Perhaps the first stanza of the 113th chorus in Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues (1959)—his both critically praised and abhorred epic poem of scat-sung, jazz-imbued stanzas—might serve well as a preface to Bernard Plossu’s photographs of Mexico: Yet everything is perfect, Because it is empty, Because it is perfect with emptiness, Because it’s […]
May 2015
Visions of Mexico: Bernard Plossu’s Photographic Road Trip
May 19th, 2015 | by Zack Hatfield | published in May 2015
Paul Muller, the CPA, and the Rauh House
May 19th, 2015 | by Sue Ann Painter | published in May 2015
Paul Muller, AIA, the Executive Director of the Cincinnati Preservation Association (CPA), was trained as an architect. His profession, along with his experience with, and passion for, historic preservation, make him ideally suited to lead the CPA. That training is especially relevant now that concern for preservation of modernist and postmodernist architecture is growing locally […]
“Journey of the Spirit: Landscapes by Kevin T. Kelly,” Cincinnati Art Galleries.
May 19th, 2015 | by Karen Chambers | published in May 2015
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 […]
A River Runs Between: “American Impressionism: The Lure of the Artists’ Colony” at the Dayton Art Institute, March 7, 2015-May 31, 2015
May 19th, 2015 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in May 2015
Frank Benson, an artist probably best known today for an oeuvre of duck hunting etchings that are, oddly, both academic and commercial, self-identified enthusiastically as an Impressionist: “I follow the light, where it comes from and where it goes.” The Dayton Art Institute is hosting an exhibit of more than a hundred paintings from the […]
The Clean Edge May 8 – June 4 C-Link Gallery, Brazee Street Gallery
May 19th, 2015 | by Fran Watson | published in May 2015
Varieties of abstract art work are too wild and woolly to begin to try to categorize them, yet the one constant is its unmistakable opposition represental realism. The real world surrounds us with its beauty and ugliness. The abstract world takes reality apart and opens minds to other forms of imagery and a new ways […]
Review of Kim Flora, Mike Hancock, and Bill Renschler at Aisle Gallery
May 19th, 2015 | by Emil Robinson | published in May 2015
Aisle Gallery on the third floor at 424 Findlay has a reputation for presenting high quality exhibits of local artists’ work. Spaces such as Aisle and Semantics in adjacent Brighton represent the kind of quirky but serious spaces that fuel vibrant art communities. Aisle has been absent on the scene for a few years. That’s […]
Not Your Everyday Sightseeing Tour of Cincinnati Review of Peter Waite’s The Cincinnati Series
May 19th, 2015 | by Sue Ann Painter | published in May 2015
Artist Peter Waite approaches architectural panel painting as an experienced tourist explores a new city. He takes in the recommended key sights and then discovers the fascinating hidden places that most tourists and residents miss. His impressions of Cincinnati are embodied in a solo exhibition, The Cincinnati Series, at the Carl Solway Gallery in the […]
Returning To Our Beginnings
May 19th, 2015 | by Jane Durrell | published in May 2015
In the 1980s the support staff at the Cincinnati Art Museum, like others before them and after them,was engaged with the collection, with the Museum, and with the idea of visual art itself, all of which enlivened their days. Last month some of those 1980s staffers gathered (from Chicago, from Cleveland, from Washington, D.C. as […]
Velma J. Morris Artist Still Working at 77
May 19th, 2015 | by Laura Hobson | published in May 2015
Echo Lew’s New Works Reflect a Life Based in Aesthetics as Much as Utility
May 19th, 2015 | by Anise Stevens | published in May 2015
After working with traditional mediums for nearly twenty-eight years, Los Angeles based artist Echo Lew grew curious about the effects of light in motion and began experimenting with photography. Not only did this investigation lead him “to spontaneously tap into decades of drawing experience while the camera’s shutter was open,” as conveyed by Lew himself, but it […]
Le Palais Bulles
May 19th, 2015 | by Jenny Perusek | published in May 2015
Over the past several weeks, luxury brands have traveled from one end of the world to another, showcasing the new batch of cruise collections. Cruise or resort wear were originally created to give jet-set luxury customers pieces they could wear on their warm weather holidays abroad. But with the ever-increasing need for new product, luxury […]
Sonja Schenk Reinterprets Landscape in “Hovenweep”
May 19th, 2015 | by Anise Stevens | published in May 2015
It makes sense that Sonja Schenk’s latest body of work provides a perspective that only a few would even consider. Absent of a horizon line, the improvised landscapes that comprise Schenk’s solo exhibition, Hovenweep,provide an elevated point of view that few rarely if ever have the opportunity to glimpse. The Los Angeles based artist’s newest […]
ART FOR A BETTER WORLD
May 19th, 2015 | by Saad Ghosn | published in May 2015
Director Sees Upside to (Relatively) Young Springfield Museum of Art
May 19th, 2015 | by Mike Rutledge | published in May 2015
While many large American arts institutions, such as Cincinnati Music Hall and the Cincinnati Art Museum, were founded in the 19th century, it wasn’t until just before and after World War II when such cultural institutions were planted in many smaller cities, like Springfield, Ohio. For so young an institution, the Springfield Museum of Art […]
Poems by Huck Fairman
May 19th, 2015 | by Huck Fairman | published in May 2015
City Of Brotherly Love Blocks of reddish brownstones and brownish red blocks measure flat black streets and white walks where sooted particles, urban eddies of them, sweep the ankles of wrapped figures hustling between doors. Doors facing streets carrying faces pacing paved squares connecting thoroughfares that vanish in neighborhoods of vacant stares. […]
Maxwell’s Poetry Corner
May 19th, 2015 | by Maxwell Redder | published in May 2015
Framing on Liberty [the Journey of Dust] Beginning from the saw teeth, the wily bits skip pass the vents. Fine particulates floating like a plastic bag in the wind catch draft from the motors and blast into a grand journey. With no ventilation, dust rapidly drops only if no bodies […]
Book Review: After Birth by Elisa Albert
May 19th, 2015 | by Daniel Brown | published in May 2015
I am ongoingly impressed and reassured by the very high quality of fiction written by younger generations of writers, both American and internationally, from countries including England,Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Australia Afghanistan, India, amongst others. In spite of all the digital hoo haa that we hear every day, legions of younger fiction (and non-fiction) writers still […]
Book Review: Migrating Animals by Mary Helen Specht
May 19th, 2015 | by Daniel Brown | published in May 2015
Another splendid novel by a virtually unknown young American woman, Migratory Animals is a fine look at a group of friends who met in college, who are now in their late twenties/early thirties. The novel about college friends who hang together afterwards has become a common American trope: Jeffrey Eugenides’ excellent The Marriage Plot covers […]
Book Review: Early Warning by Jane Smiley
May 19th, 2015 | by Daniel Brown | published in May 2015
The admirable Jane Smiley has returned with the second of three novels of a trilogy, about a family from Iowa; the triology follows three generations of this family from the twenties to the present (I assume). Somehow she’s managed to get the second novel out in just over a year from the first, and these […]