SET IN STONE

by Michael Stillion

September 20th, 2020 - November 22nd, 2020

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ARTIST STATEMENT

In these bodies of work, I am interested in blending still life and landscape with inanimate figures and portraiture. What inspires me in the studio is wide ranging – cartoons, a worn drive thru sign in my neighborhood, cigarettes my grandma smoked, Lizzo, and a Van Eyck grisaille painting titled the Annunciation. While these inspirations may seem incongruous, their combined effect has been my creation of a vocabulary of symbols and compositions. Vases filled with red flowers bend and press on the edges of the picture, shoes and gloves contort to provide a compressed tension and smoke creates a curtain of shadows. Everything is on display and open for interpretation.  

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 - Michael Stillion

Out of the Darkness
March 8, 2021 - May 23, 2021
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2020 was a rollercoaster thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. With this exhibition, we would like to use art to shed light on the pandemic and its consequences. Artists selected for this exhibition have used the pandemic as inspiration for their work and we are excited to share this powerful exhibition with the public.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented changes in our world and, much like other events such as The Great Recession of 2008, the impact of the current pandemic will continue to be felt for years to come. Acknowledging that art can convey ideas which words cannot always express, this exhibition aims to shed light on how artists are responding to the crisis and its aftermath. The theme, out of the darkness can be interpreted as both a woeful as well as a hopeful message – can be build back better, how will we use our newly acquired knowledge to prepare for future crises, will we unite at this critical junction or continue to tear into our fellow man because of political and ideological differences?

LOVE IS LOVE:

Selections from the Michelle and Sara Vance Waddell Collection

March 8th, 2020-May 24th, 2020

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

The 20 works on view in this small selection of art from the private collection of prominent Cincinnati art collector and philanthropist Sara Vance Waddell are just a sampling of the powerful, meaningful work made by contemporary women artists in the larger Vance Waddell collection.  

"Love is Love" explores the ways in which we might see how the power of care, consideration, agape—and even desire—can manifest as profoundly life-affirming in a world that encourages us to build walls between each other, rather than find ways to connect.  What truer way can humans express unconditional love and acceptance for ourselves, than to demonstrate our capacity to love others?  

Because Vance Waddell has never shied away from complex topics such as war, bigotry, and even death, the work in her collection celebrates our abilities to transcend them through such universal experiences as human connection, intimacy of emotion, and a willingness to celebrate the body as precious and divine—not shameful due to frailty, sickness, or prejudice.  

As a result, "Love is Love" features works such as Gran Fury's subversive bus billboards at the height of the AIDS crisis in 1989, which mimicked advertisements of the time and attempted to educate the public about the transmission of the disease.  It includes Breast Cancer Ballet, a photographic documentation and collaboration between partners Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, testimony to the power of sticking by our loved ones both "in sickness and in health".

Vance Waddell's "I Do" by Louise Bourgeois, included in the small gallery is a limited edition print that was made to support Freedom to Marry, the leading campaign working to win same sex marriage nationwide; while Emily Jacir's "Woman to Woman," as well as Rachel Rampleman's "Love Your Muslim Neighbor" suggest that love can be as simple as empathizing and supporting those who need it most—despite barriers of religion and culture.

With an emphasis on the sculptural, (but not limited to 3-D) the stories within these gallery walls are broad yet intimate, in that they all center the concept of love as a powerful force for change: both personal and societal.  

--Maria Seda-Reeder, Curator

Cell Personae

by Paul S. Briggs

September 20th, 2019-November 30th, 2019

An emotionally difficult and creatively challenging project, Cell Personae dramatizes the traditional walls and bars of the usual American prison cell. These art works are Briggs’ way of grappling with the concerns of his personal experiences with the prison system,  as the possibility of incarceration in his community was normalized in his conception of the world from a young age.