September 2017

Report from the 2017 Contemporary Art Grand Tour: Venice, Münster, Kassel

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in *, September 2017

Report from the 2017 Contemporary Art Grand Tour: Venice, Münster, Kassel

Summer 2017 may very well be one of the most important art seasons in recent memory. In the wake of political turmoil and the record sale of a Basquiat for $110.5 million at auction, the art fairs of Europe aligned to create a Grand Tour for contemporary art devotees around the world at a moment […]

The Artist as Cultural Producer, a Defense of New Media, and Re-Shaping Public Attitudes about Contemporary Art

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in *, September 2017

The Artist as Cultural Producer, a Defense of New Media, and Re-Shaping Public Attitudes about Contemporary Art

On September 12, 1940 four French boys stumbled into a complex network of caves in southwestern France. Their discovery of innumerable Paleolithic cave paintings dating to 17-15,000 BCE (Figure 1) soon led to excavations of the Lascaux cave system and in turn significantly altered scholars’ conceptions of human development.1 As evidenced by the wall paintings […]

Latin America Colonizes Los Angeles Via Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Latin America Colonizes Los Angeles Via Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA

Despite Southern California’s large Hispanic population, Latin American art is seldom shown. Aside from some museums’ pre-Columbian sections and paintings by well-known artists like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the Americas south of ours might as well be unconnected to our landmass, perhaps on the opposite hemisphere. As of this month, all this has changed, […]

Connecting Charlottesville and Ohio: A Conversation with Sarah Boyts Yoder

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Connecting Charlottesville and Ohio: A Conversation with Sarah Boyts Yoder

Like most of the country, I watched in shock and horror as white supremacists swarmed the city of Charlottesville in a menacing rally of racist anger and hatred. The violence they ignited ultimately reached a deadly turning point when a neo-Nazi plowed his car into a crowd of anti-white supremacist protesters, killing Heather Heyer.  It […]

“Reality of Nature” at Launch LA

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

“Reality of Nature” at Launch LA

Earlier this month, Richard Glasser, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction expressed deep concern about the future of our planet. In his words, “There can be little doubt that 2017 is turning into a year of historic significance in the struggle against climate change. We must realize that these disaster events are […]

A Painter’s Family Tree, "Predecessors" at the Contemporary Arts Center

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

A Painter’s Family Tree, "Predecessors" at the Contemporary Arts Center

Everyone has a family tree. Painter Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s exhibition, Predecessors, outlines her family tree poignantly. She gives us the women in her family in portraits and with important personal photographs that are photo-transferred and are featured in still life tableaux. She further imbeds in her paintings photo-transfers of important Nigerian political and popular figures […]

“Ana England: Kinship,” Cincinnati Art Museum, through March 4, 2018

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

“Ana England: Kinship,” Cincinnati Art Museum, through March 4, 2018

    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 […]

Timing is Everything

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Timing is Everything

Few exhibitions in our region have been more anticipated than the joint showing of oil paintings by David Mueller and MaryBeth Karaus at Eisele Gallery in Fairfax. This exhibition showcases the romantic figurative and still life work of this couple, relying on well rendered compositions of surface refinement and harmonized color palettes. The female figure […]

Familiar Connections at Miller Gallery

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Familiar Connections at Miller Gallery

The Miller Gallery in Hyde Park closes a wonderful landscape show on September 29, 2017. The work of three artists is included in the show, though the work of Santa Fe artist Rich Stevens dominates; the other work is complementary to Stevens’, but overall, the paintings on display all have something of an Asian influence in […]

The Place of the Nude: “9th Annual NUDE: Exploring the Uncovered Human Form,” Manifest, August 17-September 15, 2017

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

The Place of the Nude: “9th Annual NUDE: Exploring the Uncovered Human Form,” Manifest,  August 17-September 15, 2017

A show about the nude can’t help but raise issues about voyeurism any more than it can help raise questions about sexual politics. (I counted, for example, only four representations of the male nude to nearly twenty female.) This is the Manifest Gallery’s ninth show featuring the naked body, and I would have liked to […]

Edge of Perception, sculptural and mixed media works by Emily Burns and Mallory Feltz at the Kennedy Heights Arts Center through September 24.

