Art in the urban streetscape is transformative. Public art projects include sculpture commissioned specifically for a site, artist-designed street furniture, and murals. Heights Arts offers public art consultation services limited to our service area (Cleveland Heights and University Heights) that can involve advice, brainstorming, artist selection and/or design competitions, and oversight of a project.
Please call 216.371.3457 or e-mail to discuss your idea.
For projects in the Greater Cleveland area, contact Cleveland Public Art at 216.621.5330.
- Knitscape
- Heights Center Building Mural East
- Benches on Coventry
- Sculpture in the Heights
- Boulevard Elementary School Reading Garden Mural and Bench
- Coventry Fences
- Heights Center Building Mural West
- Cedar-Lee Mural
- Coventry Arch
Knitscape is a temporary community public art project under the creative oversight of artist Carol Hummel in residence at Heights Arts Gallery August, 2009.
Knitscape will create a visual line of color and pattern in the Cedar Lee and Larchmere business districts with parking meter poles and selected trees being covered by colorful knitted and crocheted sheathes.
The purpose of the project is three-fold:
- to demonstrate on a temporary basis how art can visually unify the streetscape
- to create a community around an art project
- to make people smile as they encounter unexpected art in their daily lives
Knitscape will be created by the collective action of anyone who wants to knit or crochet parts of the project.
For a one-time $5 registration fee to help defray materials costs, attend a Knitscape gathering and be part of creating a public art project. No experience necessary!
Meet the artist and get to work! Lessons, patterns, refreshments and friendship at the following Knitscape gatherings:
Saturday, August 1, noon-3 pm
Registration begins at Heights Arts Gallery, 2173 Lee Road
1 pm Artist Talk
216.371.3457
Sunday, August 2, 2-4 pm
FinePoints, 12620 Larchmere Boulevard
216.229.6644
Wednesday, August 5, 1-3 pm
Loganberry Books, 13015 Larchmere Blvd
216.795.9800
Friday, August 14, 6-8 pm
Boommodern, 2218 Lee Road
216.320.1784
Wednesday, August 19, 1-3 pm
Wool & Willow Needlepoint, 13002 Larchmere Blvd
216.791.7952
Thursday, August 20, 6-8 pm
Abrash, 2150 Lee Road
216.320.9300
Saturday, August 29, noon-3 pm Knitscape Finale Party!
1 pm Knitscape Slideshow
Heights Arts Gallery, 2173 Lee Road
216.371.3457
Knitscape is generously sponsored by
Pepperell Braiding Company
Abrash
Beyond Fitness
Boommodern
Calligraphy Studio
Cedar Lee SID
Cleveland Cinemas
Cleveland Heights Public Library
Corcoran Fine Arts
Cut Hair Studio
Dancing Sheep
Dewey's Pizza
Divita's Larchmere Deli and Beverage
Epstein Design Partners
Felice
Fine Points
Frog's Legs
Heide Rivchun Conservation Studio, LLC
In Flora Veritas
Irie Kynyk Goss Architects, Inc.
Heights Arts
Loganberry Books, Inc
Loren M. Sonkin, Esq.
Marc Goodman's Antique Mall
Martel Salon
Metheny Weir Painted Finishes
Parnell's Pub
Phoenix Coffee
Polished Professionals Barber Shop
J.P.Quality Printing
Rainin Nailz
Rebecca’s Shaker Barber Shop
Revive
Seitz Agin
The Stone Oven Bakery
Strong Bindery
Wool & Willow Needlepoint
Zagara's Marketplace
Fall 2008
Heights Center Building Mural East by Jesse Rhinehart commissioned for the Heights Center Building by Heights Arts.
Painted to complement the Heights Center Building Mural West installed in 2004 by the same artist, the composition of the painting was derived from a photo in the Cleveland Public Library archives and painted in the artist's studio.
The Heights Center Building is designated a Cleveland Heights landmark. Designed by Richardson & Yost, it was built at the intersection of Cedar and Fairmount Roads, Cleveland Heights, in 1916 when the city was a streetcar suburb. According to the Cleveland Heights Landmark booklet, “This brick building is a vision of Medieval Germany or Austria in the heart of Cleveland Heights’ gateway Cedar Fairmount district, filled with distinctive shops and boutiques. The building was the first neighborhood shopping center in the Heights and was designed to be in keeping with the style of the nearby residences. The various roof slopes add variety to the mass of the block-long structure. Such notable features as the tower and its clocks, half-timbering, and distinctive brickwork make this building a most striking, as well as admired, sight at this busy intersection."
Spring 2006
Our most recent project has been developing benches unique to Coventry. We found the perfect artist right here in Cleveland Heights, Raymond Bugelski. Eight benches in vibrant colors with four different designs and are now installed in Coventry Village.
