Early Fall 2016

Glenn Brown at the Contemporary Arts Center

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in *, Early Fall 2016

Glenn Brown at the Contemporary Arts Center

I have been aware of the work of artist Glenn Brown ever since he was first introduced in the 1990s as a loose member of the British YBA group. The artists’ paintings have changed minimally over time, Brown has found great success to the tune of auction prices into the millions of dollars. In Britain, […]

“The Book of Only Enoch” and “The Jackleg Testament, Part I: Jack and Eve” Cincinnati Art Museum September 24, 2016 to March12, 2017

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

“The Book of Only Enoch” and “The Jackleg Testament, Part I: Jack and Eve” Cincinnati Art Museum  September 24, 2016 to March12, 2017

To say that this exhibit is a must-see, is putting it mildly.  The combined works are a command performance of an immense amount of work, inspiration, creativity and talent.  Introduced by “The Jackleg Testament , Part I: Jack and Eve” an award-winning animated film featuring story, music and graphics, all by Jay Bolotin,  and moving […]

Paper’s Pliability Pulsates in “Brand 44 Works on Paper”

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Paper’s Pliability Pulsates in “Brand 44 Works on Paper”

Set in the foothills above the City of Glendale, Brand Library and Art Center has been serving music and art lovers across Southern California since 1956. Not only does its library offer more than 110,000 items dedicated exclusively to fine art and music, but its art galleries offer unique programming year-round, including a variety of exhibitions […]

Molly Bounds’ Panes: A Study in Motion

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Molly Bounds’ Panes: A Study in Motion

Molly Bounds’ Panes: A Study in Motion opened on July 1st at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, CO. I landed in Denver at nine o’clock on the morning of Tuesday the sixteenth of August, having flown overnight from Portland. It was my second visit to Denver and the latter of two visits with […]

Good Night, Bloom: “A Photographic Survey of the American Yard: Photographs by Joshua White” at the Third Floor Gallery in the Fine Arts Center, Northern Kentucky University, September 22-October 29, 2016

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Good Night, Bloom: “A Photographic Survey of the American Yard:  Photographs by Joshua White”  at the Third Floor Gallery in the Fine Arts Center,  Northern Kentucky University, September 22-October 29, 2016

Emerson’s idea of how to see Nature was to look up; Thoreau’s idea of how to see Nature was to look down. It drove Emerson crazy. Instead of becoming a great Transcendalist thinker, Thoreau, to Emerson’s mind, went huckleberrying. While Emerson sought to capture the Universal Soul in Nature, Thoreau bent over and watched red […]

A Quarter of a Million Miles

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

A Quarter of a Million Miles

Internationally exhibited Hawaiian-born, Christy Lee Rogers is the FotoFocus Biennial item at Miller this month. Her large format water medium photography prints fascinate as they bloom/explode/undulate organically on the gallery walls. Experimenting with the figure, water and lighting over several years, her elemental concepts came together as she succeeded in breaking the conventions of contemporary […]

Fotofolio: FotoFocus

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Fotofolio: FotoFocus

                                    Selections and venue from FotoFocus Biennial 2016, The Undocument FotoFocus Biennial Photography curated exhibitions: http://www.fotofocusbiennial.org/see-art/#curated-exhibitions Kent Krugh is a fine art photographer living in Cincinnati. kentkrugh.com

Bridging Cultures

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Bridging Cultures

Bridging Cultures, which will run at the C-Link Gallery at Brazee Street Studios through October 7, brings together the work of three Cincinnati artists, Eunshin Khang, Bukang Kim, and Frank Satogata.  The exhibit explores their joint identities as Asian American painters.  Western influenced work hangs in the main room of the gallery and Eastern influenced […]

“Painters of Interest” August 19 – September 16, 2016 Cincinnati Art Galleries 225 E Sixth Street #1 Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

