Kim Bissett
My Father’s Smile
March 7–March 28, 2026
My Father’s Smile is an ongoing body of work by Northeast Ohio artist and educator Kim Bissett presented across two connected sites: a three-week exhibition at SHED Projects in Cleveland and a site-responsive performance at Orange Dog Studio, Bissett’s self-built studio and gallery on inherited family land in rural western Pennsylvania.
The project traces Bissett’s return to her father’s land and Appalachian lineage through an evolving archive of images, objects, and acts of making. Moving between observation and meditation, the work considers memory, inheritance, stewardship, and the slow labor of building meaning through place.
Developed over more than eight years and still actively in process, My Father’s Smile positions the studio itself as both subject and medium: a structure excavated into the sandstone shelf of the Allegheny Plateau, built from local hemlock, and informed by the region’s traditions of craft and construction. What began as an act of looking has become an act of foundation-laying—a space to listen, to stand, and to hold generations of human and geological history.
‘Cleveland sculptor turns to photography to explore family legacy’
Ideastream Public Media by Jean-Marie Papoi
‘Review Kim Bissett at SHED Projects’
Newcity Art by Zara Yost
Eighth Turn
April 4, 2026
featuring Malena Grigoli + Celia Romanoski with composition by Carter Crosby
