The title for the two-person show of featured artists at the co-op Gallery-708 in Hyde Park is a mouthful: “Otherworldly Journeys: Stories Both Real and Imagined/Myths of a New World–Alan Brown and Jason Erler.” According to Michael Hensley, gallery partner, “Otherworldly Journeys” is the “unifying theme for the exhibit.” In Brown’s refreshingly straightforward statement about […]

The summer exhibition at Indian Hill Gallery is “Vivid Prints: Kevin Harris and Saad Ghosn.” Powerful feelings or strong, clear images in the mind are vivid. Strong colors that are very high in chroma are vivid. Casey Dressell, curator and exhibition coordinator, organized the show and named it, making vivid the first thing to think […]

To state the obvious, the pandemic changed all of our lives, except, perhaps, the agoraphobic. The rest of us learned how to bake bread, cleaning out store shelves of packets of yeast, as well as tp. We made lists of things we could finally do–reorganize our closets–but didn’t. Sweat pants sales soared and khakis bottomed […]

The enchantment begins with the title of the two-person show at the Indian Hill Gallery: “The Sound of Still.” (The curator and exhibition coordinator, Casey Dressell, wisely stayed away from Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence.) The exhibition “contemplates the idea of the sound of stillness–moments, figures, and forms at a standstill,” according to Dressell. […]

Organized by the New-York Historical Society, “Walk This Way: Footwear from the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Historic Shoes” is a delight, sure to tantalize everyone with a foot fetish, or, at least, an awareness of how shoes make the man, or in this case, the woman. The 100 or so pairs shown span a couple of centuries […]

“Cocoon: Fibers of Home” at 1628 Ltd. suits the time. The exhibition’s title perfectly describes the concept behind the show that features the work of Annabel Biernat, R. Darden Bradshaw, Denise Burge, Casey Dressell, Katherine Gibson, Heather Jones, Genevieve Lavalle, Maggie Myers, Eden Quispe, Ann Rebele, Kate Spencer, and Emily Van Walleghen. Co-curators Missy D’Angelo […]

Printmaking encompasses a myriad of techniques. The processes can be complicated. The equipment is specialized. And often expensive. Some artists have the wherewithal to set up their own studios, but for most artists, it’s not possible. For them Cincinnati is fortunate to have the Tiger Lily Press, which celebrated its 40thanniversary in 2019. It exists […]

For decades, from the 1950s through 1970s, Slim Aarons (1916-2006) recorded the lives of the “rich and famous” He caught them at their favorite watering holes: Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, Park Avenue, Capri, Gstaad, the French and Italian rivieras. You name it and he was there. He was a documentary photographer as sure as Walker […]

Kennedy Heights Art Center’s holiday exhibition is “Metamorphosis.” Featuring artists from the Kennedy Artist Collective, Mallory Feltz, director of exhibitions and public art, explains that the show’s title, was chosen because of its meaning of change–either personally, professionally, and/or artistically. This year has brought about a lot of change for many of us, and some of that is […]

For “Think Square 3: Virtual + In-Person Art Exhibit” at the Cincinnati Learning Collaborative, 60 artists contributed 5” x 5” pieces, all presented in 12” x 12” frames, and all for sale for the “low, low price” of $100. Kate Staiger and Andrea Knarr organized the show. With a wide range of subjects, materials, and […]

As a part of what would have been the 2020 FotoFocus, now canceled, the Clifton Cultural Arts Center is presenting “Third Place.” The exhibition was organized by the Pendleton Street Photography Gallery. Conceived by and operated by Jens G. Rosenkrantz Jr., the gallery is located in the Annex Building of the Pendleton Art Center. The […]

Each year the nonprofit Clifton Cultural Arts Center sponsors a  juried exhibition. The first-place winner receives a Golden Ticket, redeemable for a solo exhibition. Last year Ct King nabbed it and cashed it in for “Ct King: Dangerous Little Strangers.” This year’s Golden Ticket is not as shiny as in the past because of the COVID-19 pandemic. King’s […]