"Painters of Interest”   August 19 - September 16, 2016 Cincinnati Art Galleries  225 E Sixth Street #1 Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Cincinnati Art Galleries has been around long enough to outlive a slue of quality galleries which have slipped away, simply because the business of art fluctuates so easily ..and often.  Now, however, a new face is in charge. The gallery has been purchased by David Hausrath, formerly the general counsel for Ashland Oil for 32 […]

“Well-Known Pacifically” – a powerful tribute to a community’s ‘Mutual Celebrities’

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

"Well-Known Pacifically" - a powerful tribute to a community’s ‘Mutual Celebrities’

Well Known Pacifically is the third and final installment of a series of exhibitions by Antonio Adams, currently on display at Thundersky Gallery. Although I did not see the earlier shows, which began in 2012, I was deeply touched by Adams’ raw, playful and deeply thoughtful  exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculpture and the larger […]

Blind and Not Afraid: Britt Hatzius

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Blind and Not Afraid: Britt Hatzius

When playing ‘telephone’ as a kid there always seemed to be someone in the circle who would misinterpret the sentence, sometimes the translation was funny and sometimes it was gibberish, but it always connected those in the circle. In Britt Hatzius’ “Blind Cinema” this connection of communication became the struggle to build a world out […]

OFFF Cincinnati 9/24/2016 Morning Session

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

The self declared “best creative conference in the world” isn’t making a great first impression. The conference pamphlet does little to back up that notion. The graphic design is unimpressive at best – and not particularly on trend. Not to mention the simple layout errors. It would seem to have been designed by a second […]

Sol Kjok Joins Forces in Her Search for Universal Truths

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Sol Kjok Joins Forces in Her Search for Universal Truths

We met Sol Kjok in the early 1990s when she was a grad student at UC, in fine arts, though she already had an advanced degree in European literature: her art, then, focused on the metaphor of the circus, life lived on a flying trapeze, lived swinging in and through the air; her figures often […]

People’s Liberty, A Cincinnati Experiment

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

People’s Liberty, A Cincinnati Experiment

People’s Liberty, located at 1805 Elm St. in Over-the-Rhine, overlooks Findlay Market, but serves the Greater Cincinnati area within the I-275 corridor. A unique experiment, People’s Liberty is a philanthropic lab that brings together civic-minded talent to address transformation in Greater Cincinnati.  People’s Liberty invests in individuals through funding and mentorship. The organization is designed […]

"Memorable Impressions" at Cincinnati Art Galleries

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

"Memorable Impressions" at Cincinnati Art Galleries

Mark Daly’s appealing paintings are on view at Cincinnati Art Galleries in a show called “Memorable Impressions” that shares with viewers his own pleasures at looking. He likes looking at:  sailboats, sunsets, church spires in hazy weather, city streets filling up with snow.  The works are new, some as recent as three weeks before the […]

Jorge Alegria Heaven At Rockport Center for the Arts

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Jorge Alegria Heaven At Rockport Center for the Arts

Jorge Alegría’s Heaven opened at the Rockport Center for the Arts’ Garden Gallery on August sixth, with a closing on the third of September. The artist has been living in Corpus Christi for many years and although he’s flirted with accredited institutions, he’s never felt like he needed a degree to bolster his reputation. The […]

Re-Monad: ‘My approach to re-interpretation.’ The work of Fukui formative abstract artist Tatsuya Tatsuta

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Re-Monad: ‘My approach to re-interpretation.’  The work of Fukui formative abstract artist Tatsuya Tatsuta

His art is created in a compact 2–building atelier with a circular yard fringed by manicured black pines. The yard’s entrance faces southwest at the foot of Fukui’s Mt. Hachiman, one of three mountains clustered just south of the Asuwa River, and from which the renowned blue shakudani stone has been mined for 1,500 years. […]

Black & White, the KKK, and the Enduring Banality of Evil: “The Beginning is Near (Part I)” by Vincent Valdez

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Black & White, the KKK, and the Enduring Banality of Evil: “The Beginning is Near (Part I)” by Vincent Valdez

