The December issue of Aeqai has just posted. It’s a shorter issue, as less shows opened this month, and many of Aeqai’s writers are unavailable at this time of year. But we’ve still got some superb reviews and profiles for you. Jonathan Kamholtz has been reviewing paintings by Cole Carothers for Aeqai for awhile now; […]
Archive for December, 2018
December 2018 Issue of Aeqai Online
December 23rd, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in Announcements
The Hills are Alive: Cole Carothers’s “The Cincinnati Collection, 1985–2012” on display at Roehr Insurance Company, curated by Caza Sikes, November 2-30, 2018
December 23rd, 2018 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
In Cole Carothers’s “Margin” (2008), we are in Northern Kentucky somewhere—I’m thinking probably Monmouth Street—where the roadway dips down under some train tracks. There is no glamor here, at least not in a conventional sense. Where we are has been zoned for what is called light industry, which typically means that the factories are neither […]
Picasso to Pollock: Modern Masterworks from the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University at the Speed Art Museum
December 23rd, 2018 | by Megan Bickel | published in *, December 2018
According to the Speed Art Museum, Picasso to Pollock: Modern Masterworks from the Eskenazi Museum of Art showcases the impressive early 20th-century art collection owned by the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University. It covers the breadth of nearly every major artistic movement that occurred between the years 1900 and 1950 in Europe and America. […]
Queen City Struts Her Stuff Panorama of Cincinnati Art – 33rd Anniversary Benefit for the Taft Museum December 1st through Friday January 18th, 2019
December 23rd, 2018 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in *
As a prominent river town, the Queen City has long been a storehouse for culture. Picture Benjamin West’s massive painting Ophelia and Laertes – 109 x 152 1/2 inches – rolled up and secured to a barge coming down the Ohio River to its purchaser, none other than Cincinnati’s Nicholas Longworth. It was the first […]
Welcome Project Hosts a Series of Cincinnati Neighborhood Dinners
December 23rd, 2018 | by Laura Hobson | published in *
Sharing a table and a meal together can make a community stronger. During a time of unrest nationally and internationally, this is the season to be thankful over a common dinner meeting new people and reaching out to those who are different from us. The Welcome Project reflects this theme in a year-long collaboration. It […]
Best Fiction of 2018
December 23rd, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in *, December 2018
2018 was an odd year for fiction; good and occasionally superior books appeared throughout the year, though it took some sleuthing to find them. Nothing dominates other than an ominous tendency towards overpraising novels that tend towards the politically correct. If you read other lists of best novels of the year, you’ll notice a […]
Diverse Artists Navigate Boundaries in "Here" at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
December 23rd, 2018 | by Annabel Osberg | published in December 2018
Los Angeles encompasses so many neighborhoods, districts, and suburbs that nary a local can keep track of them all. In a city so sprawling and diverse, the idea of boundaries seems especially salient during our current epoch when notions of acceptability shift like sand in the wind even as divisive talks revolve around building permanent […]
“TAPPED 9: Artists and their Professors,” Manifest Gallery, through January 11, 2019
December 23rd, 2018 | by Karen Chambers | published in December 2018
The title says it all: “TAPPED 9: Artists and their Professors.” In this ninth iteration at Manifest Gallery, there are seven pairs (the teacher is listed first): Elvia Perrin, Austin, TX, and Lauren Cardenas, Taylor, MD Thad Duhigg, Worden, IL, and Scott Ross, McMinnville, OR Michael Reedy, Ann Arbor, MI, and Lorena Ganser, Ann Arbor, […]
Christopher Myers : Recognizing Covington’s Potential
December 23rd, 2018 | by Stewart Maxwell | published in December 2018
On occasion, the planets do align and a person with the appropriate knowledge, skills, enthusiasm, and temperament is hired to fill an employment position. Fortunately, this has occurred at the City of Covington, Kentucky in their hiring in November, 2018 of the new Historic Preservationist & Planning Specialist: Christopher Myers. Although young at the age […]
Artist-Educator Karen McGarry on merits of arts-inclusive education
December 23rd, 2018 | by Russell Hausfeld | published in December 2018
An odd feeling creeps into my mind while sitting in Karen McGarry’s Brazee Street studio. The feeling that the many small figures strewn about the space — mannequin parts, cigarette-smoking Barbie dolls, old stop-motion animation dolls — must get up and have lives of their own when no one is around. That is the feeling […]
Profile of Carl Samson
December 23rd, 2018 | by Jane Durrell | published in December 2018
The challenge for figurative painting, says Carl Samson, practitioner of same, is that it needs to be relevant to today. He speaks of hoping that his works “give people something they’ve not considered. Give them things to think about. New considerations. Preservation of the natural world. Patina is not everything.” That’s a large order. It’s […]
Film Review: In "Sgt. Will Gardner," a Tormented Combat Veteran Battles Against His Own Memories
December 23rd, 2018 | by Annabel Osberg | published in December 2018
