Who’s Next

EMERGiNG ARTiSTS iN NORTHEAST OHiO

DEREK WALKER

Age: 21 • Lives: Maple Heights Creates: Cleveland • Learns: Senior painting major at Cleveland Institute of Art

By Amanda Koehn

Derek Walker’s ability to challenge himself with new painting styles – despite the success of his past works, and still being a college student – has him moving toward a promising future.

The Cleveland Institute of Art senior and Maple Heights native was a fi nalist for a leading U.S. student art competition in 2021, saw his fi rst solo show this year and received several other recent accolades for his paintings.

He pushes himself toward new genres, now experimenting with pieces where the end result is not as planned as his previous work.

“For these types of paintings,” he says, pointing to a couple of portraits from 2021, in his art studio at CIA, “I got too comfortable with it after about three years of just doing these styles, where I knew what I was going to paint from the very beginning.”

Now working on his Bachelor of Fine Arts project, he’s combining the realism of his earlier work and the cartoonish qualities of his more recent art with new narratives and ideas.

Walker’s fi rst solo show, “Let The Cape Fly,” at the Art Studio Gallery at Case Western Reserve University in May comprised naturalistic portraits. In them, “The fi gure is kind of tricking the viewer as if they’re in the room with them,” he says.

The show specifi cally explores the durag, a hair covering commonly used to protect Black hairstyles. Consistent across his work, he incorporates symbols relating to Cleveland, such as Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, a hip hop group from Cleveland, and the RTA logo. “Faulty Printer” (2022). Acrylic and glitter on canvas, 48 x 36 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Walker chose to focus on the durag because of its cultural ties to the Black Diaspora, he says, and to display it within portraits and fi gurative art, which historically lack representation of Black people and culture.

“I kind of wanted to celebrate it through a naturalistic rendering, and like ideas of representation because seeing art historical portraits, I didn’t really see any fi gures that were Black,” he says. “I kind of wanted to do my own take on that and insert fi gures that are Black into these painting conventions.”

“Let The Cape Fly” was developed through CIA’s Creativity Works internship, where students organize their own project with a community partner over a semester.

“It’s an amazing program because I got to pretty much do everything from scratch and really learn the ropes,” Walker says. “Now I have under my belt the idea of organizing a show.”

For his fi rst painting for that series, “Remain Myself,” Walker says he “kind of spent my entire quarantine (during COVID-19) painting it. That took about four or fi ve months.” In the 2021 Student Independent Exhibition at CIA, it won both the show’s Board Grand Prize and The Gwen Cooper ’63 Award.

Another piece, “30 Wave Caps,” was a fi nalist for the AXA Art Prize – a leading national student art competition. Walker traveled to New York City in November 2021 to see it on view at the Wilkinson Gallery at the New York Academy of Art. He was among 40 fi nalists chosen from 600 submissions.

After that series, Walker began to dive into a comic book style of painting, he says, pointing to two pieces in his studio at CIA. And now working on his BFA project, the works so far are painted in a scale of black, gray and white, depicting people and symbols in scenes across Cleveland.

While the story is not explicitly written out like in a comic book, there’s most defi nitely a narrative. The artwork dabbles in afrofuturism, he says, an aesthetic movement focused on the intersection of the Black Diaspora culture and science and technology.

“I’m pulling from afrofuturism, but I’m looking at it from a standpoint of Cleveland commuters,” he says, pointing to a piece titled “Late Bus” that shows two commuters waiting in the rain, and includes a Cleveland Guardians logo. It shows o his comic style but with a sense of dystopia. He jokes he got “a little festive” working on it around Halloween.

For the BFA project, he’s scouted locations around Cleveland, with “Late Bus” taking place at a bus stop near E. 55th Street and Broadway Avenue. In future paintings, he’s hoping to depict more of Cleveland’s iconic buildings and dip into more experimental areas of fashion, he says.

