Revealing the Grid

The Weston Art Gallery seems to welcome a preoccupation with the challenge of its street-level gallery space that is nearly dominated by windows looking out onto Cincinnati’s downtown streets of 7th and Walnut. Thomas Macaulay’s House Divided: SiteSpecific Environmental Installation currently on view is another such invitation. With its maze of cardboard boxes, nearly all of them white, The Weston almost begs comparison with the CAC’s Tara Donovan, but I’ll let someone else write that review.

Perhaps my most powerful revelation as an art history student occurred when I was introduced to the grid not just as a design principle in architecture and painting, but most impressive as a concept of our living space. As a professor of art history I always enjoyed most revealing this to my students. Forcing them to recognize the tiles on the walls, ceilings and floors of the classrooms as well as the inherent design of campus buildings as nearly uniform three-dimensional grids in which they spent their days, their lives. Watching their eyes get big, I knew from that moment many of them would never see the world the same way again. House Divided wonderfully forces a similar revelation not only of the gridded space that is The Weston Art Gallery, but of how we move and live within the grid. Despite the analytical clarity of a grid we tend to be blinded to it. And like all mazes, Macaulay’s cardboard box maze forces us to move blindly through this space and in doing so reveals our blindness to the forms around us.

Similarly, the photographs of Fredrik Marsh that make up Transitions: The Dresden Project also reveal the architectural grid that constructs our living spaces. Marsh took the photographs during a residency in Dresden, Germany in 2002 and over four subsequent summers. During this time he found himself drawn to buildings that seemed to be locked in the process of reconstruction but now abandoned. The title of the show either refers to the reconstruction of these buildings or more likely to the transition to a post-Communist world. Marsh notes this transition as one that combines a grandness with decay.

While the black and white and color photographs of decaying interiors seem to present a commentary on the collapse of Socialism, these images reveal too a layering of the grid that makes up our domestic spaces. Photographs like Abandoned Apartment near Bahnhof Neustadt, 2005 presents layers of wallpaper and geometrics that make up a space now abandoned, but clearly once celebrated as expressed in the number of applications of design. Many of the photographs include and sometimes focus on doors and windows further emphasizing the gridded domestic space. Like Macaulay’s maze, these photographs invite movement into these spaces. Again, it is this layering of the grid that forces us to recognize our willingness to abandon or overlook these spaces, thus revealing our blindness.

Both shows at The Weston Art Gallery work so well together to encourage the viewer to engage both the formal and social implications of the grid.

Ohio Arts Jobs Preservation Grants Applications

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) recognizes that the non-profit arts industry is an important sector of the economy. The National Endowment for the Arts is uniquely positioned to fund arts projects and activities that preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn. As part of this important investment, the Arts Endowment is planning to expedite distribution of critical funds at the national, regional, state, and local levels for projects that focus on the preservation of jobs in the arts.

On the web page you will find the information and resources you need to apply for an Ohio Arts Jobs Preservation Grant award, including the OAC list of eligible applicants to the program, program guidelines, scoring criteria, FAQ, reporting requirements, and cash request instructions. Information will be added to the page as it becomes available, but guidelines, scoring criteria and the list of eligible applicants will be posted no later than April 17, 2009.

Except For Parking

Manifest Gallery 12-Hour Life Drawing Marathon This Weekend

Open Figure is an uninstructed life-drawing studio format whereby professionals, students, and the creative public can work side-by-side in common pursuit of excellence in the discipline of drawing (or various other media) while working from the nude model. This no-performance-pressure environment inevitably leads to new learning, support, and productivity that complements formal study (at the high school, college, or professional level), or other non-figure-related artistic work. Each session is moderated by Manifest Associates who are trained and well-qualified artists and/or instructors at the college level.

For more information and to register for the Weekend Drawing Marathon click here.

