Midtown Brews "Branding Stories of Humanity: Art, Advocacy and Global Networks"

Midtown Brews Conversation Transcription
Thursday November 6, 2008
“Branding Stories of Humanity: Art, Advocacy and Global

Networks”
Illustration: “advocacy,” by Illustrator, Ralph Solonitz
Links:
http://www.livestream.com/midtownbrews/video?clipId=flv_b019737c-
3dcc-40c6-bfd7-bbca9f2a37d7
http://www.livestream.com/midtownbrews/video?clipId=flv_be9150a8-
5201-4831-9e00-723772d9d8e5
http://www.livestream.com/midtownbrews/video?clipId=flv_35196360
86345409931
Gloria Ferris: I want to welcome everybody to Midtown Brews

conversation. There is somebody missing tonight and that’s George
with his pod casting equipment so this one will not be pod cast tonight
he is working late on a project for his day job. So, we’re going to go
strictly with video tonight which is good, but you need to make sure to
project so that, remember Speech 101? Or your Drama classes, or
whatever, so that we can project. And before we start and talk about
our topic tonight we usually talk a little bit about Midtown Brews and
I’m going to ask Dennis Coughlin, one of the Founders of I-Open to
Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 1
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic
Networks (I-Open) 4415 Euclid Ave 3rd Fl Cleveland, Ohio 44103 USA
explain a little bit about why I-Open became a partner with Midtown
Brews and how we’re all here tonight.
Dennis Coughlin: Good evening I’m Dennis Coughlin from I-Open. I-

Open’s corporate name is Institute for Open Economic Networks.
We’re a non-profit corporation begun in 2005. And we started
because we believe there is a need for new behaviors in economic
development in Cleveland, in particular and in the United States in
general. So, we are actually working across the United States
teaching new behaviors such as collaborative behavior, talking with
each other and being open and honest and the like. But, we do teach
what’s known as Open Source Economic Development, which is
based on sharing best practices, and open and honest
communication with each other. Midtown Brews began and it grew
out of a program called Midtown Mornings. We were working with
entrepreneurs in the Midtown area of Cleveland, which is Midtown-St
Clair-Superior, so we are sort of a parent of it, but actually its on its
own and does whatever it wants to do. Again, my analogy is it’s like a
child, but actually its grown into something wonderful – a grownup
that does whatever it wants to do. We’re still associated with it and
we still think it’s one of our…and so anyway that’s what we do and we
do work across the United States in Open Source Economic
Development and helping entrepreneurs get started.
Gloria Ferris: Okay, well, thank you all for coming and this has been
kind of a stressful, hectic kind of week for a lot of people, in fact even
our featured guest tonight is coming off a one hundred page program
review so we’re going to give her a little bit of rest, but all of you,
introduce yourselves as we always do. Now, the teacher in me, but
our topic tonight is “Branding Stories of Humanity: Art, Advocacy and
Global Networks.” So, I have three questions, you can answer any
one of them or just say, “Hi, I’m so and so…” and move on to the next
person. There’s no pressure here. So, the first question is, think of an
example of a piece of art that has spoken to you, something that has
really spoken to you and has an moral issue, or just a beauty issue,
or however that would be. The other one was, “Why did this Midtown
Brews intrigue you and why did you come tonight?” – well, that’s the
third question – “Who are you and why did you come to the Midtown
Brews?” So, we’re going to start with our host, Andy Halko, the
founder of Insivia and whom we always thank for hosting this
Midtown Brews.
Andy Halko: Well, all right, you’re putting me on the spot, thank you
everybody for coming to Midtown Brews. The topic…I think it’s an
interesting one, I’m not necessarily an expert in it, but obviously we
do marketing and branding, so I understand that part, but I think that
we’re dealing with advocacy and social issues that branding is hugely
important because it can shape what that issue is. I don’t know, I
think our recent election is a pretty good example of a good brand
and those sorts of issues so, that’s really all I have to say.
Gloria Ferris: That’s a good point. [Unintelligible open discussion]

Ralph? To you, Sir. Well, wait a minute, I want to do a little intro to
Ralph because Ralph is a cartoonist who, if you go to the Midtown
Brews site you will often see the social commentary that he puts
there through his art works. I’m interested to hear what you have to
say Ralph.
Ralph Solonitz: Well, I love doing the political cartoons but what you
call a branding or logo I have found to come up with an identity for an
event or an issue is very powerful and I have done a few of them
where I don’t think everybody remembers, “Till They All Come
Home”? During the Gulf war? With a double ribbon on that. But that
to me is a military support group button in front sort of symbolizes
that. When the Browns left Cleveland I had “Dog Gone” - that came
out of it. It seems like if you can come up with a visual…after doing a
lot of the Kent State commemorations…so, like the May 4th Task
Force comes up with a theme and then I’ll design something that
goes with that theme. But the visual is something everybody identifies
with and I find that if you put it on a button, people put it on their
chest, they say, “This is how I feel about this issue.”
Dennis Althar: And, if you feel strongly you can get a tattoo.

Ralph Solonitz: Exactly.
Dennis Althar: It’s just a permanent button.
Gloria Ferris: Okay, Dennis, now would you like to introduce

yourself?
Dennis Althar: My art piece is my speakers…Virtual reality

speakers.
Gloria Ferris: This is Dennis Althar, the inventor of the Copernicus

Speaker System.
Dennis Althar: Reach out, it’s real. Reach out and touch them. I
came because of the pizza.
Gloria Ferris: Okay. Sir?
Mark Kohn: My turn? Mark Kohn, with Hiram College and I co-
founded…I talked to you? The Center for Literature, Medicine and
Biomedical Humanities. So, I live here, I live in Shaker Heights, in
town and interested in hearing what folks are doing, if anybody heard
WCPN, the last two Friday nights, Radio Play was my most recent
project. Kurt Vonnegut play called, “Fortitude” …that’s some of the
work I’m doing. I’m particularly interested in the intersection of the
arts, bioethics and citizen engagement in terms of envisioning out
biotech and bioscience future.
Gloria Ferris: MaryBeth, I’m going to hop over to you.
MaryBeth Mathews: I’m MaryBeth Matthews…one of the things I do,

I’m a teacher for the Cleveland School District, I teach at Max Hayes
Vocational High School, which is an industrial trade school in
Cleveland. I’ve been teaching forever and something else I’m also
involved in and partner in a small manufacturing company called
Work Holding Tools and Work Holding Tools for C&C machines. Let’s
see art…I think the most moved I’ve ever been by any work of art
was the Viet Nam Memorial. That moved me to tears and I could not
stop.
Gloria Ferris: Laura?
Laura Wright: Hi, I’m Laura Wright and I’m a web designer here at
Insivia and my brain’s been kind of going non stop since I started
thinking about this topic…but I’d say that art that particularly moves
me and its usually situated in a particular context so, right now I’m
thinking of listening to this one song driving through Ithaca…and it
was just really pleasant, so it’s the relationship between where you
are and place and where it is you are observing something and taking
part in something.
Gloria Ferris: Okay. Dennis, now I’m going to come back to you and
now you’re speaking as Dennis, an individual.
Dennis Coughlin: Hi, I’m Dennis Coughlin and I’m actually a seventh
generation Clevelander and so I grew up living in the University Circle
area, so all the museums and all of that wonderful landscaping and
buildings and everything else, sculpture, so there isn’t anyone thing
that I find…but I do like everything that goes on in University Circle,
Parade the Circle is just such a wonderful thing to see. All the things
that are created there and the involvement of people and its that civic
engagement piece in art that I find really quite moving.
Gloria Ferris: Susan?
Susan Altshuler: I’m Susan Altshuler and I’m also a Director of I-

