|
Home
Cooking
Feed your soul with art in Over-the-Rhine.
Final
Friday. It sounds ominous, but it is hands
down the most regularly occurring hip thing
you can do in this city. On Final Friday,
Cincinnati feels as hip as___(fill in the
blank with another city; one that is active,
diverse and culturally charged and to which
you might be inclined to compare Cincinnati).
On
the last Friday of each month, the Pendleton
Arts Center—home to more than 100
artists’ studios—and a dozen
more galleries in the North Main Street
area open up for an evening of urban art
fun. At Pendleton, you can buy art directly
from the artists who made the work and get
to know them personally—fantastic
artists like ceramicist Terri Kern and painter
Kay Hurley.
The
corner of 13th and Clay is another hot spot
for Final Friday activities. Glorious Old
St. Mary’s church stands watch over
a veritable gang of hipsters who wander
the streets of Over-the-Rhine in search
of cultural companionship. On a recent Final
Friday, wonderful photographs by Tanya Hoggard
and Robert Geisler drew crowds at Lifeesthetics
and Flowers and Beyond, respectively. Huge
chalk arrows pointed up Clay street, past
J. Kwame Clay’s fantastic gallery
to Publico, where the print-making team
of Print Liberation staged a most excellent
Warholian art event.
The
Projects gallery, brainchild of my dear
friend Sarah Jane Bellamy, rocked too. Each
Final Friday, art teacher Sarah proposes
an art project for the next month. Anyone
who wishes to participate can make and display
art based on the theme. Past projects have
included Size Doesn’t Matter (all
the art had to be smaller than an index
card), Avant Garbage (a found art show),
and most recently Yard Art. All the works
sell for around $30 or via incremental bids
in a silent auction format. Proceeds go
back to The Projects to fund the next show.
For
Yard Art, patrons walked barefoot across
sod-covered gallery floors as they bid on
"Cheap Chihuly" lighted glass
flowers by Betsy Hodges and Orchid—Kyle
Penunuri’s huge, show-stopping outdoor
sculpture of twisted metal and colored glass.
I
stood my own watch in front of The Projects,
selling hot dogs and lemonade with my new
friend Jasmine, an 11-year-old girl-wonder
who lives a block over. Actually, the amazingly
charming Jasmine sold lemonade and hot dogs
and kept us adult grill-masters on our toes.
From
here, I took a long look at Over-the-Rhine
on a hot summer night, where just over two
years ago a very different sort of crowd
took to the streets. I saw well-dressed
white folks strolling arm and arm on 13th
Street, ducking an occasional stream of
water from the neighborhood kids’
water guns. I saw the tattooed and pierced
mingling with the coiffed and bejeweled.
I saw the future of Cincinnati. And it looked
to me that it is color-blind, loves art
and culture and neither fears the new nor
displaces the old. And let me tell you,
there is nothing hipper than that.
stacy sims
|