Rising Sun / Cincinnati

I delivered a couple of spheres to an art show in Rising Sun last Friday. It was interesting to see the town - as I had heard about how there was an effort to make it an "art" town.

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The county has some nice rolling hills, streams and old farms. And then there is the river - the Ohio river. The waterfront has been landscaped into a place where people may want to hang out. There seemed to be more restaurants on the main street than there would have been without an effort to remake the town.

The main art thing seems to be the Pendleton Art Center. There is a large exhibit space on the ground floor and the rest of that floor plus the 2nd floor have been divided up into artist studio/galleries. Some artists use them as work spaces - but more of the spaces looked like mini galleries. Some of the art was not bad. I looked through pretty quickly.

At Rising Sun - artists can have their little galleries and there is a person who can sell their work for them Wednesday through Sunday. There is a casino there - and presumably there could be people stopping by as somewhere to go. There are a couple of other galleries and it looked like another art center type of place was in the works.

From there I went to the Newport Aquarium and painted Jellyfish for awhile. Newport also has an exhibit space for artists who have studio/galleries at the Pendleton Art Centers. There are also Pendleton Art Centers at Cincinnati and Ashland, KY. The Cincinnati and Ashland versions are only open to the public on the "Final Fridays" (Cincinnati) or "First Fridays" (Ashland and Rising Sun) and the following Saturday. And all sales go through the artist.

I went to the "Final Friday" event at Pendleton Art Center/Cincinnati after stopping by the Over-the-Rhine area. There are 8 floors there (and the elevator seemed out of order) and approximately 75 studio/galleries. A few of the people that have studio/gallery spaces are pretty inexperienced (I talked with one man who seemed to be self-taught) - but most are seasoned artists. Some pretty good. It was interesting to see the place.

I especially like the art of Barbara Ahlbrand

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and Paul Wolven who has some nice cityscapes of Cincinnati.

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One thing on my mind has been a comment by someone on an art blog that I had noticed last week - that was about putting down artists who are "pseudo-impressionists". I don't know exactly what she meant by that - but it's possible that she might include people like Paul Wolven and myself. There are a lot of people who like to do Plein Air painting - it's a good way to make experiential art - and I think it's superior to making art from photographs. I suppose that it could seem so nineteenth century to paint on site of actual scenes. But I like it for the experience and for the results.