Open. I’m here because, well, I’m here because I’m part of the
program but I think, well we started this program to bring people
together to talk about creative industries, technology and energy, that
was our first focus and since we began we get some many wonderful
programs and so many great people here and I think this is such a
wonderful place to learn new information and everyone’s been so
generous to inform us about things they’re working on and we would
like people to continue coming to these programs but working outside
of these programs to get things going where they’re interested and
find out what other people are interested in so they can start getting
projects going so they can start building Northeast Ohio. So, I feel
that this is an important platform to have.
Gloria Ferris: Kevin?
Kevin Cronin: Kevin Cronin, lawyer in Midtown and active in theater

as well as Cleveland Bikes, a small non-profit that works on
promoting cycling in Northeast Ohio as effective transportation,
healthy recreation, as well as sports. For my art, I’ll choose, Picasso
and his Bull; which, if you’ve ever seen, all it is, is a bicycle seat and
the handlebars turned up from the horns and it was remarkable feat
of creativity to look at something so mundane and simple as a bicycle
seat and decide that what it really is a bull’s head, but he – anybody
who looks at it afterward realizes that he is obviously correct. So I
was always amazed by that simple leap of creativity and think that
that creativity that we’re all very capable of is a very beautiful thing.
Gloria Ferris: Thank you. Toni?
Toni Chanakas: Toni Chanakas. Graphic design. So, for me when

you are talking about logo – that’s what I love to do and that’s what
identifies people with a certain look. And I think of, go back to the
computer, the Apple, the Mac, and FedEx – are great logos. Artwork
that moves me…again, I think that Picasso, but I like the La Vie, the
blue, the big blue…because there are so many things, concepts
within that piece. That’s what I like.
Gloria Ferris: The man sitting beside her?
Mark Batson: Mark Batson, I am a life long Clevelander, but I’ve

been engaged with I-Open since it first started about three, four years
ago. I’ve been working in health care for the past four or five years,
health care and technology. Right now I am Executive Director of the
Policy Bridge, a local public policy and think tank. When I think about
art though, I think, in response to your questions about art, I think
Renaissance artists…a friend and I just on Election Day, you can
really get some neat shots of Cleveland with 70 degree weather, fall
colors, t-shirt, sunshine. So, those were my treasure shots. You may
not get shots of people in shorts and all, but…
Gloria Ferris: Frank?
Frank Mills: Hi, I’m Frank Mills and I want to apologize for leaving
early but I have a meeting I have to go to. I’m an urban psychologist
slash psycho-geographer turned organizing. I’m here because a
certain young lady bugged me over there behind the camera.
Actually, when I walked in – the art – it was interesting, because you
asked the question, I was drawn to the picture up there of celebration
– for a number of weeks, I’ve just kind of been in that kind of mood all
week so that just kind of…
Gloria Ferris: Jon?
Jon Eckerle: My name’s Jon Eckerle and I’m first a realtor part of the
day and the other part I work on the Observer Project which
manifests itself in the Heights Observer, Lakewood Observer. And,
it’s really not a newspaper, its about some things that have been
influenced, this meeting itself…Valdis Krebs, Ed Morrison, Hunter
Morrison, Richard Florida… about developing communities through
social networking software and developing platforms and
infrastructure for people to interact on a hyper level and the passion
is developing a sense of community, fighting sprawl and the tension
that draws us all wonderfully in our world, makes it so that you don’t
know that name on the street. And so what it’s all about is trying to
use the facility of the local infrastructure on the web to influence real
life, communication, face-to-face things that are happening. Getting
out from behind the computer. And it’s just a fascinating concept that
is really just happening here. It’s like an advertising agent target and
it’s just growing and growing to the point where we’re going to be able
to need a lot of input to be able to pull it off. But, about art…what I
want to say, you know like developing the artists XX17:46 tends to be
fragmented …the art community, it’s the same thing, but what I
particularly enjoy is, art like at Millennium Park in Chicago, they have
great public works art, that you see kids running through water and
they have a giant, I’m sorry the name escapes me, this giant egg that
– the Bean – just a mere bean, looks like a mirrored brain that’s about
two stories tall, and everyone who comes there they’re playing with it
but they’re also interacting with the person next to them. I think we
need to develop lots of different kinds of structures because the art
that comes between two people is really what’s a lot times what’s
precious and what’s missing in our local life.
Gloria Ferris: Bill?
Bill MacDermott: My name’s Bill MacDermott, I’m an alternative

energy ‘crazy’ whose also interested in solar and wind. Art moves
me. I don’t know to XX because I don’t know how to answer, because
I don’t know where good design stops and art begins. Do we need
artwork? Well? Do we need the computer? Well? Do we do graphic
design? Well? All of it becomes art, and, I’ve seen my share of
artwork. One of the ones that was most moving was when I was
recently at Kentucky Knob, and that’s famous and just a drive from
here. It’s one of the houses that my friend Lloyd Wight. The person
who owns it - and I don’t know exactly who he is – but he is a
gentleman, a person with some money, who lives, artistic, XX the
gentleman who owns it XXX20:05 acquired a bunch of pieces of art –
large art – and put them in the XX so that when you come down from
seeing this XX you come down through the woods and there’s some
pieces of artwork along the way and then there is artwork up in that
XX. Some of the things I saw there were most of your XX so how
things work is just as interesting as the fact that they are there. One
of the most interesting is the Rips sculpture, small XX and they go up
about six feet and they kind of touch each other because they’re
anchored in they’re own special concrete, the resonance sets up, the
tapping, the noise, sends a resonance like a sitar where you have all
those strings that resonate as the originals apply and you get this
whole humm from the fact that some of these are touching. There’s
also a piece of the Berlin Wall there – that wasn’t just a piece thrown
in, [mbrews nov pt2] XX because I have pictures of but the actual
piece that XX and graffiti XX here’s this that was part of the Berlin
Wall, now let’s display this piece XX design, taking one thing that had
one function and turning it into another function. So, I was also
thinking that the art that was back in the 60’s XX whole bunch of
public art there, and coming down here tonight I passed XX and to
get on a soap box and XX art has a habit of pushing technology XX
various things and what I would love to see XX but you really need to
see something XX I’ll sponsor a competition, I’ll give XX a number of
students XX – It’s just a suggestion.
Gloria: Tim?
Tim Ferris: Well, what a group. It’s amazing, the depth and breadth
we have here. I’m Tim Ferris and I’m married to Gloria. By profession,
I’m a broker and a planner, I’m in the ultimate liberal art profession in
that I have to go with that and take money and life style and health
and integrate everything, connect everybody. And, it’s not just about
money anymore, it’s not just about planning – it’s about what you’re
talking about. And I get so much out of these sessions and
everybody’s been so good the last two, just kind of blew me away I
want to keep the rift going. I don’t really know any art in particular that
moves me but all art moves me I love graphic art. I remember in 2005
before we were in competition, I was carrying around the Blue Robot
card – the fabulous Blue Robot card – and just in awe of the little dots
that made this robot. How long did I carry it around? Half a year? The
same thing: “Look at this!” “Look at this!” I love the XX stuff. Regular
commercial graph card. And Bill brings up a good point: Where does
the commercial stuff end and the true art start? I think it’s interesting.
When you talk about Dennis’s story with the speakers, those huge
seven-foot speakers and actual take the sound – and I’m not a music
or sound person, but they put the sound in the middle of your head
somewhere. But, as I said, what a bunch.
Dennis Althar: You know the best compliment they can make in
electronics? Is if your stuff is the “state of the art.”

