February 18th, 2012 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, February 2012
Nick Cave lives up to his hype. The artist’s sprawling installation/intervention at the Cincinnati Art Museum, “Meet Me at the Center of the Earth” covers all three floors with some thirty-six of Cave’s iconic “Soundsuits,” ten oversized glossy color photos, nine videos, two tondos, and three bears/beavers made from repurposed sweaters (oh my!) The monumental […]
February 18th, 2012 | by Kathy Valin | published in *, February 2012
Author’s Note: Valinkat (aka Kathy Valin) is a blog I created in the summer of 2010. I am currently a freelance writing and editing professional enjoying life in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio, when I’m not traveling all over the world with my husband. On Valinkat I regularly post a mix of urban diary, […]
January 23rd, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
The insistent art works in Beyond Emancipation at Kennedy Heights Arts Center demand attention. “Look at me,” they seem to cry out. “Look at me now. WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M SAYING?” The first message, and there are others, is that emancipation was a first step, a needed step, but only the beginning. Nowhere is […]
January 23rd, 2012 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
Rather poetically, the announcement card for “Winter Solace” says the two-woman show of Kim Flora’s paintings and Trina Feldhake’s ceramic baskets “reflects the quiet, the surprise, and the texture of the winter season.” It does. At least in part. essay of education To start, a group of Flora’s haunting encaustic-and-oil-over-digital-transfer panels immediately captured my attention […]
January 23rd, 2012 | by Brett Baker | published in *, Features, January 2012
This is the second in a series of a quarterly letters, which will cover painting shows in greater New York. “From the top of the arched opening – as it gradually widens – pours forth a sparkling flow of jewels, a pattering rain of diamonds, and, directly following, a tumble of gems of every color, […]
January 23rd, 2012 | by Sheldon Tapley | published in *, Digest, January 2012
Flesh. It gleams and swells in Samson and Delilah, giving us the whole story before we can recall the details. It shows us her allure and his weakness. It gives life to this picture, but it is made from paint brushed across a wooden panel. In Rubens’ hands, paint and flesh transform a morality tale […]
January 23rd, 2012 | by Keith Banner | published in *, January 2012
A stratified structure of litter (constructed of packaging that once housed Cheez-Its, cans of Bud Light and Diet Coke, and Pop-Secret microwavable bags of popcorn) rests precariously atop an old-school reel-to-reel tape recorder in Keith Benjamin’s “the weight,” a sculpture that teeters toward absurdity while evoking the loneliness and exactitude of a hoarder’s consciousness. Nothing […]
December 15th, 2011 | by Cynthia Osborne Hoskin | published in *, December 2011
Editor’s Note: I’d been away in college and graduate school between 1964-1970, returning to Cincinnati married and seeking employment while interviewing for what became my first job here (Coordinator of Cultural Affairs at The University of Cincinnati). Two names kept surfacing as visionary arts leaders; Irma Lazarus and Phyllis Weston. I’d known various Lazari (as […]
December 15th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, December 2011
Cerebral Material “Material Witness” at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery is the thinking artist’s art exhibition. Independent curator Matt Distel’s smart grouping of multi-disciplinary artists, whose only ostensible common thread is consistent consideration of media, raises thoughtful questions about locations in space and time without providing any easy answers. Eight […]
December 15th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in *, December 2011
Edward Said’s “Orientalism” as a concept and a way of seeing is one of those Western-World-shattering moments in academics (and beyond) in which European literature, philosophy, politics, culture, and art are re-imagined and re-positioned all at the same time as a vast and beautiful conspiracy of dunces: imperialism in the guise of books and paintings […]
December 15th, 2011 | by Cole Carothers | published in *, December 2011
In Manifest Gallery’s current exhibition, Observed, 18 artists explore the act of seeing and working from direct observation in graphite, pastel, oil paint, digital media and video. Their subjects are seen as close as arms’ length to a distance of miles with one artist delving into animate forms drawn from the nebulous space of wavelengths […]
December 15th, 2011 | by Alan D Pocaro | published in *, December 2011
Tawara Yusaku at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I received a copy of Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh when I was in the seventh grade. The book, an introduction to Eastern thought in general and Taoism in particular, came as a revelation to my young mind. For the first time I encountered a belief […]
November 15th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
