…Once in a blue moon there is a blue moon. 
Once in a blue moon you can see as far as the 
Fortunate Isles and the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
Once in a blue moon realization is better than anticipation.
And a kiss shatters a star.
Once in a blue moon Here is better than There…
—Jake Falstaff [1]

This poem was included on ephemera for the Kokoon Klub, an avant-garde arts society started in Cleveland in 1911. Principal founders William Sommer and Carl Moellmann brought together a group of artists who shared a “deep-seated need for expressive freedom” and a “passionate conviction that artistic liberation could be achieved through the adoption of modernism in all its forms.”[2] They organized drawing sessions, printed now-sought-after posters, participated in The Cleveland Museum of Art’s annual May Shows, and partied. Hard. Their annual Bal Masque is memorialized as a truly bacchanalian night where Cleveland’s conservative air was punctured by costume, revelry, and sex. Counting around 60 active members at its peak, the Kokoon Klub embodied a type of collective, alternative spirit before dwindling membership led to its officially disbandment in 1956. Note that in the poem, the sentiment “realization is better than anticipation” is not a statement of fact, but rather, the exception to the rule. A case when an array of variables line up just so. However, “realization” is not so staid as, say, “actuality” or “certainty.” Realization holds within it the vision that takes shape. While reality often falls short of expectation, art is something that can create a space outside of both.

Realization is Better than Anticipation features work by 12 artists connected to Cleveland and the surrounding region, including Detroit, Pittsburgh, and locations throughout Ohio. The exhibition brings together emerging and established artists, some with deep histories in the region, others who have arrived from elsewhere, and seeks to promote an open conversation about creative practices that develop in this area. At its core, Realization is Better than Anticipation is an exhibition about making. Focused on the act of bringing something into being, here “realization” is taken as equal parts practical (doing, constructing) and alchemical (magical, transformative). The works on view include painting, photography, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, video, sound, and performance. Across these media, the artists demonstrate a particular sensitivity to their materials and surroundings. Therein, the region has entered their work in a variety of ways: the landscape; the cityscape; detritus; the light; locally-sourced and regionally-specific materials; a rich craft tradition; a spirit of resourcefulness and productivity; working with what’s at hand; the openness and freedom that comes from being “outside the center.” The exhibition focuses intentionally on how artists work here, on their particular modes and reasons for making. Through their individual strategies, each of the artists show a responsiveness that is in turns thoughtful, unguarded, and generative.

[…]

Excerpt from “Foreword,” Rose Bouthillier and Megan Lykins Reich, Realization is Better than Anticipation, moCa Cleveland, 2013. Download the complete catalogue here.

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[1] Ohio born Jake Falstaff was the pen name of Herman Fetzer (1899-1935), a novelist, poet, and columnist for the Cleveland Press and Akron Times. This excerpt is taken from Henry Adams, Out of the Kokoon (Cleveland: Cleveland Public Library and Cleveland Artists Foundation, 2011), 122.

[2] Adams, 9.