Taylor Clapp laughed when asked to explain the meaning behind the logo for The Groundhog Show, the pop-up art show she co-founded.
“It was Hope’s idea,” Clapp said, referring to her co-founder, Hope Hickman. “She was like, ‘I want it to be a groundhog screaming into the void.’”
So why a groundhog?
“It’s us artists popping our heads up to see if it’s safe to come out yet post-COVID,” Clapp said. “That was how she phrased it, and that’s when I fell in love with the project.”
The Groundhog Show
Outside the Box at TrueNorth
Friday: 5 to 11 p.m.
Saturday: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Sunday: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
clappforart.com/the-groundhog-show-2024
What started as a project for local artists to exhibit pieces they made during the pandemic grew into an annual three-day festival. After three years of hosting the show in the Portage Lakes, Clapp decided to move The Groundhog Show to downtown Akron this year. Starting Friday at 5 p.m., the show will take over Outside the Box — an outdoor gallery/performance space made from upcycled shipping containers — at TrueNorth.
“It’s still a nontraditional space, so that’s what sold me,” Clapp said.
Nontraditional is kind of the theme of The Groundhog Show. The idea originated with Hickman, in 2021. For the first three years, Clapp and Hickman, who are both artists themselves, hosted the show in the Portage Lakes area at a storage facility Hickman’s father owned. Hickman is preparing to attend grad school, so she stepped back from organizing The Groundhog Show this time, Clapp said. Akron-based artist Nick Lee co-curated this year’s show with Clapp.
For this year’s show, Clapp also teamed up with Curated Storefront. The arts nonprofit offered up Outside the Box (which it owns), as well as other support and resources.
Courtney Cable, creative director for Curated Storefront, is a longtime fan of The Groundhog Show. Moving the show to a prominent downtown location benefits everyone involved, from Clapp and the artists to the community, she said.
“There is something to be said for giving the opportunity for artists to display their artwork at a public location, also. That’s not something that is easily organized by one individual or easily activated,” Cable said. “For them to show their artwork and for them to be there in the same space gives them an opportunity for more social networking as well, one, with other artists and also with collectors or people that would buy their artwork.”
This year’s Groundhog Show will feature pieces in a variety of mediums from 100 artists, mainly from Akron and Cleveland but also a few from Canton and Kent. When describing this year’s artwork, Clapp broke them into four categories.
“I would say whimsy, dark and decay, queer color pop and then dark and sexy would be the four big themes this year of how we split everything up,” she said, laughing.
Throughout the years, Clapp said the event has “organically” shifted to being an art show that showcases the work of LGBTQ+ artists and their allies.
“It just kind of ended up that way because me and all my friends are kind of queer,” Clapp said. “Pretty much the only rule is you can’t be a bigot.”
The presenting sponsor of this year’s event is Akron Pride Festival.
“It just feels really new and exciting,” Lee said of this year’s show. “To have this in a new location and be centered around Akron Pride and supporting LGBTQ artists within the area and Northeast Ohio.”
Friday’s opening reception will feature live music and drag performances as well as the awards presentation. Clapp also teamed up with the Nightlight to host two screenings Friday and Saturday of the French documentary “Orlando, My Political Biography” at Courtyard Akron Downtown. Saturday also includes an open mic night at Jilly’s Music Room. The event will conclude Sunday with a live figure-drawing class at Outside the Box. All Groundhog Show programming is free to attend, but there is limited seating for the film screenings.
“The whole reason it started was, Akron was missing something like this,” Clapp said of The Groundhog Show. “I always call it a passion project that’s gotten out of hand, but in all the best of ways where it’s overwhelming, but it’s so rewarding. Just everybody getting together and having fun and celebrating everything about this year: the good, weird life and the ugly.”
