“Filling the Void” by Rick Mallette at the Summit Hotel Gallery is an agoraphobic’s nightmare. The aptly titled show perfectly describes the vast and spartan 5700 square foot gallery space, met by ambitiously scaled artwork that attempts to tackle that vastness with claustrophobic forms, blazing colors, and palpable energy. The artist presents twenty-three abstract paintings […]
The Contemporary Dayton (aka The Co), formerly known as the Dayton Visual Arts Center, has moved. Its new home is a 6000+ sq ft. space featuring five galleries, including a video viewing room, that give it almost double the size it had at its previous location. The space itself is located in a years-in-the-making renovation […]
A knitted banner that says “Stronger Together” stretches over the steps on the front porch of the Kennedy Heights Arts Center (KHAC). With its quirky multicolor letters, pompoms, and flowers crafted by members of the BombShells of Cincinnati, it’s a rallying cry for collaboration, and a fitting introduction to the Center’s current show, “Collective Impact: […]
In mid-March, the 2021 National Council on Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) annual conference was to be held in Cincinnati. Due to the pandemic, this highly anticipated event was changed to a virtual conference. However, in preparation for the conference, many exhibitions of ceramics were planned well in advance. The Cincinnati Art Museum, the […]
The new installation at the Weston Gallery called “And the Presence of Light” by Oberlin, OH based artist Johnny Coleman is inspired by the story of 4 year old Lee Howard Dobbins, an adopted child and fugitive slave who died in Oberlin on route to Canada, and freedom, in 1853. He contracted tuberculosis while traveling […]
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitsbergen Island, Norway opened in 2008 as the world’s largest secure seed storage. Located above the Arctic Circle, it is designed to remain above water in the event of melting ice caps to protect its comprehensive catalogue of the world’s seeds. The opening of this facility fascinated photographer Dornith […]
The retrospective exhibition “All Things Being Equal” by Hank Willis Thomas has recently opened at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Planning for this highly anticipated show began three years ago, and the timing of its opening was postponed for several weeks due to the Coronavirus pandemic. During those weeks, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery […]
Can’t you see it Can’t you feel it It’s all in the air I can’t stand the pressure much longer Somebody say a prayer Alabama’s gotten me so upset Tennessee made me lose my rest And everybody knows about Mississippi goddam -Nina Simone In 1963, Nina Simone wrote this song in protest of the atrocities […]
During this time of the pandemic, in addition to reading, what I have been doing a lot of is walking. Every day, sometimes going two or even three times, just for the purpose of getting out of the house, getting some space to think or reflect. A change of scenery at a slow pace. An […]
Each year the Athens, Greece-based Deste Foundation commissions an artist to create an exhibition for Project Space Slaughterhouse, a small stone building once used to slaughter goats, perched on a cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea on the island of Hydra. Since its inception in 2009, the space has shown the work of artworld luminaries from […]
In the exhibition “Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia & Resistance”, 21C Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites assembles an impressive group of international artists whose work subverts, reinterprets, and reframes representations of cultural power, communal dignity, and personal agency through costume and its context. While regalia is a familiar term, indicating a formal outfit or ornament […]
The idea that we can transform into our best self is a compelling one. According to BusinessWire.com, the “self-improvement” industry is booming to the tune of nearly $10 billion per year. Gurus from Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra to Marie Condo provide keys to clearing mind, soul and space to achieve personal, financial or spiritual […]
“In a culture where derangement and disequilibrium are the constant and inescapable climate of a politics of bewilderment, the militant tactic is not intoxication and excess but to come to our senses and learn to live in the space they open up” –Thomas A. Clark, from “Imagination” I return again and again to this line […]
A pair of curtains adorned with a large set of parentheses hung at the entrance to the exhibit “Proximity of Syllables” at the Weston Gallery make a pronouncement: as you pass through, you are entering a space of meaning made not by what is directly stated, but by what is implied, unsaid, sidelined, redacted, absent, […]
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 […]
The Riffe Gallery’s “Women to Watch Ohio – 2018” exhibit highlights ten female Ohio artists working in metal. The show was inspired by the selection of four Ohio artists shortlisted for the exhibition “Heavy Metal”, the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ (NMWA) Women to Watch biennial. Reto Thuring, Curator of Contemporary Art at […]
You may have heard of Anila Quayyum Agha from ArtPrize, the city-wide international art exhibition and competition held annually in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The exhibition, now approaching its 10th year, provides artists with an opportunity to win a cash prize of $200,000. Two prizes of this size are awarded – one by a jury of […]