Gloria Ferris: Yes, that’s true. How interesting. Technology, creative
industries, kind of come together…“state of the art.” I mean to ask
Michael whom he is and then I’m going to introduce our guest for
tonight. And, she is going to introduce some of her students. But, I
think Michael is a good segue into Pat, because he is a Professor at
CIA, the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Michael Lehto: Thank you. My name is Michael Lehto. I teach at the

Institute of Art and I do teach communications now but one of my
interests in actually in fine art and particularly how I think some of the
XX considerations are how art and advocacy really works because
there are so much subtleties that came out of really the kind of
interface art but also the subtle stuff that happen too and I think that
that interplay between that of what is sort of shocking versus what is
so subtle of XX for instance, a very subtle piece that, but an amazing
template piece that you can enjoy on many levels. And that’s where I
find myself a lot, thinking about those things and trying to work at that
zone. A particular piece that really spoke to me was the Carl Polk
social XX that happened just this year, which was, if anybody
remembers it, was these bulletin boards, forty foot bulletin boards all
over the city and it was created from public input and so the public
came and gave ten words to describe the city and he chose out of a
random lottery he chose these things and he put the bulletin boards
up all over the City for a pretty measly $50,000 – that’s how much the
project cost – to do and he made an impact all over the City and had
a web technology presence as a part of it. So there were many
components that went into this thing to describe the City you need to
live here and to create a certain art space for that to live in around the
City.
Gloria Ferris: You know what, Betsey; I’m sorry Pat I said I would go
to you. Betsey, how about you stepping out from behind the camera
and I am sure you have an example of art. You may have one very
close to home to your heart.
Betsey Merkel: Hi, I’m Betsey Merkel and I’m with I-Open. Let’s see,
I’m also a trained harpist and working for quite a long time in a
different form of art – performance art in music and did extensive
work in working with small ensembles, touring. And so, my arts cape
is really audio. But I’m really, really intrigued with and really awed at
the awesome depth of knowledge, as Tim was saying, and diversity
of knowledge that’s here. I think that our opportunity as a region is to
invest in the exploration of the intersections of all of these different
wonderful sectors that come together, whether it’s art and technology,
or if it’s visual arts, audio arts, interactive technologies with civic
engagement…to really more sharply and clearly define what
community priorities are. What are they for a region? And I’m
convinced that they’ll be transformative and that’s what we should all
be investing in.
Gloria Ferris: I’m going to bring this over to Pat very quickly, but
there’s one thing I saw today on one of our – I think everybody here
looks at REALNEO at one time or another, and Laura posted today
that our City is listed as the fourteenth best literate City in America, of
the top Cities.
Tim Ferris: Is this Laura the librarian? Yes, but who posted it?
Gloria Ferris: Norm, did…While, our library was rated number one
and we had three libraries in Ohio in the count. Cleveland, was
number one…
Jon Eckerle: Lakewood?
Gloria Ferris: No, this was another study. Literacy. How literate a city
is. I think it was Cleveland – the copulation of all the libraries. Toledo
was number three and Cincinnati was number five. So, and I think
literacy comes – you can tell – the depth about knowledge about art.
Because being a literate city does not mean you only read, you put it
all in music, art, the visual arts and tonight we are very lucky to have
Pat Fallon, the head of the Art Department, she’s the head of the Art
Department at Ursuline College. And, our topic, as I said before is
“Branding Stories of Humanity: Art, Advocacy and Global Networks.”
And I believe that Pat would first like to introduce her students who
came with her to join in this conversation. And then I would like her to
talk about why art and advocacy is important to her.
Pat Fallon: Well, I’m really going to talk about what I just heard and
respond to you…Kristen [Baumlier], who spoke at the same
conference I was at in New York is kind of a mover and shaker and I
have with me some students who I hope will also do some of the
talking. This is my mignon, my work study student, my advisee for
years, Stephanie Kasza, she’s a big shot senior and next to her is
Jaime Hall who is a print maker, a painter, she does ceramics as well.
And then next to her is Susan Gibbs who is a phenomenal artist and
also like myself a Grandmother, so, we run the gamut and we’re all
doing advocacy in our work in some way or another. I am amazed at
this group because one of the things that we’re really proud of at
Ursuline is that we do not define a line between what we view as
personal art, commercial art and fine art – it’s art, if it’s good it’s art
and if it’s bad there’s nothing worse than bad art. So, we are very
strong on that. I also believe, you were talking about literacy in
Cleveland, I think our library is the third largest, especially as a
research library – this is our downtown library. The next one is
Boston, not New York, and then the next one is the Library of
Congress. We have a phenomenal library system, but literacy for us
is visual and so I understand the button concept of…I believe strongly
that the image is extremely powerful. And I also believe that the
image can be word and be as powerful. Margaret Cooper does
incredible stuff with words that make you, that are juxtaposition, that
make you think in a different way. I went to a conference of the
College Arts Association in February in New York – I go to any
conference in New York City – and they, a gentleman was speaking –
we were supporting him with buttons, I’m sorry I didn’t wear mine, this
is “Art is not Terrorism.” Did I pronounce “terrorism” right? A long
story short, they were in California, and they were organic growers,
they were trying to grow all of these plants to show that it is much
better than having tomatoes that you make perfect in little glass
houses or something, but anyway, on E-Bay he put all of this exotic
equipment that he had in his house and his wife was working very
late one night and they were doing this to get it out and he gets in, in
the morning and he goes to wake her up, and she fell asleep, and
she was a young woman and she was dead. And so he is
shocked…he goes out…EMS comes and they all come in and they
see all of these refrigerators with plants and they see all of these
things going on and it was right after 9-11 and they have the FBI and
everybody in there and they are still in Court. He still has not got his
wife’s body back. And this is because nobody wants to admit that
there was an error here – they were doing an art project of growing
your own food to be organic and they had all of this…so, they were
supporting themselves by going to conferences selling buttons to say
“Art is Not Terrorism.” So, I should have worn my button or sold
some. So words are powerful and scary and we put it in a degree in
our school we have a BA with the requisite number of majors in
design, art history and studio art and we put it in a BFA. We applied
to the Ohio Regents for BFA Studio Art. And our gracious thing is that
we’re within the confines of the liberal arts college and they came and
they were seeing all of the advocacy, which we do. Well, our art
department like most art departments in colleges and universities is
way up and over the hill and as far away from the Dean’s office as
possible, so, we were trying to keep our advocacy sort of quiet
because Ursuline is a Catholic women’s college – we’re ladies – and
so, we were trying to tip toe around and the Regents were just
appalled. They said, “Well, look at what they are doing, this is terrific”
and they asked us to do a course on art advocacy. So, I just XX when
Susan and Betsey came to an exhibit and we were talking about this
and that’s what became this engagement. All of these students have
been in this course, I think it has run twice now and they can talk
about it. What is interesting is they have been doing this with their
work for some time. We do talk at Ursuline we have this mantra which
is here all the time and that is voice and vision and most people have
no XX15:51 but we do think it’s important to have voice, because
we’re a women’s college, when our voice is heard. However, in the
visual arts we think your voice is your product. It’s your art and that I
put my art ‘in service of’- not all of the time - because when you do
advocacy work it’s generally brown, grey or bloody. It’s not, the goal
is not beauty. And every now and then, I’m a colorist – I’m from the
Institute and color theory’s big there and so right now I’m doing
apples but they are becoming metaphoric so we are getting into
advocating for some odd things. But this is what these women have
been doing and so I would like them to talk about their work, I can talk
forever. I would like that, so, this is Stephanie Kasza and this is Jaime
Hall and this is Susan XX.
Stephanie Kasza: All right, I’ll start off. Like she said, I’m a senior and
I focus on painting and drawing and what I’m working on in my studio
now is kind of like exposing the parallels of the hungry and the non
hungry. And how those of us who are not hungry don’t even realize
that the hungry are ten feet away from us. This past summer I was
walking in a back alley with my brother and saw a man walking with
groceries, with arms full of grocery bags and not even ten feet in front
of him was a homeless man digging through a trash can. And I
stopped and watched it just because that’s the world we live in. That
man with the grocery bag, whether or not he was aware of it the man
in thrash can, I don’t know, but it’s just, that struck me. So that’s what
I’m focusing on in my studio. And I don’t know, at Ursuline College
you’ll advocate without realizing your advocating because it’s an
underlying theme in all the courses, not just the art courses but and
you know the Ursuline study courses of all of the things we learn,
“Use your voice, use your voice for those who cannot speak.” So, it’s
kind of whether the College realizes it or not they are almost teaching
everyone whether they are an art major to use your voice to speak up
for those who cannot speak up for themselves. So, this past year
before I had this experience I was kind of struggling with, “Do I want
to advocate something specific, what am I drawing to, what do I feel
strongly about?” But then when I actually sat down and realized that
I’ve been advocating all along in all my other art work and it was an
amount of time before I realized that that was actually what I was
doing and understanding where my art was going.
Gloria Ferris: Jamie?
Jamie: As far as advocating goes, I grew up in and doing my artwork

