Salon des Refuses Gallery

About me:

1387 East Blvd.

There's a corner to buy things, a corner to remember things, mostly beers. Grasses that are not groomed, but hanging in the eyes. Well-trained, well-armed, well-fed grasshoppers. Fabrics and furnitures of unknown origin--of origin, this is known.
Many of every elderly thing. Some can be stacked, leaned, others topple.

"This place is a museum of itself,"

muses Julie Patton. Landlady, artist, teacher and visionary, Julie grew up less than a mile from here. 1387 East Boulevard has always been an artist's home. Marjorie Witt Johnson, Lori Patton-Malloy, Virgie Patton and Shannon & Manuel Sanchez were artists at home here. Abigail Childs pillowed and booked. Ted Sherron, the former director of development at the Cleveland Institute of Art held regular exhibitions in his 1387 suite in the 1980's. Daniel Kontar-Gray housed the Black Poet's Society in the nineties. Musicians Uri Caine, Nasheet Waits, Taurus Mateen frequented this place. Chucho Valdes band members, Emilio Valdes and Juan-Carlos Formell, made music climb the walls. The Rude Mechanical Orchestra of Brooklyn, NY passed through recently, while Ecopoet Jonathon Skinner collaborated on a site-specific project called Seeds for Change. Our building has supported the work and health of Russell Atkins for years. We are proud to hold a living archive of the work of Virgie Ezelle Patton; the gallery is dedicated to her.

"Here we practice the art of living."

The term "Artist in Residency" is typically a bit of a euphemism. At the Salon des Refusés, the term has become a literalism. One artist from East Boulevard, from Cleveland, from India or any other place is invited to live, work and exhibit in this building. Needing little to subsist in such a supportive environment, the artist is able liberate their practice from commerce, performing instead a valued service through their own work and their administration of the gallery.
This project was developed in partnership with an existing youth program and community garden, with which the artist works closely to integrate gallery functions and programming.

The City of Cleveland has lost nearly 50% of its population since 1950. In 2009, 1387 East Boulevard is at 50% capacity.
A woman on this street will die without telling anyone how she used to prepare a Sunday meal. We are rapidly losing our sense of place.

Art that is based on place does more than just recall the physical place to its inhabitants and the world, it also redefines what materials are needed to create meaning. Printing presses, recording studios and proscenium stages are not to be found anywhere in this building; here we have dried oak leaves, eaten away like lace, tuneless pianos, flapping iron coal chutes, rooms that are holding their breath...

The art that happens here is one of re-purposing, re-collecting. The discipline derives from living, and being lived-in. All materials are native, inexpensive or free, belonging to this place already--an artist simply borrows them for their stay. Place is built-upon, built-up and rebuilt. Nothing is knocked down or demolished but that notion of placeless-ness that effaces our bashful city.

And in a brilliant moment, the artist finds that there is truly nothing special about 1387 East Boulevard. It is a place, just like any other.