The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
Cliff Lewis
Marysville Ohio 43040 United States
Bio
Cliff Lewis works with milled and scavenged wood, blown glass, and found objects, exploring themes of ancestry, mortality, and transformation. A descendant of carpenters, clockmakers, and windmill builders, his creative life is grounded in a deep lineage of craftsmanship. Over a long and eclectic career, Cliff has pursued mastery in cabinet making, carpentry, wooden boat building, and kitchen and bath design.
Living with incurable cancer, Cliff brings urgency and clarity to his making, creating pieces that grapple with impermanence while celebrating connection and resilience. Humor and collaboration, particularly through the communal nature of glassblowing, infuse his process with vitality. His constructions often echo mythic and architectural forms, like his sculptural piece, the Tower of Babel, that addresses fragmentation, communication, and the longing for shared meaning.
Lewis holds a B.F.A. in Glass from The Ohio State University and returned to the studio and hot shop after 37 years to work in glass and sculpture. He studied glass blowing and assemblage with Einar and Jamex De la Torre at the Penland School of Crafts in 2024. His sculpture, The Tower of Babel, was recognized by receiving the Wild Goose Creative Art Show Award at the Ohio State Fair Professional Division Art Competition. Cliff recently had work in the Ohio Arts Council Biennial Show at the Riffe Gallery in 2025.
Cliff lives and shares a studio with his wife in a rural area in Union County, Ohio. He enjoys woodworking, gardening, literature, historical study, model railroading, cooking and down time spent with his many cats.
Artist Statement
Artist Statement
I create with glass, wood, metal, and found objects, to explore the fragility of memory and the weight of inheritance. My work is an ongoing conversation with those who came before me. Ancestors who built with wood, metal, and time: carpenters, clockmakers, builders of windmills. I carry their touch forward through my own making, with materials that are fragile, resilient, and full of history.
Living with incurable cancer for the past 3 years has brought me closer to the inevitability of death. For me, mortality is no longer abstract. It is immediate, embodied, and deeply felt. I respond with a contemplative, often humorous voice to navigate the terrain of loss, memory, and impermanence. My work becomes a form of preparation, remembrance, and offering.
I build from a mix of milled and foraged wood, blown, and cast glass, found architectural elements, along with salvaged materials that carry their own often unknown natural and human histories. My work with ideas and materials invests me in building clarity about what really matters. It’s how I make sense of life, death, all that is tender, ridiculous, and miraculous. I invite viewers to find beauty in the uncertain, reflecting on what we inherit, what we let go of, and how we create and extend stories that live on through making, sharing, and telling.
Ultimately, my work is a dialogue with those who came before and an invitation to reflect on our own impermanence.