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The Cauldron, Cleveland State University Thursday, November 17 - Sunday, November 20, 1994 by Ken Gradomski, Artist's Art Review The most controversial (and best attended) art show in Greater Cleveland opens this Friday, November 18. It may even be the most controversial show in the country since commentary over the 1992 show went nationwide. The local electronic media, especially one Mr. Feagler, used small, poorly done outline drawings of a missing girl to incite a bonfire of indignation because he thought he understood public aesthetics. Free speech was the issue and perhaps rage that art could be something besides pretty pictures (Art is more than just pretty pictures...) "Dick Who?" by R.C. Naso, is one of the more controversial pieces at this year's People's Art Show. The painting portrays Pee Dee columnist Dick Feagler as part of a penis. Mr. Feagler has been quite critical of the show in years past.

The Plain Dealer, June 9, 1995 by Helen Cullinan, Plain Dealer Art Critic R.C. Naso has been painting up a storm for months in preparation for tonight's Tremont ArtWalk. He will have shows of his work at four of the nine participating galleries. Most will be from his "Famous Faces" series, of small enamel-on-board paintings, measuring about 12 by 10 inches. "This is the most fun I've had painting in years," said Naso, who picked up on today's widespread celebrity craze with his wildly colorful, personality-plus portraits with frames that he paints to match. "The best part is that people love them." The Bohemia Club at 900 Literary Road will show Naso's "Famous Bohemians," portraits of artists ranging from Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso to Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt. The Literary Cafe, 1031 Literary Road, will show the literary figures: Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens and others. Edison's Pub, 2372 Professor Avenue, will show his portraits of Superman, John Wayne, Alfred E. Newman, Wonder Woman and others from his "Superheroes and Villains" group. Naso's own Studio Gallery at 2271 Professor Avenue will show mainly his large abstract drip paintings.

From the Cleveland Free Times, July 9-15, 1997 by Frank Green Community-based work is all the rage now in the art world. Its popularity with arts presenters may result from the availability of funding. While most government and corporate arts funding is being drastically cut, grants for "community-based art" are increasing. This type of funding is earmarked for activities for "disempowered" interest groops - senior citizens, "at risk" youth, gays, women, Hispanics. Too often, the quality of the artwork produced seems less important than the neediness of the people making the art. Ironically, artistic communities are ignored in this framework. In neighborhoods across America artists have formed communities that transcend race, ethnicity, gender, age and sexual preferance. Rather than defining themselves in such terms, individuals in these communities identify as artists. Yet no art funding exhists specifically to support communities such as these. Cleveland has several communities of artists, including one based in Tremont, and leave it to Cleveland State University Art Gallery to buck the current funding climate in order to showcase this local artistic community. Four by Eight, an exhibition on view through July 25, was organized by Tim Herron with help from R.C.Naso, both Tremont artists, and features work by 28 friends, neighbors, drinking buddies. The few who dont live there have participated in the neighborhood's art scene for years. Although they often exhibit together in local bars and galleries, these artists have little in common stylistically. Regarding this diversity as a sign of their community's strength the organizers devised a wide-open theme for the exhibit. Artists were asked to submit a single work in any media and style, on any theme, as long as it measured four by eight feet. The exhibition features single prototypical works in these dimensions by some of Tremont's most consistently interesting artists - a neon sculpture bt Jeffrey Chiplis, a cement casting by Jeeson Pak, an assemblage by David Cudney, a conceptual installation by Bruce Edwards, and paintings by Michael Hurley and Ben Parsons. Unfortunately, these accomplished artists are not well-served by this exhibit. The theme's openness results in a lack of cohesion, and the show ends up with the same problems as many community-based exhibitions. Valuing inclusivity over quality, and diversity over clarity od focus, the organizers have put together a weak exhibition that resembles a smaller version of CSU's biennial, democratic, uncurated Peoples Art Show. There's mediocre and even sophomoric work included and the more accomplishes work fails to add up to more than the sum of its parts. The exhibits strongest section features thematically related paintings by Naso, Herron, George Kocar, and Ken Nevadomi. All four contribute dense, panoramic paintings that blend various representational styles to create visionary self-portraits of the artists working in their studios. Naso's Studio 96 is stylistically influenced by surrealism. The artist sits dead center above a reflected darker double of himself, his back is turned on a highway to heaven, in a space that's simultaneously interior and exterior expansive and contained. The tools of his trade - paintbrush, light, six-pack, cigarette, - spread out before him, he calmly receives his vision, while other artisis agonize and paint and drink and run all around him. Everything is depicted behind a series of semitransparent frames (the studio windows) so that the whole panorama look like it's been unfolded, a hand fan opened up, a pack of cards unfolded, a magic trick. While Naso's painting is architectural, angle and line, Timothy Herron's sumptuously fluid painting, Hidden Danger, an undulating current of organic forms, is more expressionistic. It's as if Naso depicted the linear mind of the artist, and Herron the fluid soul. Herron's rendering of his face, floating off in a corner, is far more evocative than the other three self portraits. He depicts himself squeezing a tube of paint, releasing a serpent that wraps itself around a watery world of seaweed and surfers and fish. Eyes, windows of the soul, are everywhere,the skin of transformation, flowers of vision rising out of the void. These two pieces together with Nevadomi's Famished Muse with its slide viewing cherubs, and Kocars Full Tilt Boogie, in the artist's trademark cubist cartoon style, anchor the exhibit and painting becomes its strongest suit. There are strong paintings by Hurley, Parsons, Anna Arnold, Judith Brandon, and Shirley Aley Campbell. I hope Cleveland State University will continue to support area artists by allowing them to organize exhibitions of their peers.

