Greater Cincinnati continues to manifest enormous diversity in the offerings from its visual arts practitioners, and the venues which present them. Aeqai is pleased to bring you our annual double summer issue (July/August), which reflects the richness and variety of our visual culture. We are watching with increasing interest offerings coming from Brighton, and this issue of Aeqai includes reviews of exhibitions at Semantics by Maria Seda-Reeder and MuseumGallery/GalleryMuseum by Maxwell Redder; some of the most engaging ideas in contemporary art are brewing in this area of town. We continue our series on the permanent collections at the Cincinnati Art Museum and The Taft Museum of Art, with essays by area artists Kevin Muente, who examines CAM’s Inness painting and Susan Mahan, who reflects upon the museum’s van Gogh.
Aeqai writers Keith Banner and Larry Watson review two shows at CAM; the former looks at the Tanner painting exhibition and the latter examines the musical instruments as works of art/sculptures. Amanda Adams, who is departing for Virginia, but will continue to write for Aeqai, writes brilliantly on the Jannis Varelas at the CAC. Jane Durrell has a kind of conversation with numerous prints et al. in the 50thanniversary show at Carl Solway Gallery. Aeqai also congratulates Carl Solway on his enormous contributions to contemporary visual culture; we think of Solway as The Maestro of contemporary art. New Aeqai writer Maxwell Redder begins with two reviews, one of MuseumGallery/GalleryMuseum, the other of Clay St. Press. In the summer issue of Aeqai, we include reviews of exhibitions which may have just closed, because we will be down in August. Regan Brown combines his literary and philosophical interests and his artistic ones in his thoughtful review of Built in the Digital World at the Weston Gallery in The Aronoff Center. Shawn Daniel tells us about the art and technology program, where high-school students can get training in the technical parts of art making in a new career oriented exciting high-school program. Karen Chambers reviews a group show of emerging artists at the Thompson House Shooting Gallery in Newport. Daniel Brown reviews new paintings by Donna Talerico at Greenwich Gallery in O’Bryonville; the exhibition consists of paintings from her annual trip to France. Dustin Pike continues his series on design, which he is structuring by using the numbers 1-0; this month Pike examines the number four and its design implications. Aeqai will be posting a few more reviews as they come to us in early August: Fran Watson will cover the AEC exhibition in Covington, and Kenn Day will examine the current offering at the Schickel Gallery in Loveland. Stay tuned for those and any others which may come our way.
Aeqai is also regularly posting calls for entries and events of note which we believe to be of particular interest to our readers; these go up weekly, and we encourage you to check these out.
One of our region’s most accomplished artists, Kate Kern, shares her experiences at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, where she was in residence earlier this year. Marlene Steele writes about a colored pencil drawing show at Carnegie, and I offer my monthly book review, Paul Theroux’s new novel, The Lower River. We will be back around September 15th when we resume our monthly issue, and begin to look forward to Fotofocus, a festival of photography during the month of October. Nearly every visual arts venue will be exhibiting photography that month, and we shall do our best to review slices of it. As always, we welcome your comments, wish you a good summer, and Aeqai will be back in the fall.
Daniel Brown,
Editor of Aeqai