Walker says he’s often inspired by music and narratives in songs. He will draw an idea in his sketchbook, and then considers who to photograph that will fi t his vision – often family or friends. He’ll edit the photos in Photoshop to complete the scene, and then will get to work on the painting, he says.

This past year, he also had work on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland in the exhibition, “Where We Overlap,” curated by Davon Brantley, who was featured in Canvas’ Who’s Next in 2020. Walker is currently showing at the Streetlight Guild in Columbus in an exhibit where Ohio artists explore their psyche and how it communicates with the world around them. The Streetlight Guild show is curated by artists Nina “9” Wells & Khamall Jahi.

Looking to graduation in the spring, Walker says he can see himself in a creative role at a company like Marvel, balanced with freelance and selling paintings.

Growing up, Walker played baseball in addition to making art, and thought he would pursue a career in one of them. But when it came time for high school, he chose Cleveland School of the Arts, which didn’t have a baseball team – meaning he had to decide between the two fairly early.

“I think it was a good decision,” he says.

ON VIEW

• “MIND, BODY, SPIRIT & SOOOUUUL,” an exhibition featuring art by Derek Walker, is on view at the Streetlight Guild, 1367 E. Main St. in Columbus, through Nov. 26. For more information, visit bit.ly/3T0LJli. Above: “Remain Myself” (2020). Acrylic on wood panel, 39 x 72 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist. Opposite page: Derek Walker in his art studio with “Fendi’s Ballad” (2021, oil on canvas, 58 x 36 inches) to his left, and “Late Bus” (2022, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches) to his right. Photo / Amanda Koehn

Cooper “(Walker’s) fearlessness plays out at every level. Some artists, student or not, get really comfortable in the work they’re making, especially if they feel like they’ve become known for it. This can mean that the work kind of shuts down, stops developing. Derek is very self-aware as an artist and he’s not afraid to try new strategies, processes or techniques. If the work isn’t doing what he wants it to, he’s not afraid to change it and he’s got the painting chops to do it. Derek’s the real deal.” Lane Cooper, associate professor of painting, Cleveland Institute of Art

MEAGAN SMITH

Age: 29 • Lives: Edgewater neighborhood of Cleveland • Creates: Asiatown neighborhood of Cleveland Learned: MFA in textiles from Kent State University and BFA in painting & drawing from The University of Akron

By Amanda Koehn

Meagan Smith has spent the better part of the last few years learning about the infi nite possibilities of digital weaving. Since the medium is not widely accessible – digital looms are costly and can be di cult to access – her mission to make brightly colored, often wavy and complex patterned weaves took her to Norway this year.

Back from three summer residencies in Norway, where digital weaving was founded, she’s working on new weaving projects that explore themes like fragmentation.

Smith, who has a background in painting, drawing and ceramics, is drawn to bold colors, specifi cally shades like “puke green” and “electric yellow” – “colors that just make you vibrate inside,” she says. A former collegiate swimmer, she also draws inspiration from movements bodies make in the water, like splashes, ripples and refl ections.

She notes one digital weaving can take from 60 to 80 hours.

“It can be overwhelming knowing how many possibilities there are,” she says of the practice, showing many vibrant pieces in her new Cleveland Asiatown art studio, which includes a fl oor loom and computer to build digital projects. “It’s like a beautifully painful thing.”

Digital weavings are developed in Photoshop, where pixels correspond to threads on a loom. Artists tell the computer how to create the piece by controlling the threads, Smith says. Once drafted, they send the design to the digital loom to make the weaving.

“You can combine di erent complex patterns together that you can’t do on the fl oor loom,” Smith says, showing an example of a hydrangea silhouette she made with beads “Stretching Across 2” (2022). Hand woven on TC2 loom, painted warp, cotton and synthetic threads, 15.25 x 13.5 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.

embellishing it. She also sometimes paints on threads to create “surprise” elements, she says.

A Houston native, Smith lived in Atlanta and Denver growing up. She moved to Ohio after being recruited for swimming by the University of Akron.

