The History of the World: Jacob Lawrence at the Taft Museum of Art

In the 41 tempera vignettes that make up “Heroism in Paint:  a Master Series by Jacob Lawrence” (currently on display at the Taft Museum of Art through January 17, 2016), Jacob Lawrence dramatizes the life of Toussaint Louverture, revered as the founding father of Haiti who led Haitians in their fight against slavery in the […]

A Thousand Invisible Threads | Mapping the Rhizome

A Thousand Invisible Threads | Mapping the Rhizome at the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College, finds its influence from Deleuze’s and Guttarai’s postmodern classic, A Thousand Plateaus. A theme is the rhizome, a biological term for a type of root structure, used as a metaphor for philosophy, social structures, or ways of thinking that are […]

Erasing the American Pastoral in Elena Dorfman’s Sublime: The L.A. River

“See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers’ plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul.” — John Muir Elena Dorfman spent two years photographing the Los Angeles River for her series Sublime: The L.A. River, now being exhibited in the Weston Gallery. The river, paved in 1938 after a […]

City on the Rise: Public Art in Covington, Kentucky.

Our walls are changing for the better.  Propelled by the global phenomenon of street art and sustained by an embrace of community-sanctioned murals, public art is back in a big way. In Cincinnati, when it comes to public art, the name ArtWorks is ubiquitous.  With a hundred murals in thirty-six neighborhoods, formerly drab walls are […]

Frank Herrman: Making Prints at Clay Street Gallery

‘Tis the season for tricks and treats, which leads to Clay Street Press  presenting Frank Herrmann: Monotypes and Other Works. The tricks are the manipulations that Herrman and printer Mark Patsfall invented as they “played” with the monoprint  medium.  The treats are the results available to our wondering eyes. Patsfall suggested last summer that Herrmann […]

Mark Mothersbaugh at the CAC

a plastic German mask. a pile of ruby feces. the Kent state shooting Mark Mothersbaugh uses these elements, along with a horse with double hindquarters and a hoard of bird whistles, to make up the fantasy playland that is his exhibition “Myopia”. The term “myopia” refers severe nearsightedness. Mothersbaugh shared this fact at his live music performance at the Woodward […]

Helado Negro – No Love Can Cut our Knife in Two

It isn’t my proclivity to fidget during performances but during this show was absolutely squirming in my seat. The sweet sounds of Helado Negro (which translates to ‘Black Ice Cream’) and the visual nature of the exhale dance tribe cloaked in silver strings of reflective material kept me bouncing my leg and tapping my fingers […]

Last Splash of Color

From the moment you ascend the staircase at the YWCA Women’s Art Gallery to see “Last Splash of Color,” you are struck by a sense of harmony.  This is due in part to similarities in the color palettes used by Susan Mahan, Paula Wiggins, and Ursula Brenner, three highly-skilled, well-established Cincinnati artists.  But color alone […]

Talking Blues: Cedric Cox at the CCAC

Cedric Michael Cox is currently exhibiting an array of his  colorful abstractions at Clifton Cultural Arts Center. Entitled “Talking Blues”, the exhibit presents a body of larger and intermediate sized full color paintings supported by several graphite studies. Cox bases his work on drawing and describes having become tired of color and desired to simply […]