for a very long time. We actually had a show back in the spring, it was
called “Women’s Watch”- a freelance show and this painting, its one
of my favorite paintings I’ve ever done in my life. It was actually a
self-portrait, it wasn’t supposed to be a self-portrait but it turned out to
be one. It has a little finger going like this, in the background of it, it
had a bunch of little footprints on it and the message of the painting
was ‘don’t tread on me.’ And what was so interesting about this
painting was that the little footprints were actually like a tornado in the
background to the point where it’s like all around us and you’ve got to
be strong to be able to deflect things and I notice that in the art world
a lot of people are very crewel and its very cut throat. We’re always
able to pass off images as, “Oh, its garbage,’ or, ‘that’s really good.’
We find ourselves being extremely critical about something that
someone is willing to put their entire lives into and that kind of what
XX20: 13 speaking and talking about. But, as far as Ursuline College
goes we do a lot of stuff with advocating we’ve got the XX the
Women’s Watch, a Show and we also do a demonstration every year
where we walk around with bodies of people that have actually
passed away…[group comments and questions about the literal
implication of carrying an actual dead body] …but, it’s like you are
carrying a person and it actually has the name of a person who has
died on it in the last year…
Pat Fallon: These are all women, or children who have died by
violence. And so we keep track and we make these cut outs, we’re up
all night making red, sometimes large red, they used to stand, like the
knight in the square, in Public Square. It started because one of our
Nuns was murdered and raped by a man, a young boy who was sick,
in our woods. At the same time a woman had died a very violent
death in Cleveland, had been raped, but because this was a nun the
papers had this all over and nothing was ever said about this other
woman and the Nuns got very upset about it. My two full time
colleagues are Ursuline Sisters and actually one of them wasn’t even
there yet and was beside herself. We decided first we had to take
back the woods because I used to take my classes there all the time
we thought we had to get the women back in the woods, to feel safe
there. And second, we needed to make some kind of statement and
that’s where this began. And we just get these statistics every year.

Gloria Ferris: If I could ask some questions, how many years have
you been doing this, would you say?
Pat Fallon: Last year, it was maybe twelve, fourteen years.
Gloria Ferris: And how many bodies do you carry through the woods?
Pat Fallon: I don’t know.
Stephanie Kasza: This past year we did eighty-six.
Pat Fallon: We do it every year.
Gloria Ferris: Is it for the area?
Stephanie Kasza: It’s for Cuyahoga County, and what we do is we

get in touch with the Coroner’s Office and she gives us a list of
women and children of the age of eighteen, male and female who
have died a violent death. We do this the end of March every year.
Tim Ferris: So, has it been more or less over the time you’ve been
there?
Stephanie Kasza: More. This past year was the most figures that
we’ve painted and some people were carrying multiples.
Pat Fallon: It follows economics, the increase in violence; a lot of

desperate people out there. Women and children in any society are
the most venerable. I remember sitting at a bar and I was really upset
because they were talking about - this was Bosnia -and how they had
the rape camps and that they went in, I said that was terrible and this
very calm lawyer sat next to me and said, “Well, that’s what Armies
do in war time they rape the women to show that they’re, and
impregnate them to show since time and memorial and I thought well,
that’s true. I just never looked at it that way.
Gloria Ferris: Susan?

Susan X: Hi, I’m Susan and well, I have to say that the advocacy
class really opened my eyes, because I had been a homemaker for
many years, and I escaped and came back to school. My goal right
now is on women, not the general, but the roles that we play…the
role as the wife, a mother, or a sister, or a daughter. And not only
those roles but what we can be and that is where I’m trying to get to
in my heart and that is very tiring, I have to say. But the advocacy
class was really XX because it really made me realize how powerful
art can be not only advocating for things community service but even
inside your own heart. The other day I was given a hard time because
he told me art was all I cared about and all I could do was agree. So,
I love art, I love all forms of art and XX it is always right there in front
of my mind.
Gloria Ferris: So Susan, let me ask you a couple of questions, how

did you get in touch with Pat at Ursuline College and the art program
there that you said that she opened your heart to art?
Pat Fallon: It’s a required course.
Gloria Ferris: You mean advocacy? [discussion]
Susan Gibbs: It was instructive after being so stuck in the house for
so many years you just don’t think XX26:50 that you don’t know
what’s going on…
Gloria Ferris: Well, that’s…what brought you to Ursuline? The

College? The art program? You were a homemaker for all those
years and so how did you branch out and realize that art is everything
you care about?
Susan Gibbs: Well, it always was but you know in just raising kids
and you have all of these responsibilities that really held me back and
then I just decided that, I’m going to do it. And it was late, but better
late than never. And when I walked into Ursuline, I was college
shopping, I went to Tri-C, and it just felt right. Just being there was
right, I could hear my Mother say, “You’re in the right place.” Okay,
Mother – and then I met great instructors and it has been very, very
inspiring. They are taking me to another level, breaking me out of a
traditional style I’ve been in for so long and getting somewhere else
and I really feel like I’m getting there.
Pat Fallon: Susan is a very strong artist and she has a lot to say and
one of the fun things and in fact most of you are probably aware, you
remember Guernica, Picasso’s, Guernica? And that was his response
to Franco’s fascist... And they had of course used blacks and grays
and whites and the light was going out in Europe and there was the
wonderful bull and all of this, and that came to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art because he didn’t want it to go to Spain you know
when he died because Franco could go back to Spain, till Franco was
dead. So, I saw it and most of you saw it in New York City and in
1989 Ursuline gave the faculty money to go to Spain for two months
XX and I wanted to go to Barcelona, which is the city of artists, and
there it was because they were carting out Franco’s statues and
making the streets all over again and Guernica was back home. And
another powerful piece is the Viet Nam Memorial, one of the video’s
we watch is Maya Lin’s video on how she came to do it she was a
student and it was part of an assignment and she, but her process is
what is so wonderful, she started by writing. She started by writing
her thoughts and then I keep telling the students, artists are
supposed to look stupid and lie under trees with their arms under
their heads, because that is where you become creative. You don’t
say from nine to five I’m going to be creative then I’ll blow out in front
of the TV. Watch meritocracy, you have to have nothing to do for your
mind to wander and things to happen and make the connection of the
bull and the bicycle, so that’s where we get the reputation of looking
stupid and what Susan is saying “I have to get rid of this” and what
Stephanie XX because I’ve spent my entire life learning how not to
multitask. And my entire life has been to focus and now I focus so I
fall, I can’t find my car keys, I can’t find the front door, I can’t, but boy
can I focus. It took almost a lifetime to unlearn that but they, and I
pride myself on that and I pride myself on looking stupid and in my
house you only get in trouble if you interrupt somebody when they are
not talking because when people are not talking they’re thinking. And
nobody in this culture right now hallows quiet thinking they think if you
are sitting there not talking you’re available. Right? And people when
they want your cell phone number why should I be available to the
world? You know, once you leave your two year olds following your
skirt so you walk into a swamp and then your life is over, nice as it
was…you don’t want to be available to the world at large night and
day, are they nuts? And that they call your work? To talk about XX
how awful is that? Something about this society that feels that they
see and yet we don’t communicate. So, advocacy has a lot of things it
can do and a lot of bridges it can build and this conference in New
York that I was talking to XX about was all about graphic designers. It
was put on by the School of Visual Art and it is called the Liberal Arts
and the Education of the Visual Artist. This was a twenty-second
national conference. There were one hundred and ninety-nine people
there representing every state and thirty-seven countries. They were
graphic designers and a few art historians. And there were people
who just came to listen, Steven Hiller, was the major speaker and I
understand he is a graphic design God or something, he was
speaking about branding a totalitarian state and I was asked to speak
on how do you teach students meaning. I was trying to say you don’t
teach them you give them the tools to de-cipher what we call
‘spectacle’ – the TV, the iPod, we all think that kids know everything
because now they’re plugged in and they are just getting it totally
unfiltered and they can’t cope with it, they’re killing themselves,
they’re killing everybody else, with the news they’re frantic and they
need the tools to how do you filter this stuff? How do you function
within this? So, here’s another way this XX 33:44 and then I presided
over a social responsibility, all I did was introduce graphic designers
which is now visual communication design and one another and they
were all into building community through branding and that was the
big push. And it was amazing and it was at the Algonquin XX that
was a very nice place to have a conference. It’s going on, I thought
that we were like the little niche here and nobody knew it was going
on and it’s going on all over. And they’re all talking about it. So,
you’ve got the, is it ‘bull by the tail?’ – Tiger – A tiger by the tail.
Ralph Solonitz: Handle bars.

