ArtsOhio Blog

The Storms of Summer

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 01:53:29 GMT

The pandemic, racial inequality, social unrest, and challenges to our economy have come together as a perfect storm. I’ve been considering how best to weather this storm—how to make the many changes we must make, while advancing the ones we’ve already made—and have been reminded about the many good things happening in our lives, across our state, and in our country. To follow are a few highlights to brighten your day despite the serious challenges we face amid this stormy summer:

The Ohio Arts Council (OAC) board approved $12,500,446 in grants to support Ohio artists, arts and cultural organizations, students, educators, and public arts programming when it met virtually in July.

Paper Routes: Women to Watch 2020 is now open, virtually! The Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery once again collaborated with the Ohio Advisory Group of the National Museum of Women in the Arts to showcase an excellent array of women artists. The exhibition was curated by Matt Distel, Emily Liebert, and Stephanie Rond. You can visit the exhibition virtually and participate in a host of virtual artist talks and the curators' tour. Check riffegallery.org for more.

Dr. Paschal Yao Younge, a master artist specializing in African Traditional Musical Arts, was awarded the 2020 Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award for Performing Arts from the Ohio Arts Council.

Americans for the Arts recognized the Ohio Arts Council for the Ohio Arts Beacon: Finding Hope in the New Normal project in their Arts and Community Mosaic. We know that creating community in this time of physical distancing is more important than ever. After all, artists help us all process the world as it changes around us. We launched the Ohio Arts Beacon of Light to help Ohio artists find a place to share, connect, and cope with the challenges presented by the coronavirus. The idea came from our board member, Tina Husted, who hoped to inspire artists and the public at large through sharing original artwork, while giving our creative community a platform for connection, expression, and encouragement.

We continue to invite artists of all ages, working in all disciplines, to submit their work through the Ohio Arts Beacon. Share your work here! And be sure to follow @Ohioartsbeacon on Instagram to see new artwork shared each day!

Governor Mike DeWine and his administration have released an executive order and guidance for performing arts venues. We’ve heard from a variety of arts leaders that this guidance is appreciated. It is a critical next step toward re-opening, and there is much more to be considered and done to prepare facilities, revise budget projections, and determine if it is fiscally possible to open venues’ doors.

Despite today’s challenges, we must always, always acknowledge what is possible, what is good, and what is meaningful. We must remember that the sun will shine and have faith that we will recover. We know that times are hard for many of our colleagues. We understand the unknowns of the future are sometimes nearly debilitating, but we also know that when we work together, the arts are stronger.

During my calls, emails, and Zoom meetings with grantees and arts supporters, it has been so refreshing to hear your optimistic outlooks, your ideas for collaboration, your eagerness to share your stories, and—as is nearly always the case with arts folks—your ability to find hope, to pivot to new revenue models, to share back-of-house-everything to save money, and so much more.

Lastly, thank you for sharing the communications you’ve had with elected officials about public funding for the arts. You are the best arts advocates because you have authentic stories to tell—and they bear repeating. Your genuine voices and your positive, forward-thinking attitudes foster the exchange of information and ideas. Being solution-oriented produces cooperation and collaboration.

As we work through the challenges of 2020, I would not want to be anywhere else. Working with you inspires me to jump out of bed and head straight for the office—just a few hundred feet down the hall.

Until next time,

Donna S. Collins

Executive Director

Paper Routes Celebrates Women Artists in Ohio

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 19:47:04 GMT

My life is properly cluttered with paper. I have stacks of it and some well-meaning plans for said stacks. I have pieces of paper sticking out of books, hiding in drawers, and clinging for life on my fridge, but I have never investigated my relationship to paper beyond a sense of “clutter guilt.” Walking through the Riffe Gallery’s newest exhibition, Paper Routes: Women to Watch 2020 - Ohio, I’m reminded (and forgive the pun) of the expression, “you can’t see the forest for the trees.” I’ll admit I have been paper-blind, but these artists have gifted me with new eyes.

The abundance and familiarity of paper that allowed me to overlook it as a medium is precisely one of the reasons it has been so important for women artists. Historically, women artists have been overlooked and driven to the margins of the art community. Access to media that is readily available, easily manipulated, and cost-efficient created space for them to make artwork without barriers.

The women in this exhibition pull out the very essence of paper by challenging our traditional sense of paper as a throwaway commodity. Carmen Romine created landscapes from receipts, Alice Pixley Young cut out powerlines from roofing paper, and Sarah Kabot created figurative stencils from newspapers. These works pull from history, the media, and wasteful cultures to inspire a second look at our conservation practices, our relationship to the printed word, and our “paperless” future.

