Fine Art Cincinnati

ViewPoint Show -- 49th Annual Art Juried Competition by Cincinnati Art Club

Cincinnati purchasers of fine art do not have to go far to find outstanding contributions for their collections.

Fifty of the eighty paintings and sculptures on display at the show at Greenwich Gallery in O’Bryonville are from area artists. Other artists in the annual juried competition sponsored by the Cincinnati Art Club come from as far as Texas to the West, New York to the North and Florida to the South. Altogether, it is one of the best opportunities to see a wide range of artists on display in Cincinnati in the past year. Best of Show by Jeff Morrow was awarded $3000.

The juried show winners were selected by Kay Worz, Dave Klocke and Roger Heuck—distinctive artists on their own as well as being past presidents of the Cincinnati Art Club.

The 2017 ViewPoint Award Winners are Christine Alfery, Birds On The Fence; George Bodine, The Shunned; Jamie Green, Untitled; Ray Hassard, Watching the Boys Swim 2; Carolyn Hibbard, Savannah Blues; Setsuko LeCroix, Sushi Chef; Jeff Morrow, The Designer; Tom Post, Awaiting the Bride; Tom Tarvin, Portrait of Dan R; and Michelle Walker, Married to Henry 60 Years

The featured work of artists such as Ray Hassard, Don Schuster, and Mark Daly have long been favorites of mine.

As I walked around  Greenwich Gallery, two paintings jumped off the walls at me: The Shunned by George Bodine (30 x 24 oil on linen) and Jubilant by Ken Buck (38 x 31 pastel)—both northern Kentucky artists.

These figurative paintings instantly tell the stories of two very different women--one rejected and the other joyful. Both are technical masterpieces with compositions that pull the viewer into the story, only then to discover the supporting elements in the paintings

The Colonial woman in The Shunned carries a deep sadness as she climbs a ladder to the loft of a barn. You can feel her rejection as Bodine's fine brushwork and his sensitive eye for color create the atmosphere from a true story teller. I could stand and watch this painting for hours and still find something I did not see before.

  

The swimmer in Jubilant is quite the opposite of the saddness. Buck's figure is captured as she pulls up to the edge of a swimming pool. Water streams downward from her head and a look of complete satisfaction on her face says happiness all over her. Few artists compare to Buck's ability to depict figures immersed in water -- crisp blues and violets and bright highlights creates a sense of depth and movement with the swirling reflections surrounding each figure he paints. This fairly large pastel hangs in the Greenwich lobby..

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Few More of My Favorites from the show. . . 

Two other paintings in the show also  feature women, in this case both are standing on the beach looking outward to the water: Ray Hassard’s Watching the Boys Swim (18 x 24 pastel) and Carol MacConnel's Beautiful Day (30x40 oil).

How often do we parents have to take this guard position to make sure our kids are safe while they jump around in the ocean-- or just standing there watching them having fun? And how often do we stand humbly on a shoreline to gaze out at the immensity of God’s incredible creation?

Hassard's piece centers on a colorfully dressed mother who is both apprehensive and happy to watch her boys playing in the waves.

MacConnell's Beautiful Day captures the back of a woman against a brilliant blue ocean and sky. 

Don Schuster’s A Higher Calling features a plein air artist at work on a cityscape from a location in front of a retail clothing store window. The painter is set back in a shadow of blues while violet tones play across the dresses in the window. Nice combination of color and composition. 

 

Jeff Morrow won Best of Show with his The Designer, a stunning  24 x 30 oil portrait that hits your eyes just as you enter Greenwich Gallery's lobby.

No surprise that Mark Daly was in the show with his Distant Sails. I have long followed Mark's cityscapes of New York streets and his boat scenes from Maine.

Art thrives in our home town. There are so many excellent paintings and sculptures in the 80 on display in the Cincinnati Art Club's 49th annual ViewPoint competition. If you cannot get to Greenwich Gallery by November 4, take a look on the Art Club's website for all the winners. Pick out your favorites and let me know which others I should have included in this brief recap.

 

Simplicity in a World of Complexity

 

"Evening Light"

12"x 24" oil on canvas

Artist: Barron Krody

 

Barron Krody and Richard Blumberg were my business partners in a marketing agency that we created from scratch and built into one of the top 50 in the US. The spark in our agency was creativity. Our strategies were more comprehensive than other agencies. The work we produced was, I think, surprising to the world. It generated results for our clients. It would not have been possible without a special chemistry that existed between Barron, Richard and me.

Richard and I were the writers and Barron was the designer. The three of us came together as creative thinkers. Thinking, it turns out, is rather hard. This is true whether you are creating a marketing program or a painting. Barron was especially good at simplifying the visual quality of our work—making it snap out of the marketplace so it would get noticed by end customers. While his task was design, he often wrote some of our best headlines.

After leaving our agency to other employees to run, Barron returned to his first love—painting. It took me another decade before I would return to painting.

Barron and his wife Nancy moved to Stony Brook, NY where he re-launched his career as an artist. Again, his work found simplicity as an essential undergirding. As Barron says, “I paint what I see the way I want it to be.”

