April has brought us better weather, and an ongoing plethora of first-rate exhibitions in the visual arts, as well as more new galleries, increasingly on the west side of town. The April aeqai (www.aeqai.com) is now posted, and here’s an overview of what’s in it. Mike Rutledge gives us an exciting profile of husband-and-wife ceramicist team Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis, who together constitute the ceramics department at UC/DAAP, and whose numerous exhibitions and commissions have been making this region more exciting. Using some very old techniques, as porcelain was invented by the Chinese thousands of years ago, with contemporary sensibilities, concepts and execution, Rutledge captures their vibrant energy and creative spirits in his profile of them as artists and collaborators.
Two exhibitions at The Cincinnati Art Museum are reviewed this month, the Warhol print show by Keith Banner, whose deep understanding of Pop Art underlies his review, and the newly opened “Human Altered Landscapes”, curated by Brian Sholis, reviewed and put into the perspective of photography’s brief history by Zach Hatfield. Hatfield also offers an insightful review of paintings by regional painter Barb Ahlbrand, this year’s winner of the Golden Ticket Award at The Clifton Cultural Arts Center, this exhibition being part of her prize. Ahlbrand has been on the regional scene for decades, and has long been one of our outstanding abstractionists. Laura Hobson profiles Barb Ahlbrand, this month, as well.
Karen Chambers looks at a just opened exhibition at Covington Arts, curated by aeqai writer and Cincinnati activist Saad Ghosn; the exhibition follows the idea of “Flight”, and showcases the work of three area women artists. Fran Watson returns to aeqai with an anecdotal review of the porcelains show at Clay Street Press. And Katie Dreyer offers two reviews of current CAC shows, one of work by Daniel Arsham, and the other of that that Albano Afonso. Sue Ann Painter offers an insightful overview of the career of late architect Michael Graves, a UC/DAAP graduate who built both the Vontz Center and Riverbend here.
Maggie Heath returns with an overview of an exhibition of art made by artists who are graduates of Elder High School, at the relatively new Flats Gallery in Price Hill, run by Mount St. Joseph University. Elder is often better known by its sports teams and many graduates who have joined our police force, but the exhibition, features work by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Jim Borgman, works by respected area artist Joseph Winterhalter, and works by aeqai’s own Christopher Hoeting (there’s a newish coffee house across the street from The Flats Gallery, as well). Marlene Steele reviews pastel work by Judith Carducci at The Butler Museum of Art, and Hanna Loew reviews a show at another new gallery on the west side, called Wave Pool Gallery, which also looks very promising (The Weston Gallery’s annual art walk will be in Price Hill in May). Aeqai also welcomes L.A. critic Anise Stevens this month, with her review of the Caro sculpture exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. Ms. Stevens will be reviewing shows and/or profiling artists from the L.A. area for aeqai monthly.
Other offerings this month include aeqai fashion writer Jenny Perusek’s look at Chanel’s special salute to its own fabricators of what designer Karl Lagerfeld calls “semi-couture” clothes, and how the American market is increasingly important to all purveyors of designer clothes. Susan Byrnes gives us an astute interview with Christopher Hoeting, curator of the “Water” exhibition newly opened at The Weston downtown. Aeqai welcomes her as a new writer for us. Jane Durrell offers a “Letter from Washington”, a well-balanced look at her early years as a publicist in the arts, as well as a humorous look at her life as a young mother needing outside stimulation. (Ms. Durrell was head of PR at the art museum for several decades). Katie Dreyer sent us a “Letter from Savannah” this month, as well.
Louis Zoellar Bickett’s photographic offering this month is a series of deadpan photos of a man with a broom, in different settings around Lexington. Saad Ghosn’s monthly column looks at the artwork of Albert Webb, and the literary offerings of Steven Paul Lansky. Maxwell Redder gives us three new poems, and Huck Fairman, four, and I offer a lengthy book review of modernist masterpiece The Wall, by Holocaust survivor H.G. Adler.
We hope you find this issue stimulating and informative, and always welcome your comments (and donations, if you’re so inclined; aeqai is a non-profit organization). We’ll be back in May with more reviews and profiles, as the art season begins to wind down into summer.
Daniel Brown, Editor