2005 - 2006
Sculpture in the Heights is an exhibition of 8 outdoor sculptures being installed in 2005 at Severance Town Center for two years. HeightsArts invited sculptors Brinsley Tyrrell, Matthew Hollern, and Laila Voss to both display their work and serve as jurors to select an additional 6 artists for the exhibition. In October, 2004, artists from throughout Ohio (150) were invited to submit materials for consideration. The jurors reviewed their materials the following month and selected Tim Cassell, Micheal Costello, Barry Gunderson, Robert Huff, and Carol Hummel to participate.
Carol Hummel's Tree Cozy was installed in front of Cleveland Heights City Hall. Hummel, who obtained her MFA in sculpture in 2004 from Kent State University , has an eclectic background educationally and professionally as a photographer, editor, and owner of a construction company. She has exhibited regionally for several years, and recently has been working with crocheted yarn as a metaphorical sculptural material. Her proposal involves covering a tree-a natural object representing masculinity and strength-with a cozy-an emphatically handmade blanket representing femininity and comfort.
Laila Voss' Site Transfer are five painted steel tripods positioned around mulch-covered symbols cut out of the grass. The use of the ancient signs references specific characteristics of the location while simultaneoulsy connecting the site to universal ideas and origins. Each cluster of symbols evokes different layers of history, such as the original indigenous population, farming and the materials for early industrial growth and later commerce, the diversity of the current population, the site's present function.
Voss, who is also juror of the Sculpture in the Heights exhibit, received an MFA from Kent State University and has exhibited throughout the region as well as in Russia and the Czech Republic, including installation of several permanent public works. 
Barry Gunderson 's Clouburst has been installed in the planter in front of Office Max at Severance Town Centre. Clouburst, a welded and painted aluminum sculpture 10' high, is about the challenge of translating wind, clouds, and water into abstract sculptural form. We all touch and feel these natural elements - but constructing them from aluminum pipe and plates and pigment - all hard, substantial materials - provides very invigorating creative days in the studio.
Gunderson has been Professor of Art at Kenyon College since 1974. He has been an artist in residence in Norway and New Zealand as well, and has exhibited throughout Ohio and the world. Gunderson has executed commissions throughout the country, several for the Ohio Percent for Art Program.Gunderson's current work combines two long-term themes - whimsical animals and the human figure.
Brinsley Tyrell's sculpture, The Sentinels is composed of a series of stacked forms of varying heights. It is inspired by the markers that many native cultures around the world would have erected to communicate with passing travelers. The sculptures are made of fiberglass impregnated with iron or copper powder which causes green or brown colors on the forms.
Tyrrell, who is also a juror for this exhibit, studied art in his native England with a major in sculpture.In 2002 he received a Governor's Award for th Arts in Ohio , and has exhibited broadly throughout the world. His work is in innumberable public and private collections as well. Tyrrell is professor emeritus at Kent State University , and since retiring from teaching he has concentrated his work on public commissions which include The Cleveland Botanical Gardens and Coventry Village in Cleveland Heights.
Michael Costello placed his Rustic Towers Earthen Columns in Wild Urban Areas on a gently sloping area. In each of these five approximately eight foot high, rustic wood constructions a column of packed soil wrapped with a protective cotton sleeve contains time released flower seed packets. Sometime during the exhibition period each plastic sleeve will come apart allowing the soil and seed packets to spill out onto surrounding area which will eventually sprout new growth in a wild urban area. This project is a continuation and further investigation of a piece Column/Containers that he completed in 1992 for the Cleveland Museum of Art 75th Anniversary celebration. People who participated in the installation returned to the site in the weeks following to witness it's progress, and see the “fruits of their labor” as the installation matured: to be packed and placed, planted, disintegrate, collapse and then transform the site in which it was placed.
Presented by HeightsArts with the support of The Ohio Arts Council, The Coral Company, The Canyon Johnson Urban Fund, Pine Tree Commercial Realty, and The City of Cleveland Heights
Installed July, 2004
One of HeightsArts core commitments is to connect the community with its artistic residents in order to benefit both. Susan Gallagher’s 2004 artistic residency with Boulevard Elementary School in Cleveland Heights is a gratifying accomplishment of that goal.
When Susie Kaeser of the Boulevard Elementary Site Team asked HeightsArts to recommend an artist to work with elementary school students for an outdoor reading garden, we were showcasing ceramics by Heights artist Susan Gallagher in the gallery. In conversation with Gallagher, we found out that she was an Ohio Arts Council artist-in-residence since 1998, traveling all over the state to work with different communities. Yet she had never worked with students in her own neighborhood! We connected her with the project, and the result is a stunning example of an artist who can incorporate children’s participation with an artistic product.