After two-and-a-half years though, she stopped swimming for the school and shifted her focus to art – two practices that are more similar than one might think. Both swimming and art making are based around “structure and rhythm and technique, and some of the same even bodily movements,” Smith says.

After completing her bachelor’s degree in painting and drawing in 2015, she worked “loosely as an art therapist,” she says, adding she didn’t know what exactly she wanted to do after college. She also took ceramics classes at Cuyahoga Community College, and continued to make work.

“I started cutting up my paintings and then sewing them back together,” she says. “I was really just fascinated by lines and instead of making a stroke with a paintbrush, I wanted to do that with threads. So, I started sewing into my pieces, and it just activated the lines a lot more.”

She took a weaving workshop at Praxis Fiber Workshop in Cleveland’s Waterloo Arts District and visited the “NEO Geo” exhibit at the Akron Art Museum, where she fi rst saw digital weaving work by Janice Lessman-Moss, a textiles professor at Kent State University. Smith applied to Kent to work with LessmanMoss – her now-mentor who retired from Kent recently – and graduated with her master’s degree in 2021. As a student, she traveled to Japan to study patterns in nature for a month.

After working at Praxis Fiber Workshop for a year, Smith went to Norway this summer for three months for three digital weaving residencies. There, she got to explore the medium in a more in-depth way, she says.

“That was something I wanted to do for the past two-anda-half years,” she says, adding she had applied for a Fulbright scholarship to study in Norway previously, but didn’t make it to the fi nal round. “Going there and starting anew, continuing this body of work and trying to continue to fi nd access to this tool has been a challenge, but also a success.”

Back in Cleveland, she doesn’t have a digital loom, as they are quite expensive – the loom she’s eying costs around $60,000. In 2023, she’ll be raising funds to buy one.

This past February, Smith showed her work at KINK Contemporary in Cleveland – her fi rst solo show after graduate school. Smith also teaches foundation classes as an adjunct professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Currently, she has work on view at Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls and in the CIA 2022 Faculty Exhibition, as well as in a major European textile exhibition, Young Textile Art Triennial, in Lodz, Poland. Next year, she’ll have a show at Capacity Contemporary Exchange in Louisville, Ky.

While her MFA thesis drew from her history in swimming, Smith is now interested in exploring glitches in the fl ow – “creating balance in something that seems like it’s broken or twisting and kind of moving,” she says.

Specifi cally, she’s intrigued by what comes when a given structure is broken, noting she thinks about the current political environment a lot in creating her work.

“Lately, I’ve been interested in the fragmentation of it and how that distorts and warps and becomes something inverted, or entirely new,” she says. “... I’m always fi nding myself trying to balance this distorted, kind of fragmented, broken, beautiful thing.”

ON VIEW

• Valley Art Center’s 51st annual juried art exhibition includes work by Meagan Smith, on view through Dec. 14 at 155 Bell St., in Chagrin Falls. For more information, visit valleyartcenter.org. • The Cleveland Institute of Art 2022 Faculty Exhibition includes work by Smith, on view through Dec. 22 in Reinberger Gallery at 11610 Euclid Ave. For more information, visit cia.edu. • Summa Health’s Behavioral Health Pavilion at 45 Arch St. in Akron will open Jan. 14, 2023, where Smith’s work is part of its permanent collection and a show celebrating the opening through April 4. Opposite page: Meagan Smith at her fl oor loom in her studio. Photo / Amanda Koehn. Above: “Chroma” (2019). Hand woven on TC2 loom, painted warp and cotton, 20 x 13.5 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist. Below: Weavings by Meagan Smith in her studio. Photo / Amanda Koehn

Lessman-Moss “Meagan is a lovely, caring individual who exudes a quality of dynamic energy and generous spirit that makes her a welcome addition to the creative community in Northeast Ohio. Her weavings harness this energy in engaging choreographies of color and pattern.” Janice Lessman-Moss, emeritus professor of textiles, Kent State University

NICK LEE

Age: 25 • Lives and creates: Akron Learned: BFA in painting from Kent State University

By Amanda Koehn

The turning point that led Nick Lee to become a painter was a trip to experience modern art in New York City in 2019. At the time, the Kent State University junior was majoring in art education.

