If you ask the keepers of the Ohio Lesbian Archives what the most prized item is among the decades-old collection of LGBTQ ephemera, the answer is typically not going to reveal one specific thing. The Ohio Lesbian Archives (OLA) has been collecting for decades and works to preserve LGBTQ+ history locally and beyond. To satisfy such an inquiry, you might just have to sift through the books, posters, T-shirts, letters, journals, newspapers, records, photographs and countless other materials to decide for yourself.

Because the foundation of OLA began with a combination of personal collections – which includes items from co-founders and current board members Phebe Beiser and Vic Ramstetter – the archives allows visitors to view a grand scope of LGBTQ+ history through an intimate lens that details years of pride, triumphs and devastations alike. The magnification of specific events such as the rise and fall of the Greater Cincinnati Gay and Lesbian Coalition in the ’90s tells stories that impacted lives then, and inform current events now.

Vice President of the OLA board Nancy Yerian was able to rattle off a few items of note, like an AIDS memorial quilt, a scrapbook from the 1940s made by a local woman who played for a professional women’s softball team and a body of local lesbian newsletters called Dinah before admitting that each item is special and important in its own right. Yerian is too modest to say that her project Vibrant Kin, which was exhibited in 2017, accounts for 50 years of activism in Cincinnati. The large informational panels that make up the Vibrant Kin project are stored in an accessible box in the archives and can be referred to any time upon a visit.

“People are attracted to the books, people love the art,” Yerian tells CityBeat. “It’s very hard to pick the one most special thing.”

Inside the archives at the eCenter in Over-the-Rhine, atop a 4-foot-tall filing cabinet is a collection of hand-written diaries that details years of a woman’s life. A rare collection OLA calls “Jill’s Journals” is a row of about 20 handwritten diaries that reveal the life of a woman during the ’70s and ’80s.

“Cards,” Jill wrote in a single entry in a journal that spanned October of 1980 to February of 1981. “The cards tell me I must let go of Ali, move on, I’ll not get what I want. There has been much energy, much work toward a dream relationship. It has been doubtful and oppressive at times. There is still some struggle in me, but I must be a woman alone.”

Much like the rest of the OLA collection, “Jill’s Journals” were acquired by donation. Beiser says that the journals were given to the archives by a friend of Jill’s after her passing. It’s personal items like the journals or pre-owned books with notes in the margins that give OLA the opportunity to allow the people who have been part of LGBTQ+ history to control their own narrative. Who keeps history is just as important as who writes it, Yerian says. And while heroes and idols throughout history are invaluable to that narrative, everyday LGBTQ+ individuals also deserve to be honored and normalized, she says.

In 1989, when OLA was established and found its first physical headquarters in Northside above the famed Crazy Ladies Bookstore, Beiser says community members lined Hamilton Avenue to help deliver personal collections to occupy the new location. At the time, archive affiliates like Beiser

“On a Sunday morning, it was like, seven o’clock or something,” Beiser recalls. “There was a whole line of people, men and and women, whoever could help, we took boxes and they passed them down the street for blocks, and across to the new building.”

In the late ’80s – or “B.E.,” as Beiser jokingly calls it, referring to times before The Ellen DeGeneres Show – when support for LGBTQ+ individuals and movements was less accepted and oftentimes outright damned, community support was pivotal. Forming OLA was a movement in itself, one that was solidified and documented in its own archives as the beginning of accomplishing a mission to become a resource for LGBTQ+ individuals and a symbol of pride.

“A major reason Vic Ramstetter and I began the Archives was so we – lesbians, as well as GBT people – would never be invisible again,” Beiser tells CityBeat.

The effort continues today, as a recent donation came across Beiser’s desk in the form of a book, which was given to the archives by the author. Jen Jack Gieseking donated a copy of A Queer New York, which is a historical account of the geographies of “lesbians, dykes and queers,” according to the cover.

On the title page, a handwritten note from Gieseking reads: “For the OLA, its archivists and all who visit – So we can build our history together. Love, Jack.” A scribbled heart emphasizes the sincerity of Gieseking’s donation, which is just one of hundreds like it in the OLA collection.

Thirty years after it was founded, the archive continues to carry out its mission of preserving LGBTQ+ history and being a resource for the community. Since the move to its OTR location in October, the OLA has been able to display nearly the entirety of its collection and host events like book clubs and craft nights.

While the reason for collecting has changed – the OLA is now building upon a decorated collection instead of accumulating materials in fear of being erased – the sentiment remains the same. What started as a grassroots movement is now a full-blown archival machine, with its content currently being digitally archived by the Cincinnati Public Library.

