"I AM" Identity Workshop with Gina Washington and Ed Parker

As part of The Sculpture Center's exhibition Crossroads: Still We Rise, participating artist Gina Washington will lead an identity-building workshop. Unleash your magic and tap into your soul with two of the most powerful words to be spoken, "I Am." Plan to ground your energy and express your creative self. Group conversation will lead from there.

This event will be held at the Ed Parker Creative Complex in East Cleveland. Following the workshop, Ed Parker will guide visitors on a tour of the complex. Artist and entrepreneur Ed Parker built the Creative Complex in 1984. It includes gallery, classroom , and meeting spaces, and is a predominant cultural asset in the East Cleveland neighborhood.

About Gina Washington

Gina Washington is a photographer born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her Master’s in Fine Arts in Photography from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and has won numerous awards for her portraiture and multi-medium art. She works with The Visit Arts Collaborative and engages with the community by spreading art to all. By working and connecting with artists of all walks of life, Gina wishes to make art accessible to everyone. Gina has selected the Forest Hill Park Footbridge in East Cleveland as the site for her AR experience.

“I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated with an MFA in Photography from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. I consider myself “a child of the Universe” and have traveled to many places collecting images and connecting artists. I have won awards for portraiture and I create art “by any means necessary” combining many different mediums. As a master collaborator, I co-created an exhibition at the Ingenuity Fest Cleveland in 2010 that showcased poetry, storytelling, music, and visual arts with a group we now call The Visit Arts Collective. My goal is to make art accessible to everyone. I teach, I create and I hope to inspire future students as they discover their passions and soar.”

About Ed Parker

Ed Parker is an artist, educator, and entrepreneur born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in Toledo, Ohio. He earned his BA from Central State University and his MFA from Kent State University. Throughout his career, Ed has worked in classrooms, studios, galleries, and museums in America, Africa, and Europe. He began teaching art in Cleveland Public Schools and moved on to teach at the Cuyahoga Community College for nearly twenty years before retiring in 1999 and founding the Snickerfritz Cultural Workshop for the Arts in 1984. In 2017, he expanded the Snickerfritz to include the Edward E. Parker Creative Arts Complex. The Complex includes gallery and classroom spaces and a number of small businesses. Parker’s artistic achievements include numerous one-man and group shows in Ohio, and commissions from Cleveland’s Cuyahoga Community College and Florida Memorial College.

“I AM” Identity Workshop is free to attend! Registration is required.