Near where Pearl Road meets Denison Avenue in Cleveland’s Brooklyn Centre neighborhood, a family’s home forms a more figurative kind of intersection — one between art and community.
Gabrielle Banzhaf and Jon Gott foster creativity, collaboration and artistic experimentation through their nonprofit, SHED Projects, and strive to take art beyond the traditional gallery space.
“For me, SHED represents the act of shedding — letting go of preconceived notions about what a gallery or nonprofit should be,” Banzhaf said. “We’re here to challenge those norms and create something different, and that’s really what SHED is all about.”
Together, they’re restoring a historic home while living on the top floor and raising their teenage son. On the lower level, a public space takes shape where artists are invited to create and show work in a caring, intimate environment.
“We're interested in the home and art together … and also making a home for artists,” Gott said. “We have a lot of conversations about what this place is. We have galleries, but we're not really a gallery. We do lots of different projects that fit in between the lines of … how these things are defined.”
Origins of SHED
Gott and Banzhaf first met in 2009 while they were both studying fine arts in the Cleveland area. Their paths kept crossing in the following years and they eventually became inseparable as friends, collaborators and partners, Banzhaf said.
The idea for SHED Projects originated while the couple was living in New Orleans several years ago. Banzhaf, working as a gallery director at the time, said she envisioned a space where she could support more voices and offer artists more autonomy.
“It was a different type of art world that I wanted to be in,” she said. “I wanted to create one to counter that.”
Banzhaf and Gott set out to create their own gallery, literally right in their own backyard. In a covered outdoor space behind their New Orleans home, they curated exhibitions together for and with the community, blurring the lines between public and private space.
“I think right off the bat Jon and I were just really open with our family, with our home and allowing people to come in and discover the work that we were excited to show,” Banzhaf said.
In 2023, Banzhaf and Gott decided to relocate back to the city where they initially met.
Gott spotted a historic home on the market in Brooklyn Centre, formerly a podiatrist’s office for the past several decades, though the structure itself dates back to 1857.
Upon doing more research on the property, Banzhaf uncovered a connection to her personal background.
“It's close to Clark-Fulton, the largest Hispanic and Latino neighborhood in Cleveland, as well as where my father immigrated,” Banzhaf said. “So this was kind of the perfect direct intersection for us to live and raise our family.”
The house is a recognizable fixture in the neighborhood, Gott said, and many people living in the area have wondered what it looks like on the inside.
“As soon as we got here and started opening the doors and having these events and inviting people inside, it was really great to be able to have that level of discovery take place,” Gott said. “And that's informed our approach of how we open the place up, how we work with artists coming into this historic structure as a raw space, as a blank canvas.”
Celebrating Semana Santa
SHED’s current exhibition is rooted in the traditions of Semana Santa, the term in Spanish for Holy Week, celebrated the week before Easter.
Banzhaf and Gott invited a family of artists from Mexico City to visit and create work within the walls of SHED. Miguel Linares Mendoza is the youngest son of the legendary Mexican folk artist Pedro Linares. Together with his wife and granddaughter, Miguel shared his process for creating cartonería, the traditional Mexican craft of papier-mâché sculpture.
Funding for the project came in part from the Ohio Arts Council and other grants administered by SPACES, an alternative art gallery in Cleveland.
Gott said the exhibition is a great example of bringing homes together.
“They all work together in their home to do the work that they do,” Gott said. “Yet, it comes out into the streets, it comes into the city and it comes into the culture that they have. It becomes an extended family of sorts that we share with them.”
Several local artists participated in workshops at SHED to create cartonería works alongside the Linares family, which are part of the exhibition that’s on view through May 24.
“There are just different cultures and the ties that we have to each other. And sometimes the language might not be the same, but the experiences there can be,” Banzhaf said. “Semana Santa is a way to honor that collective celebration.”
