This fall HEDGE is thrilled to present a painting and sculpture exhibition featuring Mark Howard (Cleveland, OH) and Chuck Fischer (New Hope, PA). 

This will be Howard’s third exhibition with a new body of work at HEDGE since 2021, and the Gallery’s first time exhibiting Fischer’s abstract constructions and paintings. 

The Gallery will be celebrating the announcement of Mark Howard winning the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Cleveland Arts Prize for 2025. Mark Howard has worked and been influential in the Northeast Ohio region since graduating from The Cleveland Institute of Art in 1986, with artistic achievements in painting, sculpture, textile and public art projects.

Howard continues his industrious approach to art making, with new projects divided into works on paper, canvas panels and two sided painted sculptures all with an improvisational approach to color, shape and pattern. Though painting has been Howard’s concentration for decades, fiber and textile work has loomed over his background as a professional artist. He graduated with a major in painting and textile design from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and has continuously been fascinated by the two art forms. 

Mark Howard has a dedicated studio practice, and has worked on projects with organizations throughout the city. His work can be found in several corporate and private collections, including The Cleveland Museum of Art.

"I routinely observe my city and the people that make up its urban development, translating my impressions of daily life by orchestrating colors and shapes that move and weave across surfaces. This work is the evolving adventure I’ve discovered in pure abstraction.” -Howard

Fischer creates textured abstract constructions, or what he refers to as “tableaux reliefs”, to break the plane of two-dimensional art. His projects are intricately hand cut and assembled from wood, aluminum, and copper then finished with colored gesso and modeling paste to bring the surface of the work into conversation with its maze-like depth.

Fischer committed to a full-time fine art studio practice in 2016 in New Hope, Pennsylvania. He has experience designing nine published pop-up books and an architecture background; both visual languages seem to linger in his work. His designs are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt Museum and Museum of American History, and in the Artist Book section of the Library of Congress. 

“Visual complexity runs throughout my work and I rarely sketch before starting a new piece, but I trust my intuition, life experiences, and the materials at hand to create works of spatial balance and harmony.” Fischer