Gallagher teamed up with Boulevard art teacher Jackie Connelly to give every student the chance to work with clay. The school has more than 400 students grades K-5, and each student made a clay project during Gallagher’s residency. She likes to teach the basic handbuilding techniques of coil, slab, and pinchpot, and different grades made flowers, birds, and insects using these methods.
The 4th and 5th grades made the incised tiles which are the centerpiece of the mural, and Susan created the leaves and additional design elements which frame the piece.
A team of parent volunteers helped glaze tiles. Neighborhood volunteers and former Boulevard students poured the concrete base for the bench and planted the garden. Gallagher fired and installed the tiles herself.
The garden and bench are part of the second phase of the playground improvement project that started in 1998 and is led by a parent and community committee, the Boulevard Elementary Site Team. According to project organizer Susie Kaeser, “we wanted the students to contribute to the new playground. Gallagher’s vision for the project, and the student creations make a delightful addition to the site. They should be very proud of their work and their playground.
To reach Gallagher, email smg_icon_ceramics@hotmail.com
2004
The
Coventry Village Special Improvement District (CVSID) and the City of
Cleveland Heights implemented a streetscape improvement project when
Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights was repaved in summer, 2003. Power
lines were rerouted to clean up the sight lines; sidewalks were widened
to make the sidewalks consistent the length of the street; new curbs,
lampposts, and trashcans were installed. The new sidewalk design included
59 tree islands spaced on both sides of the street from Euclid Heights
Boulevard to Mayfield Road, designed to be filled with trees and perennials.
Federal transportation funds were available for landscaping the tree
islands, and the Coventry merchants asked HeightsArts to recommend an
artist who could transform the plans for generic fencing around the
trees into an artistic product. Kent artist Brinsley Tyrrell immediately
came to mind because of projects facilitated through Cleveland Public
Art: the magical "Butterfly Gate" for the Hershey Children's
Garden at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens and Orchard School Fencing,
560 linear feet of wrought-iron figures running and playing. Both were
hand-forged in collaboration with Steve Jordan, a blacksmith with an
MFA in metals from Carbondale University (see Cleveland Public Art’s
Project page http://www.clevelandpublicart.org/)
Working with Jordan and assistant Erick Oldham, Tyrrell has created 
a series of fences which narrate the history of Coventry Road and Cleveland
Heights from when there were wolves, bears, and otters to the present.
Each fence is unique, and has a title based on its narrative.
Read Dan Tranberg Plain Dealer article on the fences, here.
Completed July, 2004
Cleveland
Heights artist Jesse Rhinehart installed the Heights Center Building
mural on July 24, 2004 on the Lennox Road side of the building at Cedar
Road, Cleveland Heights.
The mural was commissioned by HeightsArts for Michael Occhionero, owner
of the Cleveland Heights landmark building. The location was selected
because the wide sidewalk in front of the wall is a place where people
often sit. But although there were benches and tables, the area felt
like a place to pass through rather than a destination.
Rhinehart studied archival photos and history provided by Kara Hamley O'Donnell, historic preservationist for the City of Cleveland Heights, and has created a trompe l'oeil mural of a historical storefront. The painting, created in his studio, depicts both the inside of stores from long ago as well as reflections in the storefront windows. The mural is painted with special outdoor mural paints and coated with a clear ultraviolet-absorbing film.
The Heights Center Building Mural was funded by: The Alcazar Hotel, The Cedar Grandview Building, The Heights Center Building, Vixseboxse Art Galleries, Edward Jones Investment, David Lavelle, Nighttown, Cedar Fairmount Business Association
Completed October, 2001
The
Cedar-Lee Mural was painted on a brick wall 36' high by 120' long facing
a municipal parking lot in the Cedar-Lee commercial district of Cleveland
Heights, Ohio. An alliance of Heights Arts , the Cedar
Lee Merchants Association , and Cleveland
Cinemas was created to facilitate the project.
The building is a historic landmark at the corner of Cedar and Lee Roads owned and partly occupied by Cleveland Cinemas, which owns the Cedar Lee Theatre housed there. The Theatre, which has 1100 seats in 6 theaters, features a variety of films that include the finest in independent film and foreign language cinema, as well as a few Hollywood releases.
Jonathan Forman, president of Cleveland Cinemas, conceived of the idea of a mural on the wall facing the vast unattractive parking lot because the area is a gateway to the commercial district. The 315-space parking lot is filled nightly with moviegoers who walk through an attractively landscaped mini-park to the front of the theatre on Lee Road. Moviegoers spill out of the back of the building into the parking lot at the end of the shows.
A call for entries was mailed to 150 artists living in Cleveland Heights and University Heights. In an effort to promote local talent, only artists in these two communities were eligible to submit designs. Among the fifty artists responding with proposals were twenty schoolchildren. A show of all entries was displayed for one month (November, 2000) at the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Main Library.
