FRONT 2022
Exhibitions,Launched in 2018, FRONT International is a contemporary art exhibition that presents artist commissions, performances, films, and public programs across Northeast Ohio every three years. In April 2022, executive director Fred Bidwell and artistic director Prem Krishnamurthy hired me as publications editor for the 2022 edition, which ran from July 16 to October 2.
The exhibition, titled Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, embraced art as an agent of transformation, a mode of healing, and a therapeutic process and involved more than one hundred artists spread across about thirty venues in Cleveland, Akron, and Oberlin, many of which were not used to presenting art.
It was a massive project that entailed not only editing but also a significant amount of project management done in concert with a small group on the ground in Ohio, curators based there and elsewhere, and separate design teams in Amsterdam and Berlin. (All told, I sent or received more than four thousand emails in four months.)
I edited, fact-checked, copy edited, and proofread all the texts presented in the 150-page triennial guidebook and the 272-page catalogue, as well as the wall labels at every venue. I built and maintained the triennial-wide master checklist, confirming every artwork and courtesy-line detail with the artists and/or their galleries, and created a database of images and captions to be shared with members of the media, whose inquiries I helped field. I served as a creative sounding board for the Krishnamurthy and his artistic team and even art directed installation-view photo shoots.
The effort, one of my first to truly bring together my project management and editing skill sets, was challenging and ultimately quite rewarding.
Note: All installation-view and artwork photographs by Field Studio. Book scans by The Rodina. Screenshots my own.