The July/August issue of aeqai has just posted. We do one combined summer issue every year, when things are a bit slower in the arts. Some of the reviews in this issue look at exhibitions that are no longer up for viewing; usually we try to be sure that the shows we review are still available for our readers to visit, but we make an exception to our internal rule in the summer. Some of the best shows around have just closed or are about to close.
Jonathan Kamholtz’s sensitive review of the drawings/illustrations made by Hamilton, Ohio native Robert McCloskey at The Cincinnati Art Museum, begins this issue, and this exhibition is still on display for a few weeks. The exhibition at The Meyers Gallery at UC, which shows how artists with macular degeneration, in particular, have accomodated this lessening in their vision with their work, making differently exciting work–often radically simplified from their previous work. This show is reviewed by Chris Carter; kudos to Aaron Cowan who runs the two UC Galleries for bringing this show to Cincinnati. Karen Chambers looks at the work by Curtis Goldstein and Matt Lynch, just closing at The Weston Gallery downtown, who picked up their ideas from the old l930s Union Terminal murals of men working manufacturing jobs (those murals are now in The Duke Energy building downtown). The Weston artists, painting rather than using the original mosaics, found contemporary manufacturing factories in this region and offer us these “updates”, if you will, on the original murals.
Jonathan Kamholtz also offers an exemplary and very thorough review of photographs by Ansel Adams, currently on display at The Taft Museum of Art. Kamholtz examines Adams’ varying aesthetics while informing our readers of his technical interests in photography itself. Ekin Erkan, who’s just left Cincinnati for graduate work at Columbia in New York , and who will be writing for aeqai from New York starting in September, offers two reviews this month. He’s fascinated by the implications about consumer culture at a group show at Thundersky Gallery in Northside, as well as mixed media installation work by various artists, curated by Solway Gallery, which was recently on display at Memorial Hall in Over-the-Rhine–including work by the increasingly nationally recognized Rachel Rampelman, whose work aeqai’s reviewed before, and who’ll be showing again at The Weston downtown in the upcoming season there.
Amy Bogard returns to aeqai this month with a fascinating look aat “Textuality” at Manifest Gallery, which examines the interactions between the worlds of images and those of texts, while our Louisville correspondent looks at work by Benjamin Cook at Swanson Contemporary in Louisville, whose highly intelligent work questions what’s “real” these days, the world of the internet or what used to be called “the real world”. I review paintings recently on display at Eva Ferris Gallery at Thomas More College made by regional artist Ivan Ivanov.
Other reviews this month include one from Los Angeles, by Annabel Osberg, of fascinating work by Sophie von Hellermann, who uses petri dishes as art/metaphor and symbol of the interactions between science and art at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery. Martha Dunham saw exceptional work by Helen Phillips at The Seattle Art Fair and offers us her review of that artists’ prescient works. Jane Durrell returned to the always fascinating Lloyd Library in downtown Cincinnati for a look at their current show, which is an alternative look at pharmacology. And Hannah Leow’s review of work by Duncanson Artist-in-Residence Vanessa German at The Taft Museum is positively exuberant.
Laura Hobson’s feature this month is on Cincinnati’s Weaver’s Guild, and it’s a fascinating look at this group who’ve been around here for quite awhile, making work and teaching and mentoring and the like. Jennifer Perusek’s essay this month looks at the fashion of Tracy Feith, who’s the first fashion designer going directly to the internet for his markets and sales. Marlene Steele reviews the works of five regional artists, who made artwork out of violins (not real ones) in a collaboration between Wash Park Art and The Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. And Russell Hausfield looks at a two-woman show, “Women of Strength”, at the Women’s YWCA Gallery in downtown Cincinnati.
And I offer two book reviews in this issue, of new fiction by Julian Barnes and Rebecca Makkai.
Aeqai’s annual benefit party will take place (it’s an art auction, of work donated to us by regional artists; admission fee is $50) on September 20 at Cincinnati Art Galleries downtown; check the aeqai FaceBook page or Board President Cedric Cox’s FB page for more details; we need your support this one time a year and hope you’ll be able to attend , and, if you can’t, perhaps you can send a donation.
We’ll be back in September, which also starts the third FotoFocus group of shows, panel discussions and numerous other events about photography; aeqai will be reviewing some of those shows in the next two months, too. We welcome your comments, as always, and hope you find our summer issue stimulating. Click www.aeqai.org to go directly to our site.
–Daniel Brown, Editor, www.aeqai.com