‘Lake Effect’ brings Cleveland’s artists back into the spotlight

“Lake Effect: Artists from Cleveland Now” marks the Cleveland Museum of Art’s return to showcasing local talent, exploring the people, places and experiences that shape the region’s identity.

By Abigail Saplak

Walking through the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Transformer Station, it is difficult to know where to look first. Crowded walls give way to open spaces. Bright colors sit beside muted tones, while paintings, photographs and other mediums fill both rooms inside the gallery. Each work is selected to tell a different story.

That is the experience of “Lake Effect: Artists from Cleveland Now.” There is no single way to capture Cleveland, and “Lake Effect” does not try to. 

When exploring the galleries of the Cleveland Museum of Art, one could get lost in centuries of artwork from around the world. The museum houses an expansive collection of more than 66,000 works spanning 6,000 years of art history. “Lake Effect,” however, brings the focus closer to home.

Featuring the work of Northeast Ohio artists, the exhibition offers a look at the people, places and ideas that shape Cleveland’s contemporary art scene. It also marks the museum’s first local artists exhibition since the “May Show” ended in 1993. 

For years, Cleveland-area artists have called for the museum to bring back an exhibition for local creators, similar to that of the “May Show,” a juried exhibition of local artists presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1919-1993. The “May Show” was one of the museum’s best-attended exhibitions and an integral part of its identity, but was ultimately ended under the leadership of Museum Director Robert Bergmen as the museum shifted toward national and international programming.

After the “May Show” was discontinued, the museum did not host another local artists exhibit for more than three decades. “Lake Effect” marks the museum’s return to showcasing the work of Northeast Ohio artists. 

In celebration of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s 110th anniversary, the show brings the focus to the ‘Mistake by the Lake,’ featuring 66 artists selected from 1,700 submissions by 950 artists. The juried exhibition is on display at the Transformer Station in Ohio City through Dec. 6, 2026. 

Despite occupying only two rooms in the gallery, the exhibition fills the walls with works of varying subject matter and moods. At times, the pieces can feel disconnected from one another, but that lack of cohesion gives the exhibit a sense of unpredictability and shows the many directions that contemporary art takes within the region.

Among the exhibit’s multitude of works, “In These Boots” offers a perspective that is deeply Cleveland. The piece is an oil painting on a canvas-covered panel, showing a brown, muddied work boot sitting atop worn green wood, the result of a hard day’s work. 

In These Boots, 2023. Frank Oriti (b. 1983). Oil on canvas covered panel. Courtesy

of the artist. © Frank Oriti

In a room full of larger, more colorful pieces and sculptures, one might be surprised at how much attention the boot demands. The artist, Frank Oriti, was inspired by the Seth Avett song “In These Boots” that tells the story of a worn pair of boots and the experiences they have endured throughout their lives. 

While serving as a testament to the quiet passage of time, the painting also holds the ability to speak to Cleveland’s industrial roots. Rather than showcasing steel architecture, the boot captures the sweat, labor and human foundation that helped establish Cleveland as a commanding presence in the manufacturing industry. 

While Oriti’s boot represents the people who built Cleveland’s industrial identity, another work in the exhibit turns toward the landscape left behind by that history. In Avery Duff’s oil painting, “Wasteland/Wetland,” they explore a factory near their home in Akron, Ohio. 

Over the years, they have watched the factory fall into a state of ruin and, more recently, a wetland where birds and animals seek shelter. The painting depicts a wetland with a dilapidated building covered in graffiti.  

Wasteland/Wetland, 2025. Avery Duff (b. 1992). Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the artist. © Avery Duff

For Duff, the changing landscape serves as a metaphor for their own gender identity and queerness, a nod to the idea that identity, like the landscape, is ever-changing. However, when viewed through a Cleveland lens, the work can also be interpreted as a reflection of an industrialized land.

It is a region shaped by factories that have since been abandoned and reclaimed by nature. The graffiti across the building represents decades of writers who have left their mark, a physical trace of industrial decline and the jobs and communities left behind. 

The shift from Duff’s abandoned landscape to Jennifer Leach’s “Sum of Her Parts 5” is a perfect example of the exhibit’s range. The abstract work is a multiblock woodcut on paper, with shades of red, pink and black overlapping to form a collection of shapes. However, those shapes are not entirely new. Leach uses visual elements from her previous series, “Untethered,” and reworks them to create something visually different.

Sum of Her Parts 5, 2024. Jennifer Leach (b. 1966). Woodcut prints. Courtesy of the artist. © Jennifer Leach

Leach explained her process: “I work in series and then I base my new series and its visual elements on previous ones.” This process inspired the title “Sum of Her Parts,” reflecting how elements from her previous series featuring a female figure became anew. 

Rather than assigning a single theme to the work, Leach leaves the interpretation entirely up to the viewer. She hopes each person can bring their own experiences to the piece and find their own meaning in it. 

“I hope everyone takes something different away because everyone comes to a piece of art with their own eyes and their own experience. Look at the title, look at the art, create a story in your own head about it,” Leach said. 

For Leach, being involved in the exhibit carries meaning that extends beyond the artwork itself. After earning a post-baccalaureate from Cleveland State University and spending the last 10 years creating fine art in Cleveland, Leach said she is grateful for the opportunity to show at this level in a place she calls home.

“This exhibit is the first show the museum has done since the May Show ended … It’s great to be recognized by the editors and by the institution, and I’m happy to be a part of it.” Leach said. 

As you near the end of the exhibit and prepare to leave the Transformer Station, the pieces that initially felt disconnected each begin to leave their own traces of what it means to be from Northeast Ohio. A worn boot carries the weight of the city’s working past, an abandoned factory overtaken by wildlife and graffiti, and abstract shapes whose meaning is left at the mercy of the viewer. 

Perhaps that is what makes “Lake Effect” feel distinctly Cleveland. Viewers are given the pieces, but the story is left unfinished. Each of the 66 works is a fragment of something larger: the people, places and experiences that make up Cleveland, Ohio.