To learn more about the Ohio Lesbian Archives visit, ohiolesbianarchives.org. Visiting hours are Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and Sundays from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. The OLA is located at 1308 Race St. in Over-the-Rhine.

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The inaugural Cincinnati Anime Film Festival is coming this summer with a lineup of screenings for all ages that span two months. The festival lineup is set to be released during a launch party at Woodward Theater on June 3.

College Hill comic book shop Manga Manga is hosting the festival, which will be held at the Hollywood Drive-in Theatre with weekly screenings beginning July 11 and running through Aug. 8.

At the launch party, Manga Manga will screen Ghost in the Shell (1995), directed by Mamoru Oshii. The film will be screened in Japanese with English subtitles. The Cincinnati Anime Festival (CAFF) shares Manga Manga’s mission of celebrating Asian culture and is eager to screen films that began as comics, according to a press release.

Tickets for the launch screening are on sale now. The launch screening begins at 7 p.m. on June 3 at the Woodward Theater. Tickets are $8 in advance and $10 at the door; find them at cincyanimefilmfest.com. Individual festival tickets go on sale June 4 at noon and the first festival screening will be July 11.

Follow CAFF on Instagram @cincyanimefilmfest and @manga_cincinnati for up-to-date information.

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Two artists from the Ohio River Valley Region explore their connection to place through photograph, sculpture and other media in an upcoming Wave Pool exhibit.

Kith and Kin: Things Well Known runs from May 11 to June 22 at the Wave Pool gallery in Camp Washington. The two-person exhibition was curated by Wave Pool’s curatorial resident Lindsey Cummins and features work by Kacey Slone of rural Indiana and Rachael Banks of Louisville, whose subject is often her family on their Bagdad, Ky. property.

“This exhibition attempts to challenge stereotypes that have been set and negotiated amongst artists’ who work in the region,” a Wave Pool press release states. “While place and the communities who come to inhabit it remain integral, Kith and Kin challenges the way artists and their work have been narrowly situated within discourse on the region, constricting them down to exemplars of a greater American Western mythology that is fascinated with the iconography of rural life.”

Pieces in the exhibit examine the relationship between person, place and communal structures through family, home, folklore and the passage of time. Casual moments of everyday life are frozen in a photograph or pulled from memory through familiar objects as Slone and Banks consider a sense of belonging.

“Grappling with who they are, through where they are and who they’re with, both Slone and Banks traverse close quarters with a soft touch — neither surrendering to sentimentality nor indifference,” the press release says.

Slone is also a teacher and a gallery manager for Harrison County Arts. She uses objects to connect with the viewer through collective memory. In a piece titled “A Friend for the Unsent,” a pillow and a broken ceiling fan unite in a stark contrast. In another installment, Slone uses a tattered childhood blanket and hangs it from a wooden post. The work evokes nostalgic longing.

On May 11, an opening reception for Kith and Kin: Things Well Known will take place at Wave Pool. The exhibit runs through June 22. An artist talk will take place on May 30 from 6-7 p.m. at the gallery. Visit wavepoolgallery.org for more information.

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A giant sculpture will soon rise in Roselawn at the corner of Reading and Section roads as part of a citywide art installment. The 10-foot “R” sculpture, created by Annie Ruth, is the first installation of 16 giant-letter sculptures and an exclamation point that will appear in various places around Cincinnati, eventually spelling “Black Lives Matter!”

In a celebration of community, strength and diversity in Cincinnati, the work is part of local artist collective Black Art Speaks’ sculptural series. A dedication ceremony will take place in Roselawn on Thursday, May 2 at 11 a.m. when the “R” will be unveiled.

The works are inspired by two of Black Art Speaks’ own creations, Cincinnati’s Black Lives Matter mural and Alandes Powell’s poem “We Want What You Want.”

Each of the giant letter installations will resemble about 70% 

Ruth is a founding member of Black Art Speaks, as well as an internationally known artist. She is the project manager for many of the collective’s installations and projects. Powell tells CityBeat that she plays a huge role in the organization.

“Because of all [Ruth] does for Roselawn, for this community, how talented she is and the fact that she created the first letter that stands up is amazing to me,” Powell says. “So she continues to not just explode in her craft, but just for her community, and how much she loves Roselawn, how much

The next two sculptures slated for installation are “A” and “!.” The “A” will appear in Avondale near the end of May or the beginning of June; it represents the issue of gun violence, Powell says. The exclamation point will be installed in June in the West End of Cincinnati.

