This week is part 1 of our interview with serial arts entrepreneur Liz Maugans. She’s a Cleveland-based printmaker whose works are included in the Progressive Art Collection, The Cleveland Clinic, the Dalad Collection, BF Goodrich, the Westin Collection and The Riffe Center for Government and the Arts. She received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 2000, and a 2005 Artist-in-Communities Grant. Liz was awarded an Ohio Arts Council’s International Residency to Dresden, Germany in 2009. We hope you'll tune in to hear all about Liz's experiences in founding numerous nonprofits over the past 25+ years. https://www.lizmaugansart.com/
This week is part 1 of our interview with serial arts entrepreneur Liz Maugans. She’s a Cleveland-based printmaker whose works are included in the Progressive Art Collection, The Cleveland Clinic, the Dalad Collection, BF Goodrich, the Westin Collection and The Riffe Center for Government and the Arts. She received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 2000, and a 2005 Artist-in-Communities Grant. Liz was awarded an Ohio Arts Council’s International Residency to Dresden, Germany in 2009. We hope you'll tune in to hear all about Liz's experiences in founding numerous nonprofits over the past 25+ years. https://www.lizmaugansart.com/
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hello podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise and I'm Nick Petrella.
Nick Petrella:Serial arts entrepreneur, Liz Maugans is with us today. She's a printmaker whose works are included in the Progressive Art Collection, the Cleveland Clinic, the Dallad Collection, bf Goodrich, the Westin Collection and the Riffe Center for Government and the Arts. She received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in 2000 and a 2005 Artist in Communities Grant. Liz was awarded an Ohio Arts Council's International Residency to Dresden, germany, in 2009. She has many more accolades, so we'll share her website in the show notes so you can read more about Liz and her art. Liz, it's great to have you on the podcast.
Liz Maugans:Thank you so much, Nick and Andy. I'm so thrilled to be here.
Nick Petrella:Why don't we begin by having you give us a brief overview of your career?
Liz Maugans:Okay, I'm from a long line of farmers and nurses, drug addicts. I've had my share of financial CEOs in my family, so I think I have a little bit of all of those genetic strains. And I started drawing when I was five years old and there's a picture of me where I was one of those people that used to draw with their tongue Is that a thing? And I had a little smocking dress on, and there is actually a very famous drawing by Fairfield Porter of etching that is called Lizzie Drawing and I have it down in my studio and it looks just like me at five. And so I just really loved how it felt to be able to kind of lose myself in the waltz of making things, and so I knew really right away that this was my calling and the life that I wanted to have.
Liz Maugans:The probably pivotal moment as I was going through high school and thriving in art classes, is I had a teacher named Phyllis Fannin who basically had gone to Kent State University. So I was like I'm going to go to Kent State University. So I went there and really loved the idea of printmaking as this discipline, that I could speak so many different languages and then I could also make multiples. I could speak the sort of commercial, capitalist language, and then I had the vernacular of something that was really personal, private one of a kind, and it just seemed very versatile and um really enjoyed being able to make multiples, to hang on multiple aunts and friends, refrigerators and um, and so I went to Kent. I, uh, majored in printmaking. I also liked it because I was the only girl and so it's a very physical and aerobic discipline of the arts.
Liz Maugans:I also was a painter and soon after I decided to go to graduate school, I took a gap year and I went to Cranbrook Academy of Art up in north of Detroit and Bloomfield Hills, and Cranbrook for me was a beautiful oasis of experimentation, reading, looking at a lot of critical theory. As it relates to art, detroit and Cleveland have a lot in common. They are these sort of kindred spirits of challenge but, I think, of great opportunity, and so I really ate and thrived in the Detroit art scene. And then, coming back to Cleveland, I immediately got connected to the Cleveland Institute of Art, for which I was the TA, and so I was so thrilled to be able to connect with so many students and help with processes within printmaking and support the faculty there. I soon became a faculty member.
