Great Expectations: Cincinnati Against the World
On a Wednesday evening, in a room above the raucous crowd assembled for Mayday Bar in Northside's Bingo night, five artists of various ilk (visual artists Britni Bicknaver & Paul Coors, photographer-designer-street artist Floyd Johnson, designer-entrepreneur Rosie Kovacs, and poet Dana Ward) gathered to discuss an issue that has effected them each, directly or indirectly: the issue of "creative drain" in Cincinnati. For several years now Coors and I—both fervent Cincinnati loyalists—have discussed the mythology/stereotype/self-fulfilling prophesy of young creative types (for lack of a better descriptor) leaving their hometown for cities on either coast. By bringing together a tight yet diverse group of local doers and thinkers to talk about their personal decisions to stay in Cincinnati, I hope that it might highlight the converse of that trope. [Full article]
Review of The Way We Are Now
The Thomas R. Schiff gallery at the Cincinnati Art Museum hosts a selection of work from the collection of the 21C Museum Hotel, the boutique hotel (soon to be chain) that has been open in a repurposed set of warehouses in downtown Louisville for the past several years and which will soon occupy the former Metropole Apartment Building in downtown Cincinnati next to the Contemporary Arts Center. This exhibit brings together two major names in the regional art scene in a somewhat unlikely manner. [Full article]
