Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Carl Pope (IU, MFA 1999) credits his high school photography teacher with inspiring him to pursue art and to see it as a tool for personal and social change. His community-based project in the rust belt city of Cleveland reflects this transformative attitude. Funded by the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities of Case Western Reserve University, The Mind of Cleveland is a conceptual public art project that began with the simple question, “What do you think about Cleveland?” Pope spent over a year and a half visiting the city and asking people (rich and poor, young and old, white and black) to give their answers in ten words or less. Their comments were randomly selected and posted on billboards, bus kiosks, and displayed in a multi-media installation at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

A set of posters was available in the exhibition as a giveaway to spread the project’s ideas after the show ended, to emphasize its populist approach to art, and to engage directly with the viewers. Pope has often used the old-fashioned letterpress medium to explore complex ideas about race, community, and self-identity. Minimal in design their style resembles cheap advertising signage the posters let the words carry the meaning. Seen (and read) as a whole, they reveal a community zeitgeist that is as diverse as its citizenry. Some are hopeful, while others reflect the real difficulties faced by a shrinking industrial city in the first decade of the new millennium. Although Pope let the people speak for themselves, he hoped that by mapping their collective mindset he could encourage the people in Cleveland to take “greater ownership from the grassroots level and create what they want to see happen in their neighborhoods, school district, and in the city as a whole.”