At Ruth’s Parkside Café, a popular eatery in Northside (try the salmon), co-owner David Tape continues his commitment to showing local artists. He’s be Born in Chicago in 1955 and reared there and in the Kansas City area, Britton2  realized he wanted to be an artist when he saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. […]

The Women’s Art Gallery at the Greater Cincinnati YWCA ends the year with “A Celebration of Life,” which was co-curated by Ricci Michaels, Urban Expression 101 Project, and Ena Nearon, Women’s Art Gallery manager. The show features the work of seven visual artists and one poet: Erika Nj Allen, Guatemala; Monica Andino, Honduras; Hei-Kyung Byun, […]

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” A single sentence from Anne Frank encapsulates Manifest Gallery’s “DARK: Shadows, Nightscapes, and Darkness” exhibition. From a pool of’ 359 works by 103 artists representing five countries, 30 states, and the District of Columbia, the blind jury selected 17 pieces by 15 […]

“They (Herman and Bessie Wessel) believed that recording the infinitely varied pageantry of the visible world with paint was an exceedingly and challenging pursuit; one that dwelled not on the ebb and flow of any fashionable modernist creed, but rather on the simple and timeless of joy of living.” 1  That is the beginning of […]

The name Alice Pixley Young sounded familiar to me, and it should have: I have reviewed her work twice for aeqai: “Looking Glass: Work by Alice Pixley Young” at the now closed PAC Gallery in March 2012 and as a part of “Wounded Home,” a group show at the Lloyd Library and Museum in August 2013. After […]

As I whipped through “Kimono: Refashioning Contemporary Style” 1 at the Cincinnati Art Museum, several things struck me. First was the aptness of it title, which quite succinctly sums up its basic thesis that the kimono has inspired Western clothing design through its form and surface decoration beginning in the 1870s and continuing to the present. The […]

Sometimes it takes time for the aesthetic worth of something to be recognized. This most definitely was not the case with French advertising handbills AKA posters from its Golden Age, from 1880 to the late 1890s. They immediately attracted a passionate bunch of collectors, earning them the sobriquet affichomaniaques–poster maniacs. “L’ Affichomania: The Passion for French […]

Robin Hartman and Kim Margaret Watling, the curators of “Because I Said So… ” at the Kennedy Heights Arts Center, neatly state the exhibition’s thesis: “Because I Said So…” (is) an exhibition encompassing the range of experiences that occur when growing up with parents or parental figures. Everyone has a story about their parents; good, […]

I confess. I’m prejudiced against exhibitions of artists lumped together because of traits they can’t change (or only change with much effort), not aesthetics. That puts the focus on the maker not the art. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve just had back-to-back months of such presentations: Black History Month in February and Women’s […]

If there were any question about the importance of the Art Academy of Cincinnati (AAC) or the quality of its teachers and students, the thoughtful “Art Academy of Cincinnati at 150: A Celebration in Drawings and Prints” at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) puts that to rest. The exhibition presents 90 drawings and prints by […]

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, […]

“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 […]

In my mind Eugène Atget (1857-1927) and Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) are intrinsically linked, like peanut butter and jelly, or, for the grownups, gin and tonic. So I was surprised when Kevin Moore, FotoFocus artistic director and curator and curator of “Paris to New York: Photographs by Eugène Atget and Berenice Abbott” at the Taft Museum […]

When I walked into native Cincinnatian PJ Sturdevant’s 1exhibition, “Remembrances,” at Xavier University, my head exploded with a jumble of images of the work of other photographers. The title of the show, thus, was an apt one for my reaction. But being able to reel off the names of other photographers (in no particular order, Jean-Eugène-Auguste […]

Usually when the topic of manufacturing in the U.S. comes up, it is as a lament of jobs lost to automation or outsourcing. Two Ohio-based artists beg to differ. In “Work/Surface” at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery, Matt Lynch and Curtis Goldstein present a suite of 10 scenes of factories operating […]