Pat Fallon: So what is going on here? You know, you are a
newspaper, but it’s a connection and it’s going on through graphic
design. Design is the 21st Century.
Gloria Ferris: I would like to throw one of the thoughts that Pat had
about, you know, don’t interrupt me; I’m quiet because that’s when
I’m thinking. And I just wonder what do other people think about that?
Because on the bus, I see a woman with little kids and she’s got the
Blue Tooth and she’s on the phone. And I think to myself that I used
to ride the bus with my daughters and that’s when we, “Look at this,
look at that, there’s the bridge going downtown, and there’s just all
this noise and I think they’re missing the best days with your child
because very soon they’re going to say, “Don’t bother me I’m
thinking.” And will have nothing to do with you. But, we’re multi-
tasking and we’re so busy, but what are we really doing? And I
guess, what do other people think about that? Do you think that
sometimes…Jon? What do you think?
Jon: I think a couple of things which one is important. Advertisers

know how to overcome sensory overload. I have a degree in
advertising and the thing you end up saying is that, ‘We know how to
do this – you don’t have a chance.’ There’s a lot of money based in
getting information into your head and I think the illustration of this is,
of sensory overload at least, is that what happens when there is
nothing, or the perception of nothing going on? How many times in
your modern life is there that you hear that XX it’s an exception rather
than the rule. There’s a lot more times whenever there was in
anything necessarily jimmying and jammed in your head, or there
was a special audio, we’re very visual now. The other thing I thought
about based on your comments was the branding of community,
which is something XX that is really interesting like in the city of
Cleveland, where people are talking about XX we want to be part of
our City, we want some sort of exchange going on and what I keep
trying to argue with the people in the City is that they need to, in fact,
brand neighborhoods in a way that is from the bottom up so
successful neighborhoods are like Tremont, where people say “I’m
from Tremont” but its almost based on geography. Ohio City, but
there are other neighborhoods – W. 25th and Clark – it has a hard
time coming up with what is the brand of this neighborhood? I think
that branding is really important. I’m from …
Tape Three.
Jon Eckerle: …I’m from Ohio City, I’m from Lakewood, I’m from
Tremont, you need to have, in order to establish that base, you need
this concept of these are where my roots are, so that you have a
reference point, so you can be proud of that.
MaryBeth Matthews: One of the things that comes out branding the
neighborhoods that are XX to brand is that they are evolving, they are
changing or evolving into what you would think would be the wrong
direction because they are becoming more impoverished or they are
disappearing. And other neighborhoods that have already hit the
bottom are coming back, Waterloo, for example. Or, because the
demographic of the neighborhood is shifting. So, those are some of
the, that’s where Cleveland’s neighborhoods are having difficulty in
trying to find their brand because Midtown, fifteen years ago, what
would this area have been branded? A neighborhood of empty ware
houses and abandon factories whereas now it’s become Chinatown.
Midtown is Chinatown. Midtown is the place where the new cutting
edge businesses are moving to…
Jon Eckerle: Without those words, Midtown, Midtown wouldn’t have

happened, and I agree with you, what’s happening with where they
are starting that new town, Collegetown, is that something they can
develop into a brand?
MaryBeth Matthews: But, is it always appropriate to brand – an

outsider coming in and branding the neighborhood that because you
want to gentrify it? That’s a question; I am not being critical, I’m
asking.
Tim Ferris: I have mixed emotions about branding because that

means and we talked about branding before, I think Gains had the
ultimate brand – you know one wears red and the other wears blue –
and then they go ahead and get contentious and that’s a zero sum
game for turf and territory. If one wins, the other one looses. And
when I see the non profits in this town fighting for the same money
from the Cleveland Foundation they try to go ahead and gerry their
brand XX the best brand so we can go ahead and write a paper and
get some money. Brands at that point become contentious and it’s
not good, it doesn’t feel good. If they write from the bottom and
percolate up and they come naturally out of the neighborhood then
they may actually work, but the ones that are externally imposed – we
don’t grow any B.S.
MaryBeth Matthews: Well, but then there is something wrong with

that. If you take a neighborhood that’s branded for its violence and
poverty can you re-brand it and make it something else attractive?
Attract something new? Something more?
Tim Ferris: Well, are you talking about lipstick on a pig? I think we
had this dialogue two months ago.
Gloria Ferris: Ralph? What were you going to say?
Ralph Solonitz: Change the name of East Cleveland to North Coast

City.
Bill MacDermott: Actually, I heard that for East Cleveland, it’s the
portion closest to University Circle. Call it University Circle.
Tim Ferris: I like East Cleveland myself. John D. Rockefeller loved

East Cleveland.
Gloria Ferris: What were you going to say Stephanie?
Stephanie Kasza: We have this organization at Ursuline; it’s the

Student Art Organization for Peace and Justice. I’m co-President of it
this year and actually last year we went to Marion Sterling School,
Elementary School, and I’m sure you have all heard of it, they have
problems with gangs, poverty and it was just so sad to go there and
see these children going through it. But our group actually went in
and painted a mural in the rotunda of their school and it was, we
decided to focus on education, staying in school and the
environment. Because we felt those were two things that were not
necessarily being taught to the kids and important. So, this image
was huge, it was forty something feet and just seeing the kid’s
behavior change the week we were there was actually incredible.
These kids were, in this little area we worked, which is where the
suspended kids sit all day, or the kids who get kicked out of class go
and they sit there, they sit there all day and they screw off with each
other they’re kind of running around causing a ruckus. The week that
we were there, they sat there and watched and we talked with them
and they were interacting with us on a totally different level. I totally
think you can almost change the branding of a bad neighborhood,
maybe not necessarily that didn’t change the whole outlook of Marion
Sterling but it helped make that week we were there XX and to those
kids, it may not have helped every single one of them but maybe it
helped this girl who sat there on her one day of suspension and
talked to this other girl and just learn about painting. So, I definitely
think you can start things, maybe not completely re-work it but you
can definitely start things.
Jamie Hall: But you don’t have to change the name of the city to
actually get more people involved, you actually do projects and get
involved with youth groups…
Pat Fallon: The people will change things.
Jamie Hall: Exactly. Working with the people will change it.
Pat Fallon: One of the things I believe is that the only way you can
advocate change is if you do it, if you do something. And I don’t mean
like lead a parade down the street, just actually get up and do
something. It’s amazing what one person doing something other
people follow. They just…