But in New York, he saw a show by Amy Sherald soon after she debuted her National Portrait Gallery painting of Michelle Obama.

“Seeing her work was really life changing, and it allowed me to think of who can do what,” Lee says. “I kind of changed my path in a way.”

He listened to Sherald, known for depicting African American experiences through intimate painted portraits, discuss how she wanted to refl ect Black people so they feel represented within art history.

“When you have a refl ection, you know you’re not a monster,” Lee explains. “... I think of, what could I add to art history as well? And when I was looking at the portraits, there was a lack of representation for Asian people. It just clicked that that’s something I could do to add to art history.”

He soon switched his major to painting, graduating in 2021. This year, Lee had his fi rst post-college solo show at Summit Artspace in Akron, and has two more he’s preparing to open.

Known for his vivid portraits that incorporate symbolic and political messages, Lee continues to seek inspiration from art history in conceptualizing his paintings. He often references Japanese culture. For example, he notes wooden bird carvings Japanese Americans created while forced into internment camps during World War II. He’s included them in his paintings as a symbol of Japanese American strength. Left: Nick Lee. Above: “An Ox outside the China Shop” (2022). Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches. Photos courtesy of the artist.

“Osaka” (2021). Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches.

One painting, “Sympathy for the Caged Bird,” shows a boy holding a bird in a cage. It symbolizes “repeating of history,” he says, tying when Japanese Americans were blamed for World War II to when Asian Americans were blamed for the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Hate crimes rose and former President Donald Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus.” Donald and Melania Trump are in the painting’s background, Lee explains.

A graduate of Green High School, Lee says as a child, he liked drawing people.

“I’ve always drawn and I’ve always been attracted to art – even though for my family, it’s like foreign to them,” he says.

It wasn’t until college that becoming an artist became a realistic goal, he says. A Kent State painting professor, Charles Basham, taught him how to use bright, saturated colors in his paintings, he adds.

After college, he worked at the Immersive Van Gogh exhibition when it came to Cleveland, and did an artist residency there last year. It was a good experience for working in an artistic environment, he says, and he made and sold his work at the exhibit – giving him exposure to a wide, diverse pool of visitors. Afterward, he took a job at a Lowe’s home improvement store.

So far, the biggest challenge he’s faced in his art career has been the fi nancial aspect, he says. Since the beginning of August, he’s pursued art full time.

Another turning point came when Lee was selected for Summit Artspace’s fi rst funded solo exhibition for Black, Indigenous and People of Color, or BIPOC, artists. His show, “When We Share Our Wounds” – which sought to heighten representation of Japanese Americans in portraiture – was on view from April 8 through June 25.

“It meant a lot to me because it was my fi rst solo show after my degree,” he says, adding he created the work for his senior thesis, but it was shown as part of a KSU group show at the time. “It was nice to have that work secluded from like all the other students’ work.” Lee’s profi le has only grown since.

His painting of professional tennis player Naomi Osaka was printed to hang in the storefront of Velvet Vintage Boutique in downtown Akron. He also was part of a show at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood earlier this fall.

This season, he will have a solo show at Negative Space Gallery in Cleveland’s Asiatown starting Nov. 26. The show, six portraits of Asian Americans from the Cleveland area, was developed with support from SPACES’ Urgent Art Fund Cycle 3 – an initiative where the Cleveland gallery o ers project-based support to Cuyahoga County artists, supported by Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.

And opening Jan. 13, 2023, he’ll have a solo show at Heights Arts in Cleveland Heights. Lee says that show “fell in my lap,” after he pitched an idea and the gallery quickly agreed.

“I am really passionate about the LGBTQ community, so I wanted to make a show dedicated to them,” he says of the new Heights Arts project. “I’ve sprinkled in queer people throughout my portraits, but I haven’t had a show dedicated to queer people.”