Possibly the earliest visual record of shell shock, the above photograph shows a Crimean War infantry captain whose eyes appear as windows to a hollow, desperate soul. Two years later, he died from the hardships of war shortly after returning home to Britain. In a similar manner about 150 years later, “Sgt. Will Gardner,” a […]
November Issue of Aeqai Online
December 2nd, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in Announcements
The November issue of Aeqai has just posted. We’d like to both thank and commend all of those at FotoFocus, who have offered all of us in the Greater Cincinnati area (and those in Lexington, Louisville, Dayton and Columbus, too), for an outstanding series of exhibitions in this biennial festival of photography. It’s been a […]
Nuclear Fallout: The Bomb in Three Archives at Antioch College
December 2nd, 2018 | by Susan Byrnes | published in *
Nuclear Fallout: The Bomb in Three Archives at Antioch College’s Herndon Gallery investigates historical documentation and mines personal accounts to challenge cavalier attitudes and awaken concern about nuclear war. It does this through highly original re-imaginings of how information itself can be communicated, and how memories of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki […]
Signs of Erasure: “Finding Kenyon Barr” at UC’s Meyers Gallery
December 2nd, 2018 | by Christopher Carter | published in *
At the outset of the tumultuous 1960s, more than 25,000 Cincinnatians found themselves evicted from their homes by city planners. Those losses came as a result of the Kenyon Barr project, which the planners named after two major streets in the city’s Lower West End, and which promised to revitalize approximately 297 acres of largely […]
Three Artists' Techno-futurist Dystopias
December 2nd, 2018 | by Annabel Osberg | published in *
“‘I’m living my life out in a cell in a row of beehives and when I wake up and think of it like I did last night it seems to me I’ll just go crazy! …All these flats just exactly like this one—all of ’em with exactly the same maroon in the furniture and rugs, […]
Unnatural Worlds: “No Two Alike: Karl Blossfeldt, Francis Bruguiere, Thomas Ruff” at Contemporary Arts Center, September 21, 2018-January 13, 2019
December 2nd, 2018 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
FotoFocus 2018 promised, in its thematic title, to burrow into the archives, and at the CAC, they uncovered something. The roots of its show, “No Two Alike,” go back to an artistic event of mid- to high-Modernism, when, in 1929, a small London gallery belonging to Dorothy Warren brought together the photographs of Karl Blossfeldt […]
Keltie Ferris: *O*P*E*N* at the Speed Art Museum: Casualist Painting / Not-cAsual SetTing
December 2nd, 2018 | by Megan Bickel | published in *, November 2018
When I was an undergrad I fumbled into Sharon Butler’s essay “The New Casualists” published in “The Brooklyn Rail”. I found it at a crucial moment in my development as a painter. It was 2011 and I was searching for a reason to keep painting. I had recently discovered the depth and breadth to which […]
Folded, Scratched, Discarded: Photographic Memory in the Work of Akram Zaatari
December 2nd, 2018 | by Annie Dell'Aria | published in November 2018
In our contemporary image-saturated, screen-based culture, the materiality of photographic prints and negatives seems part of a quaint memory of the artwork before the age of digital reproduction and instant dissemination. While many artists certainly still work with film, in vernacular photography the digital reigns supreme and the analog has become a relic. The materiality […]
Lookin’ For Some Hot Stuff Muse: Mickalene Thomas Photographs and tête-à-tête Dayton Art Institute, Oct. 20–Jan. 13, 2019
December 2nd, 2018 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in November 2018
Lookin’ for some hot stuff, baby this evenin’ I need some hot stuff, baby tonight I want some hot stuff, baby this evenin’ Gotta have some hot stuff Gotta have some love tonight Donna Summers sang it and Sandra Bush danced and romanced to it and Sandra’s daughter Michalene turned it into art. Mickalene Thomas, […]
“The Fabric of India,” Cincinnati Art Museum, through January 6, 2019
December 2nd, 2018 | by Karen Chambers | published in November 2018
“The Fabric of India” exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum illustrates the country’s diversity through 170 handmade objects dating from the 15th century to today. The show, co-curated by Rosemary Crill, the senior curator in the South and South-East Asia Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), and Divia Patel, is arranged around six […]
“It was a joy to pay attention”: “Measure” by Anna Von Mertens at the Radcliffe Institute
December 2nd, 2018 | by Joelle Jameson | published in November 2018
I married into a quilting family. One corner of our wedding quilt lists all the names of the women and men who helped piece it together before one aunt fed it to a nearly-room-sized robot, programmed to finish it off with polish and a custom, uninterrupted design. The family matriarch got a look at the […]
Judi Parks “Search & Destroy” – San Francisco Punk rock 1976-79
December 2nd, 2018 | by Will Newman | published in November 2018
Judi Parks’s show “Search & Destroy” consists of twenty four beautiful black and white images taken at the San Francisco club Mabuhay Gardens in the late 1970s. This was on display at Bunk House Gallery on the night of October 26th only. Parks was the bassist for the band The Blowdryers and documented what she […]
Truth or Dare: A Reality Show
December 2nd, 2018 | by Hannah Leow | published in November 2018