“How can we have deeper dialogue using art and actually continue this conversation removing the noise of Black Lives Matter, but still making sure the movement is important? How do we take some of that political piece out of it and make people really understand our hearts?” Powell says. “So in Roselawn, just taking the ‘R,’ knowing that it’s about the bias of Black men and how important it is for them to see the beauty in themselves and for other people to be so inclined to see it as well, is just one piece of Black Lives Matter. So the vision and the hope is that we can have these courageous conversations and dialogue using the beauty of art to change us and change how people see us. It’s an internal peace and external.”

For more information about Black Art Speaks and its programming visit blackartspeaks.com.

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Broadway and Fellow Travelers star Noah J. Ricketts and artist Zain Curtis are the double feature of QueerKY magazine’s fifth volume. The magazine is an arm of nonprofit organization Queer Kentucky and aids in its mission to amplify and strengthen queer culture through storytelling, education and action.

CityBeat spoke to Missy Spears, Queer Kentucky’s executive director, whose story is also featured in the upcoming magazine. Out this week, QueerKY’s latest publication centers its theme on reimagining masculinity.

Spears – a.k.a “the head butch in charge” – shares an autobiographical bit, introducing herself to readers while naming ways she will lead the organization into the future. “Before I understood queerness, I understood masculinity,” is how she begins her letter to readers.

Queer Kentucky was founded by Spencer Jenkins in 2018 and became a nonprofit in 2020; Jenkins is the editor-in-chief of the magazine. Spears says that upon the organization’s inception, Jenkins would travel around Kentucky and write profiles on queer individuals. Toting a Polaroid camera, Jenkins turned a blog into the nonprofit QueerKY is part of today.

The magazine launched in 2022, and Spears says this is the second edition that features stories that center around one theme. The fourth edition’s theme was home and what it’s like to call something home as a member of the queer community, because family structure can be different than others, she says.

“We started to explore set themes for all of our future issues,” Spears says. “Issue five is our first really strong theme, reimagining masculinity. We opened it up to anyone to submit. This one we really pushed to get writers from all over the state and especially Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.”

The issue features eight contributing writers and 16 contributing photographers and artists, who created pieces on topics like butch history and “how grunge music broke down my closet door,” in a work titled Slipknot Made Me Gay. Writer Kevin Garner shares an article titled Black Queer and Free, then in a “he/they’s tell all” Joshua Brown shares a pursuit in embodying a soft masculinity.

“We really dive into what it’s like for folks to not want to feel masculine and the steps that they took to kind of step away from that in their life,” Spears says. “And then also we focus on the other end of the spectrum who definitely wanted to step more heavily into that. And even the fluidity of folks who find themselves in the middle.”

Jenkins interviews native Kentuckian Ricketts in an article titled Bringing The Bluegrass to Hollywood and Broadway, which details Ricketts’ experience growing up in Louisville, Ky. and making his way to Hollywood while representing Black, queer men of the south.

Spears says she enjoys how the article reveals that Ricketts is hanging out with some of the biggest queer stars on the planet and still loves his home state.

“I connect with it a lot. Just reading that and knowing that he still loves his state,” she says. “My favorite thing about this issue is the cover. I love that we were able to do two different collectible covers for this one. We have a singular theme and we were able to put that on the front of it. So if someone walks into a coffee shop, they know exactly what they’re picking up and exactly what they’re about to read. And I just think the art is so incredible.”

Readers can find QueerKY today online, at Downbound Books in Northside; Hail Records and Oddities, Conveyor Belt Books and Roebling Point Books and Coffee in Covington; and Roebling Books and Coffee in Bellevue.

Visit queerkentucky.com for more information.

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Since growing up in Cincinnati, playing in a local groovy psych-rock band (Surdy-Greebus) in the late ’60s, attending medical school at the University of Cincinnati, then pursuing photography and eventually assisting the great landscape photographer Ansel Adams, Stu Levy’s renowned photographic work is calling him back to the Queen City.

On April 28, Levy will give an artist talk at Iris Bookcafe and Gallery in Over-the-Rhine, where his work is currently on view. Stu Levy: Landscape and Grid-Portraits runs through May 31 at Iris Cafe, where the walls are masterfully adorned with snapshots of Levy’s impressive body of work. The artwork is a photographic balance of grand landscapes and intimate grid portraits.