I came disposed to like “Atmosphera” at the Kennedy Heights Art Center. I was looking for it to calm me down after a hellish drive there from Covington. Street fairs and construction thwarted my attempt to get on I-71 N. I ended up as far west as I could go on 6thStreet, and my only […]

When I moved into a condo on the river in Covington in 2007, I heard that my neighbor across the hall was the drama critic for the Enquirer.I say heard, since I never saw her. She was up and out before I could walk the dog, and back late—after some performance. So Jackie Demaline was a […]

Something odd happened on the front lawn of The Taft Museum of Art. The world-renowned sculptor Patrick Dougherty, with the help of 150 volunteers, twisted and turned six tons of willow-tree saplings into Far Flung,a sprawling sculpture that visitors are encouraged to touch, walk through, or even sit a spell in. In keeping with The […]

  In the West, Asian art is given short shrift in intro to art history texts. H. W. Janson’s History of Artconsigned the arts of the East to a seven-page Postscript: “The Meeting of East and West,” omitting Indian Asian, Japanese, and Chinese art as well as pre-Columbian “because their indigenous artistic traditions are no […]

Fashion is a fickle lover, and it jilted Louis Comfort Tiffany at the end of his career in the 1930s. He had been the American exemplar of Art Nouveau, or “new art,” which emerged in Europe in the 1890s after a century of revivals. But “new” eventually grows old, and by 1910 its curvilinear and sinuous lines […]

The aim of “Interwoven/Contemporary Textiles” at the Marta Hewett Gallery is to explore “traditional and alternative textile materials.” Despite the diversity of what’s on view, the exhibition can be divided into artists who use traditional techniques and materials, and others who use alternative materials but still work with basically traditional techniques. In the first category, […]

“A Sense of Home: New Quilts by Heather Jones” complements the Taft Museum of Art’s “Elegant Geometry: British and American Mosaic Patchwork Quilts” exhibition. (See aeqai.com, November 2017.) Jones sees modern quilting as “look(ing) at traditional quilting and then do(ing) its own thing.” 1 For this quilt maker, “its own thing” marries tradition and contemporary abstract art in quilts […]

I think one of the appeals of 17th-century Dutch genre painting is that the narratives they present are familiar to us.  Lutes may be in short supply today, but guitars and other stringed instruments abound. Women still fuss at their toilette.  Today we read emails on our phones, instead of having the tactile experience of holding […]

Girls aren’t good at math, but don’t tell that to the makers of the 19 mosaic patchwork quilts, made between 1776 and1890 in England and America, in “Elegant Geometry: British and American Mosaic Patchwork Quilts.” Mosaic patchwork, sometimes called “paper piecing,” originated in Britain at the beginning of the 18th century and was carried to America by British colonists. Its […]

The title of the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition “Posing for the Camera” is a bit of a misnomer since quite a number of the 70-some photographs feature people caught unawares, not posing. But I don’t want to quibble over nomenclature, especially since several of my favorite photos are anything but posed. When an image […]

“There are three ports in the city of El Paso. They operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In 2011, more that 3.6 million passenger vehicles, 4.2 million pedestrians, and 300,000 commercial vehicles crossed into Ciudad Juárez through the three bridges. It was a slow day when I walked by.” Jens Rosenkrantz (Photo […]

You enter a different world when you walk into the Marta Hewett Gallery. The exhibition is “Anima and Animus/Julia Oldham & Casey Riordan Millard.” To navigate it, I needed to understand what anima and animus meant, yet another example of my spotty education. Gallerist Marta Hewett helped me there. In an October 21, 2017, email, Hewett wrote: Carl Jung […]

