Chicago Artist Cleveland Dean admitted that he was a nerd as a child — and that he’s still a nerd. “I get absorbed with things,” he explained. “If I find I have an interest in something, I do everything I can to learn as much about it as I can.”
That interest in absorbing knowledge about whatever interests him is apparent in Dean’s artwork, which will be on display from Feb. 18-April 9 at The Art Center Highland Park.
Take the way an accident became a near obsession leading to incredible effects on his canvases. That’s how Dean began using a Japanese wood-burning technique on his canvases.
“In 2010, I had one canvas made of wood that I wanted to reuse to do another piece,” he related. “So I took a hot air gun to heat up the material to be able to scrape it off. I stayed in one spot too long and it caught on fire.” Dean was surprised by the effect that created, which started him on a journey to learn more about the effects of fire.
“I studied for two or three years as to the concept of fire and its ideas and uses, whether it be for patching or heat or creation of food,” Dean said. “I looked at the idea of fire, symbolically and historically.”
He created a couple more artworks using fire and then studied the topic two more years.
“Finally, I figured out what I wanted to say; what language I was creating with this,” Dean explained.
His series based on his studies of fire debuted in 2015.
Dean said that he has been a mechanic since the age of six, which he believes is reflected in his work. “That aspect of my life definitely has helped,” Dean said. “I tell people I’m more a material manipulator than a painter or a sculptor.”
The artist has been surprised by some of the reactions to his work, but that seems to please Dean.
“I don’t want to lead someone’s thought,” he explained. “I want them to have the freedom to think and see what it is on their own.”
Caren Helene Rudman, curator of The Art Center Highland Park, said they wanted to give Dean a one-person show because his work is “very strong, very big,” she said. “Cleveland’s a very dynamic person and he’s quite established in the art world.”
Dean’s work is diverse and filled with surprises, Rudman said. “His goal in this exhibit is to have the viewer walk into the gallery and go, ‘Woah, did the same artist make all this work?,'” she explained. “Although it’s all abstract, there’s so many different ways that he pushes material and pushes form and pushes color. He also has a great eye for design. He’s pushing every boundary and making the audience experience abstract art.”
In conjunction with Dean’s exhibit there will be an exhibit of abstract works by other artists in the Art Center’s Lecture Gallery. Dean will jury those works from over one hundred images that are being submitted to him.
“It will be interesting,” he said, adding, “I’m a hypercritical type of person. There will be a very acute eye used to look at the work. It’s a feel thing. It can be technically proficient but are you evoking any kind of emotion?”
The artist was hard at work on his art when we spoke even though he had his second heart attack two-and-a-half weeks earlier. He laughingly declared, “I’m very hard to kill.”
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Dean’s work in a variety of mediums is in the collections of national and international art institutions.
The artist doesn’t take credit for his awesome talent. “I realize that none of this is me,” Dean insisted. “I’m just a vessel. It chooses me to come through and even the work itself isn’t for me. It’s for others to grasp what it is that they get from it.”
The Art Center is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays; Sundays by appointment.
Cleveland Dean: Rapport
When: Feb. 18-April 9; artist reception 5:30-7:30 p.m. March 4
Where: Main Gallery, The Art Center Highland Park, 1957 Sheridan Road, Highland Park
Tickets: Free admission
Information: 847-432-1888; theartcenterhp.org/exhibitionsh/up-next
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.