“I had always considered my landscape photos, especially the more abstract ones, to be the right brain activity compared to the rest of my life,” Levy said in an email to CityBeat. “But when the grid portraits started to emerge, they became a new right brain to the previous right brain. Both show the fine detail of the subject matter, but also suggest something beyond a more literal description of the person or place being photographed.”

During the artist talk, Levy says he plans to converse with the exhibit curator, Bill Messer, share the backstory of some exhibited photos – both landscape and grid portraits – and also reflect on his experience with photo education in Cincinnati and with Adams.

Messer has accomplished a museum-grade arrangement of Levy’s photographs at the OTR cafe, where visitors can also indulge in locally-sourced, house-made menu items and plenty of books.

Levy’s work appears in more than 24 institutional collections like the Cincinnati Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Photographic Arts and the Wilson Centre for Photography in London. Among international gallery placement, Levy’s work has also been published as two monographs and two single-image artist’s books, according to a press release.

“People have been after me to do a show with Stu for years, because there are a lot of people here who still know him. Both people in the music business, people who know him from his family and people who went to Walnut Hills with him,” Messer says. “He’s been great to work with.”

Messer says that when Levy left Cincinnati for life out west, the landscapes “blew his mind,” and years ago when Levy was attempting to capture a giant cave, he couldn’t get it all in one shot. Levy decided to take multiple images of the scene and piece them together, which became the inaugural work of Levy’s body of grid portraits. Levy’s black and white landscapes offer a glimpse into western terrain of all kinds, sometimes contrasted enough to feel abstract and other times encompasses sharp, majestic parts of nature.

His grid portraits tell intimate stories of their subjects, especially when featuring a person. The subjects often appear more than once in the images, displaying different activities or aspects of life. The expert collage of different scenes accomplishes sometimes chaotic movement that imparts an aerial view of an individual’s life. Whether it be an artist or politician, Levy includes components of his subject’s lives that create a cohesive image and detailed story.

“I think of the grid portraits as mini movies of the subject’s life,” Levy says. “But the viewer remembers a ‘frame’ from two or three different scenes and combines them into one space, even though they might have happened at different times and in different places. I think of it as recombinant architecture. I also emphasize the importance of all the artifacts in the subject’s environment which also help describe their personality.”

The artful way that Levy assembles his images could not be accomplished in one shot, without the numerous points of view and passage of time, the profound depiction of his subjects would be lost. In Levy’s portrait of Cincinnati resident and curator Mary Baskett, she is pictured three times within the piece. Once at her piano, another time sitting in a stairwell reading a book and once more happily posing on a balcony. Even though she is clearly photographed in various parts of her home, the work as a whole appears as one scene. In a trick of the eye, the viewer might think it’s digitally altered before taking a closer look.

“The portraits have this element of time, which he finds really interesting,” Messer says. “It’s also got this opportunity to have multiple identifications, multiple personalities in the same image. Almost every other portrait is one thing, whatever it is, and it could be an amazing portrait. It could be a portrait that suggests many identities and things, but it’s still going to be one thing. So here, especially if you collaborate with your sitter, you get a chance to say, ‘Well, what do you want to express in this picture? What aspects of you do you want to be in this picture?’ And that’s pretty great.”

Visit Iris Bookcafe and Gallery at 1331 Main St. in Over-the-Rhine. Stu Levy: Landscape and Grid-Portraits runs through May 31. Levy will be at the gallery on April 28 at 5 p.m. for an artist talk. Visit stulevyphoto.com for more information.

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We’re almost to the weekend, Cincinnati. There’s plenty of fun to look forward to, including CityBeat’s Best of Cincinnati event on April 11. Take a hike to check out what kind of flowers these April showers are yielding, find a clothing swap to spruce up your spring looks or check out the Half Price Books West Chester Warehouse for an exclusive sale. Scroll down for all of our weekend picks.

If you’re looking for even more to do every day of the week, visit the CityBeat events calendar, which is free to use if you have something planned that you’d like to advertise to CityBeat readers.

The post 12 Things To Do in Cincinnati This Weekend (April 12-14) appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

The Cincinnati Fringe Festival is returning to Over-the-Rhine in May with a lineup that will showcase local, national and international talent. The performing arts festival will celebrate its 21st year in typical fashion: a collection of wacky, thoughtful, experimental, profound and comical stories that can only be seen together in the Queen City.

The Fringe, presented by Know Theatre, announced the 2024 primary lineup Tuesday. It includes 26 productions: new work from 12 local creators, 12 productions from across the country and two artists from Toronto, Canada. The entire lineup of events and performances boasts more than 25 productions including four Fringe Development projects, five special events and “Kids Fringe.”

