The Cleveland Free Times coverage of “Stephen Kasner: Works 1993-2006″
From the "Summer Reading” cover article
Volume 15, Issue 12
Published July 25th, 2007
Summer Reading
Excerpts From Five New Books By Cleveland Artists And Writers
With so much attention paid to what doesn’t happen in Cleveland, it’s easy to overlook what does. Every day around Northeast Ohio, in studios and coffee shops and spare bedrooms, creative people write and illustrate their passions. The “Summer Reading” issue is our way of honoring and promoting the work of a few such people with local roots, some still living here and some who have moved on; some long known to us and some we’ve just met…
“Just another dark and trippy CIA grad.” That’s what some justifiably forgotten freelance hack called Stephen Kasner in the pages of this very publication about 10 years ago. As a fellow CIA grad, a friend of Kasner’s and an enthusiastic fan of his work, I was a few clicks beyond miffed. The incredible thoughtfulness and complexity of the man was and is vividly evident in his canvasses, simultaneously gloomy and luminous, and to caricature him as a typical art-school goth dipshit was unthinkable. After having been a gallery fixture here for a decade, Kasner made a move to Northern California in 2004, which brought his work the attention a Cleveland artist can rarely hope for. He’s now the subject of a monograph from Baltimore’s Scapegoat Publishing (scapegoatpublishing.com), a beautifully printed book that shows Kasner’s damn-near irreproduceable work in the best light possible - would that newsprint could do it such justice. With introductions by Integrity vocalist Dwid Helion, Free Times art writer Douglas Max Utter (who clearly should have been the one to write about that show 10 years ago), and Kasner himself (excerpted below), Stephen Kasner: Works 1993-2006 is the must-have Cleveland art book - at least until someone finally honors Derek Hess thusly. -Ron Kretsch