Ralph Solonitz: I’ve seen like a XX
Pat Fallon: It reminds… people are just looking for someone to lead
them, to start. There’s a school XX7:22 our chemistry teacher is on
their Board, they have no hope in their economic condition of I guess
going to College, their parents didn’t go to College, and they have no
knowledge, of course, the secret of College is that everybody goes on
financial aide. So, apply to Harvard because ninety percent of them at
Harvard are on financial aide. We have Mark Lapos Day and we give
them a college day they come and they spend half an hour those who
want to take an art class and then we do the whole thing all over the
campus. They can see what it’s like, they go to the school store, they
have a strip and buy whatever the supplies they need for that class,
and they play college for a day. But it is at college and it is with our
classes. It’s a small thing, but you should see those students, they
just come alive. Just to know someone cares. And I think that is what
shocks me is that there is a level of uncaring. One of the wonderful
things about New York City – I like New York City – is that when I
was a student my first degree was from Antioch. And that was way in
the dark ages. I had a XX8:54 in New York and in New York
everyone looked like they ate babies but they would help you in a
minute. When I came to Cleveland as a transferred wife, everyone
had a smile on the street and no one would help you. And I was
stunned. I came in 1973 and I thought this is a beautiful city it’s a
secret. I discovered you could go from Shaker all the way to the West
side by the lake, it was the most incredible city but I thought, “You
know, it’s not people friendly.” I grew up in Washington, DC in the old
days when it was a small Southern town – I’m a war baby – but New
York after 9/11, who would have believed that the entire state went
not smoking? Now in New York City you don’t smoke anywhere and
everybody wears tennis shoes. And if you are lost, they’re all around
you, “Can I help you?” The tenor of the city, I had friends there who
were writing and sending me pictures, corporations were sending
their people to shrinks because for months they were bringing in
bodies – that stuff was all in the air – the whole state, to respond to
that city, now that’s community. That’s community.

Gloria Ferris: And that’s not branding that something that...but it
becomes a brand and that’s what MaryBeth was talking about. Maybe
what comes first, but I think the community itself sometimes decides
its brand or a theme. I live in a city and we often talk, we live in
Brooklyn Center, well, Ohio City has the oldest architecture in the
city, Tremont has the restaurants and the beautiful park, so we kept
thinking what do we have? Because we can’t compete with that,
you’ve got to find your own thing. A bunch of us got together and
said, we have more green space; we’ve got the Zoo, we have a huge
cemetery, we’re a half-mile from the river, we’ve got the Big Creek
Watershed, and we were the first suburb, we have garages and back
alleys. So we decided, okay, we can be that, but the thing is we just
kind of put it out there and we found all these people, we have
somebody who was the head of the Audubon Society of Ohio who
lives in our neighborhood, we have somebody who’s a National
Wildlife Habitat Steward, so we didn’t really do anything, but what do
we have? I think that, that is sometimes where branding brings, what
are your assets? And that was the Zoo guy, the head architect,
engineer, for the Zoo, for the Metro Parks. We had a meeting with
him when they tore down the bridge in our neighborhood and he
says, you know what? He says, you’re really a park neighborhood.
Because both of the neighborhoods, Old Brooklyn and Brooklyn City,
you’re the uplands to our park, you’re park neighborhood. So, we
started percolating that, but I agree that sometimes branding, well,
Andy, what do you think with your marketing, don’t you sometimes sit
down with a client and ask them, “What are your strengths?” “What
are your challenges?” “Where do you…?” and then that’s when the
brand comes, it’s not this, let’s put lipstick on a pig…Cleveland’s a
Plum! That went over like a lead balloon. Because again, it was
somebody…
[Group bantering]
Mark Kohn: Cleveland’s the best location in the nation. I just saw that
in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, there was a Downtown Alliance thing in
the PD today…

Andy Halko: Yeah, I think when we do branding we’re looking at what
is driving people and what interests them, what is going to affect them
emotionally. I think that, listening to what everybody was saying, I
think that we’ve each got these badges, these things we believe in
strongly and those are the kinds of things you talk about and get your
heart behind. Depends what the neighborhoods are doing, they have
this thing that affects them and that becomes their brand. There are
these real internal drivers that everybody has, separate, and its from
their environment, their past experiences that makes them develop
their brand, develop their art and it’s the same thing in business; you
have these internal drivers that drive that brand. That’s interesting
because everybody has that very specific thing that they’re really
focused on in conversations, it’s kind of…but I was more sitting here
thinking, where do people come up with these things? Where does
the drive…where does the experiences did they have that drove them
to get into this art, the homeless, the hunger, or violence, or bikes, or
whatever ideas, it’s interesting how everybody’s kind of got this thing
that’s driving them, that’s how they see the world.
Mark Kohn: It came back. They used the term, “best mid-sized city.”
I’ve been using ‘middleweight champ.’ Which, we were a heavy
weight champ, turn of the twentieth century, there’s nothing wrong
with being a middle weight champ if you think of Floyd Paterson,
Sugar Ray Leonard, or whatever. I like that better than ‘mid-sized city’
or…
Ralph Solonitz: Or, midget wrestling…
MaryBeth Matthews: I have my own little name I thought of for

Cleveland, in manufacturing there’s a term called ‘lean
manufacturing,’ where you get rid of the superfluous nonsense, well,
Cleveland’s becoming a very lean city. It doesn’t mean that we’re less
effective, it doesn’t mean we’re less of anything, we’re less populace,
but we’ve become lean, production learn, we’re lean…
Tim Ferris: Well, that’s good because we still have all the money
here, we still have all the big houses and it’s just not as fat and now
what’s the matter with that? It’s better on the freeway, it’s better if you
work at home, but the freeway’s not crowded…
Gloria Ferris: Pat brought up a thing about coming here in the 70’s
and it wasn’t a people friendly town. I came from a small town to this
city and nobody was helpful and on the weekends I would hop on the
rapid and spend my time in downtown Cleveland. And so one day I
go to work and one of the gals says, “So, what did you do this
weekend?” And I thought to myself, well, I didn’t spend it with you
because nobody asked me to do anything but I said, “Oh, I went to
spend the day downtown Cleveland.” And it was like, Oh, my God, by
yourself?” and I said, “Well, I don’t know anybody here.” And I
thought to myself, well, none of you ever reached out, none of you
ever said, “Come to dinner” or anything. So, yeah, I go by myself and
I’m here. But, I think we’re changing, I see people now in the city, you
walk downtown and you’re looking at the buildings and people come
up to you and say, “Could I help you find something?” And I think part
of it is that we’re changing, I think that maybe we’re becoming a lean
city.
Ralph Solonitz: You remind me of me on Coventry in the 70’s.

Gloria Ferris: Well, I did move over there and I did find a whole group
of people. But it is a thing…MaryBeth, what were you going to say?
MaryBeth Matthews: I just wanted to get back to the statement, and I

forget what it is, when you were talking about art enabling people to
have a voice, and you hoped that your advocacy would give a voice
to those who have no voice, one of the things that I, for those of you
who know me already know, but for those of you who don’t…I always
said I was a teacher at Max Hayes High School, well, I’m also the
head of the visual arts department, so I teach art. Because I’m
teaching art to a group of students who have absolutely no interest
because all going to be mechanics and machinists, construction
workers and most of them don’t, they don’t want to be artists, they
want to take my class because it’s a required course. But, I teach it
as visual communication, visual problem solving and one of the
things we talk about art as, and we don’t talk about good art versus
bad art, we talk about art that is successful and art that is successful
is when you have, it has a message. When you’ve communicated
something. And if your message can be, if you’ve articulated that,
that’s good art, that’s successful art. So, even if you draw like a five
year old you can still have very successful art, as long as your
message is strong. So, I think that it’s very important for artists in
Cleveland, and anywhere, if you want, branding is about message.
Neighborhoods in Cleveland that are looking to find their voice, find
who they are and so the artists become very, very important, in that
whole regard. So, you can link the idea of Cleveland, and branding,
and art as advocacy and arts as visual communication and how the
arts can help Cleveland give it a voice and find out and define for
ourselves who we are.
Par Fallon: I’d like to tag on to that…I had two thoughts, one, we talk
about making the things that people don’t want to see visible, that’s
one of the things; that, I did a sabbatical on the homeless and what I
was trying to do was put this work in a gallery where people go
because they sure weren’t going downtown and they were sure they
were going to get killed, and to understand what the homeless
situation was. And so making something visible that people don’t
want to see is one thing. But there’s something else about that when
you come, when I came to Cleveland and went through this, I loved
downtown. I watched all these XX21:09 and the Plug and all that,
and the buildings that keep going up, it struck me because I was
doing a lot of work with NOVA at that time and having fun with an
organization for artists down at fourteenth street at Playhouse
Square, we painted the walls, and I couldn’t understand why
Cleveland was letting the streets go. I had come as a transferred wife
and I thought you’re not going to get anybody without schools. But
that was still, that was the XX and Cleveland just never picked up.
They let the schools go to hell. It’s just incredible. And they are still
building big buildings that are empty. But they’re not fixing the
schools; they have no textbooks and the rains coming in, in classes.
To me that’s amazing, these are public schools. So there is a
disconnect somewhere in terms of children.