“[‘The City’] can be any city in America. These individuals can be any American. There is a false sense that these threats ever were (or still are) contained at the peripheries of society, in small towns, backwoods in uneducated and poor communities.”                                                                                      — Vincent Valdez (b. 1977) Last month, a group of about […]

Third Coast National Juried Exhibition

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Third Coast National Juried Exhibition

On September second K-Space Contemporary opened its tenth annual Third Coast National juried exhibition.  The exhibition will remain installed until the fourteenth of October. The exhibition has been historically curated by a long list of Texas heavyweights and this year the juror was well renowned Texas artist Sharon Kopriva who boasts a remarkable oeuvre in […]

La Femme Dior

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Change is in the air… It all started a few seasons ago when Alessandro Michele took the reins at Gucci and introduced the world to his interpretation of the storied brand’s iconic woman (think more captivating ingénue than screen siren). It happened again in Fall 2016 when designer Donatella Versace redefined sexy as strength and […]

Earthly Delight

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

A new collection for the Italian luxury brand Valentino was extra intriguing this time around as it marked the beginning of the solo career of designer Pierpaolo Piccioli. He has been working for Valentino since 1999, as Co-Creative Director for the past eight years, but this was his first foray into the world of Valentino without […]

Film Review: “Sully”

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Film Review: "Sully"

  In Clint Eastwood’s 35th time directing a movie, Sully confidently and emotionally recreates the 2009 Hudson River “miracle”, where as captain, he managed to land a commercial airline on the river itself. The film also provides actor Tom Hanks with a platform for his best performance of the last decade. Surely to be forgotten […]

Maxwell’s Poetry Corner

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Ample Singing   She lifts me like a balloon. She caresses me like a song that makes me cry. She destroys me like dynamite and I am new.   Her spirit dawns like the moon- simple and luxurious. Her heart explodes like broken crystal. Her ample singing, like bees buzzing.   She is stars. She […]

Poems by Louis Zoeller Bickett

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

OUR FATHER HAIKU   Every night, in my room, in the comfort of dark, on my knees I prayed.   September 6, 2016       A MONTH OF SATIE     Satie in the background, melodious companion,   do I need more?     September 14, 2016     LEAVING HOME     Father […]

Bill Broun's "Night of the Animals"

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Communication and observation are constant and encroaching for the populace in Bill Broun’s big, unnerving novel, Night of the Animals, set in a London of the future but uncomfortably close to our own time. Its climactic events take place in 2052. Broun’s hero, Cuthbert Handley, is an Indigent, capital “I,” a specific class in this […]

Annie Proulx’s “Barkskins”

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Annie Proulx’s latest novel is large and long, but entirely riveting–if you read it, you’ll be amazed at how rapidly it zooms by.  It may be the essentialist novel about the environment, and it succeeds on virtually every level.  Her short story, “Brokeback Mountain”, was made into a movie that brought her much fame; her […]

Yaa Gyasi’s “Homecoming”

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Yaa Gyasi’s Homecoming is an exceptionally fine debut novel from a young, African-American writer originally from Ghana, but now living in The United States.  Gyasi, like Annie Proulx, uses the alluring and appealing trope of the family saga in an epic sweep of a novel.  Since she addresses some very tough topics–the novel begins in […]

Jay McInerney’s “Bright, Precious Days”

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Ever since Jay McInerney wrote “Bright Lights, Big City”, I’ve wondered whether his was a minor talent, or possibly a major one.  When he began what’s really a series of novels around the lives of Russell and Corrine Calloway, New Yorkers wrapped up in the intellectual life of the city, it became clear that McInerney […]

Donald Ray Pollock’s “The Heavenly Table”

October 8th, 2016  |  by  |  published in Early Fall 2016

Donald Ray Pollock, who’s from rural Appalachian Ohio, began to write fiction after nearly 35 years as a laborer and/or truck driver.  His writing has achieved national acclaim, and deservedly at that.  His story collection, Knockemstiff (named for the booze made in the hills of Appalachia), was remarkable, and his current novel, The Heavenly Table, […]