10/02/2026
OPENING TONIGHT! Friday, October 2, 6-9PM
Familiar Strangers features work by local artists Cullen Houser, Josh Luboski and Will Wilson - Opening Reception during Walk All Over Waterloo. Here's a sneak peek!
This group exhibition presents a collection of figurative pieces – each explores the absurdity of the characters and the worlds in which they exist. Including paintings, prints, and illustration, this exhibition showcases the ways in which these three artists engage in world building. Whether it’s the organized filing of yearbook photos, the hectic scroll of social media algorithms or the segmented compositions of exquisite corpses, their work is populated with characters that feel as familiar as they do strange.
Cullen Houser (Slide 2) is a multidisciplinary artist based out of Cleveland. His recent work is based on a game called “Exquisite Corpse” which was popular with Surrealist artists in the 1920s (to play each person draws the part of a body, folding the paper to conceal their work, and at the end the paper is unfolded to reveal the often monstrous figures created by chance). Houser’s recent etchings of segmented bodies plays off this idea by pairing up absurdist tops and bottoms, creating his own special creatures.
Josh Luboski (Slide 3) is a painter and illustrator currently based in Cleveland Heights. Using an airbrush machine Josh translates the low-form visual language that defines meme culture and contemporary internet humor into physical pieces. His work showcases the absurdist content shared throughout the internet in a traditionally painted context, while analyzing the effect digital spaces have on the collective population.
Will Wilson (Slide 4) is a Cleveland-based artist and high school art teacher who synthesizes a variety of traditional and non-traditional art forms. His recent work utilizes the framework of a yearbook, where many diverse students sit in front of the same backdrop, in the same position, etc. He then creates several “classes” that push the boundaries of how different we can be.