    Clay is, essentially, dirt, or, to be more poetic, earth. Many artists use clay metaphorically, including Ana England. However, she takes her material to a higher level, using it to represent the cosmos as well.  England is an accomplished ceramist. In 1983, she earned a Master of Arts in ceramics at San Jose […]

  Mounting the stairs at the YWCA Women’s Art Gallery to see “Other Wordly,” the word that came to mind was “charming” as I encountered the paintings of one of three artists in the exhibition: Laine Bachman. Her hyper-realistic paintings have a fairytale quality, enchanting and entrancing. In her In the Undergrowth, (2011, acrylic on canvas, 46” […]

For aeqai I reviewed two earlier editions of “Bookworks” (2013 1 and August 2016 2),  Like its predecessors, the 18th Annual Cincinnati Book Arts Society (CBAS) 3 exhibition covers a lot of aesthetic ground trying to demonstrate the diversity of how artists interpret the Platonic idea of book. There are conventional volumes and sculptural objects that may only allude to that idea. There are […]

Curated by Peter Huttinger, “Wordly” is the perfect title for this exhibition featuring John M. Bennett, Fred Ellenberger, and Avril Thurman and focusing on words as text or graphic elements. The word play is delicious. And the location is particularly apt as The Carnegie in Covington is one of the 2,509 libraries built by the […]

As an undergraduate studying art history in the late ’60s, I lusted after a Thonet rocker, which I pronounced “thon-it,” and a hanging Tiffany lamp. I imagined them in a book-lined room with a cat curled up on the rocker. But, as a student, I couldn’t afford even reproductions. At that time, work by Louis […]

It was just before Valentine’s Day, when I saw the lavish “Bijoux Parisiens: French Jewelry from the Petit Palais, Paris” exhibition at the Taft Museum of Art, and how I longed for a wealthy beau. The show features some 75 pieces of French jewelry, primarily from the early 19th- to mid-20th centuries. They are from […]

​ On the quiet Tuesday that I visited the “Dressed to Kill: Japanese Arms and Armor” exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum, there were only a few people in the gallery, mostly middle-aged men. They were carefully studying the 11 suits of armor on view, but were equally intent on the many, many weapons on display: a […]

In “Max Beckmann in New York,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art has brought together 14 works painted when the artist lived in the city in 1949 and 1950, and 25 earlier paintings (1920-1948) from New York collections. Although the New York-centric focus would appear to be narrow, the show provides a concise overview of his […]

    “VOULKOS: The Breakthrough Years” at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City traces the evolution of Peter Voulkos from accomplished potter to one of the most—quite arguably the most—transformative clay artist of the 20th century.  The exhibition was co-curated by Glenn Adamson, former Nanette L. Laitman director of the Museum […]

“Old age should be a reward, not a punishment,” declares octogenarian Duane Michals. “I must recommend getting older.” 1   With his vigor, creativity, and capacity for impishness to poke at the sacred cows of the art world, he’s a great advertisement for old age. As part of FotoFocus, Carl Solway Gallery is presenting three […]

The theme of the third edition of the FotoFocus Biennial is “Photography, the Undocument.” It “offers a chance to think about a fundamental aspect of the photographic medium: its assumed ability to document as well as its less-recognized tendency to distort and reshape, intentionally or not, the world it records,” according to the returning artistic […]

As you enter the drab lobby of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, you can see Caroline Thomas’s over-the-top headpieces in her exhibition, “Bal Masque.” I was immediately seduced and quickly scrawled my name to sign into the building. Inspired by Mardi Gras costumes, regalia, and float design and construction, Thomas’s pieces are dazzling. Although they […]

The 17th edition of the “Bookworks” exhibition boasts 48 works by 30 members of the Cincinnati Book Arts Society (CBAS), which organized the non-juried show. CBAS, founded in 1998, is dedicated to “creating a spirit of community among hand workers in the book arts and those who love books.” Aiming to showcase the most expansive […]

