Plain Dealer, Cleveland, OH
Nov 4 2012
A creative exchange: Artists from around the world share talents here
and take ideas home
By Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer
The fourth-graders at Boulevard School in Shaker Heights are
mesmerized. They’re listening to Lucineh Hovanissian, a musician from
Armenia dressed in national attire, regale them with sounds and images
from her homeland.
The youngsters learn simple words — arev means sun, and if you add
“b” to make barev, it becomes hello — and sing a folk tune. Then
Hovanissian asks them to make drawings using the symbolic colors of
the Armenian flag (red for pomegranate, blue for lake, apricot for —
what else? — apricot).
“How lovely,” Hovanissian says, in her lilting voice, when they’re
done. “You’re so talented.”
Big smiles all around.
Such enlightening encounters are happening throughout the region these
days as five international artists share their expertise and their
cultures with local students, professionals and the public.
The artists are participants in Creative Fusion, a Cleveland
Foundation program that places visiting dancers, musicians, visual
artists and specialists in other disciplines in residencies with
nonprofit organizations.
“The purpose of the residency is to give the Cleveland community
access to creative individuals from cultures that they might not have
the opportunity to engage otherwise,” says Kathleen Cerveny, the
foundation’s director of evaluation and institutional learning.
Like her colleagues in the program this fall from Chile, India, Mexico
and Sri Lanka, Hovanissian is embedded in a local organization — in
her case, Music and Art at Trinity Cathedral — that chose her from
dozens of applicants to work on-site and reach out to nearby
constituencies.
Hovanissian, 39, is spending her three months in Cleveland introducing
her country in classrooms and making music in worship services at
Trinity. As part of her residency, she composed “Quo Vadis,” based on
an ancient Armenian melody, for the cathedral’s choir.
The other Creative Fusion participants also are busy on many fronts
creating, instructing and learning from area artists and students.
Kapila Palihawadana, a dancer and choreographer from Sri Lanka, has
devised a work that Inlet Dance Theatre will perform Friday, Nov. 16,
at the Hanna Theatre. India’s Sanjib Bhattacharya is immersing
students at the Rainey Institute in his country’s dance traditions.
At Zygote Press, the printmaking workshop, Chilean artist Ivan Lecaros
works on his creations when he isn’t teaching classes at the Cleveland
Institute of Art and elsewhere. Young Audiences is hosting another
printmaker, Guillermo Trejo from Mexico, who’s stretching his artistry
though a variety of professional and educational experiences.
A two-way street of experience
All of the genial Creative Fusion visitors say they’re benefiting from
contact with Cleveland artists and citizens while making their own
contributions to the city’s cultural life.
“I find here the interest, the knowledge, the support,” says
Palihawadana, artistic director of nATANDA Dance Theatre of Sri Lanka.
“You can conceptualize and verbalize your work. That is a challenging
experience for me.
“I can draw profundities and put those qualities in my work when I go
back. I feel I learn something here I could share with my people.”
Which is just what the Cleveland Foundation envisioned when it
inaugurated the program in 2010.
“One of our agendas for doing this is to get an awareness of the
creativity and innovation happening in Cleveland in different parts of
the world,” Cerveny says. “We hope the artists will carry the good
word of Cleveland back home.”
Since the program began, the foundation has designated nearly $800,000
for the residencies of 16 artists, operating costs, and program design
and evaluation. Aside from the current group of artists, participants
have come from Cuba, South Africa, Turkey and Uganda. Among the
countries to be represented in the next round of artists in 2013 are
Croatia, Israel and Vietnam.
On a balmy September morning, Lecaros is showing students and faculty
at the Cleveland Institute of Art how to mix chemicals to prepare a
print. He leans closely to the surface he’ll brush to heighten the
cuts in the etching.
Several years ago, Lecaros, 40, couldn’t see his artwork unless it
came within inches of his face. As a child, he was afflicted with the
disorder known as lazy eye, which didn’t stop him from pursuing his
love of drawing.
His prints “became small, almost microscopic,” until a doctor who took
interest in his plight years later performed surgery that corrected
his eyesight.
“After that, I could see everything!” he exclaims. “So this is what
it’s like to see the world.”
Lecaros uses this experience to teach a life lesson to aspiring
artists in Cleveland and students at his studio in Chile, Aguafuerte
(Spanish for etching).
He heard about Creative Fusion from a friend who’d worked at Zygote
Press with co-founder Liz Maugans. Lecaros friended Maugans on
Facebook, and she told him about the Cleveland program.
At Zygote, Lecaros has made prints and exhibited his pieces in a solo
show. He also has worked with students in Esperanza, the educational
program for Hispanic students, and observed local colleagues.
“I’m learning a lot,” Lecaros says. “One of the things I wanted to see
is how things are done in the states. Now I’m here as an artist. They
give you all you need to work.”