Ohio Artist goes “back and forth in history”

Columbus, Ohio, artist Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson (b. 1940) has been creating sumptuous mixed media paintings and sculptures for more than half a century. These document the stories she has gleaned from her elders, her travels throughout the world and her study of African and African American history. Her recent series of rag paintings entitled Along Water Street is based on the stores her Uncle Alvin told her as she was growing up and on old maps of Ohio she studied at the library. The artist describes the series as “going back and forth in history” with references to early Native American and African inhabitants who may have populated the Americas hundreds of years ago.

Along Water Street is on view at the Akron Art Museum through April 5, 2009

Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center Artist Call

Call to Artists for The Carnegie's 2010 Exhibition Season Deadline May 1, 2009!

The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center is dedicated to showcasing the works of emerging and established artists in all artistic disciplines. The Carnegie is located in Covington, Kentucky, ten blocks from the Ohio River and downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. The organization was established in 1971. Each year, 30-40 group and solo shows are awarded for the five galleries consisting of over 6,000 square feet of exhibition space.


Click here for eligibility and forms.

The Sculpture Center Artist Call Deadline

Ann Albano, Executive Director of The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio is reminding artists of their artist call. The April 6 deadline for entries for After the Pedestal, the 5th Annual of Small Sculpture from the Region is fast approaching. Don’t miss this opportunity to have your artwork selected by the juror Paola Morsiani, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art and former Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas. This summer exhibition will run from June 5 – July 25, 2009.

Consideration will be given to work in all media of sculpture, including installation, conceptual work, and performance video, if object based. The work may be conceived for exhibition on a pedestal, on the wall, on the floor, or hanging from the ceiling – it just should not be too large, made within the last three years, and not previously exhibited in northeastern Ohio. Up to three works of art can be entered for consideration.

For full information and online entry, please click here.

Joan Snyder Goes Solo in Los Angeles

In January I wrote of how fortunate we are to have the Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinnati as a portal for modern art. Then the gallery just opened their exhibition showing Joan Snyder, Joan Miró, Hans Hoffman, and Fred Tomaselli. Now, Joan Snyder is showing at the Solway-Jones Gallery in Los Angeles in a solo debut. Check out David Pagel’s review of Snyder’s “funky art” here.

Solway-Jones in LA is owned by Carl's son Michael and his wife, Angela Jones.

ArtWorks Forces My Hand on Outsider Art

When I visited Cincinnati Art Museum’s Isn’t Great To Be An Artist? Insider/Outsider Art from the Robert A. Lewis Collection a few weeks ago, I was met yet again by my inherent discomfort with Outsider Art. I do love folk art, but this show exposes an underlying “primitivist” aesthetic that exploits along racial, cultural, and economic lines. Because I struggle to get beyond this (I left the museum in tears), I decided not to write about the show.

Last night however, I left ArtWorks Green Spaces: Everyday is Earth Day simply furious. The show featured work by artists from Visionaries & Voices, a non-profit art studio in Cincinnati for artists with disabilities. My anger over the show last night is a direct response to a clear lack of respect for these artists. The first thing I notice when entering the gallery was a failure to label any of the works of art. Instead, ArtWorks supplied a printed list of the artists’ names, the names of the works, and poor quality b&w reproductions of the art. I found myself and others walking around the gallery trying to match up the art with the information on the list. I’ve never seen such a poor art installation.

According their website, Visionaries & Voices has a “vision that artists with disabilities are valued members of the cultural community, and that they have opportunities for artistic success and creative growth in an atmosphere of mutual respect, inspiration, and joy.” ArtWorks’ disrespect for these artists is immediately clear in the poor presentation. Further, the marginalization of the artist of Visionaries & Voices became more painfully clear when I walked towards the back of the gallery and saw works by two artists not part of the show whose work were clearly labeled.

While the Cincinnati Art Museum asks the question with Isn't It Great To Be An Artist?, Artworks answers with, perhaps not always.

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.

Another Dose of Friedlander

I just learned northern Ohio has another Friedlander exhibition currently open. The Akron Art Museum is now showing Lee Friedlander’s Factory Valleys through May 31st. This series that includes about 60 photographs was commissioned by the museum 30 years ago.

