Be Easy: Ceramics by Katie Swartz, 1305 Gallery
I first encountered Katie Swartz’s work in “All the Usual Suspects” at Thompson House Shooting Gallery (see aeqai.com, July 2012). She showed three crocheted animals: “Bartholomew,” 2010, an 11” tall, cuddly bear, and two friendly octopi: “Mario,” 11” tall, and “Myron,” 9” tall, both 2011. In that review, I placed her work in the context […]
Child's Play: "Funny Mirrors" at AEC Gallery, "Inventories & Diagrams" at PAC Gallery and "SOS Art" at Cincinnati Art Academy
By: Keith Banner In “Funny Mirrors,” a three-person show at AEC Gallery in Covington, Kentucky, Billy Simms drains a clown’s life of all color and joy, creating a wall-novel out of wood-block relief prints that is both astoundingly sad and gleefully sinister. The way his bit of the show is hung, along a hallway at […]
Meditations on Emptiness: Francis Upritchard’s, “A Long Wait”, at the CAC
By: Maria Seda-Reeder The Zaha Hadid designed Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, with its intermittently soaring and squatting ceilings and massive concrete pillars, has been notoriously challenging for artists and curators alike. Fortunately, the two current exhibitions on the second floor, Jannis Varelas’ “Sleep My Sheep Sleep” and Francis Upritchard’s “A Long […]
Grim Fairy Tales: “Panjereh (Window)” New Work by Sheida Soleimani at Prairie Northside June 9th through 30th 2012
By: Regan Brown Photographs courtesy of Eric R Greiner “The Valley of Understanding: Here we all choose a different way and different rules to disobey.” ― from The Conference of the Birds (منطق الطیر) by Peter Sís (adapted from Farid ud-Din Attar) [ 1 ] My first of several consecutively less disfigurative “windows” onto […]
Strength in Relief, Mary Woodworth Provosty at U.C. Clermont
By: Fran Watson Photographs courtesy of Eric R Greiner This may be prejudice, but print shows are always elegant to me. It might be the stark, bravado of good line on fine paper, or the iteration of symbols, or even the sinuous curls and aggressive exclamations of straight lines reminiscent of the waning popularity of […]
The Lloyd Library presents: “View, Ways of Seeing”
By: Laura A. Partridge In its history, Cincinnati has managed to accumulate a number of hidden gems. The Lloyd Library is one of them. The Lloyd is a private library that was incorporated in the late 1800s, and is located at Plum and Court streets. The collection has lived in a few different spaces as […]
The Value of Criticism: “Flora and Fauna”, Bromwell’s Gallery
By: Amanda Dalla Villa Adams Photographs courtesy of Eric R Greiner Faced with the end of modernism, art historian Hal Foster attempted to define the role of the critic within post-modern art in “Re: Post” (1982). Ultimately, he suggested that postmodernism allows art to go “beyond the limits of critique,” because there is no longer […]
Drawing and Contemporary Portraiture: 2 Approaches
By: Marlene Steele Drawing, the tool of observation and investigation employed by artists even in this technological time of electronic gadgetry, is as diversified as the number of individuals wrestling with its control. It is a fascinating opportunity to observe how another navigates their drawing process. This is insightful particularly when the exhibited work, so tidy […]
Botanical
The Bible tells the story of Adam and Eve (mankind) expelled from the Garden of Eden for picking fruit from the tree of knowledge. Katie St. Clairʼs, The Hierarchy of Living Things gives us little comfort in whatever knowledge we have gleaned from that singular fruit. Here, naked as the day she was born, a […]
TRIO
Layered Abstractions at AEC April 13 thru May 11 Abstract they are; some more than others. Yet sculpture by Robert Pulley, palette knife paintings by Trish Weeks, and painted comments on humanity by Paige Williams, were pulled together by the common, if tenuous, thread of nature. Robert Pulley has spent decades in sculpture. With a true […]