Along with equipment and supplies, the Creative Fusion artists are
housed at Reserve Square or Judson Manor, not far from their host
organizations. The Cleveland Foundation grants each organization
$25,000 for the three-month residency. The artists aren’t paid, but
they receive per-diem allowances and, through the Council of
International Programs, health insurance.
Living in downtown Cleveland gives Trejo, 29, the chance to explore
the city when he bikes to Zygote, where he’s in creative mode in the
afternoon. He uses his observations in his art.
“I bring objects I’ve found around the location and the studio —
something about the circumstances of the city,” Trejo says. “There is
a social-engaged aspect in my work.”
Taking inspiration back home
Cleveland is only the second U.S. destination, after New York, that
Trejo has visited since moving five years ago to Ottawa, Ontario,
where his wife works for the Canadian International Development
Agency. Along with his endeavors at Zygote, he’s taught printmaking at
area schools, including John Hay High School.
“Working with Young Audiences is showing me I have the capacity to
teach, which I enjoy,” says Trejo. “It’s been a nice surprise.”
How much of a surprise?
“When I was young, I went to an alternative school that had small
classes, with a focus on the arts,” Trejo says. “I believe this
experience shaped my life.
“To come to these classes [in Cleveland] with 30 kids can give them a
chance to see other realities. It’s important to see someone who looks
like yourself doing other stuff. I want to show something [about
Mexico] that’s not necessarily the war on drugs. There are positive
things going on.”
Choreographer-dancer Palihawadana also hails from a country that has
endured extended strife. From 1983 to 2009, Sri Lanka — the island
southeast of India formerly known as Ceylon — was embroiled in a
civil war that left nearly 100,000 dead.
Palihawadana, 36, wasn’t encouraged by his family to pursue dance,
believing it wouldn’t provide security. But “dance was in my blood,”
Palihawadana says, and he would go on to found the country’s first
modern-dance company, nATANDA, whose name combines international
iterations of the word “dance.”
The company presents one big production per year — without funding
from the country — and works in communities teaching Palihawadana’s
blend of traditional Sri Lankan dance and martial arts. He’s been
sharing his style here with Inlet Dance Theatre and in master classes
for schools and Verb Ballets.
“Cleveland is a place that really wants to involve the community,”
Palihawadana says, “and how you can give opportunities through your
work to the community.”
Bhattacharya, his Indian colleague, spends most of his Creative Fusion
hours at Rainey teaching inner-city elementary and middle-school
children.
“I’m used to working with professionals,” he says. “This time is very
different for me. I’m not working as a professional artist. I’m
working as a social activist.”
In a studio at Rainey, Bhattacharya, 43, takes youngsters through
subtle gestures and techniques based on rhythmic patterns (tala) that
introduce them to Indian culture. He is dressed in a flowing orange
kurta (shirt) and dhoti (pants), traditional Indian attire.
Born in Calcutta and now a resident of New Delhi, Bhattacharya served
as a dance coordinator in an international school, but he’s been an
independent artist for the past decade. He works with major artists on
collaborative productions, appears as a soloist, runs workshops and
directs his own dance company.
Bhattacharya was alerted to Creative Fusion while serving as a
representative to the Asia Pacific Cultural Exchange Program at the
University of California at Los Angeles. He made contact with Lee
Lazar, executive director of Rainey, and they hit it off immediately.
“We’re all about kids,” says Lazar, “but we wanted someone who could
connect with people of all ages. We had about 30 nominations [for the
residency] in all disciplines. As Sanjib says, I think this was meant
to be.”
Bhattacharya isn’t sure what his experience in Cleveland will mean
once he returns home. He says the American system of fundraising and
nonprofit organizations could have relevance in India.
Bhattacharya and Lazar have discussed applying to the Cleveland
Foundation for a grant to open a branch of the Rainey Institute in New
Delhi.
“I am working [there] with blind children and street children,”
Bhattacharya says. “Maybe I can try. This time [in Cleveland] has
influenced me to do something.”
Armenia’s Hovanissian has many options as she contemplates life after
Cleveland. In addition to her solo career and collaborations with
Armenian musicians (she’s made several albums), she has worked in
journalism, done theoretical work in neuroscience and practiced as a
child’s dentist.
She says her sacred music reflects the meeting of art and science —
“what goes on in the brain when trying to connect to this unknown.”
As Hovanissian talks about making connections in Northeast Ohio, she
heaps praise on Creative Fusion for uniting international visitors
with local residents.
“It’s a huge amount of time to be close to these artists,” says
Hovanissian, whose only previous trip to the U.S. was a six-week
residency in New York in 2009.
“Here it’s really the everyday life of the community. It’s wonderful
to discover America and share my culture.”
http://www.cleveland.com/musicdance/index.ssf/2012/11/creative_fusion_story.html