For six months in 2008, the sculp­tures of twelve regional artists were sit­u­ated through­out FB’s His­toric Dis­trict and giv­ing “per­for­mance art” a new mean­ing. When May 2008 rolled around with the open­ing, the exhi­bi­tion became the talk of the town and FB, and a lively and recur­ring des­ti­na­tion. The FB com­mu­nity embraced the exhi­bi­tion and artists (a few with inter­na­tional rep­u­ta­tions), mar­veling as they installed their works. The com­mu­nity also proudly engaged local and for­eign vis­i­tors with infor­mal chats and reg­u­lar tours of the fine sculp­tures that grace­fully landed in neigh­bors’ yards. But get­ting to that place required a cura­tor par excel­lence, Shirley Koller.

Koller—a long­time artist, for­mer teacher, and cur­rent cura­tor at The Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) head­quar­ters build­ing in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.—curated the exhi­bi­tion. While it could be inter­preted as an easy plat­i­tude, FB owes Shirley Koller a debt of grat­i­tude. The real­ity behind the sen­ti­ment in terms of time and atten­tion to the require­ments of stag­ing a “first” exhibition—budgeting, orga­niz­ing, too many “ings” to note here—is daunt­ing enough. The fact that the event was staged out­doors added that much more com­pli­ca­tion to the plan­ning. Such as: get­ting neigh­bors with yards to vol­un­teer; match­ing and intro­duc­ing artists and home own­ers; ascer­tain­ing yard size, slope and instal­la­tion require­ments for the works; and seem­ingly mun­dane things like insur­ance (which came in handy when one sculp­ture was dam­aged and had to be repaired). You get the picture.

Con­tin­u­ing to laud the core committee—Jackie Lemire, Jill Nevius and Mary Kay Shaw—as well as the extended com­mit­tee for their con­tri­bu­tions, Koller also noted the joy of work­ing with the artists who sub­se­quently staged another group exhibition—this time easy— that was “just” indoors.

Not only engi­neer­ing the require­ments, cri­te­ria, and logis­tics to cre­ate a hit show, Koller used an inge­niously applied method that was sem­i­nal in guid­ing the exhi­bi­tion to its crown­ing suc­cess, win­ner of The Mayor’s Award for ”Inno­va­tion in the Arts” in Novem­ber 2008 over stiff competition.

Look­ing For­ward to…

A grad­u­ate of Cleve­land Insti­tute of Art and Case/ West­ern Reserve, Koller is busily prepar­ing for her own show at Water­gate Gallery in Octo­ber. In the same breath she men­tions how much she enjoys show­ing art-lovers around her Alexan­dria stu­dio. And, as if her sched­ule is not busy enough, Koller has agreed to curate and has already begun work with her trusty com­mit­tee on the sec­ond “Arts In Foggy Bot­tom” Sculp­ture Exhi­bi­tion. It opens May 2010.

To get to the top of the 2010 Exhi­bi­tion vol­un­teer list, and/or for a spe­cial visit through her stu­dio, reach Shirley at ShirleyArtKoller@metronets.com