While the exhibition is flooded with new prescience and meaning in a COVID-19 world, these works are not dark or hopeless. In fact, many spark overwhelming senses of joy and warm nostalgia. Sydney Joslin-Knapp created a cosmic cave, dark and dim as a cave should be, yet full of bright, shiny, sparkling flowers that pull us into the space and present us with an opportunity to reflect, breathe, and embrace both the light and dark within ourselves and the installation. Emily Moores’ “Let’s Celebrate” fills a glass wall in gallery, but its massive scale feels so inviting it’s impossible to walk by without feeling the urge to crawl inside and return to childhood.

I have had the opportunity to stand alone with these works in the gallery, to be properly humbled and inspired by them, and now to share my delight with you. No future is guaranteed, but Paper Routes moves us forward, with all the certainty of the human race itself, cradled in the womb of women artists.

Paper Routes: Women to Watch 2020 – Ohio is presented at the Ohio Arts Council’s (OAC) Riffe Gallery in collaboration with the Ohio Advisory Group of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). NMWA, located in Washington, D.C., is the world’s only museum solely dedicated to celebrating the creative accomplishments of women. With its collections, exhibitions, programs, and online content, NMWA champions women through the arts and advocates for equity. As the exclusive affiliate of the Women’s Museum in Ohio, the Ohio Advisory Group of NMWA extends the mission by showcasing women’s contributions to Ohio’s rich cultural landscape.

The exhibition was curated by Matt Distel, Emily Liebert, and Stephanie Rond. Featured artists include Kristine Elizabeth Donnelly, ¡Katie B Funk!, Sydney Joslin-Knapp, Sarah Kabot, Natalie Lanese, Charlotte McGraw, Emily Moores, Susan Li O’Connor, Alice Pixley Young, Sa’dia Rehman, Carmen Romine, Adrienne Slane, and Breanne Trammell.

Paper Routes is on view at the OAC’s Riffe Gallery through Oct. 17, 2020. While the gallery is temporarily not accepting in-person visitors, a virtual exhibition can be viewed online at oac.ohio.gov/Riffe-Gallery/On-View. All Riffe Gallery events are now virtual. Visit oac.ohio.gov/Riffe-Gallery/Events-Calendar for more information about upcoming programming.

ABOUT THE OAC RIFFE GALLERY
The Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery showcases the work of Ohio's artists and the collections of the state's museums and galleries. The Riffe Gallery is located in the Vern Riffe Center for Government and the Arts, 77 S. High St., Columbus, OH 43215.

Visit Riffegallery.org, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

ABOUT THE OHIO ARTS COUNCIL
The Ohio Arts Council is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically. Connect with the OAC on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or visit our website at oac.ohio.gov.

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Article by Aimee Wissman, 2020-21 OAC Riffe Gallery Marketing and Exhibitions Fellow
Featured Image: Sydney Joslin-Knapp, "Cosmic Cave (Going into The Unknown to find Everything We Thought We Knew)," 2020

Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery Opens Women to Watch Ohio - 2018 through July 7

Thu, 24 May 2018 15:03:11 GMT

Women to Watch Ohio - 2018, on view at the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery, was organized in partnership with the Ohio Advisory Group of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This exhibition, curated by Ann Bremner and Matt Distel, features 10 Ohio women artists who work in metal: Mary Jo Bole (Columbus), Carol Boram-Hays (Columbus), Carmel Buckley (Cincinnati), Susan R. Ewing (Oxford), Tracy Featherstone (Hamilton), Llewelynn Fletcher (Cincinnati), Leila Khoury (Cleveland), Kelly Malec-Kosak (Columbus), Marissa Saneholtz (Bowling Green), and Olga Ziemska (Cleveland). The artworks in Women to Watch Ohio – 2018, while varied in scale and technique, present a collective look at an enduring material not often associated with women. In truth, despite being underrepresented in major exhibitions and auction houses, the era of postwar contemporary art is flush with women working with metal such as Lynda Benglis, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois, Mona Hatoum, and Ruth Asawa, to name only a few. Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016, organized in 2016 by Hauser, Wirth and Schimmel (Los Angeles), examines the massive impact that women had within the often male-dominated field of sculpture. It is a wonderful starting point to consider the larger context of contemporary sculpture that can provide greater appreciation for the artworks featured in Women to Watch Ohio – 2018. Additionally, further reading about women’s place in art history can be found in art historian Linda Nochlin’s comprehensive essays, compiled in her 2015 book, Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader.

Carmel Buckley, Untitled, 2017-18

The variety of material and processes on display in Women to Watch Ohio - 2018 is remarkably flexible, featuring exceptional examples of manipulating metal, ranging from decorative enameling to structural welding, from bronze casts to fine jewelry. Boundary-crossing material explorations, a hallmark strategy of contemporary practice, abound in this exhibition, most notably in Carmel Buckley’s installation. Buckley’s Untitled (2017-18) consists of a cast bronze reproduction of a human head supporting a teeter-totter-like wood board. A neat stack of drawings rest on top of the board with a carefully placed, playful arrangement of miniature aluminum heads. The board is balanced with a heavy sheet of steel, and additional groupings of heads are scattered across the floor. Mary Jo Bole also utilized casting to produce Good Bye (2008), a gnarled wall relief assemblage of a human head made from cast iron and copper. In both instances, the formal properties of cast metal (pouring molten metal into a fabricated mold) yield an enduring character that is both grotesque and somber, yet capricious.

