MassMusings

Ariella Har-Even is a jeweler and metalsmith currently living in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in jewelry and metals from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Holocaust and genocide studies at Gratz College. Ariella has been the recipient of many awards, including a One for the Future Award from NYC Jewelry Week, and has...

Isabelle Crawford is a visual artist and muralist from Akron, Ohio. She recently obtained her bachelor of arts degree in studio art from the University of Akron. Isabelle has a passion for community engagement and fostering positive social change through the arts. She has participated in many public mural projects including the Parsons Avenue Mural Hop, Akron’s Art Bomb Brigade, and collaborative...

Susan Snipes is an interdisciplinary artist based in Cleveland, Ohio, whose media installations respond to the anxieties and disconnection of the digital age. Working with video, sound, digital devices, and often incorporating interactive elements, she creates spaces that invite reflection and dialogue. Susan holds a masters of fine arts degree in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a...

Cleveland-based artist Katy Richards focuses on the materiality of paint and representation, exploring themes of life, death, and desire. Katy earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art and a master of fine arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her artwork has been exhibited in numerous group shows, and she has had three solo exhibitions at HEDGE Gallery in Cleveland....

Eric Anthony Berdis is an artist and educator from Erie, Pennsylvania. Their Studio M exhibition, Bugs That Crawl, Flowers That Bloom includes hundreds of quilted bugs created by community members, embellished and assembled by the artist on and around large quilted panels. Some of the bugs were created by participants in a Do the Mu workshop in 2024. Do the Mu is a free intergenerational drop-in a...

Greg Martin is a Cleveland-based artist who incorporates a wide variety of mediums in the creation of 2D and 3D works. He explores the unique polarities found in the natural world, industrial history, and the digital age with a focus on the seen and the unseen.  A Cleveland Institute of Art graduate, Martin has exhibited in duo and group exhibitions, and in solo exhibitions at Fabrica de Arte Cuba...

Maxmillian Peralta is a painter from Cleveland, Ohio. In his most recent artwork, he alludes to an atmosphere of tension, insecurity, and fear experienced personally, but also collectively by his generation. The artwork takes the form of highly exacting acrylic renderings of spaces, both tense domestic spaces and impossible exterior spaces. Peralta received his bachelor of fine art in painting fro...

Tom Bartel spoke with MassMu staff recently. His exhibit "Figure as Memento: New Ceramic and Mixed Media Artwork" is on display through June 8, 2025. Tom Bartel has exhibited his ceramics internationally in more than 375 solo, group, juried, and invitational shows. He maintains a studio in Athens, Ohio, where he is a professor and the ceramics chair at Ohio University. Bartel’s artworks...

MassMu staff sat down with Emily Olszewski before her exhibition was installed to talk about her studio practice.  Her Studio M exhibit "Playdates," is on view through April 13, 2025. Olszewski is a figurative painter based in Akron, Ohio. She earned her bachelor of fine art in painting from The University of Akron in 2019 and her master of fine art from Kent State University in 2024. He...

Today, we have a conversation with Mario Arteaga, our current Studio M artist.  His exhibition is titled Heated , and it is displayed through March 9th. Mario has a Bachelor of Science in Fashion Merchandising with a minor in Accessories. In 2024, he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a concentration in Jewelry, Metals, and Enameling from Kent State University, and currently teaches i...

On today’s episode of MassMusings, we interview current Studio M artists Grant Ederer and Stephen Tornero about their exhibition A Fair Trade , which is on view through January 5, 2025. A Fair Trade features ceramics by Grant Ederer, and weaving by Stephen Tornero. To create the exhibition, the artists traded artwork over several years to inspire one another. The result is like an elegant improvis...

Through the Looking Glass is an exhibition of porcelain sculpture by Ohio-based artist Kimberly Chapman. Chapman works through a female lens, exploring the lives of fiercely independent women who lived on the fringes of respectable society. Tiger trainer Mabel Stark and sideshow performers Myrtle Corbin and Kittie Smith are among the women portrayed in the Studio M exhibition. Chapman focuses on w...

Massillon-based artist Emily Bartolone explores, through her artworks, the intersection of shape and color and how those elements can express human experiences and relationships encountered in daily life.   Emily Bartolone obtained her BFA from the University of Dayton, and her MFA from Kent State University.  Her artwork has been shown at Project Gallery V, New York; the Cincinnati Contemporary A...