“Drawing has always been a way to interact with what I see and feel – that could be the material world or the world of dreams and memory or some combination of all of these,” explains Cincinnati artist Kate Kern who studied at the University of Dayton (BFA) and the University of Cincinnati (MFA in […]

When you walk into “UNRAVELED: Textiles Reconsidered” at the Contemporary Arts Center, the first piece you encounter is Legacies, 2006, by Kari Steihaug (b. 1962, Norway; resides Oslo). With an unfinished sweater hanging high overhead, it dominates the gallery and is the perfect way to start the show visually and intellectually. It succinctly illustrates curator […]

Being unfamiliar with Kirk Mangus’s (1952-2013) work, seeing his exhibition at Carl Solway Gallery of ceramic sculpture and drawings, spanning four decades, was overwhelming. I can’t describe the work or its impact better than Douglas Max Utter did in his review of Mangus’s 2014 retrospective, “Things Love,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland: […]

Much has been written about Joseph Cornell’s work, but for me it can be summed up by saying that his boxes created worlds that we are invited into. Their small size makes them intimate experiences, and we involuntarily shrink to fit into his universe. In a gallery handout1 for “Utopia Parkway Revisited: Contemporary Artists in […]

The thesis of “Vestiges” is set out on the announcement card: “. . . Brenda Tarbell, Cheryl Pannabecker, and Carrie Pate explore the natural world and relationships, bringing to the surface the unnoticed, hidden, or unexpressed.” There was something about the exhibition title that seemed off to me so I went to the dictionary. “Vestige” […]

“Fiber?” is this year’s material-based exhibition in C-LINK Gallery at Brazee Street Studios. It features 13 Cincinnati-based artists: Sandra Palmer Ciolino, Judy Dominic, Cris Fee, Jennifer Zimmerman Garter, Kelli Gleiner, Pam Kravetz, Carla Lamb, Jacob Lynn, Karen Saunders, Barbara Stewart, Jenifer Sult, Jonpaul Smith, and Lindsay Whittle. When I walked into the show, it took […]

“Modern Living: Objects and Context” at The Carnegie was co-curated by Matt Distel and BLDG, a Covington-based design firm, and explores “the intersection and conflation of design and art objects,” according to The Carnegie’s Exhibitions Director Distel. To this end, the exhibition is divided into two parts. Objects are installed as art in the first-floor […]

The exhibition “Selections from the Michael Lowe Collection” at the Art Academy of Cincinnati focused on the local collector and private dealer’s collection of Minimal, post-Minimal, and Conceptual art, with works dating from 1965 to 1987. The exhibition transported me back to my years in New York. After I finished my graduate work in art […]

I had high hopes for “Fiber: The Next Dimension” at the Kennedy Heights Arts Center. The photograph of Amy Wallace’s Nature’s Vessel that accompanied the press release bolstered those hopes. I’d also seen guest curator, Carole Gary Staples’ 2013 “Vessels: All the Eyes Can Hold” at Kennedy Heights, and liked it a lot (see aeqai.com, […]

Keith Banner, co-founder of Thunder-Sky, Inc., explains the thesis behind the “History Channel: New Art from Old Art” exhibition there:   Thunder-Sky loves to mess with art history every once in a while, and using historically famous art and artists as starting points and inspirations for artists we love and support is a great little […]

As you ascend the stairs to the just opened Nancy and David Wolf Gallery in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s second-floor ambulatory, you’re confronted with four stained glass windows made by the Tiffany Studio for Avondale’s Grace Protestant Episcopal Church and two tall glass vases, also by Tiffany. These functional and decorative objects make a suitable […]

Hometown boy Kevin T. Kelly’s earlier work has been called as “Neo Pop” or “Post-Pop,” and described as “Roy Lichtenstein meets Dennis Hopper on Steroids.” Using what he calls a “hyperchromatic” palette, he juxtaposed disparate and hard-edged images to express social commentary. It’s pure Tom Wesselmann, another hometown boy, for whom Kelly served as studio […]

