Barroco

After having completed a positively dazzling CLE mini field trip this morning (the purpose for which will remain top secret until next month), the Goat and I stopped for lunch at Barroco on West 6th in the Warehouse District downtown.

Barroco shares a space with Downtown Liquor, which isn't your usual storefront hole-in-the-wall that's just a counter and some measly shelves selling pints for exorbitant rates, but a real, full stocked liquor store. So that garners style points on its own.

My Cubano was fabulous, filled with pork and ham and melted cheese and really fresh greens on a crusty yet delicate roll (**sigh**), but I was also digging on the street art on the tables and walls. It was all signed by Juan David.

I asked the guys behind the counter about it. Now dig this: the gent giving the two thumbs up in this next pic is Juan David in the flesh.

(!)

So, the guy who made my Cubano also created the art in the joint, which is about the most perfect thing I could ever imagine.

Cleveland, you never cease to ROCK MY FACE OFF.

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Waiting for Godot and a gallon of mascara

This post, which is not about the government shutdown, John Boehner, Ted Cruz or (ahem) Denis Hastert, will detail some important minutiae for the readership.

Giant solid bronze chicken head in Cleveland Museum of Art Atrium

-The tag on a king-sized flat sheet goes on the foot of the bed, on the right side corner (as you face the bed). To those out there who have been seeking this information, you're welcome. How did I untangle this Gordian domestic knot? By buying striped sheets.

-This is the most beautiful picture of Marilyn Monroe I have ever seen.

-In the early Harry Potter movies, the newspapers had moving images. By the time the series ended, however, this "magical" detail was irrelevant as tots and adults alike all had iPads, upon which newspapers had come to life with embedded video. Think about that: movie magic came to fruition so fast, it outran Hollywood.

Can you dig it?



-Ironically, the undesirable ingredients in a Reese's Cup (Polyglycerol polyricinoleate [aka PGPR], tert-Butylhydroquinone [aka TBHQ], citric acid [to preserve freshness]) all come together with the more predictable components (sugar, cocoa butter, milkfat) to produce one of life's most craptastic experiences.

-I found Aurora Snow's letter to her unborn child to be positively touching and honest.

-I just purchased a tube of CoverGirl LashBlast mascara. Using my keen mathematical skills, I have extrapolated the price ($6.94 for 0.21 fl. oz.) for one gallon of said cosmetic, which would total $4,230.

This post is done.

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The longest night of the year came a few days late

You go to the Solstice Party at the Cleveland Art Museum? I so went to the Solstice Party. What's that? Couldn't make it? No worries, dude. Here's what you missed.

Tons of galleries were open despite the ongoing construction, but the party proper was outside.

As usual, The Thinker thought.

Guys wore hats!

Some chicks did too.

The Goat had to work, but he was there in spirit.

One guy scored a touchdown.

Another guy took his clothes off.

And The Thinker thought.

Super cute chicks wore super cute shoes.

The Fired-Up Taco Truck rocked my face off with a chorizo empanada. HELL YEAH

 The whole scene grooved.

At least that's what The Thinker thought.

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The MOCA magical mystery tour

Last week I was invited on a hard hat tour of MOCA, Cleveland's new Museum of Contemporary Art, which is scheduled to open in October 2012. Of course, this opportunity filled me with Extreme Cleveland Art Love and a host of other positive vapors. As anyone would expect, the tour was a dreamlike journey into another world.

For starters, I was greeted by a reliable dragon.

We entered a tiny door that opened up into a huge room--just like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

The whole time I felt like I was peeking behind the curtain of a beautiful lady's dressing room as she prepared for a breathtaking performance.

We crept through secret passages ...

... while the music of the world-famous Volbeat thrummed upon the rafters.

And as anyone can plainly see, this space is already filled with art.

Delicious treats tempted ...

... and a confident wizard named Jimmy floated above my head.

Behold a space that cuts the sun into perfectly portioned slivers ...

... and delivers shape and light, light and shape.

Some of MOCA's neighbors are celebrating life ...

...while others are fighting death.

But somehow MOCA, I have a feeling you'll fit in perfectly with all of them.

Thanks for the tour. I had a blast.

Love, Erin

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Mascot

Yesterday the Goat and I attended our first fine art auction at Gray's, which is a enchanted palace here in Cleveland where you'll find fairy godmothers, chalices, secret scrolls, talismans and magical cloaks. I purchased this netsuke.

A netsuke is a hand carved charm that your way-back Japanese dudes used to attach their manpurses to their kimonos. This one may look like a mild-mannered monkey wielding a skull scepter, but man-o-man, does he have secrets!

Not only is he at-the-ready to secure your manpurse or blast away a bad guy with his skull scepter, he's also transforming into a turtle.

AND his eyes pop out in order to facilitate super-netsuke xray vision.

