No one can tell the story of our local artist communities better than the creators themselves. Learn more about the artists who have made greater Cleveland their home, and take your own lessons from their experiences. 
Poet Gail Bellamy is currently the City of Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate, a program of Heights Arts and Heights Writes. She is the author of two nonfiction books, Cleveland Food Memories (Gray & Co.) and Design Spirits (St. Martin’s Press), and the poetry chapbooks Victual Reality (Pudding House) and Traveler’s Salad (Pudding House).
Raymond Bobgan was recently selected by American Theatre as 1 of 25 artists shaping the future of American theatre. As Executive Artistic Director of Cleveland Public Theatre, Bobgan has directed several lauded productions, including Osama the Hero, The Other Shore and a radical interpretation of Our Town.
Mikaela Clark has been studying dance since the age of 10, when she first recognized her curiosity towards movement. After training in ballet and modern dance for nine years near her childhood home in Texas, she sought further education abroad and nationally, experiencing dance in many forms in the Solomon Islands, Australia and Cleveland.
Sarah Gridley is the author of two books of poetry: Weather Eye Open (University of California Press, 2005), and Green is the Orator (forthcoming from the University of California Press in 2010). Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, jubilat and New American Poetry.
Dianne McIntyre established her choreographic career in New York City for 30 years before returning to her native Cleveland in 2003. In modern dance, she has choreographed both for her own company Sounds in Motion, and numerous other companies nationwide, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dancing Wheels, Dallas Black Dance Theatre and American Dance Festival.
Ida Mercer is a member of the cello faculty, chairman of the String Department and cellist of the Almeda Trio at the Cleveland Music School Settlement. In addition, she is a cello instructor at the Cleveland Institute of Music / Case Western Reserve University. A founding member of the Cleveland Cello Society, she currently serves as its Program Chair.
Debra Nagy has been called “a baroque oboist of consummate taste and expressivity” (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Nagy performs frequently with baroque ensembles and orchestras nationwide and has been heard at the international Early Music Festivals of Boston, Berkeley, Regensburg and Antwerp.
Charles Oberndorf is a native of Cleveland and the author of three novels and five short stories. He teaches English at University School, where he is the Chi Waggoner Chair in Middle School. Oberndorf has also worked with adult writers, both at Imagination 2 and facilitating CSU's Cleveland Public Workshop during five different semesters.
Kristin Ohlson is the author of the award-winning memoir Stalking the Divine and a coauthor of the New York Times bestselling Kabul Beauty School. A California-born, Cleveland-based writer, Ohlson has published articles and essays in the New York Times (magazine and newspaper), Salon.com, Smithsonian.com, Oprah and many others. She has also published short fiction in award-winning literary magazines such as West Branch and the Indiana Review.
As a performer, director, and playwright, Chris Seibert develops new plays, reinvented classics, solo works and original adaptations. In her many years of performing, she has appeared in a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional performance venues.
Robin VanLear is a sculptor and performance artist with her own company, Art Acts, which she founded in 1978. VanLear joined the Education Department of the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1989 and now serves as the organization’s Artistic Director of Community Arts.
Sarah Willis’ first novel, Some Things That Stay (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction 2000, was awarded The 2000 Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature and was adapted into a film.
After completing the Foundations program at the Pratt Institute, George Mauersberger received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing from Carnegie-Mellon University and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Painting from Ohio University. He has lived in Cleveland since 1984.
Michael Romanik is a 1989 graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art. He majored in Drawing with a minor in both Glass and Printmaking. He took Enameling as an Independent Study and continued exploring the technique of cloisonné after graduation and is primarily self-taught in his jewelry and metalworking skills.
Mark Slankard's photographic and video works have been exhibited and screened widely, including such venues as the Rotterdam International Film Festival, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Columbia University, Texas Tech University, Visual Studies Workshop, SoHo Photo Gallery, Wexner Center for the Arts and Rebecca Ibel Gallery.
Independent glass artist and Cleveland Institute of Art Professor Brent Kee Young has been recognized by scores of museums, galleries, colleges and universities in the United States and Asia, which have displayed or acquired his work. Many of the institutions have engaged him as a speaker and teacher.
Roberta Williamson’s love of nature grew out of her early childhood experiences in a poor, urban environment devoid of trees, grass and nature. Eventually her family moved to the suburbs. Roberta’s pieces not only portray the wonder of nature but the elements that are part of the human condition. Many of her works speak of loss, loneliness and longing.
Randall Tiedman was a highly intuitive self-taught artist. He was accepted for an advanced standing at the Cleveland Institute of Art after his tour of duty in Vietnam but decided to pursue art on his own. He did not publicly exhibit his art until 1982, when he made his gallery debut in the Proscenium '82 at the Beck Center.
Michael Loderstedt’s work incorporates photography, printmaking, artist books and installation. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking from East Carolina University in 1981 and his Master’s of Fine Arts from Kent State University in 1985.
Kasumi is internationally celebrated as a leading innovator of a new artform synthesizing film, sound, video and emerging technologies. She has won global acclaim for her experimental films and video art in venues worldwide, from herLincolnCenterappearance with Pinchas Zukerman and The New York Philharmonic to live performances with Grandmaster Flash and DJ Spooky.