Mary Jo Bole, Good Bye, 2008

In addition to a variety of material processes, size is an important factor in Women to Watch Ohio – 2018, which can be seen in the extreme jumps in scale of Susan R. Ewing and Olga Ziemska’s artwork. Both artists move seamlessly between private and public space, creating work as small as Ewing’s jewelry and Ziemska’s cast fingertips topped with tiny dollops of iron shavings—and as large as their monumental public sculptures. These jumps in scale are a compelling facet of the exhibition, which showcases the variety of ways metal can be worked.

Left: Olga Ziemska, LUNA (detail) 2017
Right: Susan R. Ewing, Lead Pearls (detail), 2014

In Lead Pearls (2014), Ewing creates a delicate composition from a cascade of small lead beads carefully dotting a single line of steel cable. The piece functions doubly as a wall sculpture that produces an equally beautiful shadow that could also be worn as a necklace were it not for the toxic lead “pearls.” In the free exhibition brochure, which was produced with support from the Ohio Advisory Group of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, curator Ann Bremner notes that Ewing creates jewelry as though it were another form of public art. Also on view in the gallery are a series of maquettes and small studies for StarSphere (2010), Ewing’s monumental sculpture. Permanently installed outside the journalism building on the campus of Kent State University, it is a sly nod in support of the First Amendment.

Susan R. Ewing, StarSphere, 2010

Similarly, Ziemska has created a deep roster of large public works, many of which utilize reclaimed natural materials paired with industrial materials like metal, installed at numerous sites internationally in places such as South Korea, the Czech Republic, Poland, Italy, Mexico, and regionally across the Midwest. Women to Watch Ohio – 2018 features photographic documentation of many of Ziemska’s public works, including Feather Point, her 2017 steel sculpture permanently installed at Thaddeus Kosciuszko Park in Dublin, Ohio. Ziemska’s material choices and subject matter underscore the driving force behind her work:, to examine the relationship between the natural and man-made world.

Olga Ziemska, Feather Point, 2017

Considering the fact that Women to Watch Ohio - 2018 features only women in a field that historically fails to adequately represent their work, many works on display pointedly address contemporary political issues of gender, sexuality, and political representation. Llewellyn Fletcher, a 2017 recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, is most notably represented in the exhibition with Shield for Queer Kin: Protection, a 2018 collaborative installation with Amanda Curreri made of a steel rectangular armature wrapped with soot-dyed cotton that is hand-stitched with colorful Japanese sashiko thread. The armature rests on the floor at an angle, a slant that Fletcher inserts into much of their work as a physical manifestation of queer politics. The blanket-like shield functions as a literal protection for an oversized carving of a fist clenched in iconic resistance.

Llewelynn Fletcher, Shield for Queer Kin (Protection), 2017
in collaboration with Amanda Curreri

Additionally, the work of Leila Khoury, who was chosen by the National Museum of Women in the Arts as the Ohio representative for their sister-exhibition, Heavy Metal – Women to Watch 2018 (on view at the NMWA, Washington, D.C., June 28 – Sept 16), functions as a memorial to her Syrian identity. Aleppo Bathhouse (Fragment) (2018) is made of 32 concrete tiles cast from architectural details from buildings in Aleppo, a site now mostly destroyed in the ongoing Syrian conflict. The rectangular structure made of welded steel stands just over 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide, like a building miniaturized to the scale of a child’s playhouse. Yet, there is no entrance and the façade, while pleasingly decorative, is entirely made of heavy, olorless concrete. It is a sobering totem of all that has been lost in the genocide.

Leila Khoury, Aleppo Bathhouse (Fragment), 2018

Women to Watch Ohio - 2018 asks viewers to consider the varied materiality, technical processes, and scale of metalwork. The exhibition presents viewers with an opportunity to pause, look, and learn from an impressive group of artists and to engage with contemporary issues filtered through the lens of an often-gendered material. Ultimately, the common presence throughout the exhibition is the enduring spirit of women, sculpture, and metal.

ABOUT THE RIFFE GALLERY
The Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery showcases the work of Ohio's artists and the collections of the state's museums and galleries. The Riffe Gallery is located in the Vern Riffe Center for Government and the Arts, across from the Statehouse on High Street in Downtown Columbus. Like the Riffe Gallery on Facebook and follow us on Instagram.

ABOUT THE OHIO ARTS COUNCIL
The Ohio Arts Council is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically. Connect with the OAC on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or visit our website at oac.ohio.gov.

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Article by Mary VanWassenhove, 2018 OAC Riffe Gallery Marketing and Exhibitions Fellow