A Weekend with Family and Friedlander

While visiting my family in Lorain, Ohio over the weekend, my 87 year old Aunt Mary made a rare and much anticipated visit with her photo albums in tow. Aunt Mary has happily assumed the role of the family historian though has never written anything down. The pictures are her record. We often hear about families suffering with Alzheimer’s disease, so while my family has not yet been touched by this memory crippling disease, I was still amazed as Aunt Mary seemed to be able to recall a story or two from each of the pages of the albums.

Who was married to whom and who was in the wedding, where everyone lived and worked between Italy, Pennsylvania, and finally Ohio, who owned what car, and family pets animated this oral history. Aunt Mary remembered everything. I suspected there were even a few details she left out, like her time working at a nightclub. Aunt Mary insists she was not a dancer in the club though a picture of her in a leotard seems to suggest otherwise. But this was her history more than mine last weekend. I asked her how she is able to remember all of these details. She said, “When I feel a bit depressed, I look through my pictures and remember how wonderful my family is and much fun my life has been.”

My visit to see family included the requisite stop to the Cleveland Museum of Art. This time I stopped to see the Friedlander show. Lee Friedlander has always been one of my favorite photographers. No doubt it’s the wonderfully entertaining puns found throughout much of his oeuvre that entertain me. Many of his photographs I hold especially dear because his work was perhaps most easily recognizable during slide identification exams in both History of Photography classes I took. Each time one of his pictures projected onto the screen during an exam, I let out an audible sigh of relief. Many of these images are included in this exhibition.

Friedlander’s photographs and books are displayed in chronological order within various categories making it easy to see simultaneously a breadth and depth of his career of five decades. Not only did I recognize many of these photographs, but some of the subjects too. I’ve visited or lived in many of the cities in which he shot, including Boston, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque, NM. I also met at least a couple of his subjects, like Maya Lin and John Szarkowski. With such familiarity of the work combined with walking through the show with my sister, I couldn’t help but recognize the Friedlander show as a wonderful complement to my Aunt Mary’s photographs. As a photographer of “the American social landscape,” Friedlander captures the wonder and wit American life.

Stewart Goldman, Rebel?

The Cincinnati Art Museum would have you think so in its new show. However an artist who rebelled against Abstract Expressionism is rather cliché. In doing so, Stewart Goldman: Presence through Absence seems to play down some of the rather obvious references to AbEx’s geometric and organic visual language that find their way throughout Goldman’s work. By trying to illustrate a different road towards abstraction, the show seems to battle art history. For example, Goldman’s abstract Feldafing Scape of 1997 is said to have been created after the artist’s trip to Germany. Yet there is no mention of a possible influence of German Expressionism even if to dismiss it. Similarly, Goldman’s Untitled series of couches bathed in various light neglects referring to Monet’s Haystack series, which achieved the same.

I enjoyed the presentation of the development of Goldman’s work over the last few decades from a geometric realism to abstraction. Perhaps because it mirrors a history of Modern art that I still enjoy watching unfold each time I walk through museums. The show's focus on absence is intriguing, but I think the narrative is forced. Perhaps I will have to wait until May 6th for Professor Matthew Dayler’s gallery talk to better see what is not there.

No Street Cred for Shepard Fairey

The debate over Shepard Fairey’s use of Mannie Garcia’s photograph of Barack Obama to create the iconic “Hope” poster continued on Fresh Air with Terri Gross last Thursday.

But one of my new found favorite blogs, My Art Space has been following the Shephard Fairey controversy with interviews of Los Angeles street artists. One of these artists, The Phantom Street Artist has issued a direct challenge to Fairey.

Word on the street.

Art Teachers Out of the Classroom

Yes, I happily wear my art snobbery on my sleeve (actually on my vanity plate), but there are times when I really have to put it in check. This morning I visited Parallel Visions VII at the Studio San Giuseppe Art Gallery at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati. This is an exhibition of works by art educators at various area schools. Determined to make a quick stop before lunch, I found myself taken by not only the number of artists in the show, but by the various techniques and rage of subjects that make up this show.