ON VIEW

•Nick Lee’s show at Negative Space Gallery, 3820 Superior Ave. E., second fl oor in Cleveland, is on view starting Nov. 26, with an opening reception from 5-7 p.m. The exhibit is on view until Jan. 20, 2023. •Heights Arts will host a solo show by Nick Lee, on view at 2175 Lee Road in Cleveland Heights from Jan. 13, 2023 through March 12. “Sympathy for the Caged Bird” (2021). Oil on canvas, 28 x 38 inches.

Meeker “Nick’s spring 2022 solo exhibition at Summit Artspace, ‘When We Share Our Wounds,’ facilitated important conversations about who is represented in our media and artwork, and who is missing or systematically erased. The stories his portraits tell are vibrant, complex, compelling, humorous and painful at once. Nick’s work offers so many points of entry, challenging us to reconsider the assumptions we carry about people, culture and race.” Heather Meeker, executive director, Summit Artspace

SYDNEY NiCOLE KAY

Age: 23 • Lives and creates: Cleveland Learned: BFA in photography from the Cleveland Institute of Art

By Amanda Koehn

Mixed-media artist and photographer Sydney Nicole Kay’s work often builds from vivid images of people to explore ideas surrounding consumerism and race.

Incorporating bold, contrasting colors and intricate cutouts, she tries to let her work come naturally and allows those around her to inspire it.

“I kind of like sitting on things and just letting them marinate, and just kind of doing a lot of passion projects,” Kay says.

For the 2021 Cleveland Institute of Art graduate, those “passion projects” have led her into shows that would be pursued by artists much farther in their careers.

Kay grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she has childhood memories of wanting to be an artist. While she always liked drawing, her mother was “like the queen of taking pictures everywhere,” which led Kay to do so, too, she says.

“I kind of knew I wanted to do art, but I didn’t know exactly what,” she says. “I think most people, when you think of artists, you just think of the typical fi ne artist and not really all the other spaces you can branch out to.”

In high school, she was motivated by her art teacher to pursue a career in the fi eld. When it came time to choose a college, she says she fi rst learned about CIA when a representative visited her relatively small high school to share information about its programs. She liked it, as did her parents, and she initially started at CIA as an animation major.

Kay switched to photography, but she says, ironically, now she does more animation at her full-time job as a content production assistant at Marcus Thomas, a locally headquartered advertising agency.

For her Bachelor of Fine Arts project, she incorporated screen printing and video into her photography work. The project, in part, analyzed the dynamic between advertisers and consumers, and the consumers’ role in determining what ultimately gets marketed.

“(It showed) what our role as the consumer is in fi guring out what the advertisers market,” she says. “… If we want more representation, then we must demand that because I feel like the consumer doesn’t really act like we have as much power as we really do in trying to ask for what we want.”

For the project, she cut out human models from her photos. They leave the viewer to consider who might fi t into the spaces based on the outfi ts and hair left in the image, she explains, and people may have di erent ideas based on their own backgrounds. Playing with “what I can take out,” of photos has also been a consistent theme in her work – fi lling spaces which seem random, but aren’t, with something completely di erent.

After graduating in 2021, she began her job at Marcus Thomas. Doing her own artwork on nights and weekends primarily since, she’s stayed busy and has gotten attention for it.

In 2021, she was part of “Cross Generations; bridging the gap of artists,” a show at the Morgan Conservatory in collaboration with the Museum of Creative Human Art. Less than a month after she graduated, the show aimed to amplify local artists of color across ages and disciplines.

Kay says that show helped lead to another project she did this year at the Cleveland Print Room. She was an inaugural recipient of the Stephen Bivens Fellowship/Residency there, creating and

Sydney Nicole Kay at her “Reaching Paradise” show at the Cleveland Print Room. Photo / McKinley Wiley

A 16 x 20 inch digital inkjet print that was part of Sydney Nicole Kay’s BFA project in 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist. An 8 x 10 inch digital inkjet print that was part of Sydney Nicole Kay’s 2021 BFA project. Outfi t designed by Cierra Boyd. Photo courtesy of the artist.

showing her exhibition, “Reaching Paradise,” on view this past August and September.