From the Cleveland Edition September 8, 1988 by Amy Sparks What do you do if your a frustrated local artist seeing millions of "cultural" dollars being thrown to the same few causes and celebrities, when you are displaced from your warehouse studio because some developer decides it would make a better tourist attraction, when there are only a handfull of places which truly nourish local artists and want to promote their work? What do you do if you are unconnected, nearly broke and disgusted? You open your own gallery. Which is exactly what artist R.C.Naso has done with a group of like minded friends in Tremont, site of the cities fastest growing artist community. No they didn't round up an influential board of trustees, garner a grant from the Cleveland Foundation or the Gund brothers, design a fancy logo and marketing strategy. They just moved into an abandoned building, got their tools and buckets out and started to make it habitable. "I dont have any commercial aspirations" says Naso. "I just want to paint and have a place for artists to show their work. For anyone who thinks Cleveland's art scene needs a shot of adrenalin, this is it. Called simply the Studio/Gallery, its first show opens September 9th with an appropriately gritty group of artists, headlined by enfant terrible Robert Ritchie, mixed media guru Steven B. Smith, painter Ed Raffel and photographer Laura Stuart. But dont expect to pick up any lovely items that match the couch or are perfect for Christmas presents. For those you have to travel to Murray Hill. The artwork like the artists and the gallery itself, reflects its surroundings. To understand these artists you have to understand the raw streets of Tremont. You have to understand why Naso worked in the flats ten years ago and now wont even venture down there. As has happened in New York 's East Village and now in the Bronx and Harlem, the pattern of a city's redevelopment begins with the artists moving into undesirable neighborhoods, fixing up old buildings, living and working there. It isnt just because it is cheap, the neighborhoods also have an aesthetic charm built into their decay and neglect. It happened in the Flats and in the Warehouse District, now white-washed and redeveloped for the gentry and tourists. But the burgeoning artists community in Tremont sees it not as a stopping place, but as home. "Ten years ago I was involved with the Riverbed Artists Association" says Naso, "which claimed more than 100 artists working and /or living in the flats. It was a rough place, back then. There were 40 studios down there, and while there are still studios (now called the Left Bank) all the original people were displaced." Many artists moved to Tremont, but to keep the spectre of gentrification and rising rents off their backs, many have decided to buy a home for the first time. "Hopefully," says Naso "we can finally call this home." But how can a struggling little gallery keep itself afloat without incoming cash? "Were not looking for money," claims Naso, "We don't have any overhead. Whatever an artist sells we take a 25% commission which pays for mailing and wine for the openings." Artists who want a show can just come in and set up, and do whatever they please, as long as they leave the gallery the way they found it. Artists, mostly from the neighborhood, have already booked the space through January. While Naso and the others are clearly excited by this venture, there is an undercurrent of tension and anger fueling their efforts. While some complain about the power of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the lack of education about contemporary art issues, the conserative taste of most Clevelanders, the questionable use of art consultants (why don't people just buy what they like?),virtually everyone complains about the lack of adequate arts coverage by the media, this paper included. Perhaps part of the reason is that for the past ten years SPACES gallery has been the only artist-run alternative space showing local and regional work. In any other city there are reams of tiny storefront galleries, usually run by and for artists, struggling to survive. So what will you find opening night at the Studio/Gallery? A couple coats of fresh paint, a newly hung sign, cheap wine, Ritchie's amazingly transformed bicycles in the window and a sense of accomplishment and vitality. One whole wall will be given over to a collage of all four artists work, crammed together and facing the street. Junk-master and savior of detritus Smith will be showing some new pieces, no doubt difficult and uncompromising. Ed Raffel's photo-realistic paintings-for which he has won special mention in the last three CMA May shows-won't be featured this time. He's abandoned that style for a more abstract expressionistic one. Photographer Stuart is known for her hard-edged urban scenes, and for this show she has been shooting in the neighborhood, a place rife with images. And those who know Ritchie have come to expect a certin tone in his work. But his newer pieces, mostly mixed media and intricately painted windows and doors, show a meticulous side od Ritchie not often seen. Expect the show to be refreshingly irreverent, and difficult. But expect some excitement as well.