The Sculpture Center

The Sculpture Center is hosting the first Cleveland exhibition to feature Sarah Paul's Little Miss Cleveland & the Flaming Sunset. The diva, dancing in ecstasy before the glowing sunset and swimming in Lake Erie, with images of those fiery Cleveland smokestacks she so loves, is found on shimmering and swaying silver walls in the Main Gallery. This video projection is fluid with the content changing through the run of the exhibition. Little Miss Cleveland is also present in the gallery to lead the visitor through her fragmented narrative with an inspired and expressive vocal melody.

On opening night, Little Miss Cleveland will be found at sunset in a dramatic outdoor performance, created through the collaboration of Sarah Paul and Lauren Voss.

Sarah Paul's Little Miss Cleveland & the Flaming Sunset is an ongoing, transdisciplinary project, begun in 2009, that chronicles the exploits of an outrageous beauty queen and her love affair with post-post-industrial Cleveland and Lake Erie. She has regularly attended Cleveland Indians' games, to considerable public attention. Paul's work sprawls across artistic disciplines, attracting a diverse audience and engaging all of their senses in an exploration of the sultry, hazy territory generated by the integration of public performance and formal gallery display. Her varied oeuvre is intended to embrace and celebrate the cities of the Rust Belt.

about the artist
Sarah Paul is Assistant Professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art where she has been teaching since 2007 in the Technology Integrated Media Environment (T.I.M.E.). She has been creating live performances since 2006. Most recently she was a Featured Artist at Visual Studies Alumni Invitational Exhibition, curated by Bill Maynes at The University Gallery, Center for the Arts, the University of Buffalo (fall 2011). In 2010, Little Miss Cleveland & the Flaming Sunset #4 was shown in Beyond/In Western New York 2010: Alternating Currents at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, curated by Holly Hughes. Also in 2010 The Unsung Torsos: An Experimental Opera in 13 Parts, commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA Cleveland) and SPACES (Cleveland), was performed at MOCA Cleveland. The artist received her MFA in Visual Studies from the University of New York at Buffalo (2007) and a BS in Mathematics at the University of New York at Albany (2004).