"Sent" By John Jackson (Paint and graphic on paper, 40" x 61".)

Last Thursday evening two of Cleveland's most admirable artists were murdered. The events took place in the Detroit Avenue building where each maintained a studio and living quarters. Masumi Hayashi and John Jackson had little enough in common in terms of media or artistic concerns, yet in temperament they were remarkably alike, sharing a gentle thoughtfulness mixed with hardnosed dedication to their craft.

Shortly before he died, John Jackson wrote a statement — almost a poem at times — for an upcoming group show scheduled at Zygote Press Gallery. The title of that show is Revive, for which each artist will choose an old project set aside for one reason or another, and give it another chance.

For his part in Revive, John describes a sculptural work conceived some time ago, exploring a notion of sacred space. Consisting of a niche such as might be found in a mosque, and a collection of iron window sash weights, the idea was typical of John's thinking; he was always weaving visual and conceptual strands together to make loose-fitting, elegant garments for the mind and eye. He wrote, "I've been thinking lately that my central interest in art-making is the nature of creation itself, the diverse ways in which things actually get done Å  elements of sacred places; orientation, dominant color, sound — specifically the tones of struck instrumentsÅ "

Everything John did aimed to forge improbable alliances between disparate elements, coaxing sprightly metaphors from a coalition of rough and smooth, or curly and straight. One sculpture shown at the Dead Horse Gallery combined a beautifully turned dome of hardwood with a handle from an antique paper cutter and a shallow, rusted metal conical bowl, mounted atop a rough concrete plinth. The work is perhaps two-thirds the height of an average person and gives an anthropomorphic impression, gesturing with its handle/arm as if making a point or signaling a left turn.

Many of John's sculptures, influenced by surrealist works by Miro and Klee, are playful in such ways and often have an ironic twist. Zygote co-founder Liz Maugans remarks, "He had a modernist compass, with a postmodern extension cord."

Whether working in three dimensions or on paper, the sinuous, organic quality of his line is a crucial element in much of his work. In his sculpture he sometimes used a frantic, jangling haze of fine, jumbled wire to offset the solid thunk of a heavier, more geometric form. And at times his painted works explore the potential of this kind of line even farther.

Perhaps the best known examples of this second body of work grew out of a very unusual experiment with line and collaboration that John was part of, and which included his friend Bea Mitchell and longtime Cleveland Institute of Art instructor Ed Mieczkowski. Eventually the three called themselves Newcelle, and the lithely linear compositions they created together are the stuff of legend. Often as large as six feet across, these two- and three-part inventions are circular, and that sound-like dimension that art can possess is all but audible. Three very individual takes on line twist and evade and complete one another in a series of intricate visual canons and fugues. Bea recalls how Ed (who is well-known as a brusque kidder) would give John a hard time: "He never said a kind word to John. After years of working on these drawings together he'd say, "OK John, you're beginning to get that line.'"

Newcelle was a small part of John's artistic life and output, and in general his admirers probably value his sculpture most, as he did himself. The textures and contradictions of the Northeastern industrial rust-scape were the first love of this Northern Ohio-born artist. Still, the biological concepts and gestures underlying the nerve cell-like progressions of his later drawings and paintings, like the 2005 "Green Goddess" displayed in the Cleveland Museum of Art's recent NEO Show, trace at least some of their origins to the Newcelle experiments.

At the age of 51, it seems certain John Jackson was only beginning to create the works of his mature manner. All the same, there's no doubt he did indeed "get that line," producing a large body of work of lasting beauty and significance.

Masumi Hayashi is one of Cleveland's few artists who enjoy a growing worldwide reputation. She was born in one of the infamous relocation camps built in the Southwest United States to incarcerate Japanese-American citizens following the Civilian Exclusion Act of 1942. This very early experience fueled decades of intense meditation on alienation in general, and especially discontinuities between appearance and substance. These are the subjects of a long series of photo collages, shown in one-person exhibits at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others.

Many of her works depict buildings or landscapes, sometimes including passersby, photographed up to 100 times from a single vantage point. The final assemblages are built from these and resemble shimmering mosaics. The online Masumi Hayashi Museum Web site includes an archive of 177 series of this kind. Places she photographed include nine relocation camps in the U.S. and three in Canada. Another especially haunting series explores abandoned prisons around the country, including several in Ohio. Tiers of open cells bulge forward in the interior of a disused cellblock at Mansfield, curling upward in a flutter of gray tones like burgeoning fungus. These studies include a full 360-degree view and seem like screens unfolding. The artist often includes repetitions of certain features, adding a visual syncopation that underscores the re-constructed, essentially artificial nature of all our visions. Masumi's works are almost always overtly beautiful, yet they convey a sense of profound unease as they reiterate a treetop, stuttering across the top of one group of photos, or turn the edges of a rooftop into a crown of thorns.

With quiet grace and more than a little true grit, Masumi Hayashi gave everything she had to her art, and to her students at Cleveland State University, where she was a professor for the past 24 years. She and John Jackson will be sorely missed by all who knew them, and remembered by many more who encountered them only through their extraordinary works.

arts@freetimes.com

A memorial service for John Jackson and a dedication of his sculpture will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at West 65th St. and W. Clinton Ave.

A memorial for Masumi Hayashi will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday at Beck Center for the Arts, 17801 Detroit Avenue, Lakewood.