From WOMAN 19

From WOMAN 19 is a celebration of women and their art. This iteration of From WOMAN is curated by Mary Urbas and Susan Snipes, and features emerging and re-emerging artists of Northeast Ohio.

Featured artists:

• Joan Pogalies
• Bianca Seely
• Emily Strogin
• Laura Tuokkola
• Izabela Zoga

Join us for the opening reception Wednesday, March 18, 5-8pm

Additional hours:

• Open every Friday from 12-5
• THIRD FRIDAYS Art Walks: March 20 & April 17 5-9

Joan Pogalies

Biography

A family cottage on Lake Erie is where Joan enjoyed her summers growing up and where she now resides full time. And although she’s had a lifelong passion for art — crayons, oils, pastels, glass blowing, enameled/slumped glass, photo-tile public art, hand-formed ceramic floor murals, recycled glass mosaic murals — within the last five years she found her true inspirations in her back yard: Great Lake Erie eco-docu-photo art.

She rearranges original photographic images, crops, enlarges, stacks, flips them into montages documenting local scenes into unrecognizable configurations. These are printed using the dye sublimation technique that heat-infuses pigments into the surface of metal panels up to 4ft x 5ft. For decades, she experimented with (and still produces) traditional photographs before yearning to push through the single moments of her individual images to create deeper stories and vast visual narratives. Thus, she taught herself to reimagine reality. She continues to push, push, push her photos through into those other dimensions!

Her art has been in shows at University Hospitals (Geauga), Kendal at Oberlin Art Gallery/Friends Gallery, Stella’s Art Gallery, Tri-C East, Photo Cleveland, Ashtabula Arts Center, The Art Gallery, Understory Gallery, and in private collections.

Artist Statement

I’m a story told through my relationship with and observations of Great Lake Erie: Fierce, strong. Serene, meditative. Everything in between.

I’ve taken traditional photographs for decades but I yearned to know what more my solitary photos had lurking within. So I now push time: Looking forward, backwards, above, below, through images. I rework complexities of my surroundings, revealing new wonders within old landscapes, vulnerability, resilience. My work puts you inside frozen moments to discover more moments through layers of experiential depth beyond the whole.

I invite macro AND micro perspectives: From afar you see abstract waves of color, mirror images of almost recognizable objects, maybe portals that lead...where? There are curious objects that invite exploration. Stop, look closer, view it in new ways, and be encouraged to discover the responsibility we have to seeing our multi-dimensional surroundings and our selves.

Pushing reality of landscapes by enlarging images, flipping, flopping, stacking them, challenges what you think you’re seeing. What people discover in my art is a delightful part of how I engage them, invite them into fantasies of imagination. They discover things I haven’t seen. There’s a childlike joy of discovery for adults and kiddos.

I have them printed on large metal panels up to 4ft x 5ft so that more details can be seen. The heat and pressure required for dye sublimation printing infuses colors into the surface letting the base metal shimmer through highlights for 3-D layers of depth and resilience: no borders, no limits.

Bianca Seely

Biography

Bianca Seely (they/them) is a first-generation artist based in Cleveland Heights currently pursuing an associates in Studio/Fine Arts at Tri-C. They enjoy exploring different art mediums and getting lost in the process, drawing inspiration from both nature and human anatomy. Some of their current hyper fixations include printmaking, ceramics, painting, and life drawing. They hope to continue to learn new mediums, explore their creativity, and share art with their community for as long as physically possible.

Artist Statement

In a world currently filled with AI generated slop and unnecessary technology (did you know that smart fridges are a thing that exist?), I have found myself wanting to delve into traditional arts now more than ever. These works showcase my journey in the traditional art of printmaking and my love for exploring different techniques and processes.

For each piece, the plate is prepared, inked, and printed by hand. "Insight" includes the first two collagraphs I created, from left to right. The plate itself is a collage of materials that were manipulated and adhered to create a variety of tones and textures. For the printing process, I explored the "ghost print" method on the right. This created a lighter image of the initial print, after a second impression was made using the residual ink.

"Bighorn Sheep" is an intaglio etching, one of my favorite forms of printmaking that is seen in all the animal pieces. Etchings are made using a metal plate that is covered with ground and then scraped using sharp tools. Afterwards, it is placed in an acid bath which eats away at the exposed metal creating recesses where ink can hold. For the printing process, I explored the double drop technique which uses two layers of color with the plate going through the press at separate times. If you look closely at the print, you can see that I didn't line it up perfectly when printing and created a blur effect. Luckily, it turned out very interesting.

Emily Strogin

Biography

Emily is a native of Cleveland, where she currently resides on the east side. Her love of ceramics has led her to become an artist with Stella's Art Gallery in Willoughby, OH where she teaches ceramics classes to all ages and helps manage their community pottery studio. Emily enjoys the collaborative nature of teaching ceramics and helping students connect with clay in ways that resonate with them. After graduating from Ohio State University with a degree in classics and ceramics, she is currently pursuing a masters in landscape architecture where she combines her love of ecology with her love of art. Emily enjoys taking her dog Russell to the river, spending time with friends, and growing fruits and vegetables in her garden.

