As a longtime resident of the Midwest I’ve come to know the region less as a single place but rather as a transient crossroads of many contradictory things. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been skeptical of attempts to reduce it to an essence, which in my experience resides more in the nebulous than the nameable. […]

By Sara M. Vance Waddell Edited by Michelle Vance Waddell There have been numerous women pioneers that have made strides for themselves and their gender over the years to garner equality. One significant stride occurred 100 years ago this year, the passage of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote. Finally, women thought, […]

Two exciting artists are exhibiting at Caza Sikes Gallery in Oakley and their work is well married in a number of ways.  Jan Wiesner continues her series of female fables and environmental heroines. Tom Towhey displays a variety of colorful fantasy paintings that merge his environments with his love of gardening. Typically of Towhey, surprising […]

Holland Davidson’s paintings have a compulsive quality; it is as if she cannot not help but paint them and we cannot help but try to fathom the intricate patterns and unsettling images that fill each canvas.  Davidson’s work is on view at Indian Hill Gallery in “Along the Line,” a show that features sixteen large […]

Carolyn Shine, who died late last year at the age of 101,  lived a life illuminated by visual arts and illuminated those arts for others. She was my colleague at the Cincinnati Art Museum, my friend before that, and always an example of life lived well. A Cincinnatian by birth, Carolyn’s home from the beginning […]

In the autumn of 2019, two giants of American photographic arts died, a mere seven days apart from each other. They were close friends and neighbors in the New York of the ‘50s, at one time even working together on the same project (a film). Both were Jewish, and deeply humanistic, and both had children […]

“Sous les pavés, la plage!” (“Under the paving stones, the beach!”) went the rallying cry of French students in the protests of May ‘68. Referring to the sand found beneath Paris cobblestones lifted to hurl at police and build barricades, this phrase, soon championed by the Situationists[1], came to symbolize a reclamation of freedom through […]

Located just below the Artic Circle, Iceland is the Land of Fire and Ice: a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic defined by its dramatic landscape with one-hundred thirty volcanic mountains, geysers, hot springs and lava fields. Iceland mostly stays quietly out of the news – but in 2010 – Iceland was major global […]

A dilemma faced by any art museum is how to keep the public consistently engaged. One way to do this is through visiting exhibitions, which are essential to the vibrancy of the museum. However, what about the permanent collection? How can a museum newly engage patrons with paintings they may have seen many times before? […]

Carried across the country by a Seattle transplant, a little piece of Cincinnati finds its way into the Emerald City’s soil.  Now on display at Specialist, a gallery and artist-run space, artist Jay Stern features his first solo exhibition: I Remember Feeling Far.  With a centrally creative background, Stern has worked in the industries of […]