Although I'm not sure who owns who in this budding relationship, the netsuke and I were clearly destined to be together as mine was the sole bid. For the curious, this skull-scepter-wielding-monkey-whose-eyes-pop-out-and-is-turning-into-a-turtle cost less than a one-year membership to the International Netsuke Society (but not much less).

If this guy doesn't bring me good luck, I just don't know what. Now then, any name suggestions?

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Gray ladies down

Deba Gray and Serena Harragin run the funkiest cooliest artiest auction house in Cleveland, but the path that led them here is dotted with tears and quiet triumphs. It wound around the lofty world of upscale art, the production and pryrotechnic end of the film industry, and through that morbid pit of Ground Zero that screamed at the sky after the September 11th attacks.

Gray, left, and Harragin are two of the most inspirational women I've ever had the honor to write about. Their story is featured in this week's fresh water.

You'll find some proper photos over there, but here's a few less professional offerings from yours truly. I don't begin to do it justice, but know that the inside of this auction house, brimming with the stuff of humanity, filled me with pure love.

This WWII propaganda poster will be for sale at Gray's next auction on Nov. 17.

Tiny Japanese netsukes. EXTREME WANT.

One bench, no people.

Who says there's no such thing as a treasure chest?

Everything at Gray's inflated me with breathy sighs.

Gray's is housed in a building that was once a Citroën dealership. um ... HELL YEAH.

Each piece of this silverware from the 1700s is embossed with a Knights Templar insignia. Gray expects the set to garner $15,000 to $20,000. I held one of the forks in my hand and marveled. Each tyne--which had delivered a bite of beef or mutton or pheasant to someone's mouth more than 200 years ago--was sharp as a stitching awl.

The hard hat Deba Gray wore while working at Ground Zero.

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Egg Art Devastates and Comforts

Special for the Owner's Manual
by Portialista Romverolio

O'Brien, Erin. Egg Art. 2011.

Deceptively simple in title, newcomer Erin O'Brien's Egg Art debuted this weekend to an exclusive crowd at efFLUent gALAveria on the city's near upper west side.

Utilitarian in its approach but devastating in delivery, O'Brien at once corrupts and deconstructs the very coexistence of nascence (as in: ovum) and reality (as in: it is what it is) with an exacting eye for cohesion without abandoning minimalism. Eschewing the stability of linear expression, Egg Art comes to fruition within its own texture, at once violating the viewer and comforting her.

Simply stated, O'Brien convolutes convolution.

Egg Art, detail.

Conventional spatial relationships normally enable viewers. Not so with Egg Art, wherein the edge of dimension diminishes in perpetuity: here there are no lines. Definition evaporates before us. Yet we are invited--compelled even--to tumble ineluctably forward, excusing not only O'Brien, but also ourselves as we fall into in the realm of post-modern neo-deconstructionalism.

"The yolk broke," said a charmingly self-deprecating O'Brien. The room erupted in delighted chortles at her quip.

In one instant, Egg Art demands surrender with simplicity through complexity. Behold ironic plenum, empty capacity, unanswered exactitude and pattering ends.

Egg Art is O'Brien's first public offering. Savvy art lovers can only hope it won't be her last.

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Art for everyone's sake

A few days before the LePage Maine public mural uproar ensued, I toured the Intermuseum Conservation Association in order to research this article for Fresh Water.

The Snake Dancer

The ICA conserves and restores art and notable objects. Sounds staid, but that is hopelessly inaccurate. Walking among the conservators and their work was nothing short of magical.

From the edges of the Civil War

Every item in the building entranced me. And when the conservators chimed in with the stories behind the objects, everything in this mystical place came alive.

When my buddy Jane Hammond displayed a Civil War cloak she's restoring, carefully pointing out the frayed knit edges, I felt as if the woman who originally knit it and her war-torn soldier were standing right behind us.

If the cloak haunted me, the salvaged public murals simply took my breath away.

Just watch as the ICA clan unfurls this to-be-restored Louis Grebenak piece. The WPA funded this work and many others for installation at a (now-demolished) public housing project here in Cleveland.

Look at the giant hand, the muscled forearms. I love this thing--love love love it. The full view starts at about 2:04.



Yo Lou? Baby, I'm receiving your broadcast loud and clear.

Every day, the staff of ICA makes a beautiful contribution to the human experience. In the instance of vintage public art, it's about everyone from the WPA clerk who drew up Grebenak's paycheck some 75 years ago to the people who will pass this mural every day when it's fully restored and installed at the new Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority administration building.

This is about all of us, whether you abhor or detest the impetus of the murals or their content. This is who we were and who we are. When a community comes together to celebrate that, it shapes who we will be.

Hey Governor LePage?  Lou Grebenak and I think you're a big turd. 

Yeah, yeah.

I guess I'll stay here in Cleveland and hang out with the good guys.

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