Akron Life September 2023

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A grief-stricken face, a couple embracing, a mother on her deathbed, a body collapsed in relaxation — late Cleveland artist John W. Carlson’s paintings, mixed-media pieces and drawings display visceral, relatable emotions using variations in figure, expressive lines, color, layer and scale. “Emotion is a common thread running through the human condition,” Carlson wrote. “My work is every emotion.” See more than 75 paintings, drawings and objects in “John W. Carlson: Set the Twilight Reeling” from Sept. 16 to Nov. 12 at the Massillon Museum. A portion of the exhibit re-creates his former studio in the ArtCraft building in Cleveland so visitors can see how he used his sketches and journals to create his final works. He collaborated with visual artists, writers and musicians, and visitors can view art works that are products of those collaborations. He spoke with his friend and Jamaican-born pho tographer, Radcliffe “Ruddy” Roye, about music and race for his “Blues” series. For example, the oil-and-charcoal work “On a Sea of Forgotten Teardrops” features a Black family holding up a baby to a full moon on a raft, which is made out of driftwood Carlson sourced from Mississippi. “The blues here is the space to escape their wretched ness, and it is where John hopes to catapult his view ers, for them to also feel the plight,” Roye wrote. Carlson’s frequent collaborator was his partner, Shari Wilkins, who is the founder and strategic director of the Cleveland Print Room dedicated to film photography. The two co-created the American Emotionalism manifesto, which states art should

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SEPTEMBER 2023 | akronlife.com