MaryBeth Matthews: Children don’t vote.
Ralph Solonitz: Yeah, there’s an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’
Pat Fallon: Well, that’s the distain of, for women and children. I mean
there is…XX23:34
Tim Ferris: Let me give you a …XX24:16 and it doesn’t take in the
banks and the developers and the unions. That’s a hard background
here, we’re a, our prior generations built things they could use for a
long, long time and we wasted the assets because we want to move
money and we want to do this…
Gloria Ferris: But, you know what I think Pat speaks to and I think this
is probably…we’re wasting our human capital.
Dennis Althar: It’s not the bricks and mortars…
Gloria Ferris: At the real root, we are not investing in our children.
And it’s national.
Ralph Solonitz: It’s a statement of our society.
Gloria Ferris: Kids are difficult.
Pat Fallon: I was born a, ‘glass is half full person’ and I’m hoping it’s
passing. When I look at what happened with Wall Street, and
Freddie, and I was part of that bubble. I was a single parent and I
refinanced my house so I could go to school, I got myself more
degrees and I knew my house wasn’t worth that much, if anybody
knew. So, I was part of that bubble, but in a little tiny, tiny way. But
there’s a whole group of people that went up and I remember sitting
at tables with people explain to me the benefit of the trickle down and
it used to make sense. I mean the very rich were the people that gave
us the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art. There was a
give back.

Ralph Solonitz: It never made sense to me.
Pat Fallon: But there is a whole group of people up there with Enron
and everybody else, and AIG, that did not give back. They just took
more. But those people are going. One of the wonderful, there’s an
organization the National Association of Schools of Art and Design
and they put out these great statistics which tell everybody what all
the teachers get XX 26:28 but one of those statistics is one of the
largest growing groups is Studio Art all across the country. So, there
is a rebellious group coming up that is not out there for the
money...so it is going to shift again, there you go, but there’s going to
be a shift, and you need to be ready for it…communicators. Because
it is out there and these kids are growing up and they don’t like what
we’re giving them to inherit.
MaryBeth Matthews: Because we haven’t given them anything.

We’ve given them a big problem…
Gloria Ferris: But I also think that it used to be that people moved for
a job, transferred for a job, now, our daughter is a case in point and
she’s not like a lot of others in her school, her graduating class, they
picked where they wanted to live and then that’s where they went and
then they found they’re jobs and then they went to college but they
didn’t choose based on a job they chose on a sense of place. I do
believe you’re right, there’s a whole shift in the way people are
thinking.
Dennis Coughlin: One of the things we know, is we all move in the

direction of our conversations and so the question we need to keep
asking ourselves is how do we keep this conversation going in this
group and in other groups we come in contact with and keep moving
it forward? That is the thing we need to keep thinking about so that
when we do have something we’re passionate about, is how do you
keep those conversations going? In I-Open its not just talking heads
and a video on the Internet it’s continuing conversations that are so
important, the continuing advocacy in art is so important and that’s
one of the things that the Midtown Brews website that is posted on
and if you don’t have it we can make sure you do get a copy of it. It’s
MidtownBrews.net. Keep going with the conversations.
Gloria Ferris: Does anybody have any closing questions, comments?
Tim Ferris: I just wanted to get an academic distinction. Is there a

distinction between advocacy in art and propaganda? What
perspective is there, there?
Pat Fallon: Well, I suppose it depends on which side of the issue you
stand. I advocate Obama, but if I were Bush or McCann, I would say
she’s a propagandist. Steven Heller was doing a really nice talk,
talking about branding the totalitarian states. From my point of view,
I’m always telling the students they don’t like artists. You never want
to be an artist for a revolution because they don’t like artists, they
throw you in XX or they try to kill you, they can’t control artists they
just show up and do their thing…Well, no, that’s not the same thing
as a revolution. Once the state is established then they have their
artists, then they get the branding. One of the horrible things, well,
there are a lot of horrible things about Nazi Germany but, as an artist
one of the terrible things is that art deco and the incredible
architecture there and that was some of the most beautiful art and we
lost it because it was such a damned political nightmare. And some
really beautiful art was lost forever. So there’s a problem involved,
you don’t want to take artists along, you don’t want to be used for the
wrong thing…
Tim Ferris: Is advocacy seen as more pure?
Pat Fallon: Only if you think you’re a purist. One person’s advocacy is
another person’s propaganda.
Tim Ferris: But, isn’t propaganda perverting where you’re actually

forcing something to do something you shouldn’t?
Pat Fallon: Well, yes, and some people say advocacy is, it depends
on how you advocate.
Ralph Solonitz: Or advertising…
Pat Fallon: Well, yeah.
Gloria Ferris: Bill?
Bill MacDermott: There’s a thread that runs through all of this from
the comments made about advertising, the marketers knowing where
we are to how to manipulate us, to the fact that you said something
about waking up the TV to mediocrity. I had a deprived childhood, my
parents got sick of hearing children fighting over the television so they
broke it so we couldn’t fix it. So my family had to grow up
communicating with each other, my siblings learned musical
instruments, we learned how to play games, we learned how to
communicate and we learned how to deal with each other. It was a
soapbox, but I know people who have said, “Oh, such and such was
on last night and that’s the episode I absolutely hate and it was on
and I hated that!” Excuse me, but XX32:03 The people that have that
constantly thrown on, it’s a waste of electrons, we could be polluting
the air with better things than the noise, you’re asking, “How will we
find time to think?” “Why we’re not allowed to think.” My problem is
with that ‘idiot box’ – its an old term, brand, when that idiot box is on, I
can’t think. So, I turn it on for the news twice a day, I read and I blog,
I get involved in things, I draw, I do my little design art work…
Mark Kohn: Of course the purpose of television is not the shows it’s
the selling…
Bill MacDermott: That’s where it’s going, okay? George XX was right;
we are taught how to think by the television. We are manipulated, we
are taught, we are told we’re inferior, this morning a great thing about
Obama, I was watching the news…but there are people saying, now
you no longer have the excuse you are the way you are and you are
not good because you didn’t come XX32:26
Pat Fallon: Yes, I caught that, and do you know one of the things the
TV has changed is magazines and newspapers? They have short
sound bites, I mean some, and they’re all doing it. They’re all short
but we’re not on Ritalin, they are used to that three or four-minute
time, classes at school forty minutes, thirty kids in a class for forty
minutes? For a hands on class? How can you possibly teach? How
can you possibly teach?
Tim Ferris: I’ve been spending hours on those Architectural Digests,

we’re actually getting five and six page articles, it’s getting better.
Gloria Ferris: They’re changing. Dennis, you had something to say…
Dennis Althar: Just an observation about branding, you were talking

about branding. Branding, you think of the word and its when
somebody used to take a hot iron and make it a part of their property,
and have fear in you to where you obey them cause they own you. As
opposed to branding - submission in branding – exactly. Its part of the
propaganda, so it’s the proper word but the wrong use. So there’s
branding and there’s part of a community, I’d like to submit too that
back in the seventies I used to live here. I think if you seek out you’ll
always find community; I believe we’re the same everywhere on the
planet. You go to the Phillapeans, you go to New York, I remember
spending a month in New York City and for being an outsider and
getting on the trains and its just totally covered from top to bottom
with graffiti and you felt like you had your life in your hands, but this
was like just solid layers of graffiti and it was dirty and nasty and I
remember, and the same in Washington, but if you see it everyday,
you kind of get blinders to it because you are used to seeing it. I
remember being in Manhattan, at the big conference center and
seven cops sitting at the door and some guy leaning in the doorway
passed out and the cops two feet away from him. People are walking
over the top of this guy and going into a trade show and I’m just
telling you looking at the other side. The two days I was there I saw a
total of eight people pissing down stairways, middle of the day with
people in suits and ties walking by but to me…but I really believe that
if you seek out people are the same everywhere.