Her project at the Print Room covered di erent generations and their relationships to success and adversity, she explains. Focusing on people of color – from Baby Boomers to Generation Z – she explored how areas of success like power, wealth, knowledge and happiness are defi ned and achieved di erently across generations, and each generation’s unique issues faced.

She paired that idea with photographic mediums – an iPhone, digital camera and large format camera – to depict and represent the generations with which they best align. Paralleling the exhibit’s exploration of generational challenges, di erent challenges come with each photographic medium, which she sought to understand. The large-format photos were a challenge in their own sense as she’s allergic to photo chemicals, she notes.

Her own family also served as inspiration for that project, specifi cally her great-aunt turning 100 years old, she says. And in her idiosyncratic style, she cut out spaces in the images and fi lled them with other items, like newspaper print, that also refl ect di erent generations.

“It’s more like kind of comparing the (generational) issues and how (they build) on each other,” she says, adding that the show aimed to address if society could get to a place where there are no major issues a ecting people because of their race. “... I’d like to get to a place where racism isn’t a factor, but we still aren’t there.”

The kind of person who always does things “110%,” Kay explains she’s struggled with overworking herself and getting burned out. She’s trying to work in moderation in that sense, joking that she gets maybe an overly strong work ethic from her parents. To keep things manageable, her goal is to be in one art show each year. She’s still considering where that might be in 2023.

“I kind of am also a workaholic ... to be honest with myself,” she says. “I don’t really like to sit still.”

“(Kay’s) insight for things is always a new perspective. Especially in this most recent show at the Print Room, when she was talking about generational wealth and how that translated to the mediums she was using, and also the mixed-media collagetype stuff she was doing, I had never Zehe thought about any of that stuff that way. ... I think (her work is) very striking. Usually, she uses a lot of really bold, contrasting colors. So even if you’re not totally understanding the full picture of the concept, it’s just awesome to look at.” Kaliban Zehe, teaching artist and dark room technician, Cleveland Print Room, and photographer/performer

JULiA MiLBRANDT

Age: 25 • Lives: South Euclid Creates: South Euclid and Cleveland Institute of Art • Learned: BFA in drawing and printmaking from CIA

By Amanda Koehn

For Julia Milbrandt, inspiration may come from something so minute you may overlook it. But if you do notice it – perhaps a balloon fl oating through the sky, a box of confetti or a pop music lyric – it might bring a tinge of happiness.

“I get my inspiration from my everyday life,” she says. “I’m really interested in small moments of like wonder and joy and awe that kind of take us out of our everyday mundane experiences.”

She’ll snap a photo to document the moment and make a note in her phone, eventually to become art.

The Bu alo, N.Y. native fi rst moved to Northeast Ohio to attend the Cleveland Institute of Art and graduated in 2019. Now, she works a day job as a preparator at Progressive, where she installs art, brings in new acquisitions and ships artwork around the county.

During her nights and weekends though, Milbrandt can be found either drawing in her studio – an extra bedroom in her South Euclid apartment – or printmaking at her alma mater, where she is an artist-in-residence. At CIA, she works with students and assists with departmental projects, she says, and has the benefi t of using the college’s printmaking workshop.

“Stone lithography is my jam in print, and that is totally something you can’t do at home,” she says, noting the process using limestone, gum arabic and nitric acid requires a special facility to avoid danger.

Milbrandt says she’s always created things and in middle school became serious about fi ne arts. Choosing CIA for its feel and proximity to home, she pursued printmaking for the fi rst time and chose to double major in it with drawing. She valued the chance to learn from Karen Beckwith, a local artist and a Tamarind Master Printer – the title for one who completes the elite lithography program at the Tamarind Institute in New Mexico.