His inspiration now comes from living on Long Island Sound and summering on the coast of Maine. Barron's sensitivity to light and color make every painting a statement of his perception of what is in front of him. His work is intense and you can see a representational sampling on his website (krodypaintings.com).

Barron graduated from the Art Academy of Cincinnati.  He was a freelance graphic designer and full time art instructor at AAC for seventeen years before becoming a founding partner in WBK Marketing, Design, Internet in 1979. For his art and design he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Directors Club of Cincinnati.

In the end, however, it is not Barron’s creativity that makes him such a special person. It is his sensitivity to other people. You see, Barron turns out to be one of the kindest, most gentle people I have ever known. He cannot help it because that is who he is.

 

Remembering Bill

 

 

 “Joseph Roy, Portrait of Worker”

1934 oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Artist: William E. Gebhardt

 

Many of my memories now are fuzzy, back to 1954 when I completed my first oil painting at the William Gebhardt School of Art in downtown Cincinnati. I was in the sixth or seventh grade and Bob Hebenstriet, my friend at College Hill Elementary School (already an accomplished artist) suggested I enroll in the art school with him.

As a young and immature kid who just loved drawing, Bill was a big, very imposing man. Despite his constant laugh, he scared the crap out of me. Intimidated would have been the operative word.

I can still picture myself walking up the steps to the second floor on my first day at the art school. It was  a long dark stairway leading to a large painting studio and a smaller commercial art studio, above an Empress Chili Parlor and across the street from the Greyhound Bus Station on Fifth Street.

I had no idea what to expect.

I was put at a drawing table in the commercial art and drawing studio. My first assignment was one that would stick with me for the rest of my life. He sat me down and showed me how to hold a pencil and draw ellipses. One after another after another. That I did not expect. When I graduated from ellipses, I could draw them in my sleep. I still can.

But it was the art studio that held the excitement for me. The smell of oil paint and turpentine was everywhere. Lots of big easels and stools. A wall of bins where students stored their works in progress. My friend Bob was already painting in the big room. He was the school’s star student. I couldn’t wait to escape the ellipses and get in there with him.

That day came and Bill set up a cluster of artificial carnations in a vase and a few pieces of fake fruit. He patiently guided me through the process of painting a still life. He kept urging me to find subtle colors in the flowers—colors that for the life of me I could not actually see. I can still remember exactly where I sat in the painting studio during this exercise. Many more paintings were to come after the carnations, and I eventually learned to see the colors that were actually in front of me all the time.

While I was attending his art school, he was commissioned by Pigall’s Restaurant to produce a huge still life mural. I got to paint a few of the grapes in that painting.

Born in 1907, Bill was five years younger than my own father. And like my dad, Bill was far from wealthy. He was a graduate of the Dayton Art Institute and the Cincinnati Art Academy. He studied in Europe for five years and attended the Sorbonne and the Academy of Scandinave, both in Paris. He taught at the Cincinnati Art Academy, Dallas County Art League in Selma AL, and the Central Academy of Commercial Art. He also painted portraits of many prominent Cincinnatians.

Bill had paintings displayed in American and European art galleries including the Metropolitan Art Museum and Whitney Art Museum, both in New York; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Tel Aviv Art Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum and Dayton Art Museum.

He moved to Florida after retirement and a few years later tragically died in an auto accident.

While my first impression of him was intimidating, I grew to appreciate him as a teacher. He set me off on a journey of painting and appreciating fine art that would last a lifetime.

Bob Fabe -- Artist and Professor of Art

Untitled

18" x 24" oil on canvas

Artist: Robert Fabe (1917-2004)

I knew Bob when I was one of his post-graduate students at the University of Cincinnati. We have two of his prints hanging in our home.

Bob was a relaxed,  inspirational teacher. We would all be set up in the studio when he would wander in a bit after the official start time. He'd grab a wooden box and sit in the middle of the room and launch into a story. A different story in every class. And every time, by the end of his story, we were all so motivated that we would have walked through a brick wall just to have the chance to pick up a paint brush and do art.
Bob Fabe made my Saturday mornings special for three years.

What I took away from his teaching was his sense of color and the impact that a well-placed highlight can have on the success of a painting. Hitting these high tones takes a bit of courage. Too much ruins all your work and too little leaves the painting looking for life.

Biography: Robert Fabe (1917-2004)

Robert Fabe moved to Cincinnati as an infant. His father, Morris, was a talented amateur artist, and Robert worked along side of his father, painting from an early age of 7. He attended Withrow High School which had an educational relationship with the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

After graduation from Withrow, he received a scholarship at the Art Academy.

In 1939 he received the “out of town” scholarship to the Art Students League in New York City. Here he studied with Raphael Soyer, George Grosz, and Arnold Blanch. In 1940 he returned to Cincinnati and opened his own art studio.

In 1941, Robert was drafted into the United States Army, where he served for five years. He participated in the Battle of the Bulge and D Day invasion in Europe. He was wounded twice while serving in Europe.

He returned to Cincinnati after the war and taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

In 1958 Robert joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati in the College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning. He stayed until 1987.

Throughout his long, creative career, Robert painted daily, and won numerous awards. His work is in many museums, private and corporate collections.