Featured Artists for our First Friday Event on August 2, 2019
Dicc Klann – Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Dicc Klann is a graphic designer and creator of fine art images. He is a graduate of the Cooper School of Art and once owned an advertising art studio, Kaleidoscope Art, Inc. for 17 years where he and his staff of 8 artists created logos for corporations, product identity, and non-profit organizations. His most familiar design is that of the Lube Stop franchise. After selling the business, Dicc became Graphics Director for Gallo Displays for over nine years. Now retired, Dicc creates in Colored Pencil. He has pieces in collections across northeast Ohio. Featured in fine art shows in Bratenahl, Chagrin Falls, Cleveland, Geauga County’s West Woods Nature Center, Mentor, Peninsula, Shaker Heights and Willoughby Hills, Ohio. He is a member of Heights Arts in Cleveland Heights, Ohio; The Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls, Ohio and the Colored Pencil Society of America. 
Dicc states: “My goal in the drawing is to reveal something beautiful. The colored pencil allows me to move from extreme detail to simple impressions and to travel anywhere in between. Inspired by geometric shape in nature (i.e., the triangle of a pine tree, the rectangle of a trimmed hedgerow). Surprising colors in unexpected places open my eyes and mind to new experimentation. A little whimsy, a bit of graphic design and patterns of repeated shapes are the standard tools for my Trees & Cloud Series.”
Ro Clarkin – Painesville, Ohio
The one thing I always knew about myself was that I was blessed with creative juices and needed to do something with them. My first canvases were pieces of an old window shade that my mom cut up and gave me to paint on. These canvases have evolved into clay, fiber, and now glass. My art classes were on the kitchen table, the living room floor and anywhere else I could find a spot to create. Those creative juices still start to flow as soon as I gain consciousness each morning. I can’t leave it alone; it is who I am and what I do. I read once that “Creativity is a gift from God, and using it is a gift back to him.” Today I am excited with the puddles of cut glass and chards of broken flower pots waiting to begin their new lives. I am most happy when one of my designs look like they could have come from an old velvet box, a treasure from long ago. I feel that each piece that I complete is destined to reach the right person who will enjoy my creation to the full. Creating gives me joy! 