Liz Maugans:I met my first business partner of Zygote Press, joe Sroka, and connected to some of the other people that helped me found Zygote Press. Joe Sroka and connected to some of the other people that helped me found Zygote Press, and that's really the story of me starting my first entrepreneurial. Maybe it's my second entrepreneurial entity. The first one was when I was at Kent. I was unfortunately in this situation where they're bringing in computers and so that was where the galleries were. So a number of us that were trying to do our BFAs didn't have a place to do it. So six of us ended up renting out an old antique store. We each threw in 50 bucks a month. It was called Gallery 425. We used it as our studios and then we ended up having our BFA exhibitions in there and for 25, probably 30 years it continued to be an art space for students.
Nick Petrella:That's great.
Liz Maugans:Yeah, I continue to go back and I have taught at a lot of Northeast Ohio universities, including Lorain County Community College, tri-c, metro, cleveland Institute of Art and Kent State, among many, so it really leveraged me to be able to be a huge advocate for connecting students to opportunities and just being, I think, a self-proclaimed dot connector.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, and that was your first of many ventures, wasn't?
Liz Maugans:it yes.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that's great and we're going to unpack. That, I think, is the interview.
Andy Heise:So they put the computers in the gallery space.
Liz Maugans:They did.
Andy Heise:Okay.
Liz Maugans:You know, this was a time where they were getting rid of a lot of printmaking, looking at it as being analog and antiquated. And of course we get along best with technology. The printmakers um with photo silk, screening and um a lot of digital uh, um, uh interface and intersection. And so it was both a blessing and um very sad that we were clearing out beautiful French tool printing presses and Charles Brand presses, unfortunately putting a halt to the printmaking programs in the universities, of having school groups and countless, countless artists being able to use that to be able to continue making their work.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah, so in addition to the many things that you're involved, in which we're going to talk about as we go through this interview, you're currently the director of the Yards Project. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and what being the director entails?
Liz Maugans:Sure, it's a kind of combination of being the curator of a collection of all hyper-local Northeast Ohio art and it's also directing directing Yards Projects, which is a gallery that also supports artists from this region. There are two buildings and we're working on our third building for the developer, neil Vinney, who runs Dalad Group, which is a development project where he really loves these adaptive reuse buildings. One building has about 98 apartments and the other one has 51. So the gallery is literally in the lobby of this beautiful building that is in the heart of the warehouse district, and so when we have the seven or eight exhibitions each year, we open everything up to the public and we have great parties and we're able to really turn a lot of newcomers on to the arts. The collection itself is shared in all of the halls and all of the spaces of the building, and so I do many, many, many art tours each year and I'm able to really I bring students from university, I have high school tours, and so it's really a beautiful, you know, broad representation of what Cleveland looks like and beyond.
Liz Maugans:So it's been a great surprise in my life that this came along. I literally had gotten a cold call from the developer that had not known at the time that I was going to be succeeding to try to do other things in the community, and so that became an opportunity for me to go over and to look at this building and he basically said, hey, I'm thinking of turning this into a gallery. Do you know anybody? And I just said I might be interested. So Neil and I collaboratively and really beautifully became kindred spirits also in this pursuit of doing studio visits, of being able to support the local creative economy by purchasing art from a lot of the galleries. It became really lovely to be able to see him kind of come into patronage, have these radical ideas that I want other developers to see, the energy to see that people stay in those buildings longer, that it builds a community through this sort of glance and perspective of the artists, of how they are framing the stories and the challenges and the different kinds of narratives that they're trying to present in their work.
Liz Maugans:And so it's become a hotspot, I would say, particularly in the warehouse district, where at one time there were three galleries there and now there is only Yards Projects that made it out of the pandemic and now there is only Yards projects that made it out of the pandemic.