Joseph Winterhalter: Painting consists of a suite of thirteen new works by this Cincinnati artist; five paintings and eight works on paper dated 2016 and 2017. For this show, Winterhalter focuses his conceptual gaze on the life and ideas of Guy Debord and Joe Strummer, men of successive generations who were both influential political […]
Ebb and Flow (recently closed) is a three-person exhibition at Cincinnati Art Underground, in OTR. The work of Cincinnati artists Kristine Donnelly and Erin Mahorney fill the gallery walls. A sculpture by Florida artist Noah Z. Brock occupies the center of the space. What connects these works, otherwise diverse in terms of media, is their […]
The realm of artist Kate Kern is the ethereal space of imagination, wherein she depicts an actual, tangible place that is like this world, but not quite. Here it is, a bare room, a few empty chairs, the wind ruffling the curtains. Here it is, the dense voids of deep sea and deep space. And […]
The windowless white rooms that comprise the Carl Solway Gallery provide an austere setting for the LCD screen-based, chrome-armatured show Alan Rath: New Sculpture. The main gallery feels almost sparse; each piece is given a generous amount of space. At first glance, the robotic, high-tech pieces set against or mounted on the mostly bare, flood-lit […]
As I write this, there is an excessive heat warning in Cincinnati, with heat index values reaching 102 degrees. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just reported that June temperatures marked 14 consecutive months of record-breaking heat across the globe, with the average sea surface temperature also reaching a record high. One thing […]
“In the middle of the night, peering intensely at some small thing, I do become lost, consumed by the intensity of this condensed universe” – Christian Schmit (from Artist Statement for Lost in the Making) There is something foreboding about diving solo into a nocturnal inner world, especially of the diminutive sort. From The Adventures […]
In late winter, when my skin’s its palest and the sky its grayest, I head southwest to get some sun and some heat. About 2700 degrees worth of heat – the temperature that melts scrap iron down into a molten pool that gets poured into a mold and becomes a sculpture. I’ve made artwork this […]
Kate Kern is a visual artist who works primarily in drawing, although her work ranges from making artist books to installations, as well as an occasional curatorial endeavor. In 2013, she curated “Wounded Home” at the Lloyd Library and Museum, and was also a featured artist in the print collection Cincinnati Portfolio IV by Clay […]
Catherine Richards defines herself as an artist and architect. A graduate of DAAP originally from Cleveland, she spent a year in NYC working for the renowned firm OMA (co-founded by Rem Koolhaas). She currently teaches at DAAP, lives in OTR, and works out of a gigantic studio in Newport filled with a mountain of fabric, […]
Kate Bonansinga is Director of the School of Art at the College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. After growing up in Cincinnati, she left to attend college at the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana. She developed a career as an educator, curator and gallery […]
Denise Burge is an associate professor of art at UC’s DAAP College of Art. I visited her on a warm late summer day in her studio in Northside where I found her working on the beginnings of a new series. Burge is known for her work with quilts as well as more recent video and […]
With its current show By This River and previous show The Weight of Water, the Weston Gallery has devoted both spring and summer to presenting Cincinnati with multiple lenses through which to view water, an essential element of life that has served as inspiration for countless artists. It’s a timely topic too, given the record […]
The Carl Solway Gallery is an icon in the Cincinnati arts community. In 2010, Carl’s son Michael became director of the gallery after running the SolwayJones Gallery in Los Angeles for 10 years. Below is an excerpt from a recent interview with Michael Solway. It coincides with By This River, an exhibition he curated that […]
Doris Salcedo is a Colombian artist of international renown who has made sculpture for the past three decades. Her work, meticulously crafted in her Bogota studio with a team of assistants, memorializes those lost to political violence both in her home country and abroad. She uses simple, utilitarian, human-scale objects and materials in unorthodox configurations […]
If you frequent art exhibits in Cincinnati, you are likely to have crossed paths with Mary Heider. Currently an independent curator, with recent exhibits “A Clean Edge” at Brazee St. Studio’s C-Link Gallery in Oakley and “With and Without: Challenges” at the Carnegie Art Center in Covington, Heider built her career at the University of […]
Christopher Hoeting is an artist and Cincinnati native who has curated several exhibitions here, including two shipping container-based shows in public spaces. He recently co-curated the exhibition “The Weight of Water: too shallow for diving” with Pittsburgh artist Carolyn Speranza at the Weston Gallery. Hoeting was inspired by Speranza’s initial iteration of the “too shallow […]
“When members of a society wish to secure that society’s rich heritage they cherish their arts and respect their artists. The esteem with which we regard the multiple cultures offered in our country enhances our possibilities for healthy survival and continued social development.” -MAYA ANGELOU, Poet Dear Mayor Cranley, and City Council Members, I am […]
