As part of the Star Neighborhood Development planning for the Star Complex and surrounding one mile radius, I have been planning the redevelopment of the current Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Building and land, on East Boulevard in Cleveland, shown below (full size image here).

My friend Katrina will be guest bartending with Thomas Barbric' the regular bartender at Light Bistro (formerly Parker's) on Thursday, June 26th from 4:30 - 8:00 (Happy Hour) all tips will go to the Cleveland Animal Protective League.  There will be complimentary Tapas as well as a few other appetizers for $5. 

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Maybe you were there at Gray's Auctioneers Inaugural Auction on Sunday June 17th? Doors opened at 10:30 am for one last opportunity to preview the over 200 lots of fine art, furniture and decorative items, and by noon, auction time, the room was packed with excited bidders.  Some of the people in the audience were old pros and others were new to the auction world.  This first auction had something to suit  everyone's taste and price range. Those who attended were glad they did!

With this June 15, 2007, Inner Circle Open House, it is safe to say the NEO Excellence Roundtables are back, as this week we will feature a very unique discussion and performance by Cleveland Orchestra violist Eliesha Nelson, who is in the middle of a sophisticated recording project at George Lucas' Skywalker Sound, in Marin, California. Eliesha will discuss with us how she decided to get into the "recording business" and how the community can help her project succeed - and the purpose of this roundtable is to help Eliesha's project succeed.

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This fabulous biennial extravaganza returns Thursday, May 24 - Monday, May 28 in all its splendor. Tour the designer gardens and fill your mind with dreams and practical ideas of what your own garden could be. Learn about the latest trends in horticulture and flower arranging and take the opportunity to buy live plants, and horticulture related products and gifts from around the world.

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Bill Callahan and I are pleased to offer a last moment opportunity to join an important conversation just beginning on making NEO a global leader in the use of Free Open Source Software, with the man who wrote the Open Source Definition, Bruce Perens. Bruce is Vice President of Developer Relations and Policy for FOSS-related SourceLabs, of Seattle. NEO is fortunate to have a local connection with Bruce, as the Director of Marketing for SourceLabs, Athena Diamantis, lives in this region. Digital Vision Director Bill Callahan and East Cleveland CIO Abu Alli met with Bruce and Athena last week to discuss how to make NEO a world FOSS leader, and we decided that is a topic deserving much broader and more open attention. So tomorrow we continue growing the dialog.

Join us, if you may... 8 AM breakfast tomorrow at the Juniper Grill.

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It is always exciting to see powerful uses of the technology we use for realneo - Drupal. Derek recently pointed out that the New York Observer uses Drupal for their web presence and I just found a posting on the website of the originator and keeper of the Drupal flame, Dries Buytaert, that Ozzy uses Drupal - his label Sony uses Drupal. I'd heard that about Sony, but hadn't connected it with any of their sites before... this...

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Friday night I attended a reception and lecture at SPACES Gallery for select Cleveland organizations with interest in urban planning and sustainability. The current exhibition at Spaces, Shrinking Cities, explores strategies for post-industrial urban areas and should be of great interest to anyone interested in urban planning and sustainability. Terry Schwarz, Senior Planner at the Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio, was to give a tour of the exhibition. My affiliation? I am an energy ambassador at Case. I am also an art historian, and although there are some witty, beautiful and innovative works represented in the exhibition the theme and the messages of the show truly over power the aesthetics. One could easily forget they are in an art exhibition.

Wednesday night's lecture at the Cleveland Clinic with Peter B. Lewis and Frank Gehry was everything I had expected and more. I doubt an audience member left without a new appreciation for the  positive,  transformative power of architecture, friendship and collaboration. It was inspiring just to be in the same room with two people who had made such great contributions to architecture. It was also inspiring to see two people, two friends, who worked so well together as client and architect. A testament to Gehry's fame, the lecture had very few visuals – only a few slides of his most famous buildings such as the Disney Concert Hall in LA, The Experience Museum Project in Seattle, the Guggenheim Bilboa and the unbuilt Peter B. Lewis residence were shown.  Peter Lewis and Frank Gehry each spent 15 minutes discussing some of the highlights of their lives and careers and then they took questions from the audience.

We live in "Forest City" so Arbor Day should be an important holiday in Cleveland. Here is one idea how you might celebrate ...

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Cleveland Clinic, Ideas for Tomorrow - a speaker series, Free event featuring: Peter B. Lewis,Chairman of Progressive Corporation & Frank Gehry, world-renowned architect

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Claes and I were picking up Evelyn at the University Circle Arabica Sunday around 5 and I heard one of my favorite sounds flowing over from my favorite area spot - the Barking Spider - roots jazz. I knew who I would find there... the finest roots jazz musician I know in town, George Foley... so we headed right over. George plays and sings, solo and with many area musicians, in every imaginable combo, all over town, and it is always a fun, uplifting and inspiring experience.