At the Cincinnati Art Museum, I always breezed through the Schmidlapp Gallery with its antiquities on my way somewhere else. Well, that will never happen again since the gallery has been renovated to present “18 of the Art Museum’s most iconic works of art,” according to the wall text.* That declaration is unnecessary since the […]
November 15th, 2011 | by Mark Harris | published in *, Features, November 2011
daydreaming of success of enhancing culture, of collaboration bringing this city up with all of our brilliance bringing this city to life with all of our passion filling this city up with our art, with our sounds with our faces and ideas … Excerpted from “Rubble of The Mind” by Jim Swill, Caustic Nostalgia: selected […]
November 15th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, November 2011
The Cincinnati Art Museum’s current show, “Art Deco: Fashion and Design in the Jazz Age” is an exhibition contextualizing evening dresses from the Betty Colker Collection with textiles, prints, jewelry, furniture, and sundry other art objects related to the Art Deco aesthetic. The exhibition is decidedly female centric, focusing on the material trappings and images […]
November 15th, 2011 | by Cynthia Osborne Hoskin | published in *, November 2011, Profiles
Matt Distel, a lively compact young man, is a curator, gallery director and general man about art. Anything written about him only scratches the surface of his penetrating involvement in the art life of Cincinnati, from the DeLeia to the CAC, from Country Club to Publico to The Weston, Distel has had his hand in […]
November 15th, 2011 | by Selena Reder | published in *, November 2011
Under the cover of darkness the city twinkles with the light from countless windows, streetlamps and signs, wrapping us in a blanket of familiarity. The city nightscape is as assuring and magical as a Christmas tree glowing in a dark living room, and as primal as fire. It is the light of our hometown, reflected […]
October 15th, 2011 | by Brett Baker | published in *, Features, October 2011
This is the first in a series of a quarterly letters, which will cover painting shows in greater New York If you want to experience the New York art scene from afar, watch James Kalm’s videos. Kalm tirelessly travels the city documenting art openings and exhibitions from Manhattan to Brooklyn. His videos are a selective, […]
October 15th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in *, October 2011, On View
Like doodles scribbled on the edges of homework, Peter Saul’s exquisitely moronic pictures (on display mostly in lithographic form at Carl Solway Gallery through December 22, 2011) have a rote yet somehow ominous quality, a blurry merger of the popular and profane. While seeming to be birthed from boredom and cynicism like punk rock, they […]
October 15th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
“Speed Trials” was an essay commissioned for the catalog accompanying the exhibition “Trial by Fire: New Glass Work by Darren Goodman” at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM). Goodman was selected by the 4th Floor, an associated group of the Museum, for its biennial 4th Floor Award, a competition to promote local artists. j-hokkaido.com The organization […]
October 15th, 2011 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in *, October 2011, On View
Currently on display at the Miller Gallery on Hyde Park Square, is an exhibition featuring 25 artists whose work offers outstanding examples of contemporary realist painting. A movement towards figurative painting among artists has accelerated in the past five to eight years. Whether artists are painting portraits, interiors or still lifes, the work is incredibly […]
October 15th, 2011 | by Dan Newman | published in *, Digest, October 2011
Despite having a PhD in Philosophy and Dr. of Divinity Degree I know very little art history. As a self taught artist, from an early age, I have had creative abilities in drawing and woodworking. I draw in pencil or charcoal. I learned tools and skills from my mother. I was, therefore, immediately drawn to […]
September 15th, 2011 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
The paintings that mark a gradual return to across-the-board contemporary art at Marta Hewett Gallery, where glass objects have held the floor, are themselves almost glass-like. Jason Zickler’s labor-intensive works with their dense layers of clear, cured resin and paint gleam in a celebration of colorfor its own sake but hold in their depths delineations […]
September 15th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, On View, September 2011
“We’re the reflections of our ancestors / we’d like to thank you for the building blocks you left us / ‘cause your spirit possessed us” – Talib Kweli, “Africa Dream” Emily Hanako Momohara’s current exhibition at PAC Gallery, “Islands,” consists of fifteen archival pigment prints on rich Somerset Velvet paper. The exhibition is a […]
September 15th, 2011 | by A.C. Frabetti | published in *, On View, September 2011
Third Party Gallery opened its first exhibition with a group show (the curator isn’t listed, but I assume it was Wyatt Niehaus, one of the co-founders) called Reductio ad Absurdum. According to the press release, the curator claims that its artists have “composed a dialogue between their work and a preexisting ideology, convention or concept […]
