Culled from the Ohio Historical Society’s own collection of such objects are five installments making what is called “Controversy Two: Pieces We Don’t Talk About”. Immediately upon walking into the exhibit you are presented with a Nazi flag, followed by a poem written in dialect, and a child’s bowling set featuring cartoonish depictions of immigrants. It is followed by a room full of the Courier and Ives “Darktown” series, and lastly a Cleveland Indians Jacket from 1947.

The point of the exhibit is not to assume some guilt from our collective past, to let the blatant racism wash over like a bitter rain. Controversy Two is merely encouraging curiosity and conversation.

It’s natural in this exhibit to be affected by some objects more than others. It’s hard not to have some emotional reaction to the stark Nazi flag with the swastika emblazened on it in black. This particular flag has a story. Private Harold J. Gordon Jr. from the 175^th infantry regiment took the flag from a Tiger Tank on May 7^th, 1945 the day of Germany’s surrender. He gave it to his father in Cleveland, Ohio. The swastika used a symbol of good luck until it became associated with Nazi Germany. The symbol still holds its power today, proudly displayed by white power organizations and neo-Nazis. It reminds us that even in what some call a “post racist” world, we are far from it.

Also in a not too distant past is one of the best selling Currier and Ives lithography series, Darktown. The company is known for their idyllic prints of happy and well to do people enjoying life, these Dark Town prints, again, some of their best selling, are almost like a slap in the face that still stings after 130 years. At the time of production, Currier and Ives described the series as “pleasant and humourous designs, free from coarseness or vulgarity.” That last bit is a little hard to swallow. Images like these were common at the time, with actors in minstrel shows often appearing in black face. It brings to mind truly how much what is considered “acceptable” has changed in our media and our society.

Go see Controversy II at the Ohio Historical Society for yourself to see what impacts you. It is a bold move to display such challenging objects allowing general public to make their own assumptions about. It reminds us that though our history is written by those that lived it, it is up to us to filter that information for ourselves.

Controversy II is on display through December 30th, 2012 at the Ohio Historical Society.  Visit the website for hours and information.

Alexander creates mesmerizing artwork using large sheets of pure white layered paper, cutting designs in surgical precision with an exacto knife. Her work evokes a sculptural quality, and she finds that when her work is viewed “people [would say] ‘that’s paper, really?’”  Laura laughs at the fact that her chosen medium is white paper, because it is a huge contrast to her self-admitted messiness.  “I can’t even wear white cause I’ll get dirty!”

It’s about the process for Laura.  “I’m so interested in the materials.  I want to push paper beyond where you think it can [go].”  The many tedious hours that she puts into her pieces are like a “meditative process” for her.  She puts it simply: “The world is such a crazy place, and I just come in [the studio] and I draw and I cut and it all just fades away.”

Recently, Laura pushed herself to the limit and was rewarded for it.  After a curator got in touch with her, Laura submitted an 8 foot by 8 foot piece to ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  ArtPrize is an international art competition where the top ten finalists are chosen by the public and receive cash prizes.  Entitled “The Tempest II” it took over 300 hours for Laura to complete.  Alexander was overwhelmed by the experience in Grand Rapids.  “Over 160,000 people came through the exhibition.  Every artists’s dream is to have [so many] people looking at your work but at the same time I was standing there for 12 hours a day next to my piece talking to people so it was physically and emotionally exhausting.”  But it was worth it.

“My mom called me on my lunch break at work and she was like, “You’re in!!!”, says Alexander about hearing the news she was in the top ten.  “I started crying.”  Alexander was voted 7th place in ArtPrize out of 1500 international artists.  

What’s next for Laura Alexander?  “I had a teacher in high school that said you’re only as good as your next piece,” recounts Laura. “I’m always trying to be better.”  

To see some of Laura’s work, check out her profile at  www.columbusarts.com where you can also find profiles of many local artists here in Columbus.  Alexander does not have plans for any upcoming shows, but keep an eye out for what she might come up with next.

Power lines, windmills, water reservoirs, cell phone towers, are things that often escape our attention.  These essential objects are part of the infrastructure that makes our society function. Without them we couldn’t turn on our lights, or call our friends and yet we often see them as eyesores or not at all.