Liz Maugans:So for those other developers, I really believe that, just like accreditation for ADA accessibility or LEED certified building, they have something that's called WELL certification, where arts can be of vital importance as we move forward to make the environment, the atmosphere of these spaces healthier and to encourage people to engage in what is this moment of epidemic levels of loneliness and isolation. I see these as being, you know, convening and connective experience for the residents that are in these buildings, and also the investment by people who are developers, rather than looking at gentrification that happens to be going in a lot of different pockets of Cleveland, to create buildings that are fluid, that provide space for black club parties or meetings different kinds of. We do a lot of nonprofit fundraisers there at no cost, so we can help support other political, civic and cultural entities that are really trying to climb back after the pandemic.
Nick Petrella:That's great.
Andy Heise:Yeah, it sounds like an amazing model.
Nick Petrella:You mentioned that you co-founded Zygote Press. Can you tell us what prompted you to start a nonprofit printmaking studio and what was it like working with a co-founder?
Liz Maugans:So everything I think that has been entrepreneurial has been because there was a challenge. And at Zygote I was understanding that there was a gap. There was a big, huge hole, and unless you were connected to a continuing education class at a university or you had your own press, there was no access for you to be able to continue making your work. I had gone to Bob Blackburn's printmaking studio, this epic mecca that was formerly the Atelier 17 of William Stanley Hayter, and after World War II he brought his press over and started this amazing printmaking collaborative and basically birthed all of these other printmakers to start opening university print shops. That then spawned a whole bunch of other independent uh nonprofit print shops, and so I had gone to New York city, uh, right after I had, uh, graduated from Cranbrook and I had, uh, it was like 90 degrees and it um, I went up to the fourth floor and this like sweltering shop smelled like BO and I just sort of like it's so impressed at 30 people working in the shop at one time.
Liz Maugans:And when I came back I was still teaching at Cleveland Institute of Art and um and Joe Sroka who, uh, I'm a twin and Joe is also a twin we loved this idea of he was going to be graduating and I was going to be sort of going to take some other jobs in adjunct faculty teaching. So we decided to start. We both were bartenders and waitresses and we were making a really good bank, and so we decided to pull our resources together and to be able to rent a space that was 2,500 square feet for $150 each and, mind you, joe and I made that really in a shift. So that tells you about the real estate opportunities and vacant spaces. Here in Cleveland we have a full city at half price. So I couldn't have done this in Chicago. I couldn't have done this in probably any other area, but maybe Detroit.
Liz Maugans:So we joined forces and then two people joined us Kelly Novak, who was from Cleveland Institute of Art, and Bellamy Prince was out in Seattle and she was going to be moving back here. I did not know her. She literally cold called me and she said I heard that you're opening a press. I would love to be a part of it. And so I said come on down of it. And so I said come on down. And so, having that openness, she's always so tickled that I was just like I would love for you to be a part of this.
Liz Maugans:And so the four of us became the founders and we all were probably not paid for about six years of developing it. We all just pitched money into the hat. We started to become a nonprofit and we got our first grant from the Ohio Arts Council, which really snowballed our respect and our integrity from getting it from other foundations. And it just grew and started to prosper. And then we became adults and so we started to get meager wages and we started to get more organized and manage ourselves. We started to say you know, let's have a gallery and let's have residencies and and so it really kind of birthed organically Zygote.
Liz Maugans:A lot of people always ask me what that means, and Zygote is the separating cells in twins. That just is part of the gestation period and we loved how that reflected the idea of printmaking and making multiples and so it's really really caught on and we often say we have to watch what's in the water at Zygote because Bellamy had twins. So the flourishing of Zygote now well into its 28th year is just wonderful. Jackie Feldman is the executive director now and she's kicking butt and it's just really wonderful to see all of the new iterations and the new ways in which they're really dynamically connecting with cross-sector energies in terms of writers and the literary arts and so much more.