Gloria Ferris: We need to wrap up our conversation. But yeah it’s a
good, I also think that’s the difference in perception that’s art, what
one person sees in a piece of art may mean something totally
different than someone else and what they see. And so with that I’m
going to thank Pat and the students for coming and sharing their
evening with us, it was very informative, it was very enlightening and
again thank you Brews crowd, I too, am a little overwhelmed at the
depth of comments as we go around, I just think it was really great.
And we are starting to see some new faces and good; I’m glad that is
happening. I’m going to let Susan close our program and tell you
what’s up next for the Midtown Brews crowd and some of the other
things we have going for us.
Susan Altshuler: Look for updates on our MidtownBrew.net site.

Betsey’s going to start something called ‘Community Watch’ and its
going to be news feeds from the Northeast Ohio Blogs and Midtown
Brews News based around technology, creative industries and
energy. And the people who participated in our last month Midtown
Brews on advocacy. That goes into our next update about the NEO
Next book, the idea is to take, and it came from last month’s
wonderful program on advocacy and all of the wonderful
conversations that developed out of that, but taking those
conversations every month and publishing it and then over the year
we’ll have twelve chapters and we can produce a book about all the
wonderful conversations about how people think and feel and what
they’d like to see for the future. And it is for the future and it is about
the future of Northeast Ohio and moving Northeast Ohio forward.
Tim Ferris: Is it a print book or is it an online book?
Susan Altshuler: Yeah, and e-book, right?
Betsey Merkel: A community generated e-book. Laura’s going to help

some with it too – and if anyone else has any ideas about what kind
of format it could take.

Susan Altshuler: That brings us to November 19th where we’re going
to bring everybody together that was at the October program to follow
up with learning about social software technology and moving their
ideas into projects. So, anybody’s welcome, we’d love to have you it’s
November 19th at the Cleveland Heights Library from 6:30 to 8:30 and
Betsey will send you an email with all the details. The December topic
is with Bruce Missig and Friends, they will be discussing how small
steps from everyone of us can begin to reduce our carbon footprint
and revitalize our communities, and he is going to be focusing on the
quality of water. We have a lot of new programs already scheduled
for 2009, if you know of anybody who would like to host a Midtown
Brews please let us know, any topics you would like to discuss just
call Betsey, Me, Gloria – post to the Midtown Brews.net blog – just
tell us what you are interested in and also join the Midtown Brews
and go into the Midtown Brews and start posting to the blog, start
giving us all of your wonderful ideas and your information and with
that we’ll use that to plan our next year.
Gloria Ferris: It’s MidtownBrews.net and if everybody says oh, I don’t

have time to write, you can’t think, can’t write, a lot of us read. If you
see an article that you think pertains to something we’ve done here,
please post it, call us, we’ll help you post it, just start adding to our
knowledge base through that site.
Susan Altshuler: We encourage all people to go on it and just read

the information people put on it and this way we’ll start coalescing
people and getting the interests in each of the sectors that we’re
pushing forward so that people can say, “Oh, I want to work on that.”
And I’m going to call this person.
Gloria Ferris: We’re starting to see that happen, we’ve had a little bit
of bubbling up that people are working on projects outside of the
monthly meetings and starting on projects and starting to move
forward. A group of us from last month are going to start on
transportation. So, if anybody wants to work with us on that and I
hear that the new Transportation Secretary may be someone who
bicycles to work everyday. So that will be new and different. First of
all, thank you for coming. And, we’re done for this month’s Brews and
we’re off line.


Midtown Brews "Branding Stories of Humanity: Art, Advocacy and Global Networks"

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Midtown Brews Conversation Transcription

Thursday November 6, 2008

“Branding Stories of Humanity: Art, Advocacy and Global

Illustration: “advocacy,” by Illustrator, Ralph Solonitz

Gloria Ferris: I want to welcome everybody to Midtown Brews

Dennis Coughlin: Good evening I’m Dennis Coughlin from I-Open. I-

Gloria Ferris: That’s a good point. [Unintelligible open discussion]

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 3

Dennis Althar: It’s just a permanent button.

Gloria Ferris: Okay, Dennis, now would you like to introduce

Dennis Althar: My art piece is my speakers…Virtual reality

Gloria Ferris: This is Dennis Althar, the inventor of the Copernicus

Gloria Ferris: Okay. Sir?

Gloria Ferris: MaryBeth, I’m going to hop over to you.

MaryBeth Mathews: I’m MaryBeth Matthews…one of the things I do,

Gloria Ferris: Laura?

Gloria Ferris: Susan?

Susan Altshuler: I’m Susan Altshuler and I’m also a Director of I-

Gloria Ferris: Kevin?

Kevin Cronin: Kevin Cronin, lawyer in Midtown and active in theater

Gloria Ferris: Thank you. Toni?

Toni Chanakas: Toni Chanakas. Graphic design. So, for me when

Gloria Ferris: The man sitting beside her?

Mark Batson: Mark Batson, I am a life long Clevelander, but I’ve

Gloria Ferris: Frank?

Gloria Ferris: Jon?

Gloria Ferris: Bill?

Bill MacDermott: My name’s Bill MacDermott, I’m an alternative

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 9

Michael Lehto: Thank you. My name is Michael Lehto. I teach at the

Jon Eckerle: Lakewood?

Gloria Ferris: Jamie?

Jamie: As far as advocating goes, I grew up in and doing my artwork

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 15

Pat Fallon: Last year, it was maybe twelve, fourteen years.

Pat Fallon: I don’t know.

Stephanie Kasza: This past year we did eighty-six.

Pat Fallon: We do it every year.

Gloria Ferris: Is it for the area?

Stephanie Kasza: It’s for Cuyahoga County, and what we do is we

Pat Fallon: It follows economics, the increase in violence; a lot of

Gloria Ferris: Susan?

Gloria Ferris: So Susan, let me ask you a couple of questions, how

Pat Fallon: It’s a required course.

Gloria Ferris: You mean advocacy? [discussion]

Gloria Ferris: Well, that’s…what brought you to Ursuline? The

Ralph Solonitz: Handle bars.

Jon: I think a couple of things which one is important. Advertisers

Jon Eckerle: Without those words, Midtown, Midtown wouldn’t have

MaryBeth Matthews: But, is it always appropriate to brand – an

Tim Ferris: I have mixed emotions about branding because that

MaryBeth Matthews: Well, but then there is something wrong with

Gloria Ferris: Ralph? What were you going to say?

Ralph Solonitz: Change the name of East Cleveland to North Coast

Tim Ferris: I like East Cleveland myself. John D. Rockefeller loved

Gloria Ferris: What were you going to say Stephanie?

Stephanie Kasza: We have this organization at Ursuline; it’s the

Pat Fallon: The people will change things.

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 23

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 24

Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 25

Ralph Solonitz: Or, midget wrestling…

MaryBeth Matthews: I have my own little name I thought of for