Aeqai has returned with its combined January/February, 2018, issue, which has just posted. What’s particularly engaging about this issue is the range of exhibitions covered (and people profiled), as we’re living in a transitional world in the visual arts, and are witnessing a time where the internet’s presence and importance, particularly to younger artists, is clear and growing. Ekin Erkan’s review of “Fiction (with only daylight between us)”, curated by Jeffrey Cortland Jones, at The Convergys Gallery in the Art Academy of Cincinnati, raises significant issues about art exhibitions curated utilizing work by artists culled from, in this case, FaceBook.  Jack Wood offers two different interview/conversations, but his conversation with an all-woman collaborative group across America, connected via internet, wherein the six women involved meet other women artists there, and create art shows accordingly, is fascinating (“XXOO”). We get a real sense of the internet’s potential for artists themselves in these reviews/conversations. We’re seeing more and more shows of artwork made by women with an overtly feminist outlook (according to Erkan, we’re now in the third and/or fourth wave of contemporary feminism), so Joelle Jameson’s review of a show at The University of Massachusetts in Boston (“”Hard: Subversive Representation”) fits this description aptly; the fascinating work of Rachel Rampelman, who has shown here at Solway Gallery, is included in this show in Boston, which examines images of women made by women artists. And Ekin Erkan’s other review for aeqai this month is “The Future is Female”, at the 21 C hotel in downtown Cincinnati. Jonathan Kamholtz analyzes the multi-faceted work of  Japanese artist Glenn Kaino at The Contemporary Arts Center, whose work is based on map making but may be construed to be an examination of capitalist forces at work today world-wide.

This Aeqai also reviews the work by the late, much esteemed Cincinnati Modernist painter, Jens Jensen, at Cincinnati Art Galleries in downtown Cincinnati (reviewed by me), and Marlene Steele’s review of work by representational Cincinnati painter Patrice Trauth and photographer Ron Hoffman at Wash Park Art in OTR, Cincinnati. Amy Bogard reviews works by printmakers from Tiger Lily Press (including work by Aeqai writer Jack Wood) at Brazee Street Studios, and another interview/conversation by Jack Wood with another woman artist showing in Austin, Texas (Jessica Carrolton).  Jennifer Perusek, Aeqai’s fashion critic, offers a splendid look and critique of work by Chinese fashion designer/coutourier, in her Fashion Week show titled “Elysium”, a kind of Neo-Baroque but highly contemporary fashion whose work brings that of Iris Van Herpen to mind, too.  Karen Chambers reviews work by contemporary artists working with textiles, at Marta Hewett Gallery, and Libby Andress work at Irl Gallery (“Notes on Today from Tomorrow”).

Jane Durrell offers us a profile of artist/longtime area art dealer Linda Schwartz, who is also offering exhibitions  increasingly online with her “Alternative Projects”. I had a conversation with Eric Avner from The Haile Foundation in December, and a summary of it appears in this issue, too.  Laura Hobson also offers us an overview of The Fitton Center for the Arts, Northwest of Cincinnati in Hamilton, which is considered one of the country’s most successful arts venues. And Aeqai architecture critic Stewart Maxwell offers his ideas on what the city might do with the recently available Fountain Square West (“Fountain Place”) area of downtown, which is, yet again, available for development with the closing/departure of both Macy’s and Tiffany’s from that area of downtown.

Megan Bickel offers two reviews, one from Nashville’s Frist Arts Center, which showed work by the increasingly admired Nick Cave (who showed at Cincinnati Art Museum years back), and one from Louisville,. work by  Letita Queseberry and Aaron Rosenblum at The Huff Gallery at Spaulding Univeristy there.  Martha Dunham’s Seattle review looks at refreshing paintings by Warden Butler at G. Gibson Gallery there. And Cynthia Kukla’s been traveling again; she offers a fascinating look at the permanent collection at The Audain Museum in Vancouver, B.C., which is the first collection of work by Native peoples in Canada, and she also offers a second review of work by Canadian woman artist Emily Carr, comparing it to the work of American Charles Burchfield; both of their work shows a high level of spiritual interest in the vast landscapes of Canada, and of Upstate New York. And Kent Krugh’s fotofolio offers images by photographer Jerry Birchfield.

So this issue of Aeqai runs the gamut from High Modernism to feminist postmodernism, from painters painting on canvas to artists engaged via the internet: there’s so much rich art out there now, in so many different mediums, with so many differing aesthetic and socio-political underpinnings: it’s a great time to be looking at art and how it both reflects and precedes where culture is and is heading.

We welcome your comments, as always, and we’ll be back near the end of March with our next issue of Aeqai.  To go directly to the site, please click onto www.aeqai.com/main and it should take you directly to our site.