This year, the 14-day Fringe lineup shares a theme of community care and radical self-expression. The shows run from May 31-June 15 at its home, Know Theatre, and select venues in OTR.

The diverse lineup includes “choose your own adventure” performances, a medieval romp, dance numbers, miracle stories, tales of aging, dark comedy monologues, true stories, stories about gender-based issues, resurrections, history, the afterlife, the mundane, the extraordinary and so much more.

The 2024 Cincinnati Fringe will comprise 12 world premieres, 12 regional premieres, one national premiere and 21 producing companies never seen in Cincinnati. According to a press release by the Know Theatre, 50% of box office revenue goes to producing Fringe artists. Single and package tickets are on sale now.

THE 2024 CINCINNATI FRINGE FESTIVAL PRIMARY LINEUP:

1-MAN NO-SHOW
Isaac Kessler
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

A Migration of Crones
Performance Gallery
Cincinnati, OH

A Perfect Day Away
Dead Cat Productions
Cleveland, OH, Athens, OH & Chicago, IL

As If You Will Remember
Gerry Grubbs, Pauletta Hansel, Rachel DesRochers, Katie Chal, Rob Keenan, Adam Petersen, & Michael Burnham
Cincinnati, OH

Bloody Mary
Kelly Collette
Cincinnati, OH

BODIES
Can’t Stand Sitting Productions
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

CANCEL THIS MUSICAL
Wesley Zurick
New York, NY

CASTAWAYS
Silver Linings Productions
Cincinnati, OH

Cyrano on the Moon
Arcane Arts
Hayward, WI

Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl In Hitler’s Germany
Ingrid Garner
Los Angeles, CA

Esther Made Me Do It
Nell Adkins and Elizabeth Sacktor
Lexington, KY
Gender? F*ck!
Rachel Baker
Cincinnati, OH

I’m Finally Going to Ask Elizabeth Hopkins to the Homecoming Dance and Nothing’s Going to Stop Me, Not Even the Ghost of My Dead Grandmother Who Watches Me Masturbate
Queen City Flash
Cincinnati, OH

Knight, Knight
Madeleine Rowe
Minneapolis, MN

Le Spectacle De Merde (“Welcome to our Sh*t Show”)
Megan Flynn & Teresa VanDenend Sorge
Troy, NY & Cincinnati, OH

Meet Me at the Bathtub: The Short Life & Tumultuous Times of Charlotte Corday
Samantha Joy Luhn
Covington, KY

Mounting Washington: The Story of a Mountain & a Miracle
Penny: For Your Thoughts
Rochester, NY

No f*cks given. None taken. All done. Pamela L Paek
Los Angeles, CA

NO PASSENGERS
Gideon Productions
Queens, NY

SeaMAN
2 Sleepy RatGuys (Amica Hunter & Bruce Ryan Costella)
Portland, OR, & Orlando, FL

Singing Into The Dark,1933
Big Empty Barn Productions
New Orleans, LA

Songs Without Words (or, The Mendelssohn Play)
Jennifer Vosters
Chicago, IL

Strong Bear
Jack Fogle
Cincinnati, OH

The F-Files
Solasta Theatre Lab
Cincinnati, OH

The Last Witch in Ireland: The Story of Bridget Cleary
InBocca Performance
Cincinnati, OH

Waiting for Laura
Ben & Justin Present
Cincinnati & Columbus, OH

The 2024 Cincy Fringe Festival Special Events:

Absurd It Through the Grapevine: Paul Strickland
Paul Strickland Presents
Covington, KY

Alphas: Origin Story – A Comedy Variety Show
Alphas Comedy
Cincinnati, OH

Methtacular!
Steven Strafford
Athens, OH

Choice
Julie Coppens
Cincinnati, OH

trueFRINGE 2024
True Theatre
Cincinnati, OH

The 2024 Cincy Fringe Development Productions:
(one-night-only productions of works in development)

Cracks
Claire Lochmueller
Chicago, IL

Ford’s Escape (or a Honda’s Civic Lesson)
Zamudio Theatre & The Milford High School Drama Dept.
Milford, OH

Tea Sips and Tells
Leila Kubesch
Cincinnati, OH

Webcam
Kirk Sheppard
Cincinnati, OH

Kids Fringe:

The Emu that Ate Cincinnati (and Other Curious Tales)
Autumn Kaleidoscope
Cincinnati, OH

The Cincinnati Fringe Festival presented by Know Theatre will run from May 31-June 15. For more information and ticketing, visit cincyfringe.com.

