Eli Betchik

Eli is a jeweler obsessed with invertebrates. Through her work in silver, gold, gemstones, and the occasional dead bug she explores the forms of insects, arachnids, myriapods, and annelids. She graduated with a degree in Jewelry and Metalworking from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2021 and has shown work in various gallery shows around the northeast Ohio Area. Aside from bugs, Eli takes inspiration from various natural sources including mold, lichen, carnivorous plants, and local geology. Her artistic practice is split between creating daily wear jewelry on commission and fabricating larger scale art jewelry and sculptural pieces, focusing throughout on decay, relics, the macabre, and grotesque.

Jace Lee (이주은)

Jace is a painter based in Cleveland. Her practice explores language, materiality, and systems of sense-making in a process similar to translation. She is interested in the biology and neuroscience of vision, and how we perceive and generate meaning from what we see. Her abstract oil paintings negotiate energy, form, and space, drawing inspiration from ecology, the built environment, and her writing practice. Lee graduated with a BFA in Painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2021.

Arfil Pajarillaga

Arfil is a Filipino-American artist based in Cleveland. Primarily working with analog photography processes, his work examines the relationships that coexist within environments, whether it be between people, objects, or the natural surroundings—using the gesture of looking and framing as a way to explore intimacy, transience, and moments of beauty in the everyday.

Artist Statement:
Photography is often used as a way of depicting “this is how it is.” I try to use photography as a way of describing, “this is how it feels,”—using it as a tool for understanding the world around me. The world is a vibrant place that is always shifting—there is beauty in that shift. These photographs are an invitation to explore and notice the landscapes around you—these photos are the view from the sides of highways, your neighborhood at night, a lunch at the lake—a glance in any direction, at any moment in time.

Diana Rice

Diana is a 2023 graduate of The University of Akron Myers School of Art with a BFA in painting and drawing and a minor in illustration. Her senior solo exhibition “Notes of Periphery” was featured in the spring of 2023 at Kink Contemporary (Cleveland). Currently, Rice is a resident artist at the Summit Artspace (Akron, Ohio). In Rice’s art practice she focuses on her personal history, mythologized childhood memories, familial stories, and dreams. She draws inspiration from poetry, literature, folklore, and her own writings. Using traditional and imagined symbolisms in her artworks, she creates a lyrical reality that is both a true personal record of her life and an otherworldly narrative open to the interpretation of the viewer.

Ron Shelton

Ron is a multi-media artist living in Cleveland. He has tirelessly practiced his craft for the past five years, with the main focus on plastic. Ron’s artistic exploration around this medium has been showcased in Northeast Ohio and Internationally: CAN Triennial, 2018 and 2022; Firefish Festivals, 2018 and 2019; Rooms to Let, 2018 and 2019; an exhibition at Detay Sanat Galerisi, Ankara, Turkey in 2020 was the beginning of a busy exhibition itinerary for the next four years. He has shown his work in many Northeast Ohio galleries, an artist residency at Zygote Press in Cleveland, and a 2022 European tour of his plastic art work. As the curator and publisher of an online arts magazine, High Art Fridays (HAF), Ron began seeing a commonality in artists across the planet working in this unsustainable medium. This collection of artists is making a bold statement of how this base material is finding its way, traversing through endless streams and ocean currents forming gyres and islands across the planet In 2022, he began his “cover-a-building” project, which covers buildings with plastic. The Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls was the first building, and he is planning to cover the Invigorate Gallery in 2025.

Thea Spittle
Curator

Thea (she/her) is an independent curator and writer based in Akron, Ohio. She collaborates alongside artists to produce exhibitions, publications and public programs for the greater Northeast Ohio community. Spittle holds a Master of Arts in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Spanish from Hamilton College, Clinton, New York. Her first curatorial project, the sunroom, was in a Cleveland Heights home, and showcased site-specific installations throughout the home and its yard. She served as co-curator for CAN Triennial 2022 producing exhibitions at Zygote Press, Morgan Paper Conservancy and artNEO. She currently co-directs Gallery 2602 with Deidre McPherson, a roaming exhibition and public programming platform situated within community spaces. She has written essays for Cleveland Institute of Art, CAN Journal and Gallery 2602 and moderated the panel discussion Who Curates Contemporary Art? at Cleveland Museum of Art.

About Museum of Creative Human Art
Michael C. Russell II and Antwoine Washington

The Museum of Creative Human Art employs a character-based approach to connect creative expression with education and personal development. In addition to providing a space for underserved youth to learn, connect, create, and share, they also offer exhibition opportunities for professional and emerging artists. At its core, their work focuses on cultivating conscientiousness, moral agency, core values, and social attitudes essential for individuals to make meaningful contributions to society. Learn more at www.creativehumanart.com.