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Edge of Perception, sculptural and mixed media works by Emily Burns and Mallory Feltz at the Kennedy Heights Arts Center through September 24.

Just prior to the great solar eclipse which traversed our country a few weeks ago, I attended the opening of a show at the Kennedy Heights Arts Center entitled Edge of Perception featuring the latest work by Pleasant Ridge based artists Mallory Feltz and Emily Bruns.  These two artists complement each other well in their spare color palette […]

Review of "Biophilia, Standing Witness" at Studio San Giuseppe Art Gallery, Mt. St. Joseph

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Review of "Biophilia, Standing Witness" at Studio San Giuseppe Art Gallery, Mt. St. Joseph

An undercurrent of pleasure runs through the exhibition Biophilia, Standing Witness on view now through October 20 at Studio San Giuseppe Art Gallery, Mount St. Joseph University. Twelve women artists, all with roots in Cincinnati and/or Columbus, are each represented in some depth – not easy in a show including so many artists. The exhibition […]

Tracy Boyd at Vermillion Gallery

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Tracy Boyd at Vermillion Gallery

Bold, ambitious and packed with color, Tracy Boyd’s paintings indulge our sight, whether you linger on the drips in the paint or see the horses in the rain. These paintings shift in and out of their layers of meaning, shimmering with a kind of nostalgic looking-forward, a potential future once imagined. Boyd has stepped up […]

Ebb and Flow at Cincinnati Underground

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Ebb and Flow at Cincinnati Underground

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 […]

A Jewel in the Queen’s Crown

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

A Jewel in the Queen’s Crown

On October 6, 2017, Music Hall, one of Cincinnati’s iconic treasures, will reopen to the public after extensive renovations for the past 18 months. Revered worldwide not only by musicians and performers but also patrons of the arts, our Queen City’s Music Hall was designed and built in 1877-1878 by locally renowned architect, Samuel Hannaford […]

UnFunction

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

UnFunction

The most functional items in our lives go unnoticed. The more functional, the more indistinguishable they are from our daily routine. When the doorknob breaks, we are frozen in frustration and fury at our immobility. When the doorknob works, we pass through each frame of our day forgetting the one before. The artists of UnFunction […]

Poetry in Bars and Other Solutions

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Poetry in Bars and Other Solutions

“The spirit of Dada re-emerges in the puberty of every artistic generation,” —Adrian Notz (owner / operator of the Cabarete Voltaire)     Believing that painting had become too concerned with pleasing the eye and not the mind, Marcel Duchamp had the idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it […]

Meet Me at the Horizon, 125 Expansive Paintings in 8.5 x 11 Inch Frames

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Meet Me at the Horizon, 125 Expansive Paintings in 8.5 x 11 Inch Frames

When you walk into HudsonJones Gallery, at first glance it might appear bare. The one room gallery is flooded with light, flanked with beautiful red brick and accented with sleek light wood. It is a beautiful space – contemporary while highlighting its industrial bones. Throughout the center of the room stand three walls and nothing […]

Greenery

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Greenery

Art Beyond Boundaries, a spacious storefront gallery on Main Street in Over the Rhine, features the work of regional artists with disabilities. The current show, “Greenery,” presents paintings by Caroline M. Pyle Jr. A near fatal car accident in 2006 caused Pyle to shift from a career in public health and take up painting as […]

Relation at Brazee Gallery

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Relation at Brazee Gallery

Relation, an exhibition of Stuart Fink’s intense and intricate sculpture, fills the two relatively small exhibition rooms at Brazee Gallery in Oakley with ease and assurance. It’s almost as though they’ve been there before and in a sense they have, although not these particular pieces. They have a famial relationship to earlier work Fink has […]