My interest was really to see the work of one of the artists, Cathy Herring. She is the art teacher at Mercy Montessori. I’ve worked with Cathy on a few different projects and know her as an art teacher. But I’ve not seen her own work and like many parents, I was really interested in knowing not just her work with her students, but this side of her creativity. Her work in this show includes framed textile collages of kimonos. The ordered combination of geometric shapes and organic fabric designs both highlight the Japanese kimono form and texture. Ms. Herring’s work seems to capture what I saw throughout the show; a combination of styles, media, and techniques that really celebrate the wonderful breadth of creativity infused into our schools.

It is usually pretty easy to prepare myself for a number of shows I visit throughout the year. Too many times I approach an exhibition seemingly so well prepared that if you look closely you can see a rather large chip on my shoulder. This biennial and many other exhibitions focusing on our schools art teachers always catch me off guard. Here I am forced to put away for a moment my own theoretical approach to art criticism and simply recognize the range of creativity filling the lives of Cincinnati’s school children. And I hope others recognize it too.

Local Artist/ Writer Wins Award

Mark Harris, Director of the University of Cincinnati School of Art is one of a 27 awarded by the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant Program. The program is designed to encourage and reward writing about contemporary art that is rigorous, passionate, eloquent and precise, as well as to create a broader audience for arts writing.

The subject of Mark Harris’s essay is Cincinnati's artist-run space Publico that closed last year. In his article, he will focus on Publico’s 5-year history by comparing it to similar organizations in and outside of the U.S. Not only is it exciting to find a Cincinnati writer recognized for arts writing, but the recognition of a local organization makes this award extra special for our city.

Congratulations and thank you Mark Harris.

Taking Back Art’s Mission

It saddens me that much of the art discussion these days is about money. Between the controversial closing of the Rose Museum at Brandeis to the struggle to keep arts funding in the stimulus package, the art world finds itself on the defensive. Of course we in the arts are always fighting for more money. This is particularly true now and in Cincinnati as the city has eliminated more of its funding for the arts. For these last years, we’ve allowed our city’s strong corporate instincts to determine and promote the value of the arts. However we find again that viewing art as a means to financial success is not a sustainable approach. Artists need to speak on their own terms. It is time to take back the art’s mission.

The Fine Arts Fund recently recognized an interest in promoting the arts not as a promise for financial growth in the city, but as a vital component of the cultural health of our communities. This change of focus is probably my greatest source of optimism. Though I think this change involves more of a cultural shift in priorities that are unfortunately ingrained in the city. This is not only about changing the language of our missions. Defending the cultural value of art is rather easy. In fact, I know no one who disagrees with the importance of access to the arts in our schools and other public spaces. If the Fine Arts Fund wishes to succeed in shifting their focus, they may want to require local arts organizations to employ not only business but art professionals.

This is not to say that many administrators of our local arts organizations are not interested in art. In fact, I trust many of them have a sincere passion towards the arts in Cincinnati. Their skills in business administration are valuable to the art community. However, the caretakers of the core mission of the arts should be artists, historians, or educators.

CAM 3rd Floor Makes Changes

Since I suggested Carl Solway Galleries and not the Cincinnati Art Museum is our local venue for seeing modern and more contemporary works of art by well-known artists, the CAM has made some changes.

The Solway maintains a strong and dynamic exhibition calendar. Up until now, the Cincinnati Art Museum’s galleries of modern and contemporary works have remained static. This was especially true for the 3rd Floor gallery. With the enticing Nam June Paik installation at the top of the stairs to the 3rd floor, the gallery seemed to invite us to see what is new in the history of art. But once we passed the wall of video screens, we’ve been quickly disappointed to find most of the works on the floor almost 2 decades old.