Raw Material is a solo exhibition by Katie Davis that explores themes of feminism and domesticity.  Davis is a mixed media painter and installation artist.  Her color choices and visual language have a direct relationship with her materials, which are sourced from retro interior design trends and textiles.  The artwork uses formalism and abstraction, held in tension with whimsy and playfulness.  H...

On view in Studio M from April 6–May 19, 2024 Portrait of US   is an evolving audiovisual archive of intimate stories told by ordinary people. The artists Monica Jane Frisell and Adam Scher create the audiovisual portraits in their Nomadic Photo Ark, a roaming black-and-white darkroom and art studio, as they weave across the United States. Frisell and Scher visited Massillon with the Nomadic Photo...

McDonald creates large-scale oil paintings that are tied to reality, but exist in a different place. In Another Life: A Tale of Love, Loss, and Living explores the artist's inner world and how it has been affected by her experiences.  She is influenced by religious texts, mythology, and pop culture. In her paintings with vivid colors, she depicts women in environments where they are free to b...

Elena Masrour, an Iranian artist now based in Birmingham, Alabama, works as a visiting assistant professor at Birmingham Southern College. She received a master of fine arts in painting from Kansas State University in 2022 and a bachelor of fine arts in fabric and textile design from the Tehran University of Art in 2013. Drawing inspiration from her homeland, Masrour’s artistic vision centers on t...

Set the Twilight Reeling  is poised to be an emotional experience for visitors. Carlson (1954–2020) communicated using a language of line, colors, space, form, contrast, and gesture to express narrative, and above all, feelings. The artwork draws in visitors and reminds us to recognize the experiences of others and find ways to connect.   Carlson wrote of his own work, “It is important to me, to p...

Born in 1982 and raised in the Midwest Rust Belt, Ish Ishmael is a documentary-style photographer, an installation artist, and a vagabond. Infatuated with exploring the diverse approaches that humans take in late-stage capitalism, Ishmael traverses the arteries of the USA in her Toyota minivan, seeking disparate threads of commonality through the collective American dream. Ishmael weaves together...

Hilary Gent, a Cleveland artist who works with oil and latex mediums, is inspired by the urban and natural landscape. She earned her BFA from Kent State University in 2003.  Gent’s paintings are included in public collections such as The Cleveland Clinic, Summa Hospitals, Sherwin Williams, cARTa, Hilton Hotels Corporation, and numerous private collections. Gent has spent the last fourteen years st...

Sarah C. Blanchette is a photo-based fiber artist who works out of the Detroit area. Through repetitive acts of hand and machine sewing and physical manipulations of the self-portrait, she documents her coming of age in a digital world while embarking on a journey toward growth and autonomy in womanhood. Since establishing her studio practice in 2015, Blanchette has exhibited nationally and online...

The exhibition analyzes "shadow selves” and their relationship with the “seven deadly sins” and how each is necessary in coming to terms with true balance, even though the process may cause internal conflict. Davon Brantley reflects on personal narratives and experiences to shape his body of work. Using an amalgam of materials, he heightens meaning erratically in self-portraits that convey he...

Prairies to Peaks features detailed watercolor paintings, and pen, ink, and graphite drawings recounting the artist’s 1,000-mile solo bicycle trip from Cleveland to a summer job, where she worked and lived on Mt. Elbert—Colorado’s tallest peak.  Viewers are invited to contemplate women in adventure sports, the beauty within stranger interactions, the country’s magnificent nature, the horrible dest...

“Imagine walking into a space dominated by tactile and juicy paintings, surrounding the viewer in an immersive paint and process experience,” says Jordi Rowe of her Studio M exhibition, Blueing of the Light: The Gloaming . A dozen of her paintings are on view from February 4–26, 2023. Rowe is a painter, pathologist, and mother who alternates between creating artwork, practicing medicine, and paren...

Coty Giannelli’s photography has been seen previously in Massillon Museum exhibits  Massillon Tiger Football Boosters and Tiger Legacy: Our Tiger Football Family , both in 2012, and the 2019 Stark County Artists Exhibition , when he was awarded an Honorable Mention. Giannelli earned the “Rich Mahan Best Student Portfolio” honor in the 2013 Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar. That year he also earned...