In addition to being an activist, artist, U. C. professor, director of the VA’s Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Service, and writing a monthly column for Aeqai (“Art for a Better World”), Saad Ghosn has found time to curate nearly 200 exhibitions. Many of them reflect his dedication to social activism and justice, and sometimes what […]

The title of the Cincinnati Art Museum exhibition featuring the apparel designs of Rudi Gernreich – notorious for his topless swimsuit — is inspired. “The Total Look” defines the Austrian-born designer’s aesthetic concept that every element of an ensemble should complement every other. He designed everything from head to toe – hats to shoes – […]

I think the best way – physically and intellectually — to approach the “Modern Voices in Japanese Ceramics and Prints” exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum is through the Schiff Gallery and Ambulatory, just up the stairs in the lobby. “Masterpieces of Japanese Art” is installed there, and it lives up to its title. The […]

Last fall the Covington Arts Center moved from its Seventh Street space to the corner of Pike and Madison. It was just a block but the difference is gargantuan. Overseen by Cate Becker, the gallery vacated a huge space that could easily accommodate 100 pieces. I’d also describe it as bordering on unmanageable, “bordering” because […]

Cincinnati should be proud that it has produced some of the most important artists of the latter half of the 20th century: Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004), Jim Dine (b. 1935), and Marcus Ratliff (b. 1935). It may seem like hyperbole to include Ratliff because he was a commercial artist, a term that seems quaint today. But […]

The Neusole Glassworks has moved from Walnut Hills to Forest Park, from a neighborhood where police crime scene tape and chalk outlines are common to a verdant college-campus-like industrial park. The building, which houses facilities for glassblowing, glass fusing, and lampworking, is smaller than the East McMillan location, but feels much larger with the open […]

In 1838 the Prussian-born Édouard Baldus (1813-1889) arrived in Paris with an eye to becoming a painter but met with little success. Instead his “eye” along with a lens led him to create what Malcolm Daniel of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of photographs called “the model for (architectural) photographic representation in genres that […]

Born in India and now living and working in Cincinnati, Radha Lakshmi is the first artist-in-residence at gallery One One and Brazee Street Studios. Founder and Director Sandy Gross and Leah Busch, creative director and gallery coordinator, had long discussed instituting an artist-in-residence program. It would include a solo exhibition to showcase the results of […]

Although it goes against my grain in a visual arts review to start with the verbiage surrounding an exhibition, it seems to be the best way to approach “American Primitives: Todd Slaughter” at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery (his second there, the first being in 1996-1997). I was searching for something […]

by Karen S. Chambers When I think of photos of musicians, I immediately visualize them caught up in the performance, on stage, perhaps dramatically lit, with maybe a glimpse of an appreciative audience – raucous or captivated. legal pharmacy online Don’t go to the Iris Bookcafé and Gallery expecting that. In fact, there are really […]

by Karen Chambers For the last three years, gallery one One’s juried summer exhibition has focused on color. This year it’s another basic design element – “shape: Circle.” The circle represents “perfection, completeness, and freedom from distinction or separation.”1 It’s the cosmos, creation, and time. The circle is perhaps the most universal of shapes, appearing […]

by Karen Chambers In “Under the Sun” (what a great title for an exhibition of photograms made by the sun), Anita Douthat is presenting four series — “Transparent Uniforms,” “Bridal Suite,” “Alterations,” and “Candelabras for Constantin (Brancusi)” — in a solo show at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery. Photograms were among […]

by Karen Chambers “CCAC (Clifton Cultural Arts Center) will have a beautiful show with these five artists.” That’s how the curator, Yvonne van Eitjden, described the exhibition of two photographers, two wood sculptors, and one painter (herself [Why, oh why, do curators include their own work in exhibitions? How about they make a pact with […]

by Karen Chambers Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery through March 22 Nellie Taft was a hometown girl, born in 1937 in Indian Hill and died in 2012 in Boston. She attended Lotspeich and Hillsdale Schools in Cincinnati, which answers the burning question among natives: Where did you go to high school? She […]

by Karen Chambers Before I get to Robert Kushner’s exhibition at the Solway Gallery, let’s take a look at the Pattern and Decoration (P&D) Movement1, which he helped found. Ben Johnson’s curatorial notes for the 2012 exhibition “ReFocus: Art of the 70’s: Pattern and Decoration” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, FL, sums […]

