remarked in 2012.

Visual Art Showcase - Kwamé Gomez

Mark Keffer, MFA

The vast array of approaches to artmaking produces a perpetually engaging arena for communication and expression. Myriad mediums, philosophies, styles and motivations create a field of inquiry that exists without limits. Even artists working in the same medium, covering similar territory, will generally produce very distinct outcomes.

Transforming Akron Into a Dynamic Urban Destination Through the Arts

Curated Storefront is an ongoing series of public art exhibits that activate empty storefronts with art installations in downtown Akron. For the past six years, Curated Storefront has activated 29 spaces with 118 exhibits featuring the work of 165 regional and international artists and personally engaged over 5,000 individuals through guided educational tours, virtual live-stream and in-person events. To date, 13 of the 27 buildings activated with exhibits were commercially developed or revitalized post project start.

Visual Art Showcase - Samantha Bias

Mark Keffer, MFA

Photography is a ubiquitous medium in contemporary society, and one that most people have the means of creating at any time. The quickness and ease of photography today produces an endless stream of mundane, throwaway images that generally remain in digital format, never intended to be printed. This state of affairs can make the sight of a thoughtfully and carefully created hard copy photograph even more special. When the subject transcends the cursory and the printing process produces a physical object of esthetic weight, the experience of the photograph can be a rich and multifaceted discovery.

Schriber Automotive Machine Shop

David B Lile

I am David B Lile.I captured and produced this group of artistic images from the history filled, well known by all past auto enthusiasts, former Schriber Automotive Machine Shop, which has now been transformed into a community-oriented retail space and local, gathering spot, the Jenks Building, on Front Street, in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Visual Art Showcase - Eric Rippert

Mark Keffer, MFA

Visual art in Northeast Ohio is made up of a wide variety of approaches, subjects and materials, which is not unexpected, seeing that it reflects the state of art nationally, even globally. Unlike periods in the past, where there was a dominant movement, such as Abstract Expressionism or Pop Art, we’re currently in an era of ‘pluralism,’ where no overriding thematic direction seems to take precedent over another.

Visual Art Showcase Vol 19

Abstraction in visual art is far from new, but many area artists are using it to produce rich and meaningful work. In western art, from the pioneering experiments of the fascinating Swedish mystic Hilma af Klint, to Russian Suprematism, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Op Art, even Land Art, etc., we have seen wide-ranging developments in both form and content. Three artists here—in printmaking, painting, and sculpture—make it clear that abstraction can still make for a vibrant, first-hand art experience.

Visual Art Showcase - Lisa Shonberg

Mark Keffer, MFA

Abstraction in visual art is far from new, but many area artists are using it to produce rich and meaningful work. In western art, from the pioneering experiments of the fascinating Swedish mystic Hilma af Klint, to Russian Suprematism, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Op Art, even Land Art, etc., we have seen wide-ranging developments in both form and content.