“I got to learn litho from Karen, who’s one of the highest trained people in the country,” she says of Beckwith, who was technical specialist at CIA before she retired.

In 2018, when Milbrandt was a junior, she took part in a Creativity Works internship program at CIA that challenged

“Do You Ever Feel (Like a Plastic Bag)” (2019). Lithograph installation, 38 x 60 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Left: “When The Fun Has Ended” (2021). Screenprint, 22 x 15 inches. Center: “Look At This Stuff, Isn’t It Neat?” (2022). Gouache and colored pencil on embossed paper, 30 x 22 inches. Right: “Typhoon Lagoon” (2019). Lithograph, 30 x 22 inches. Photos courtesy of the artist. Opposite page: Julia Milbrandt in her South Euclid art studio with some inspiration for her work. Photo / Amanda Koehn

her to build her own solo show. It also involved the realworld work of pitching herself to galleries and helped build her confi dence, she says. While she faced some rejection, she showed at the Gordon Square Arts District o ce at the 78th Street Studios.

“That really challenged me professionally, and kind of socially because I still am pretty introverted and timid,” she says. “It really pushed me that like in order to make it happen, I had to email these galleries, I had to meet these people that I was nervous to talk to.”

While Milbrandt says she’s always been drawn to bright color, refl ective objects, and the way light moves and defi nes spaces and things – a style she pursued in school – after graduating she sought to explore new themes. The COVID-19 pandemic began less than a year later, which also infl uenced her work. She had more free time, she says, as she moved back in with her parents in Bu alo for a few months after the places she worked at the time shut down temporarily.

Initially, she found she lacked inspiration because she couldn’t go out to see and experience things that would normally lead to artistic ideas. And once she did create, it was di erent.

“It was a lot more of the abstraction-based stu ,” she says. “I was trying to pause people and make them stop and look and pay attention to small things in the everyday.”

She points to a screen print she made of a balloon sign that says “Oh what fun,” where the word “fun” has defl ated and fallen some.

“It’s kind of looking at the moments after that peak moment of excitement,” she says, adding it’s a natural shift for fi nding momentum after the big milestone of earning her BFA.

And she is gaining momentum. This summer, she had a drawing on view at Praxis Fiber Workshop as part of the CAN Triennial. It was based on a box of confetti pieces and “little bits of memories” of stu the box once held, she says.

“We hold on to these little memories – whether that be physical or like a photo in our phone, or just like a little memory in our brain,” she says.

The piece is titled “Look At This Stu , Isn’t It Neat?” – a reference to “The Little Mermaid.” Pop culture and music often infl uence her work as well. A big Taylor Swift fan, her lyrics show up in Milbrandt’s titles.

At Future Ink Graphics’ “Women Who Print” show earlier this year, a print of hers hung with Beckwith’s. Milbrandt was also in a recent exhibit at MetroHealth and part of the 2022 Mid America Print Council Conference, hosted by Kent State University with CIA as a partner institution.

And after a busy year, now it’s time to “literally go back to the drawing board” to determine what’s next, she says.

Meanwhile, her work on Progressive’s art collection also fuels her, she says. Since December 2020, she’s installed artwork that employees can experience and learn from in their work environment, which aligns with her own artistic practice.

“There’s a huge educational component to our collection,” she says. “It’s really great to get to engage with people that aren’t trying to engage about art, but it’s in their everyday life. The same thing (with) working at CIA – it’s like getting to help students and other artists, even just on a technical aspect to make their work, it like fuels my brain a bit. ... I like to help make art happen in the world, whether that be my own or bringing other people up.”

Kabot “Julia’s excitement about a project increases with each new level of technical diffi culty. This excitement, a bubbly effervescence, translates into the festive imagery of her art. Julia’s work holds these two things, technical virtuosity and giddy representation, in tension, creating compelling artwork.” Sarah Kabot, associate professor and chair of drawing department, Cleveland Institute of Art