Artist Statement

My work explores ancient utilitarian forms in contemporary times. Memory, history, and earth drives me to explore ancient material culture through clay, and by coiling, the process is slowed to understand intention. Shape and function are inevitably altered by modern hands, but ceramics itself carries the history of thousands of generations before me, and I hope to honor them through my work.

Laura Tuokkola

Biography

Laura Tuokkola is an assemblage artist based in Wooster, Ohio. Working with antiques, found objects, mache and original clay sculptures, she creates transformative pieces that examine the interplay between free will, choice, and capitulation. Her subjects often appear to be emerging from—or interrupting—these states of consciousness. Tuokkola frequently approaches challenging themes through whimsical or childlike forms, generating a tension that becomes an essential part of the viewer’s experience.

A self‑taught artist who began her professional career in late 2024, Tuokkola has quickly established a presence within the Northeast Ohio art community. Her accomplishments include a solo exhibition, multiple publications—among them the cover of Novum Artis Magazine and an interview in The Scribe newspaper—and participation in numerous group shows across galleries in Cleveland, Akron, and Canton. Her evolving body of work continues to push boundaries while remaining deeply connected to the emotional and psychological landscapes that inspire it.

Artist Statement

My work is rooted in vivid memories from my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s—moments filled with mystery, imagination, and the tactile presence of objects that carried stories long before they reached my hands. Through assemblage, I weave together antiques, found objects, mache and clay sculpture to explore the shifting relationship between free will, choice, and capitulation. I’m drawn to the moments when a figure seems to be emerging from one state of consciousness or disrupting another, and I use that tension as a way to examine what it means to be human.

The human condition is the driving force behind my process. I often approach difficult or uncomfortable themes through whimsical or childlike forms, creating a contrast that invites viewers to sit with the complexity rather than turn away from it. That interplay—between innocence and gravity, playfulness and truth—is where my work feels most alive. Each new piece continues to push me further into the questions that first compelled me to create: What shapes us? What frees us? And what do we surrender to along the way?

Izabela Zoga

Biography

Izabela Zoga is a visual artist and photographer originally from Albania, currently living, studying, and practicing her work in Cleveland, Ohio. She is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and has a background in graphic design. Zoga is a conceptual artist who enjoys experimenting with a wide range of mediums, including drawing, painting, printmaking, and photography. Zoga often incorporates elements of destruction, chaos, and silence in her practice, using light and contrast to create depth, sensitivity, and atmosphere. She has participated in several exhibitions, including the 55th Annual Student Art Exhibition (2023), where she won First Place in the Drawing category, and the Cleveland Photo Festival Portrait Show. Currently, she is working toward a solo exhibition in partnership with the Cleveland Public as part of a self-designed internship through the Creativity Works program at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Her work intends to provoke emotion while exploring themes of identity, tension, vulnerability, and reflection. Zoga is deeply interested in how personal and cultural identity shape human experience, and much of her work is influenced by her roots and lived experiences.
Recently, Zoga has been experimenting with video installation. One of her latest works, Ghost at Work, is an interactive video installation that uses motion tracking in Isadora to change the color of the projected video as viewers move through space. This work emphasizes presence, invisibility, and the relationship between the viewer and the artwork.

Artist Statement

Exit is a video and photographic project that explores tension, uncertainty, and the emotional space between safety and danger. In this work, I aim to create an atmosphere that provokes strong emotions, unease, curiosity, suspense, and mystery. I want the viewer to feel as though they are standing on the edge of a moment, as if something is about to happen but has not yet revealed itself.

At the center of the work is a human figure covered with a sheet. This figure becomes a symbolic presence within the project, both visible and hidden at the same time. The sheet transforms the body into a mysterious form, suggesting absence, memory, protection, or concealment. The figure moves between spaces and environments, creating a sense of ambiguity and tension. It becomes a visual metaphor for the emotional and psychological states explored in the work.

Light plays an essential role in the project. I seek locations with strong natural light to create dramatic contrasts between light and darkness. These high-contrast moments intensify the emotional atmosphere and heighten the sense of suspense. The visual language of the project is primarily black and white, emphasizing form, shadow, and mood. However, brief moments of color appear intentionally to interrupt the monochrome, highlighting specific emotional shifts or significant moments within the narrative.

The project also incorporates light materials such as sheets, old clothing, or pieces of fabric. These materials move with the wind and introduce a tactile quality to the work. Their movement adds texture and rhythm to the video while also suggesting presence, absence, and memory.
Alongside the video, the project includes nine photographic works presented as a sequence. These photographs function as fragments or still moments that extend the narrative of the video. Together, the photographs and the moving image create a unified visual experience, inviting the viewer to move between stillness and motion, observation, and anticipation