The artists who submitted proposals were diverse: One entrant sold tickets at the movie theater, and was a scenery designer. Another was a professional musician with the Cleveland Orchestra who likes to paint. Three were architects. Six were middle school students in an after-school program. Ten were fifth graders from the nearby public Fairfax Elementary School. One was an art teacher at the public high school. Two were students at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Several more were professional artists.
Four judges selected the winning entry, and awarded prizes in three age categories to the children as well.
Robert
A. Muller , Principal Photographer and Coordinator of Photographic Services
at the Cleveland Institute of Art, designed the winning entry. He was
awarded $1000 donated by Cleveland Cinemas and Seitz-Agin Hardware.
The artist is a photojournalist, commercial photographer, and fine artist with a degree in painting. He was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 1994.
Muller created an image of Lee Road that is vibrant, colorful, sophisticated, and site-specific. His entry is reflective of the street both figuratively and literally - he stood facing the windows of a flower shop and photographed reflections of the stores across the street. His composition is a panoramic image of several photographs culled from the hundreds that he shot and edited on the computer.
Muller noticed repeating patterns of brickwork throughout the street, and decided to incorporate parts of the historic building's decorative masonry in his proposal. The composition does not simply fill the whole enormous wall, but is sensitive to the built-in framing of rows of brick and sandstone.
The mural was painted by a professional local firm with 20 years of experience in indoor and outdoor mural painting.
The Cedar Lee Mural was funded by:
The Raymond John Wean Foundation,
The Wolpert Fund,
Cleveland Cinemas,
Cedar Lee Business Association,
Cedar Lee Movie Benefit,
Individual Donations.
Installed June 5, 2001
The
Coventry Arch is located at the intersection of Euclid Heights Boulevard
and Coventry Roads in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. It was a project of Coventry
P.E.A.C.E., Inc. (People Enhancing a Child's Environment), a nonprofit
grassroots organization based at Coventry Elementary School.
The selection process involved a review of slides by regional artists. Of these, five were invited to give slide lectures about their work and then three were commissioned to present proposals.
The selected artist, Barry Gunderson, is an art professor at Kenyon College whose work has been installed as Ohio Percent for Art projects throughout the state. He visited the Coventry neighborhood often when his son and daughter-in-law lived in the neighborhood, and writes, "I have visited often and certainly found the charm that you now wish to expand." His proposal is best described in his own words: "This commons area is certainly the hub for the area and significant attention has already been exerted on the site with the pavers, walkways, and plantings already in place. Thus it was a challenge to find both a location and proper sculptural addition to be added. But . . . it became very clear to me what the exact site should be. The newly established gardens. The pleasant walkways, the intended forest of trees needed a 'gateway'-some marking that said 'welcome to our community'. And the perfect setting for hits gateway was the poured-in-place planter walls that ushered pedestrians in and out of this portal. Thus my thinking quickly turned to the enterprise, what kind of gateway should there be?
Figurative sculpture has been ruling in my studio work for the last 5 years. I have been fascinated with the complex invention of turning industrial materials - pipes and structures - into anatomical forms. Inventive cutting and shaping of round tubes yield arms and legs; intriguing joining of lengths and angles gives feet and fingers. Together these geometric materials form a figure of gesture and character.
"My
intent here is to use 12" diameter aluminum pipe rolled into a 180 degree
arch to form a passage way of greeting-two abstract figurative forms
on either side. Because my work cannot get away from whimsy, the gesture
of the extended arms of the figures will form the arch itself, culminating
as their hands touch in the center. The four figures, two on each side,
will thus from two arches, one slightly higher that the other. The surface
patterns of design are there for two purposes. The first is visual.
The markings of lights and darks blended with the sparkle and shine
of the metal surface are primarily there to excite the eye, to catch
your attention. The second purpose is to indicate the internal character
of the figures and thus community members. Each is different, each unique;
each is made up of internal spice. How else to show this than with pattern,
design, and rhythm? My hope is that this figurative cluster will serve
as a symbol of the community's interactions with each other and with
visitors-a symbol of greeting, accommodation, and the celebration of
differences that I see in PEACE. What more fitting symbol could you
have for a community ?"
The Coventry Arch was funded by:
Ohio Arts
Council,
The Cleveland Foundation,
The Raymond John Wean Foundation,
The Wolpert Fund,
Coventry PEACE,
Coventry PTA,
Coventry Neighbors, Inc.,
Friends of the Cleveland Heights University Heights Public Library,
Coventry Special Improvement District (CVISD-merchants),
individual donations, a New Year's Day Pancake Breakfast at Tommy's restaurant on Coventry Road.