Tracing Lines is an exhibit at the Urban Arts Space that explores the parts of our landscape that we tend to edit out.  The images illuminate a beauty in the infrastructure.  There’s Alexandra copley’s  photograph of power lines cutting geometrically through an azure sky.  The ghost like architecture of a power plant in the distance by Ralph Prince. With a wide variety of mediums, each piece in Tracing Lines presents you with something new to consider about infrastructure.

Perhaps one of the most interesting and powerful pieces is a collaborative photography project containing works from all around the globe.  Viewed from a distance the collective shape is reminiscent of the way infrastructure fragments our landscape.  Up close, you can see that power lines have a universal quality that we all experience wherever we may live.   These little photographs pieced together, from centralize what the entire show is about.  Infrastructure, while it is something we can choose to ignore, is a necessary part of all of our lives.

After seeing this exhibit maybe you can change your focus when you look outside your window, even if it’s just for a second..  See the elegance in the industrial design that populates our landscape.

The Urban Arts Space is located at 50 West Town Street and open Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 6 pm, with late hours on Thursday until 8 pm.  Tracing Lines  is curated by Aimee Sones and Jessica Larva and assisted by John Javins, and is on view through March 24th, 2012.

Curator of American Art at the Columbus Museum of Art Melissa Wolfe was curious, “What is that legacy that the contemporary Columbus art world draws from, and grows on?  What is its past?

Sometimes those things [artists] are known and sometimes, as this show has proven sometimes it’s not so well known.” What Wolfe is hinting at is a treasure trove of artistic gems to discover in the exhibition.

“While there are those “cornerstone artists I knew, and most people are going to know [like] George Bellows, and Emerson Burkhart but not everyone,” says Wolfe. You can also find works by familiar names Roy Lichtenstein, Roman Johnson, Elijah Pierce, or Alice Schille.

Whether any of these names are familiar to you or not, Wolfe has spread out a buffet of artists to pique your interest into what the artistic culture in Columbus was long before we know it as it is today.

The long threads that run through the diverse exhibition are the communities that cobbled together Columbus’s burgeoning art world.  Wolfe considers Columbus’s relative size as a city in comparison to larger art meccas such as New York City or Los Angeles. In those larger cities, supposes Wolfe, the communities don’t have to inter-mingle or “read the same newspapers, or show in the same shows.”

Here in our “unassuming, midwestern city” is a large enough base of artists to create an interesting mix of artists and communities but small enough to engender camaraderie and support of one’s fellow artists.

In the wonderful biographies that accompany each artist in the exhibition, you can learn about the strands that connect all of these artists together. Wolfe “installed artists next to each other who had relationships so you can get the story.  Even if you don’t get the relationship in the art work, you get the human story, and the narrative story, and the story of community.”  You can find out who taught who, who shared a studio or went to go hang out with Bellows in Woodstock, or distinguish a connection all on your own.

The variety of this show is truly at the heart of it.

“The show includes sculpture, and ceramics, and cartoons, and prints, and pastels, and oil, and folk artists, and academic artists,” smiles Wolfe, after taking a quick breath.  ”I really tried to get a sense of the mix because one of the hallmarks of the city is this really integrated mix of these artists.”

100 Years of Art is on view at the Riffe Gallery from January 26th to April 15th. Visit their website for hours and information.

Seven nights a week on WBNS 10-TV Fritz came into your living room with his own particular brand of commentary.  They showed all sorts of movies throughout the week, but Friday nights seemed to be particularly seminal to a lot of viewers.  “The [double] chiller was probably what I was know for best,” says Fritz. “That’s when a kid in 5th or 6th grade, on a Friday night, his parents would let him stay up late and that was kind of a moment in their lives, and all of a sudden, “I can stay up past midnight, up till three or four in the morning and watch this.”

Fritz is characteristically humble about the effects he’s had on Central Ohio residents.  “At the time I didn’t realize 20 years later that people would tell me, “Oh, wow I remember the first time I got to stay up ‘til three or four in the morning and you would scare me.” Fritz is still surprised by the reaction he gets from his fans.

With a career in broadcasting spanning over 50 years, a collection of Emmy’s spanning his mantle many of Fritz’s childhood dreams have come true. Though he didn’t end up being a jazz musician, Fritz hosted the beloved Nite Owl Jazz for 19 years on various radio stations throughout Columbus.  He didn’t become famous movie star, but he played himself in a movie every single night in Columbus.  Fritz was the first late-night movie host to use special effects to insert himself into the movies leading to commercial breaks.   “When they [WBNS] broached me in doing it [Nite Owl Theatre] I said everything that I do, the visuals, the music , the voice over has to relate to this movie.  I would research the movies and then I would just ad lib.  I had a program director, John Haldee, who just said “look, do what you want, just have everything done by 6:00 in the morning when we have to start the new broadcast day.” Fritz continues with a laugh: “That’s the kind of program director you want to have.”

