Mona Kolesar: The Shape of Wood | Joyce Morrow Jones: The Art of Story | Fiber X4

Artists Archives of the Western Reserve

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• Date Wednesday, August 26, 2026 - Saturday, October 10, 2026
• Location 1834 E 123rd St Cleveland, OH 44106
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Founded in 1996 by notable Cleveland sculptor David E. Davis and eight other prominent Ohio artists, including Shirley Aley Campbell and Patricia Zinsmeister Parker, the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve (AAWR) emerged from a shared vision. Recognizing the risk... more

The Art of Story, and The Shape of Wood are the respective solo inaugural exhibitions for Joyce Morrow Jones and Mona Kolesar as new Archived Artists. Joyce is a story teller. Every series of work that she produces has symbolism and cultural meaning. Her knowledge of African textiles, rituals and religious customs is vast, and every doll or sculpture she makes reflects on the black experience of life in America today through a lens of history. Joyce writes about her work, ”… I want people to delve into and resonate with the many stories that inspired their creation, understanding that in creating art, I am reclaiming ancestral memories...”. While her immersion in what could be considered the “traditional women’s art forms” of quilting, sewing, and doll making ties her to the past, she forces it into the present by the ways she utilizes it in deference to the stories she tells. We are very proud to claim Joyce as our 100th artist, whose works are archived in our collection. Mona Kolesar has contributed to the art scene here in Northeast Ohio for many years. She stands out as a constructivist sculptor, working earlier in her career in the more traditional mediums of stone, plaster and clay and turning later in life almost exclusively to wood, and creating installations made specifically for the exhibition space of the moment. Her work now employs seemingly delicate lengths of bent wood painted in a delightful array of colors, employing abstraction to illustrate her ideas. An example of her own brand of storytelling is the series of “room studies”, each of which could be built large enough for a single human to occupy briefly. Although these are studies, one can imagine the experience of sitting in the chair of the “thinking” room and being able to imagine new ideas and bring them to life. Our final concurrent exhibition is Fiber X4. Inspired by the reviewing of our entire collection during our recent remodel, curator Mindy Tousely found some surprising juxtapositions, on the gallery walls, of objects that normally would not be grouped together and also some surprises of works from the collection that we had never physically seen before. June Bonner, Evelyn Ward and Kathleen Totter from our collection, as well as include a few extra works of paper sculpture by new Archived Artist Joyce Morrow Jones, which otherwise might not have been shown as a part of The Art of Story. Each of these female Archived Artists has made strong bodies of works over the course of years, and we are honored to represent them here as part of our collection in these two concurrent collections. These exhibitions open Thursday, August 20 from 5:30 - 8 pm, and will remain on display through October 10, 2026. Free and Open to the public