“Doug Navarra: Marking Time,” Manifest By Karen Chambers Doug Navarra’s exhibition at Manifest Gallery is called “Marking Time.” It might also be called “Connecting” or “Making History Now.” Let me begin by describing some of the 11 drawings and two books* on view. On reclaimed antique documents, which are the support (literally and figuratively) of […]

“Aquachrome: Contemporary Watercolor,” Manifest Gallery By Karen Chambers I have always found watercolor to be a technically daunting medium, something I never wanted to try in undergrad as I worked toward a B. F. A. (Me? B. F. A.? My adviser said I needed to understand the problems visual artists faced as I pursued art […]

Marta Hewett Gallery: “This is contemporary art.” By Karen Chambers Even though the computer ate gallery owner Marta Hewett’s “What Is Contemporary Art?” essay for aeqai, it set her to thinking about the question. (For how other citizens of the art world answered that question, see the September issue.) Once on this path, Hewett came […]

“Vessels: All the Eyes Can Hold,” Kennedy Heights Arts Center By Karen Chambers I don’t know how many exhibitions have been organized around the theme of “vessel,” or the number of shows of craft materials where the vessel form is the natural result — wheel-thrown clay, blown glass, lathe-turned wood, and spun metal. The final […]

WOUNDED HOME, Lloyd Library and Museum By Karen Chambers “Ten years in the making” is not hyperbole when applied to the “Wounded Home” exhibition at the Lloyd Library and Museum.1 It’s just a fact. Ten years ago the guest curator, Kate Kern, participated in “Mining the Lloyd: Artists Reveal Secrets and Treasures from the Lloyd.” […]

“Bookworks 14 – Cincinnati Book Arts Society’s Annual Exhibit,” The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County By Karen Chambers One might say the concept of book as artwork dates back to the 7th to 4th millennium B. C. with the very first examples of text carved into stones. This is especially so when mnemonic […]

“Keith Kuhn Memorial Exhibit: Alice Heyn Balterman,” The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County By Karen Chambers During his tenure as library services director at The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Keith Kuhn compiled an impressive collection of artist books. Each year a Memorial Exhibit honors him with works drawn from that […]

“Queen City Glass Arts . . . Renaissance,” 5th Street Gallery  Work by seven members of Queen City Glass Art is currently on view at the 5th Street Gallery, a co-op gallery in the Netherland at the corner of Fifth and Race. The organization is a nonprofit dedicated to educating and uplifting the community through […]

“Terrie Hancock Mangat: Quilts” at Carl Solway Gallery By Karen Chambers Terrie Hancock Mangat is quite clear about what she’s making when she stitches together cloth and adds all manner of embellishment from buttons to beads, appliqués to embroidery. She is making art quilts. Lest you think the idea of “quilt as art” is a […]

Elaine Ling’s Mongolia, Iris BookCafé and Gallery By Karen Chambers Walking through “Elaine Ling’s Mongolia” exhibition at the Iris BookCafé and Gallery in Over the Rhine, her photos read as ethnographic records documenting the life of nomads living in the independent Outer Mongolia. Looking at them gave me the sense I knew these people through […]

Confluence: Partnership and Creativity Karen Chambers The concept for “Confluence: Partnership and Creativity” was cooked up over dinner by potter Pam Korte and her husband, poet Richard Hague, and ceramic sculptor Terri Kern and her husband, graphic artist and letterpress printer David Umbenhour. Why not show the work of couples, to show how their personal […]