Student-alum connection inspires artwork on view at Progressive

Earlier this year, Cleveland Institute of Art visual arts students visited Progressive Insurance’s headquarters in Mayfield Village, Ohio to scout the celebrated Progressive Art Collection. It was the first step in bringing to life Ready, Set, Relay!, a group exhibition in which students created paintings, drawings, sculptures and digital media in response to Progressive works.

As part of CIA’s Role of the Artist as Producer course, 17 CIA students developed, curated, marketed and installed Ready, Set, Relay!. To create the work, they spent the semester researching and responding to pieces by world-renowned artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, Petah Coyne, Vik Muniz, Jennifer Steinkamp, Felice Varini, Todd Pavlisko, and Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry.

Among the participating students was Painting major Emily Fontana. During that initial visit to Progressive, she immediately connected with “Rebus,” a site-specific installation of porcelain ceramics created by Andy Yoder ’82. The pieces together form a rebus, or puzzle where words or syllables are represented by pictures.

“I find it important that Andy’s work displaces objects from their typical setting, therefore displacing the rules we associate with them,” Fontana says. “One form that my work takes is sculpture, and I started to imagine how I could do the same thing. I chose to create eight cakes, titled ‘How To Make a Cake.’ Each one is a word puzzle of an ingredient in a cake and is installed on the wall in similar fashion to ‘Rebus.’”

During the semester, students met virtually with the artists whose work they responded to. Fontana’s conversation with Yoder—who lives in Falls Church, Virginia—was insightful.

“Andy described how his work has a key connection to memory,” Fontana says. “Whether an idea stemmed from seeing how large his father’s shoes looked in the closet as a child or his grandmother’s licorice stash, the goal is to gain a visceral and humorous reaction. This helped me think about my intentionality with the objects I use/represent in my work.

“I was lucky to also hear endless stories about Andy’s time as a student at CIA, as well as what came afterwards,” she continued. “It was inspiring to be told how crucial it is to stay a part of the art community, whether it is through volunteering, making connections or simply continuing to create.”

Yoder, who earned his BFA in Sculpture, enjoyed reminiscing. “My time at CIA was transformative, and connecting with Emily felt like a bit of a time machine. I remember the feeling of so many possibilities. We were starting to figure things out while taking chances.”

These days, Yoder teaches as an adjunct faculty at George Mason University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts in Fairfax, Virginia. He’s a practicing and exhibiting artist, too. Overboard—a 2020 exhibition featuring more than 200 replicas of Nike Air Jordan 5 shoes that Yoder created using trash he foraged from his suburban Washington, D.C. neighborhood—garnered coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour and Smithsonian Magazine, among others.

Though “Rebus” might not have received the same media attention when it was installed in 1997, Yoder says it “will always be near and dear to my heart.”

“It was my first permanent commission, and it was done thanks to Toby Lewis, who was a friend and force of nature in the art world,” he says. “This recent exchange with Emily was enjoyable for many reasons, among them the chance to share the circumstances surrounding the piece, getting to know a current student at CIA, and connecting with the fab, present-day curatorial team at Progressive.”

Yoder commended Fontana’s “How To Make a Cake.” “It was great to see the work she did in response to my installation, and I deeply appreciate that she chose my work to consider. I could see Emily’s work had some parallels [to ‘Rebus’], such as wordplay, the use of everyday objects and a dose of humor—but I was glad to see it remained distinctly different, as an extension of her perspective and personality.”

Drawing professor Sarah Kabot, who taught the Role of the Artist as Producer course with fellow Drawing professor Amber Kempthorn, said that all of the artists involved in Ready, Set, Relay!—CIA students and Progressive artists alike—benefited from the connection cultivated by the Progressive collaboration.

“I think the students were thrilled to get to speak with and interview artists who have had long and successful careers to understand a bit of what it takes to get from being a student—and in the case of Andy Yoder, a student at CIA—to being an internationally recognized artist,” she says. “And, I think it’s exciting from the artists’ point of view to have an opportunity to both look back at the time when they installed the work at Progressive but also to be able to share their insights.

“There’s so much generosity on the part of these incredibly busy and well-recognized artists to share their insights with a single young person,” she continued. “I mean, this doesn’t happen anywhere, and it’s because of this extraordinary collaboration between CIA and Progressive that our students experienced something unique.

Kabot added it was “exciting” to have Yoder—as well as former CIA student Joseph Kosuth—involved in the project.

“I think it’s very heartening to realize CIA graduates have had massive impacts in terms of culture in the local art community and wider, national art community,” Kabot says. “I think it just really goes to show that we give a great education and we’ve done so for decades. So many of the artists who’ve graduated from here go on to have these massive impacts.”