September 15th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
![Still[ed] Life: Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis](http://aeqai.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/4-PARKER-Bust-Sevres-150x150.jpg)
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it can also be a sincere source of creativity. That tenet is confirmed by “Still[ed] Life: Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis” at the Taft Museum of Art. In collaboration these two area artists (Parker is an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati’s College of […]
September 15th, 2011 | by Fran Watson | published in *, On View, September 2011
Manifest Gallery’s “3rd Annual NUDE” international competition showing through September 9, offers more than the vast undulating landscape of skin to be considered. The subjects have been folded, stretched, posed and exposed in every manner from hypnotic fragility, as in Bain Butcher’s “Untitled” graphite rendering of a young woman, to the Diebenkorn-ish palette knife interiors […]
July 25th, 2011 | by Cynthia Osborne Hoskin | published in *, Profiles, Summer 2011
Alice Frieder Weston is by no means an obscure figure now nor has she been over the many years she and husband, Harris Weston, encouraged and supported the arts and other causes in Cincinnati. Entering her living room, as she says “good morning”, one is greeted by an expanse of Carl Strauss-designed light and airy […]
July 25th, 2011 | by Maureen Bloomfield | published in *, Digest, Summer 2011
Editor’s Note: What follows is the second in Aeqai’s series, where we ask artists in Greater Cincinnati to select one work of art in the permanent collection of either CAM or the Taft Museum, and tell our readers why it is important to him or her. Maureen Bloomfield is Editor of The Artist’s Magazine, as […]
July 25th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in *, On View, Summer 2011
“Not Just Pretty Pictures: The Carl M. Jacobs III Collection” at the Cincinnati Art Museum “I am at war with the obvious,” Photographer William Eggleston once said when asked about his work. I have a feeling Carl M. Jacobs III, the collector the exhibit […]
July 25th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, On View, Summer 2011
“Hard Knocks: Art without Art School” is a loosely curated collection of more than one hundred works of art by thirty-one artists from around the globe. By making use of their three curators (visual artists Antonio Adams, Ran Barnaclo, & Spencer van der Zee,) Thunder-Sky’s Face Book page, and exhibition blog to cast a wide […]
July 25th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
Seven Rediscovered Tiffany Windows Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) has been a crowd-pleaser for decades (except for the period following his death as a bankrupt until the 1950s). Popularly he is best known for his leaded glass or stained glass lamps, first marketed in 1899. But his stained-glass windows […]
July 14th, 2011 | by Selena Reder | published in *, Announcements
Northern Kentucky University Hosts Five Ghanian Artisans Northern Kentucky University’s Ceramic and Sculpture Studio is brimming with teachers. They come from all corners of the U.S. to grind glass, cast bronze, and weave cotton cloth under the tutelage of master Ashanti artisans of Ghana, West Africa. MaryCarol Hopkins, professor of Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy at NKU, […]
June 15th, 2011 | by Cynthia Osborne Hoskin | published in *, June 2011, Profiles
Saad Ghosn – Art For Change as a Non-juried Enterprise Walking into the interior of Saad Ghosn’s house near The Cincinnati Zoo carries an almost physical impact, shifting from the bright leafy world of his front walk to shady rooms replete with colorful and exuberant art, some of it his own. This is the ninth […]
June 15th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, June 2011, On View
A Star is Born: the Douglas S. Cramer Collection at the CAM. If you go to the Cincinnati Art Museum this summer you will see artwork from the contemporary art collection of Hollywood producer Douglas S. Cramer in two separate exhibition areas: one just upon passing the entrance foyer, where the Museum often houses small-scale […]
June 15th, 2011 | by A.C. Frabetti | published in *, Digest, June 2011
U-turn’s organizers reflect upon their “medicine for misanthropy.” (The following interview took place Sunday, June 14, 2011 in U-turn’s gallery in Brighton. Attending were the five organizers of U-turn, in alphabetical order: Molly Donnermeyer, Matt Morris, Patricia Murphy, Zach Rawe and Eric Ruschman. All are graduates of the Art Academy of Cincinnati. For the sake […]
June 15th, 2011 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
at Solway Gallery Carl Fudge is a sly fellow. Just as you think you’ve caught the drift for one of his series works, either paintings or prints – ah yes, you think, look how this cluster balances that – he changes the color scheme for another version and all relationships shift gear. New game entirely. […]
