March 2016

Weapons of Mass Construction

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in *, March 2016

Weapons of Mass Construction

There’s nothing funny about guns. Even the toy gun that releases a flower after the trigger is pulled is still a formidable object despite the unmistakable irony. However, Brooklyn-based artist Natalie Baxter has found a way to transform firearms into colorful sewn sculptures that makes one almost feel giddy. OK-47, currently on-view at Institute 193 […]

Thoughts From A Millennial Artist

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in *, March 2016

Thoughts From A Millennial Artist

The millennial generation is baffling to most who are outside of it. Truthfully, it is confounding to us as well. The onslaught of the internet and the ever expanding opportunities it offers is fundamentally changing the way we as a society do almost everything. Being the generation who grew up parallel with the personal computer, […]

THE MARVELOUS ETCHING REVIVAL FROM DAUBIGNY TO TWACHTMAN

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Etching is a process art.  Definite steps produce it, change it, bring it into being.  A warm copper or zinc plate is covered with an asphalt substance.  The substance cools and hardens on the plate and can then be drawn into with a stylus.  The plate will then be submerged in acid until etched in […]

Pieces of the Whole: 20 x 20 x 20: Celebrating 20 Years of the Weston Art Gallery and the Aronoff Center for the Arts, January 29-March 27, 2016

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Pieces of the Whole:  20 x 20 x 20: Celebrating 20 Years of the Weston Art Gallery and the Aronoff Center for the Arts, January 29-March 27, 2016

Artists have career, or even mid-career, retrospectives; galleries, less frequently. Many galleries don’t last as long as a successful artist’s career; fewer still have something that needs to be said or demonstrated about their having arrived at two or three or more decades. The Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Gallery, having successfully shown work […]

Artist:Body at Lexington Art League

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Editor’s Note: This column is reprinted courtesy of UnderMain, an online publication in Lexington. Self-portraiture can be an unfortunate expression of ego, and until the last hundred years or so this has been its dominant motivation. The humanism of the renaissance elevated the individual artist into subjects worthy of examination in art, displacing, but by […]

Wonderful World of Woodcuts: Then and Now Lloyd Library, Cincinnati Ohio

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Wonderful World of Woodcuts: Then and Now Lloyd Library, Cincinnati Ohio

The Lloyd Library is exhibiting a selection from their large collection of rare and modern works containing woodcuts in various applications. The majority of examples are from 16th -17th century European and Asian published volumes on zoological identification, herbal and medicinal information and processes and cultural research.   The first specimen is a volume on […]

WHEN A YOUNG MAN’S FANCY TURNS TO SPRINGTIME”–IN THE ARCHIVE GARDEN, MARCH 15, 2016, The Archive Louis Bickett

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

WHEN A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY TURNS TO SPRINGTIME"--IN THE ARCHIVE GARDEN, MARCH 15, 2016, The Archive Louis Bickett

Zoe Hawk with Kim Rae Taylor

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Zoe Hawk with Kim Rae Taylor

Where are you from and where do you currently live? I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. I went to graduate school at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and for the past four years I’ve split my time between the United States and Doha, Qatar.   Did you create Donkey Lady and Other Tales […]

Kenton County Public Library Offers More Than the Ordinary

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Kenton County Public Library Offers More Than the Ordinary

One used to go to a library, look through a card catalog and find a book on the shelf.  Or, one would go to the reference desk and ask for a book that couldn’t be checked out. Times have changed.  The era of the Internet has brought in computers, online research and technology classes.  Patrons […]

Profile of Thomas C. Umfrid, College-Conservatory of Music

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Profile of Thomas C. Umfrid, College-Conservatory of Music

Artists make things.  They make stories, they make pictures, they rustle around through possibilities, try something different, emerge with what may be a new look for some old thing. A particular line of work – that is in fact making things – is the creation of sets for theater productions. People can learn to do […]

What is Design?

