Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

Prescription for Cleveland: public-art therapy

Something snapped yesterday. Maybe it’s because I seem to be getting a cold.

But as I was driving through the University Circle section of Cleveland, Ohio, on an afternoon of mud-brown earth, crumbling pavement and dark, pouring skies, I passed a newish art installation in the median – a couple of dull shapes made of ordinary stones – and suddenly, I had had it.

Simply … had it. Why does so much of the public art in this city look like part of the urban blight? Don’t we have enough heaps of rubble and rusting hulks already? Do poverty and decay and collective depression improve somehow because they’ve been referenced in a rockpile or a crude, steel sculpture that looks like an exploded muffler?

Cleveland’s public-art projects tend to solicit works that reflect, and comment on, our gritty life here in the Rust Belt. Maybe people think this gives the works more meaning and importance than brightly decorative pieces would have.

I don’t think it works that way. Frankly, I think most public art of any style tends to lack significant content, probably because no one wants to get into any more fights about using taxpayer dollars for pieces that might prove controversial.  But I also think the strain of trying to make a deep but publicly acceptable statement about industrialism and urban ills too often results in a simple, platitudinous literalism about ugliness. 

 We have enough ugliness here in Cleveland. It gets to all of us so much that our chronic outlook on life has become as gloomy as our winters. I would like artists to comment on this as much, and in as many ways, as they like in work that will be displayed in galleries and museums. But on the streets of Cleveland, we need color and beauty.

See, Clevelanders are sort of like alcoholics. We’re always sodden with defeat and self-loathing. Our putting up public art that’s all about our rotting infrastructure and bleak climate and faded glory days is like a drunk buying another bottle of whiskey. We need to get off the depressants.

We need color and beauty. Color and beauty aren’t shallow. They can express great things, even sorrowful or disturbing things. The difference between them and art that looks like factory waste is that color and beauty will make our city thrilling to be in. Our people will throng our sidewalks instead of hiding inside, because vivid reds and golds and azures make their hearts leap up. Gorgeous architecture and murals, brilliant sculpture and color-lighted streets will draw people from other places to see how beautiful and special Cleveland looks. They will want to be here, to stay here.   

Will they want to stay here if they see the art on the Detroit-Superior Bridge that took years and years to get and looks mostly like plain lampposts with a few hard-to-see twiddly things on top? Will a glimpse of the gray, patterned pavers and the cut-out steel trash bins on the new Euclid Corridor keep any of us locals from throwing ourselves under a bus on a sullen February day? 

Or how about those giant metal contraptions on East Superior Avenue that look like some salvage company dropped a load off the truck?

Will they save anybody’s sanity?

Exactly. So could we start changing our view by changing our look, please? Now?

 Euclid Corridor crosswalk art.                                                                              2007  N. Bryson