“Sight of Hand” at Cincinnati Art Galleries

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

"Sight of Hand" at Cincinnati Art Galleries

Cincinnati Art Galleries on East 6th street is presenting the contrasting work of two Cincinnati artists. Leslie Shiels invites you to enjoy her animated brushwork in a new series of paintings featuring the skull. Historically speaking, artistic statements featuring human brain depositories are construed as commentary on inevitable destiny of mankind and human fallacy. Shiels’ […]

Fashion and Technology – Part I

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Fashion and Technology - Part I

With early hints of fall being seen around the city, these next few months are an especially exciting time for the Cincinnati Art Museum and its fashion-loving community. On October 13, the museum and its Chief Curator and Curator of Fashion Arts and Textiles Cynthia Amnéus will unveil Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion, an exhibition […]

Two Cathedrals

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Two Cathedrals

Two cathedrals have recently arisen in the Over-the-Rhine area of Cincinnati’s urban basin, one a renovation of an historic brewery, the other a fountain complex in the center of the newly redesigned and constructed Washington Park, across from Music Hall, the chief landmark of the neighborhood, which has also been renovated and restored in a major […]

Wooden Hill, Home and Garden Shop, in Westwood

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Wooden Hill, Home and Garden Shop, in Westwood

Wooden Hill, 3036 Harrison Ave., is a new home and garden shop in Westwood. Owned by Amanda Hogan Carlisle and her husband Kevin Carlisle, the store features all local – TriState – merchandise. The couple purchased the store on the corner of Harrison and Montana in the Ruehlmann Building. Hogan Carlisle carries cards, paintings, collages, […]

Two New Galleries Open: 124 W. Pike St. and Caza

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Two New Galleries Open:  124 W. Pike St. and Caza

Named after its street location, a new gallery called 124 W. Pike St. opened September 15 in Covington in Duveneck Square, listed as an Historic District by the National Register. Curated by long-time artist and gallerist Suzanna Terrill, the gallery currently features abstract paintings by Barbara Mayerson, a modern artist originally from Dayton, with work […]

Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus chapters

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus chapters

Laura A. Hobson, owner, Hobson Mosaic, received a first place award for best feature writing in the freelance category for a story about the Civic Garden Center in Aeqai. Hobson also received a best feature writing second place for her work in Hyde Park Living.

Mathias Enard’s “Compass”

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Compass, a long and erudite novel by Mathias Enard, is the surprise novel of the summer.  Winner of the most prestigious French Prix Goncourt, named for the two Goncourt brothers who lived around the time of Proust, and known for their extreme aestheticism (and, alas, for their anti-Semitism) and magnificent taste in literature, Compass is […]

Tom Perrotta’s “Mrs. Fletcher”

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Tom Perrotta is the most contemporary of American writers chronicling life in the American suburbs, a distinguished tradition in American fiction that probably starts with John O’Hara, runs through John Updike, and continues with and through Perrotta (this month’s review of Cynthia Osborne’s new novel Fall Tides runs parallel to Perrotta’s book; hers takes place […]

Gabriel Tallent’s “My Absolute Darling”

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

 There’s been a huge amount of positive, excited build-up towards the publication of “My Absolute Darling”, a new novel by a new writer, Gabriel Tallent (who is aptly named). One often is concerned by marketing hype these days, as there’s so much of it, and the product rarely lives up to its advance billing. “My […]

Cynthia Hoskin’s “Fall’s Bright Flame”

September 23rd, 2017  |  by  |  published in September 2017

Disclaimer:  Cynthia Hoskin is a good friend of mine.   I read the novel “Fall Tides” this summer, in galley form, and wrote a review for it, unsolicited, at that time. The novel’s now been published, and Ms. Hoskin has used my review as the Prologue to the novel.   I saw no reason ,however, not to […]