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Simply put, design is an attempt to better the human experience. Design is more though. Design is a viewpoint. A passion. A way of being, and a way and seeing. Design is problem solving. It makes life better for anyone involved – the designer, the manufacturer, the retailer, the user. Everything that woman and man […]

Fashion Kills

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

    Or so it does according to Jeremy Scott. The designer currently at the helm of Italian fashion house Moschino has brought the brand into a renewed renaissance since taking over the role of creative director from Rossella Jardini in 2013. The House of Moschino was originally founded by Franco Moschino in the 1980s […]

Letter from Lebanon: First edition of SOS Art Liban held in Beirut

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Letter from Lebanon: First edition of SOS Art Liban held in Beirut

I just returned from Lebanon, where I helped organize in Beirut the 1st SOS Art Liban event. SOS Art, which stands for “Save Our Souls” Art, is a collective art exhibit and a festival of the arts focused on creative expressions for peace and justice. It was started in Cincinnati in 2003 at the beginning […]

Letter From New Orleans

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Letter From New Orleans

New Orleans is a state of mind, and in its own individual way, a state of art. There’s no question but that New Orleans residents care about how things look. Where else are you likely to find a museum called “The House of Dance & Feathers” installed in a small-ish building once a barber shop, […]

Photo Essay: Elaine Ling

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Photo Essay: Elaine Ling

“Baobob: Tree of Generations” – artist statement In some of the most arid and infertile regions of Africa, Madagascar, and Australia the Baobab tree grows to enormous size. These miraculous giants are one of the largest living things on the planet and have a potential lifespan of more than a thousand years. They are great […]

Relinquishing Control and Embracing Discovery

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Relinquishing Control and Embracing Discovery

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability…. To be alive is to be vulnerable.” ― Madeleine L’Engle Nurit Avesar’s solo exhibition, “Elemental Energies,” exemplifies the power that creativity can impart when the artist is willing […]

The Combustible Brink: Patrick Shoemaker’s Fire on Fire

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

The Combustible Brink: Patrick Shoemaker’s Fire on Fire

My first thought, looking at Patrick Shoemaker’s “Hindrance” is that it looks as much like dance as hindrance. Then I wonder who is hindering whom—and from doing what. And why. Then I wonder why two things opposite seem, so often, on the verge of one another. And now I’m still looking at the painting, but […]

“IDENTITY – A Visual Artifact,” PROGRAPHICA / KDR, March 5-April 30, 2016

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

“IDENTITY – A Visual Artifact,” PROGRAPHICA / KDR, March 5-April 30, 2016

On one wall, the blown glass head of a faun blossoms from the center of a mesmerizing lenticular print with ring upon ring of robots and baby dolls. At the far end of the gallery, a long, abstract rectangle of red and black Chinese ink subtly evokes the deaths of Chinese workers during the construction […]

“Beasts of No Nation”

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

“Beasts of No Nation”

A remarkable piece of filmmaking, redefining the Hollywood model. Based on the 2005 novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala, “Beasts of No Nation” is an indelible story that is difficult to stomach but commands your attention. The narrative leaves you meditating upon the cultural significance it shares with many current global issues, and […]

INHERITANCE

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

INHERITANCE We were taught to be racists in casual and subtle ways. The perfect story to illustrate this statement is the following true story, often told by my Mother in a dramatic way. My Mother was a typical Southern woman of the upper middle classes raised during the first quarter of the last century. Her […]

Maxwell’s Poetry Corner

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Molecules   –For Danielle, my muse of abundance   Eyes on eyes I ended with our death claiming even after our molecules would combine holding on to each other for eternity.   By that I mean as our flesh turns to dust and is picked up by a seedling with whom we grow to an […]

Anita Brookner: In Memoriam

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

Anita Brookner, the great English novelist and art historian, died last week at the age of 87.  She was, in my opinion, one of the ten best novelists of the latter part of the twentieth century, a writer of acute psychological insights,  who wrote perfect, flawless prose over and over in her approximately 24 novels, […]

Review of Three Novels

March 22nd, 2016  |  by  |  published in March 2016

As the worlds of fiction and literature in general broaden, we’re privileged to be able to read novels from all over the world, with ease, and the current emphasis on diversity has changed the face of fiction, too, as subject matters once considered either taboo or irrelevant are welcomed into the front ranks of literature.  […]