The question "Am I possible?" is the beating heart of Get Rid of Yourself, and it echoes throughout Bernadette Corporation's existence on the borders of fashion and art.  The group is influenced by Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, and Jean-Luc Godard. They are also interested in new immigrant cultures surrounding their loft "headquarters" on the Bowery in New York City. Bernadette Corporation's interventionist projects function as a critique of our global culture, which constructs identity through consumption and branding.

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Claude Monet. Poplars, Pink Effect, 1891
36 7/8 x 29 1/8, Private Collection

Wednesday night I attended a lecture at the Cleveland Museum of Art, part of the Monet Lecture Series that accompanies the exhibition Monet in Normandy. So far I have attend all but the first in this eight lecture series. I found the previous lectures all to be very entertaining and enlightening. I feel I know a lot about Monet now -- I read the exhibition catalog and gallery labels and I have listened to the audio tour, but I am finding that Claude Monet is a truly fascinating figure and it seems there is always something more to learn about him. Paul Tucker is a  professor at the University of Massachusetts and a renowned scholar on Monet and Impressionist painting. His lecture was titled "Monet, Modernism, Normandy, and La France" -- a title I believe was meant to cover all the bases. What I found most interesting about Professor Tucker's hour long lecture was his insights on some of Monet's late works that become narrow and vertically oriented (such as Poplars, Pink Effect 1891) and the role of religion in Monet's life and work. 

I received an informative email this afternoon from Richard McDougald Enty, Planning Team Leader, Programming & Planning Department, Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, about some of their Transit Oriented Development initiatives and vision. It is very exciting to see this as an active subject for discussion and planning here. I am a strong supporter of Transit Oriented Development and consider it the core foundation on which we should rebuild the City of Cleveland and surrounding suburbs.  Here is the vision from RTA:

This week's edition of Dee Perry's arts & culture television program Applause!, on WVIZ, features a segment on REALNEO... so I'd like to invite all the friends of realneo to join us for a screening party for the first broadcast of the program, Thusday, March 29, from 7:30 - 8:00 PM, at the great A.J. Rocco's Cafe, at 816 Huron Road, by East 9th Street. As a special treat, I was pleased to learn that A.J. Rocco's had already planned a very cool and complimentary event for that evening - Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman will be the guest bartender from 6-8 PM.

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Stephen Marley (son of reggae legend Bob Marley) play the House of Blues.
Visit Stephen Marley's website to hear his music and learn more.

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I was quite honored to be contacted, a few weeks ago, by the producer of one of my favorite television programs, Dee Perry's "Applause", asking for information about REALNEO. Seems he was doing research on the spectacular Convivium 33 Gallery, which we have featured extensively on REALNEO, covering Christopher Pekoc here and Clarence Van Duzer here (photos from which were featured in Cleveland Magazine), so REALNEO came up in search results. The producer saw REALNEO as in interesting source of insight on arts and culture in NEO and suggested to his staff doing a segment on Applause about REALNEO. Even though we scheduled the interview, this seemed very abstract until I just saw a promotion on WVIZ for the show, featuring a scrolling view of the REALNEO home page.

A Spring Suzuki Workshop will be held at the Windermere United Methodist Church on Euclid Avenue, from April 9 - 13th, in East Cleveland. Our guest faculty will be Arvilla Rovit.

  Arvilla Rovit has Bachelor's and Master's degrees from The Juilliard School where she studied with Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory and Hsin-yun Huang.  A graduate of the internationally acclaimed School for Strings Teacher Training Program (New York), a two-year apprentice program in Suzuki Pedagogy, and having attended numerous Teacher Training Workshops, Ms. Rovit is Suzuki Teacher Certified to teach violin and viola.  Her Suzuki viola teachers have included William Preucil, Sr., and Betsy Stuen-Walker.  Upon graduating from Juilliard Arvilla was awarded a Special Award for Achievement by Drs. Marilyn Pearl and Norman Roland.

3rd Annual Art Fur Animals Benefit & Auction, all proceeds go directly to the care of animals at the City of Cleveland Kennel.
I went to this even last year and it was a lot of fun. Various artists painted about 30 ceramic dogs that were sold by auction. There were other types of art (prints, photos) being auctioned too. The low admission price brought in a fun crowd. There were free appetizers and a cash wine bar. I liked how the whole event was done at a very low cost allowing most of the money to go to the animals. But, what I enjoyed most was seeing all that creativity. I bought a dog with scenes of the Mediterranean painted on serveral areas of his anatomy. This year should be no less interesting!

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