This week City Beat’s Matt Morris reports that Jessica Flores, CAM's Associate Curator of Contemporary Art has made some welcome changes. Perhaps now the CAM can learn from Solway how to invite the public to celebrate modern art. These much overdue changes are not noted on the museum website. Will there be a gallery opening inviting the public to see these changes? In the meantime, we’ll have to continue to find our own way up to the 3rd floor.

Branding Local Art

After thinking more about a previous post regarding art in retail spaces, I began to focus more on how and why this practice has infiltrated Cincinnati’s local art scene. While I enjoy seeing the work of local artists displayed in coffee shops and the like, I cannot help but to suspect that decorating with local art has developed into more of a branding strategy than maintaining a loyalty to local art and artists.

I do not doubt the interest in a thriving local art scene by the owners of these businesses, but I do suspect the motivation is merely monetary. Almost no one argues against the notion that art and culture is good for the community. Though I expect that nearly every successful grant from the Fine Arts Fund in the past five years convincingly pointed to specific commercial rather than cultural benefits towards a developing neighborhood. Recently, this infectious practice has become much more pronounced in Over-the-Rhine.

In this week’s City Beat, leaders in the art community discussed the wealth of art in OTR as well as the challenge of maintaining sincere patronage from the area’s commercial developers. When asked about their relationship with the developers in Over-the-Rhine, both Jason Bruffy, Know Theatre's Artistic Director and D. Lynn Meyers, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati's Producing Artistic Director said the commercial developers have never visited either venue. Yet it is the mere presence of these art organizations that seem to make the area marketable. Like the paintings of local artists on the walls of a coffee shop the art organizations of OTR lend to these businesses and this neighborhood a label of authenticity, a culture, a flavor, a brand.

Why do Cincinnati art organizations insist on adopting a corporate business model to run their non-profit? This business model of Cincinnati, home to Proctor and Gamble is to brand, label, and commodify anything and everything to satisfy the bottom line. This is not to accuse P & G of being Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. P & G is a business. Instead, mine is a call to artists and art organizations to step up and demand recognition in their communities. Whining about the economy is the song of the corporate world not the non-profit sector. Everyone knows non-profits can and do thrive on a shoestring budget. I certainly understand the dilemma in which Bruffy, Kenny, and Meyers find themselves, but as the “soul” of OTR, they sound rather defeated. People do in fact honestly support the arts, but artists and art organizations cannot allow themselves to be branded.

The Winds of Change in the Local Arts Scene?

Is it possible the Fine Arts Fund has figured out that the arts serves not only the pockets of the private sector but also benefits the cultural health of the community?

Mary McCullough-Hudson and Margy Waller, President and Vice-President of the year-old Arts and Culture Partnership of the Fine Arts Fund lay out this vision in a column in today’s Enquirer. They seek to “live in a region with vibrant arts and cultural offerings that provide value to the entire community.” Speaking about the importance of the arts in the community, they make a solid argument for supporting the arts in Cincinnati to benefit the community culture; an argument arts and community advocates have expressed for years.

Of course we’ve seen these changing trends in the arts before. After years of viewing art as a mere commodity, and now with a threatened economy the adoption of a new language of culture and community is immediate. Somehow we must keep the coffers healthy and this shift in focus from financial needs to “the role of arts and culture in serving the interest of the community” may be a strong step in this direction. However more steps must be taken. For over the last 5 years, too much of the city's art scene has been in control of development officers, pr professionals, and art educators who admit not being concerned about educating patrons as much as just getting them to walk through the front doors and enjoying their visit. I’ll allow that these individuals like art. Heck, they may even love art, but too many of them know too little about it to advocate the change in focus for which McCullough-Hudson and Waller seem to advocate in their column.

To have a productive “conversation about the role of arts and culture for a vital community,” the Arts and Culture Partnership of the Fine Arts Fund must seek out those who can speak to those who are community advocates and organizers who understand that the value of art is not on a price tag or the size of the patron’s wallet. This, and not just the language, is the fundamental change that needs to happen in Greater Cincinnati.