Liz Maugans:So I still print there, and so it's just really fantastic that this set of new eyes has been able to really move into directions that I'm so proud of and, as being a person that was affiliated with Zygote, and to know that it is continuing to flourish. Bellamy always used to say we want, if we are ever hit by a bus, we want this to continue, and I was like let's change that. Let's just say let's just say what happens if we win the lottery and we end up going to Tahiti. Let's use that instead.
Nick Petrella:I like the fact that Bellamy Prince is a printmaker.
Liz Maugans:Yes, I do too. It's what's on her bumper sticker and her name is spelled P-R-I-N-T-Z. So it's a lot of people think it's a vanity name change, but it's not.
Andy Heise:So what was it how?
Nick Petrella:did, how did?
Andy Heise:how did Bellamy hear about you from Seattle? Was there some personal like second or third connection or something?
Liz Maugans:So her late husband, what his family, was from here, and he had unfortunately been terminally diagnosed with cancer. He was in remission, but they came back here the second time, and so Bellany knew that she was here. She had become friends with Holly Morrison, who was the head of etching and printmaking at the time, and so Holly actually was very pivotal in the zygote story because she lived in a hive building, her studio was there, and so that's exactly where we decided to put the zygote Cygo.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, gotcha, so serendipity. Yeah, that's twice because you got the call the first time. So I just want to go back. So the second part of that question was what was it like working with a co-founder? But in this case, what was the dynamic?
Liz Maugans:I loved it. I think a lot of times we find ourselves all having different skill sets and I am not a great public speaker, so Bellamy would always be the person who would be the person who was sort of the presenter in the face of Zygote and doing a lot more of the conversations and different kinds of interviews that you guys are so beautiful at. Joe had really great tech skills, kelly had great professional and technical skills and actually printmaking and technical skills and actually printmaking. I was the dot connector, the opportunity finder.
Liz Maugans:I love to really be the sort of cross pollinator, and so we all worked really really well together and not to say that there weren't ever any issues with, you know, conflicts and challenges, but I think that that makes us better and it makes us improve our move forward, our processes, our administration of Zygote, and I think it's core to being somebody who is in the real world working with other people, and so I thought I'm an adapter, so I thought it was really, you know, I couldn't have ever imagined running it myself. And often people are like aren't you, don't you have like the founder syndrome? Don't you have like the founder syndrome? And, uh, I couldn't be happy, happier to be proud of that as kind of my other child, yeah, as I've got a lot of things to do and that's just one of many, and that's the way I look at it. Um, I look at it as like a proud aunt that's awesome.
Andy Heise:Well, your work is amazing. I I was I really enjoyed cruising the web and checking out a lot of your work. Um, are you still focused on maintaining your art practice or are you primarily focused on managing all these artists, support organizations that you're, that you're involved in?
Liz Maugans:um, I just came from a huge solo show called Life is Brutiful and it's also a component is a book project by an author named Richie Paparanen and a book that's published by Red Giant Books called Octopus Hunting.
Liz Maugans:Richie is a data scientist and knows Cleveland and Rust Belt cities better than anybody, and I followed him regarding how he sees the city and the ebb and flow of our health and wellness in decline in these industrial you know, post-industrial spaces, and I would always take whatever he was talking about, whether it was economic, whether it was healthcare, I would always put arts and culture into the sort of line item that he was talking about, and he and I became friends when closer friends, but I had always followed his op-eds.
Liz Maugans:He works a lot with Cleveland Foundation and Greater Cleveland Partnership, and so I started following him when my brother was dying of glioblastoma and Richie had just been diagnosed as my brother was transitioning, and so Richie's book and the work that I was making at the time also was serendipitous of being sort of conversing about these different types of conversations that we were having both internally and that we were having also externally about the city, only about the city, and so that show just came down at Hedge Gallery and it had, I think, over 50 pieces in the show and we had the book launch there and I just couldn't have been more thrilled to be able to come closer to this individual.
