Cincinnati's Artistic Legacy Continues.

Housetrends Cincinnati is now featuring a story on the Herman and Bessie Wessel House. The story tells of Greater Cincinnati's most well-known 19th Century artists. The Wessels were students of realist, Frank Duveneck. As teachers, they continued to pass on Duveneck's ideals.

Housetrends focusses on the Wessel home as a scene for the art crowd during the 1920s. According to the story, the couple worked there as well as held large art-themed parties. For 20 years, after their deaths, the house was rented to art students.

While the story focuses on the house's past and it's possible future as a house museum and center for American Art, it also recounts a time in the city when artists (not p.r. handlers) maintained the artistic legacy of Greater Cincinnati. Herman and Bessie Wessel's preservation of artistic ideals, education, and conversation are keys to this end.

Best wishes to Carl Samson as he continues to preserve our artistic legacy.

Call for Artist: Manifest adds NUDE to Exhibition Schedule

The first annual Nude will be the ninth exhibit added to the Manifest Gallery exhibition schedule. For this international competition, works in any media of any style or genre and size will be considered. The deadline is July 17, 2009.

Here you can find more information and an online entry form.

SOS Art 2009 at the Art Academy of Cincinnati

Now in its seventh year, SOS ART 2009 presents for 10 days an art show and event of sociopolitical expressions for peace and justice.

More than 200 Cincinnati visual artists, literary artists, musicians, performers and school children will participate in this year’s SOS ART event at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, from May 29th to June 7th, 2009.

Organizer and founder, Saad Ghosn of the University of Cincinnati, has
coordinated the art event of paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, installations, poetry readings, movies, music, performances and discussions on current issues of peace and justice.

The event is a kaleidoscopic community view on the sociopolitical world. Works by local artists make powerful and diverse statements in support of peace and justice locally, nationally and worldwide.

The opening night, which includes an artists’ talk and reception, is Friday, May 29 from 6pm to midnight. Saturday programming for both weekends includes events from 7pm to 10pm. Sunday events are from 3pm to 6pm with a closing reception on the final Sunday, June 7th.

The visual art may also be seen Monday to Thursday from 9am to 6pm, Friday and Saturday from 9am to midnight and Sunday from noon to 6 pm, May 30 to June 7. The entire program is free and open to the public.

See the pdf for more information.

Manifest Gallery Presents Iconic Mythography

Thematic exhibitions often present various styles of art worked towards a broad idea. A good show also offers the viewer a opportunity to see clearly articulated artistic perspectives on a theme. Rare is a show made up of iconic pieces. Mythography, currently on view at Manifest Gallery is such a show.

Mythography is an annual show inviting national and international artists to tell a story. The result is an exhibition that includes painting, sculpture, drawing, video, and photography presenting stories with details we may not know, with images strikingly familiar. David Hannon’s Strange Gifts for example depicts a scene in which a young man has just opened a package containing a sculptural bust. He is presumably on his front patio, which is surrounded by examples of a polluted disregard for the urban landscape. Factories drape the landscape along with sewage draining nearby and a car exhausting fumes passes by.

The films of Bill Domonokos are similarly engaging. Domonokos’s work includes found photographic images and archival film he represents as film collage. While we may not be familiar with the narrative, the aesthetic of these black and white images are easily recognizable. His film “Nocturne” is accompanied and inspired by the absolutely beautiful music of Tchaikovsky adding another level of iconic familiarity.

While Mythography allows for a broad definition of the narrative, the art of storytelling pulls the show together with dramatically engaging results. Through the iconic forms of Jessica Grace Bechtel’s Ripening and Chris White’s endearing Grandma & Grandpa that pull us into the gallery to the welcoming familiarity of Laura Fisher’s Part One: Dreams, an old book of prints Mythography makes room for the storyteller.