APE MADE / Events + Shop

Find APE MADE at the following locations:

• SALTY NOT SWEET – 13339 Madison Ave – Lakewood, Ohio

• CLE CLOTHING CO. – 342 Euclid Avenue – Cleveland, Ohio

• ZYGOTE PRESS – 1410 E 30th Street – Cleveland, Ohio

• THE CPL LIBRARY SHOP – 424 Superior Avenue – Cleveland, Ohio

• THE GIRLS’ JOINT – 6505 Detroit Avenue – Cleveland, Ohio

• HEIGHTS ARTS – 2175 Lee Road – Cleveland Heights, Ohio

• BAY ARTS – 28795 Lake Road – Bay Village, Ohio

• CANTON MUSEUM OF ART – 1001 Market Avenue N – Canton, Ohio

• HANDMADE TOLEDO – 1717 Adams Street – Toledo, Ohio

UPCOMING EVENTS

ABOUT

APE MADE is a one-woman business – quite literally anything Ape (April) makes. In recent years, she’s shifted her energy from the clothing brand back towards more fine art projects, large scale public art, commissions, and artist residencies - in addition to completing a full studio remodel and expansion. All artwork, design, screen printing, and packaging is done by hand by April Bleakney (aka Ape). While the company officially launched out of Ape’s Kent basement in 2011, you may have APE MADE items dating back to 2009 when she began printing on the side during the Great Recession.

Beyond art and prints, APE MADE creates items for everyone – adults, children, babies, pets, and home – using only the comfiest apparel and aiming to maintain affordability across the line. All items are handmade in Cleveland, Ohio. All of our products and artworks are hand printed by Ape using eco-friendly, water-based textile inks and no machines or harsh chemicals. Blanks are sourced from companies with high certifications in both their humane working conditions and environmental impact. While many of these have been retired, Ape still does carry a small selection of wearable / home items.

Ape has developed an artistic practice rooted in social consciousness and community engagement, always with an eye to the past and a hopeful wish for the future.  Her aesthetic is bold, gritty, textural, and loaded with meaning.  She creates intriguing and often highly detailed, layered, visual tapestries with unexpected use of color, form, scale and pattern.  Her foundation in history is utilized through research and context. Photography is also key; she employs photographic elements within her artworks as figurative components, textures, or abstracted layers.

April believes in purpose-driven printmaking, shared through teaching, public and community-based art projects, commissions and artist residencies. She is intentional in leveraging her art and business in support of local social justice and mutual aid organizations. She has a long track record of public arts and large-scale commissions. The subject matter of these works is frequently community-based and responsive to the space, audience, and energy - often inspirational, contemplative, and hopeful. Much of her work is deeply rooted in the region and visually celebrates places, people, and histories.