Liz Maugans:That I think is really tremendous and has done that I think is really tremendous and has done just has been such a great voice and reporter and recorder of what's happening in Cleveland. So, yeah, I'm very active in the. In my own practice I have both the community practice, which I see a lot of supporting artists, as an extension of the way I strategize, I cultivate, I structure concepts and I move forward in those ways, using my gut first, my heart and probably my head last.
Nick Petrella:So you're really building an ecosystem is what you've been doing for the past 20 years.
Liz Maugans:Yeah, I do feel really that it's really important. Even when I was teaching the studio courses versus the courses that I'm teaching right now at Cleveland State I would make my own work. While I was showing how to do a process, they could see me pulling my own prints and they could see me see those prints in exhibitions and sort of missteps, as they were able to see me as an older model of where they could see themselves heading, and so I feel really strongly that I am participating in an ecosystem right now where those that came before me I've learned from all of their different kinds of pathways and the marks that they've made. Currently, right now at Yards we have a show up that's called Sage Wisdom yards. We have a show up that's called Sage Wisdom and there's seven artists that are well into their 70s and 80s who have been making art for over five decades in this region and they are, like this, royal guard of Cleveland, and so it's been really beautiful to celebrate them and the outpouring of love.
Liz Maugans:We just had that opening last week. It was one of the largest receptions we had and they were just floored. They were just so heart swelling to how many people came out to support them, and certainly they've supported all of these generations. Many of them are teachers. They're people who, do you know, parade the circle and these huge epic community events, and very few people actually knew so much about their own creative practice. So to celebrate them in all these different ways, was it's just it?
Andy Heise:was great.
Nick Petrella:That's amazing. So I also see that you founded the Collective Arts Network. It's a quarterly journal, online resource and arts consortium that promotes Northeast Ohio artists and organizations. Just wanted to say that for the listeners. What prompted you to do that and has it been impactful? Impactful.
Liz Maugans:Yes, I just came from an event last night celebrating our 10 years at Cannes, and it was at Tinnerman Lofts, which is the sister building of Yards, worthington, yards and Yards Projects. The celebration was supporters who had funded these beautiful tomes of all of the 10 years of the quarterly journal and their support that has been just. We couldn't have done it without them, and so it was really a wonderful party to honor them. And it started. Cannes started as Mike was Mike Gill, who is the editor and publisher and the executive director of Cannes Journal. It started because he was a printmaker too and he was starting to learn how to create using letterpress and to create handmade books. He was a out of work writer. A paper, a local paper, had just folded, and so he was there and had all these other wicked skills writing about arts and the politics of art and the politics of art and what was going on here in the city, and so we had found that post-recession, that we were really hit hard here in Cleveland, ohio, and so a lot of organizations were really struggling, particularly with getting the message out. We only had one media outlet and one person that covered the news, and that wasn't good enough for us, because that one person wasn't necessarily coming in any of our directions, it was maybe the writing that we might see in our local plane dealer was more things like the Cleveland Museum of Art or the sort of tested and true institution. Yes, so I said, why don't we all pull together different galleries and why don't we all throw $100 in the hat? Let's'll pick each other's name out of the hat and let's write about each other for one year and let's use the plane dealer and let's print like a newspaper, the plane dealer kind of printer. We didn't use the plane dealer, but we used their printer and we ended up making 10,000 of these papers that talked about collective energies that have happened in the arts here in Cleveland.
Liz Maugans:So Michael took that to task. We had a map of all the organizations. We had what their year schedule looked like, and so it was really beautiful because I had actually picked the sculpture center and so somebody else picked Zygote Press and so we became friends and then we had a big launch party and everybody came to pick up their. We made 10,000 of them and everybody came to pick up their newspaper so they can distribute them in their own neighborhoods, came to pick up their newspaper so they can distribute them in their own neighborhoods. And then and that was through a one-to-one match, through the Ohio Arts Council, so we had 16 organizations starting.