On display now at 21c Museum is Truth or Dare: A Reality Show. Featuring work from around the world, the exhibition is host to over fifty artists bringing with them messages and milestones from their homelands. From photographs and installations to sculptures and video, the exhibition is saturated with political, social, and cultural commentaries. Serving […]
Margie Livingston at Greg Kucera Gallery
December 2nd, 2018 | by Martha Dunham | published in November 2018
Margie Livingston doesn’t just push paint around. She layers it, folds it, quilts it, weaves it, mends it, and drags it behind her on a harness. She has also explored the substrate by playing with stretchers, or weaving loosely knotted grids of string and applying paint so that the whole stiffens into structure. Her current […]
Two FotoFocus shows at The Lloyd Library
December 2nd, 2018 | by Jane Durrell | published in November 2018
Anyone drawn to museums knows that the stacks, the storage space for everything not on exhibition, have an irresistible fascination. Lloyd Library & Museum, 917 Plum Street in downtown Cincinnati, capitalizes on that attraction for the exhibition “Out of the Stacks: Lloyd Inspired Artist Books” (September 28 – November 30), one of their two FotoFocus […]
PLEIN AIR: Art Made Outdoors
December 2nd, 2018 | by Marlene Steele | published in November 2018
“En plein air”: ORIGIN from French, meaning ‘in the open air’ This term in the painter’s glossary denotes art made outdoors, and/or images traditionally about what one sees outdoors. Launching the artistic process outside of the sheltering studio is a liberating adventure. The act of creation is accompanied by a test of your stamina and […]
Fotofolio: Suz Fleming
December 2nd, 2018 | by Kent Krugh | published in November 2018
“Impermanence” Suz’s statement: I started Impermanence several years ago and continue to work with this series. Without specifically addressing my Japanese heritage, these images are informed by Japanese art and ideas: haiku, Buddhism, and Ikebana. I have long been inspired by poetry, in general, and haiku, in particular. These short poems are often about nature, […]
Pulling Off All the Old Masks Just to See the Flowers Bloom Again Tres Taylor at Caza Sikes Gallery
December 2nd, 2018 | by Daniel Burr | published in November 2018
This show at the Caza Sikes gallery in Oakley consists of eight large works meant to be viewed in a specific order, as the central subject in each, a monk, makes a journey of self-discovery. Tres Taylor, a biochemist and now a self-taught artist living in Alabama, prepared a statement for his show about the […]
The Clay Alliance
December 2nd, 2018 | by Laura Hobson | published in November 2018
Several small arts organizations in the Greater Cincinnati area fly under the radar. Clay Alliance is one of them. Studio San Giuseppe at Mount St. Joseph University presents the Clay Alliance 20th Anniversary Exhibition from November 5 – December 7. This is a juried exhibition showcasing quality work of 35 members and a timeline of […]
Q&A: Sophie Lindsey and the art of minute-but-meaningful social intervention
December 2nd, 2018 | by Russell Hausfeld | published in November 2018
In many ways, Sophie Lindsey’s artistic practice can be compared to finding a penny face-up on the sidewalk. It happens in the context of your daily routine and makes you feel something — maybe happy or lucky. It breaks the routine just enough to let you step back and appreciate a moment in an otherwise […]
Film Review: "The Price of Everything" Paints a Valuable Group Portrait of Art Market Players
December 2nd, 2018 | by Annabel Osberg | published in November 2018
“The Price of Everything,” a 98-minute documentary directed by Nathaniel Kahn, tenders a panoptic window on the contemporary art market’s upper echelon via a carefully orchestrated sequence of interview segments with a wide array of prominent art world influentials. Seeming particularly timely in light of the $90.3 m Hockney auction record set just three days […]
“Four Soldiers” by Hubert Mingaerelli
December 2nd, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in November 2018
I was wandering around in Joseph Beth Booksellers a few weeks ago, and a caption by English novelist Hillary Mantel, whose books on King Henry VIII and Cromwell have fascinated me, to date, and saw this quote on a book cover : “A small miracle of a book, perfectly imagined and perfectly achieved”. That novel […]
“Washington Black” by Esi Edugyan
December 2nd, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in November 2018
“Washington Black”, a new and much praised novel by the African-Canadian author Esi Edugyan, is a real romp of an epic. It centers around a slave boy named Washington Black, who lives as a young boy on a sugar cane plantation in Barbados, owned by an English white family, transitioning from a father newly dead to […]
“Early Work” by Andrew Martin
December 2nd, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in November 2018
Andrew Martin’s debut novel, “Early Work”, show us a very young writer of amazing talent. The novel’s about a group of young/would-be writers, all of whom seem to have been made precious by various writing/MFA in creative writing programs, which are growing enormously around America these days, seeming to subsidize English departments everywhere. A group […]
“A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl” by Jean Thompson
December 2nd, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in November 2018
The often underrated or undernoticed Jean Thompson’s back with another of her superb family sagas, this one called “A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl”, and it’s splendid. Thompson, who lives in Illinois, has been writing family sagas about people who live in the Upper Midwest, in cities of, oh, 100,000 people or so; […]