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Cincinnati City Council approved funding on Wednesday to benefit the preservation of historic Cincinnati record label King Records.

The King Records Legacy Foundation, the foundation created to revitalize the King Records complex and help educate others about its historical significance, will receive $205,000 from council to cover the cost of an executive director and marketing. The King Records buildings are currently owned by the city.

According to Steve Goodin, the foundation’s treasurer, Kent Butts, the son of King Records musician Otis Williams, will be the foundation’s executive director. In this role, Butts will be charged with doing a number of tasks meant to help the foundation fundraise $2 million in the next year, which will include creating a benefit concert this summer.

In an initial city council meeting, the city was poised to give $410,000 to the King Records Legacy Foundation, but councilmembers determined that more information was needed before allocating any funds. After determining the full scope of the foundation’s fundraising goals, council cut the initial funding in half to $205,000.

“This is really exciting,” councilmember Reggie Harris said during Wednesday’s council meeting. “This is the allocation of dollars for King Records — a project that’s long overdue. What we have is a funding strategy from the city. We have a plan on paper from the organization and an executive director that has a 12 month strategy to get us to phase two. This really kicks off our strategic momentum moving forward to getting this project across the finish line.”

The former record label was founded in the Evanston neighborhood of Cincinnati in 1943 by businessman Syd Nathan. The record label recruited artists in two genres: “Hillbilly,” or Appalachian music, and “Race,” which then referred to music made by Black artists. Those genres are considered to be early precursors to rock and roll. At a time when most businesses throughout the country were segregated, King Records is credited as being one of the first Cincinnati businesses to operate an integrated workplace. During its heyday, King Records attracted talent such as James Brown and Bootsy Collins.

The King Records site in Evanston was designated as a local landmark in 2015 and it earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2022. On Brewster Avenue, visible from both the northbound and southbound corridors of I-71, the King Records complex of five buildings holds a legacy that is both impressive and influential. The shell of the King Records complex has been vacant for years.

Council will be following up with the King Records Legacy Foundation in a year to monitor the progress on their fundraising goals. Though the foundation hopes to raise at least $2 million in the next year, they ultimately want to raise between $15-20 million for the entire renovation project. 

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An annual exhibition hosted at various venues throughout Ohio is coming to the Cincinnati Art Museum for the first time. Accessible Expressions Ohio is a traveling collection of art made by artists who identify as having a disability. Out of 165 state-wide submissions, a panel of artists, educators and arts administrators chose a select bunch of Ohio artists to exhibit.

Accessible Expressions Ohio opens March 29 and runs through May 12. This year’s themes are self care and mental health and the pieces represent both 2D and 3D work. The exhibition is organized by Art Possible Ohio, an organization that bridges the arts and disability and advocates for inclusivity and accessibility

A preview of work included in Accessible Expressions reveals a range of talent and mediums. Emerging artist Stephanie Hinders of Powell, Ohio delivered a charcoal piece called “Get Out.” The work is a realistic scene of a contorted person with two hands clawing at the neck. The use of gradation and highlighting achieves an intensity that establishes a feeling of discomfort or rage.

Cincinnati artist Saya Amend’s work “It’s Time To Get Up,” was also selected for the exhibition. The oil on Bristol board painting is a dark scene that depicts an empty bed with disheveled covers and a window in the background. Amend’s expert use of contrast connects the viewer to the image on a deeper level.

Another participating artist, Lisa Merida-Paytes said in a press release that participation in Accessible Expressions has given her the freedom to educate viewers on how her disease affects her body and her work.

“Being a part of Accessible Expressions Ohio is very significant because it enables me to reach new audiences, exhibiting work and engaging our community members in how disease informs my work,” Merida-Paytes said in the release. “As an artist with disabilities my artwork has become a vehicle to interpret transformative changes occurring in my body caused from the progression of disease while also pushing the boundaries of contemporary art.”

Accessible Expressions Ohio is CAM’s first exhibit solely featuring artists with disabilities. According to the museum’s website the exhibit is, “One of the most accessible and diverse art presentations ever displayed at the museum.”

It runs through May 12 and after that travels to the Massillon Museum in Massillon, Ohio from June 22–August 18. It will also see the Dublin Arts Council from November 9-December 19 and visit other venues in between.

Accessible Expressions Ohio is on view from March 29 – May 12 in the museum’s Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Gallery and the Manuel and Rhoda Mayerson Gallery (Galleries 124 and 125). Visit cincinnatiartmuseum.org for more information.

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