Liz Maugans:And then it just basically flourished because of one of the people we were honoring last night, wally Lancey of Consolidated Solutions, who said, hey, I will give you through my company, we will support you for the first two years, but it needs to look better, it needs to be on better paper. And so the Cannes Journal was made possible beyond that one year idea, and it just kind of grew into something that you know who knew 10 years later it would grow into this. I'm a proud board member and and they've just been flourishing in coverage my students are now writing, my art history students are writing and I'm doing critical reviews for Cannes, so it's really become full circle, yeah it's nice.
Liz Maugans:And getting paid for it.
Andy Heise:Yeah that's amazing.
Liz Maugans:Yeah.
Andy Heise:Why 10,000? That seems ambitious for the first one. How did you arrive at 10,000?
Liz Maugans:Well, I think we decided to kind of. We did hire a person that first year to distribute it in different outlets of coffee shops.
Andy Heise:So you had a plan for distribution, okay.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, it wasn't just a price break.
Liz Maugans:No, and it's in every library, it's in all of the public spaces that we could distribute it as far as that goes. But it's a beautiful magazine that I'm so proud of. Mike and his staff and what's been able to just do all kinds of miraculous things. So now it's printed quarterly 10,000, and we have a distribution party that we call Can Launches at all these different galleries all around Northeast Ohio and people come and they pick up their boxes of can. I'm almost like it's like we're kind of like drug dealers or something, because people are so excited to come and get so they can.
Liz Maugans:You know, let me get this back. Let me get my story out about the artists that are showing in our galleries, about the, the workshops we're doing, Um, and it's it's really citizen journalism, uh, from the arts that we can count on, that we can use our own voice and it goes out to and it maximizes the amount of people that we can go out to, versus it being something that the old school we were making our little postcards or sending out our emails that were on our own email lists, and so this way it really this way it was really much more effective and cost efficient during this very hard time post-recession. Yeah.
Nick Petrella:And is it only visual arts or do you do other things, music, things like that it's only visual arts. Yeah, okay, just want to make sure and we'll link to it in the show notes so people can check it out.
Andy Heise:Yeah, and it's free for somebody to grab one and read it. It's free. And it's free for somebody to grab one and read it.
Liz Maugans:It's free and it's beautiful. It's won all kinds of awards Best Magazine in Ohio and all different kinds of wonderful things that have really been pivotal for Cannes. To tell stories and at times it's been bilingual when we've had you know how it's been in different neighborhoods, and so they're continuing to really try to support the historically underrepresented with stories of, you know, smaller grassroots organizations that are in different neighborhoods that many might even say that there's not a lot of stuff going in those neighborhoods culturally, but we all know that there are.
Liz Maugans:So it's really kind of highlighted a lot of those, and a lot of artists too, that have had a lack of a lack of feeling valued or seen, and so it's been really beautiful for those artists to to have you know something that goes back to their name.
Andy Heise:What an over 10, you know 10 years of those releases. What a treasure trove of history you know for for that, for that region and the arts.
Liz Maugans:So it's you know, especially over Cannes, I mean over the pandemic. Cannes was one of those. You know what do we do when everybody was shelter in place, and so there were different kinds of stories and strategies and ways in which that one sticks out to me because we had all of the artists that had masks on that were on the cover of the can. So, politically, how many of the folks in our cultural community were just really struggling at that time and to really put that out there. And so we also tried to make it that even the cost of participating in Cannes was we got grants to be able to cover those costs during Cannes, so everybody could still help process a time where they weren't making money at their own organizations and galleries, as they were closed.
Andy Heise:I'm also imagining so, that first year was sort of the experiment and then somebody said, OK, do this for two more years. Now you have to kind of switch gears a little bit and think about, rather than just getting this thing started, how do we give it legs or whatever?
