Release Date: July 1,2025
Summer Exhibitions Honor Akron’s History through Art
Akron, OHIO (July 1, 2025) — Five exhibitions open at Summit Artspace (140 East Market Street, Akron, Ohio 44308) on Friday, July 11, 2025, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Summer exhibitions will be open during public hours on Fridays from Noon to 7:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. through Friday, September 13, 2025.
Summit Artspace’s Summer Exhibitions opening night will showcase an incredible group of local artists in the galleries throughout all three floors of the historic Akron building. The event provides an opportunity to meet exhibiting artists, hear their stories, and engage with the community.
“As Akron celebrates its 200th year, we are invited to reflect on the layers of history that shape the present moment and the ways that artists help us honor, question, and reimagine that past”, remarks Natalie Grieshammer Patrick, Interim Executive Director, about themes in the upcoming exhibitions. “Our Summer Exhibitions echo this spirit of reflection as exhibiting artists explore concepts of home, place, and memory.”
Betty and Howard Taylor Main Gallery
Though We May Roam
|
Group Exhibition
Artists Lizzi Aronhalt, Andy Curlowe, Lauren Davies, Michelle Droll, Charisse Harris, and Arnold Tunstall explore what it means to call the rustbelt home through a range of mediums and processes in this exhibition. Themes of domesticity, environment, and place all converge to expand our understanding of the world around us and the specific place in it that we claim. The feeling of home can be as personal as the way our blanket smells or as universal as the grass below our feet. Home is often informed and defined in contrast to other places we visit.
Tunstall’s work explores themes of replication, visual overload, and the absurdity embedded in American visual culture. “I see so much of ‘America’ in Akron,” he notes, “some of it merely postindustrial neglect, other things appear as perpetual American optimism - often sentimental and ridiculous.” Whether capturing layers of the urban landscape, everyday ephemera in his kitchen, or the surreal qualities of monochrome imagery, Tunstall’s photographs invite viewers to reconsider the familiar. “Home is also small things in our space,” he writes, “a book or candy wrapper catching afternoon light… It is often these quiet, accidental still lifes made of humble objects in our space that makes it home.”
Welcome Gallery
Overdose Awareness Exhibition
In partnership with
Summit County Public Health
In honor of Overdose Awareness Day on August 31, artists in Summit and contiguous counties created artworks exploring their personal experience with overdose and addiction, honoring a loved one who has died, and serving as an ally
for those who have struggled. The day represents the world’s largest annual campaign to end overdose, remember without stigma those who have died, and acknowledge the grief of those left behind.
Intersections Gallery
A Bunch of Landscapes
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Cassie Jeffries
Abstract paintings on shaped canvases by
Cassie Jeffries are inspired by the environment and its ever-changing landscapes. The subject of landscapes and their natural systems of change, like erosion, growth, and decay, acts as a conduit for processing internal and social anxieties. For the
artist, this focus on change makes way for coming to terms with personal griefs. Many of the natural motifs and forms present in the paintings are drawn from Jeffries’ home in Akron, OH.
Forum Gallery
Roots
| Juried Exhibition
Curated by Al Macdougall, this exhibition centers around themes of personal histories, familial histories, and paying homage to home- whether that be Akron or an abstract feeling. This theme will also honor Summit Artspace
for all it has done for its artists and patrons since its inception. Mediums include—but are not limited to—textile, film, and mixed media photography. Works will emphasize a cultural tie to heritage or documentation.
Horizon Gallery
Covered in Snow
| Katelynn Rogers
In this series of photographs, Katelynn Rogers draws connections between environmental decay and social issues impacting women in the state of Ohio. Nature, and specifically trees, became a personal projection of anxieties
reflecting the artist’s own healthcare emergency, which led to research into other women’s experiences dealing with domestic abuse and reproductive crises. Motifs like tree branches and spider webs act as visual metaphors for the collective
disquietude of local women, and their relationship
to the socio-political climate of the state.
Finding the Joy | Group Exhibition
Finding the Joy features photographs by Don Parsisson, Rob Greer, and Susie Lilley, which focus on finding joy and happiness in times of unease. While the outlook of unease and negativity in our current surroundings can be discouraging, it is incumbent on us to actively search for sources of joy in our lives. These artists have come together to encourage others to seek out their joy; to explore what "trips their trigger" and share it with others.
About Summit Artspace:
Summit Artspace is a nonprofit arts organization connecting artists and artist-serving organizations to the resources they need to thrive professionally, creatively, and financially. It provides artist studios, exhibitions, and programs in Summit County and serves as a vital place for the public to engage with the creative community. Summit Artspace is located at 140 East Market Street in Akron, Ohio. Public hours are Fridays from noon - 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Summit Artspace is supported by The County of Summit, Ohio Arts Council, GAR Foundation, Arts Now/ArtsForward, Akron Community Foundation, Burton D. Morgan Foundation, Synthomer Foundation, Lehner Family Foundation, The Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation, and Peg’s Foundation. For more information, visit the Summit Artspace website, call (330) 376-8480, or email info@summitartspace.org.