From a young age, Shannon Morris, founding executive director of Artful Cleveland, spent a lot of time cutting up materials and making colorful collages.
“I always thought there were already enough materials, you just had to find them and use them,” she says. “I never went to the craft store, and I saw value in things that maybe other people didn’t notice, so I’ve always been a recycler.”
At 13, she moved to the other side of the camera, she says, and immersed herself in photography. While attending Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, the school gave her the keys to the dark room, and she had free reign. They even invented new classes for her since no student had ever taken so much photography before. As a high school student, Shannon thought that was pretty cool.
Next, she enrolled at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fine Art Photography in 1995.
Afterwards, though, when she returned to Cleveland, Shannon decided to stop focusing on photography and return to using her hands to create art. “I’ve always worked with wood, and my dad taught me at a young age how to use power tools, so I just started expanding my skill set,” she informs.
In 2005, she opened her own gallery, No One’s Not An Artist, on Lee Road in Cleveland Heights. Then in 2015, Shannon had an idea to launch an art collective that she’d been pondering and jotting notes to herself for years.
“ARTFUL Cleveland was always something I wanted to do because I feel that we lift each other up with our energies and our knowledge,” she explains. “I always wanted to be a part of a collaborative where there’s a range of talent, experience and backgrounds so we could all learn from each other in so many ways. So when I couldn’t find one, I said I’m going to do it.”
After a meeting at her home drew nearly 40 enthused artist friends of all disciplines, Shannon enlisted the help of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts to obtain 501(c)(3) status, and she began receiving donations immediately. She signed the lease for their space in the former Coventry School in 2016, and ARTFUL Cleveland opened its doors in March 2017 with 18 studios. Today, there are 32 artists from a variety of disciplines in 26 studios.
“Shannon has a very inclusive vision for ARTFUL that has allowed a diverse range of people to embrace the term ‘artist’ for themselves,” observes Sarah Curry, friend, artist, and long-time arts educator at Charles F. Brush High School in Lyndhurst. “She believes that everyone has something artistic to contribute to the world or just in the privacy of their own studio.”
Shannon says her plan is to continue to grow ARTFUL “We have created an open environment where all artists feel safe, and we’re not portfolio-driven or based on where you are in your career,” she says. “The CHUH Library board’s resistance to convey the building to the tenants, and its insistence that we are not qualified to care for the building is insulting. However, we continue to fight the good fight.”