Liz Maugans:Well, if it wasn't for this Wally Lancey consolidated solutions, we would not have been where we are. It would have been a one off and he really believed in a lot of arts and cultural organizations that he supported through his printing and and our printing with him for the you know the entirety of that time where where we could pay for it. But he gave us that seed money to kind of get this sexy journal off the ground and to get it into people's hands and it sure as hell worked.
Nick Petrella:Yeah Well, he had the proof of concept so he saw that saw the passion likely and said, let's see how he has legs.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So networking and networks, that's a huge part of what of the work that you've been describing to us um, so far. Uh, and we talk about that with guests on this, on this show a lot, primarily because Nick and I work with, with artists, um, you know, college aged artists who are just beginning to think about that notion of networking or what is networking. And then I guess I guess that's that's the question I want to pose to you is is, um, you know, what does networking and utilizing your network or leveraging your network, or leaning on your network, whatever you want to call it what does that look like for you?
Liz Maugans:there was a show I was in that was about my community engaged practice at Mocha, cleveland and it was, uh, back in 2012 and there was a lot of things that were going on with arts funding for individual artists, and because I had this platform and because I think artists were that there was transparency issues there were issues with artists being involved in the policies that were coming down from a cigarette tax public funding and because I had this moment to talk about uh, you know, my own art and uh, which includes uh, connecting with community, I invited others into this exhibition and the piece was called the Artist Trust of Cuyahoga County and to put trust out there and to invite artists to make an eight and a half by 11 portrait of themselves and to be able to participate in the show. Many artists and this is anybody who was 18 or over could participate, and so I got over 550 artists in the exhibition and from that I built a very rudimentary database that had their picture, their name, their website, if they had one, and their email, and so it was probably one of the largest exhibitions attending exhibitions, especially from local artists at MoCA. Moca had, just you know, they have a new fantasy building and a lot of local artists didn't necessarily see themselves represented there, and so this show, with my work among other artists that were included in the show, really was about how they impact community, how they think about community, how the community impacts them, and so from that experience, we started another larger database through the administration of Gordon Square Arts District, who was known for performing arts but wanted to expand it to the literary arts and the visual arts, and so they decided to want to build out a larger website that um uh, that was all representing Cleveland artists, and so, uh, and and performers and dancers and writers and filmmakers and designers, um and the um uh designers, and the Cleveland Artist Network was born, and now that has been shifted over to the Assembly for the Arts and they are actually expanding it with the same people that we were criticizing with part of the Assembly for the Arts and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. But at the time, you know, if you wanted to look up a Cleveland artist, a writer or poet, there was no way for you to get in touch with them, and so we sort of expanded the search engines for that. So specific neighborhoods, demographics, how people wanted to identify, they could upload, it was free and so there were no barriers for if you didn't have the tech skills of building your own website, getting the domain, all that stuff, this was just something that was collectively for everybody, and so for my students, this shift happened this year.
Liz Maugans:So this uh, even this year, I uh, I make it my uh students business that they have to sign up for the can blog, they have to sign up to the cleveland artists network. They have to do all these things, uh, to get their names and to start that, you know, to start that extension away from their own nervousness and self-doubt and imposter syndrome and actually just kind of get themselves out there. I make them all make business cards. That's great For my assignments. I make them all make business cards. It's great For my assignments.
Liz Maugans:I make them go to these arts walks that we have twice a year at 78 Street Studios and at Walk Oliver Waterloo, many that they've never been to before. They don't do arts advocacy work and they have to interview people about whatever their self-interest is in arts advocacy. They have to go to a Cuyahoga Arts and Culture Board meeting or an assembly meeting and write about it and um, and it's, it's, it's, it's really important and uh, it gives them to sort of a terrain of what the landscape looks like. And, uh, my other job at uh cleveland state university is as the haddad art mentor and it's really tried to get paid internships for these students, to get paid gigs, so they understand, you know what they're looking at and how to move forward and being able to negotiate, being able to know what they're worth and to not do it for free yeah, that's great.
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Nick Petrella:Thank you.