This hardworking man is characteristically flippant about being characterized as “hardworking.”  “I have a PhD in laziness and procrastination,” says Fritz with a smile.  “Literally, all my life I don’t consider anything I’ve done work.  Even in my army career…I was writing, directing, narrating, and acting in movies for the army.  I put more GI’s to sleep probably than any guy playing taps.  I was an usher in a movie theater so I got paid to stand in the aisle and watch movies.  As a DJ I got to play the music I wanted to play and just sit in a nice air-conditioned studio listening to good sounds.  So I really can’t think of any job that I considered work.”

Nite Owl Theatre ended in 1991, and his radio show on WKZA was cancelled in 2010 due to a change in format but a new opportunity found Fritz shortly thereafter.  One of his “Fourteen viewers in the dark,” longtime fan Mike McGraner approached Fritz about restarting Nite Owl Theatre again.  “It amazed me that it’s [the new Nite Owl Theatre] on the internet.  In the old days, you know radio and tv, you were limited by how tall is the tower, which way it was pointing, and that was your potential audience,” remarks Fritz.  “Now on the internet, that people can hear me in Des Moines, Deluth, Debuke, Fiji, that kind of blows me away.”

Not only can you see the new Nite Owl Theatre online at www.niteowltheatre.com, you can also watch it late-night the last Friday of each month at Studio 35.  Fans new and old still come out to see their late night king of cool in person.  “As long as there is an audience for it,” Fritz has no plans in stopping.  “My favorite part is that I considered [his career] all of it an art.  I just felt that I was creating something that was new or different that hadn’t been seen or heard before.” says Fritz, looking back.  “Whatever I did I did because that’s what I wanted to do and if you paid me for it, even better.  I never did anything because somebody expected it or wanted me to do it.” He compares what he did to musicians working with an instrument or an artist with a canvas. “ I had this canvas that was audio/video, movies, and I had to blend something into that [it] was a unique creation and that was very gratifying.”

The next episode of Nite Owl Theatre airs at Studio 35 on Friday, February 25th at 11:30 featuring The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price.  Stop by to meet the man in person, watch a movie, and stay up past your bedtime.

If these are questions you’ve ever asked yourself, Race: Are We So Different? will give you all the information and more to discover the answer for yourself.  Race explores the loaded word in its title through the lenses of science, history, and personal narratives.

“Race and identity is not something people talk about on a daily basis,” says Minnesota-based photographer Wing Young Huie. Huie’s stark black and white photographs are included in the exhibition, grounding the expanse of information in simple portraits of everyday people.

Of the many personal and visual narratives throughout the exhibit, a local touch is added by Columbus area high school students.  Encouraged to reflect on how race impacted their lives on a daily basis, the students made an artistic representation of that feeling in a locker.  As much as this exhibit is researched exhaustively, we might learn just as much from a high school student. 

Amaria Estes, a 16 year-old sophomore, put it quite well:  “I think people who see the lockers and come to the exhibit will realize that people of different colors are similar, what the history of different races went through, and kind of show what young people think about race too.”  The locker project is inspired by a set of decorated lockers included in the exhibit to examine race in our schools.

No stone goes unturned in this exhibit.  There is more information, images, voices, and faces than you can possibly process in one day.  Some of the most striking images come from Wing Young Huie, who has a very pointed view about the subject.

“Race is a difficult subject.  Nobody wants to be looked at through the prism of race.  I don’t want someone I don’t know to come up to me and ask me questions about being Chinese,” imparts Huie.  “What I’m trying to do is to create a new iconography of who we are as Minnesotans, and as Americans.  America has changed, America is shifting and [the] realities have not caught up to that shift, popular culture has not caught up to that shift.  What I’m trying to do is catch us up.”

Whether it’s the questions included in the exhibit, like “Why do we come in different colors?” or “Does where we come from tell us who we are?”, the wide array of faces and personal experiences, or the historical data presented, you will leave this exhibit knowing more about race than you ever did before.  Wing Young Huie speaks to the importance of what happens after you leave the exhibit.

“Once you leave the exhibit, try to take with you what you see, what you’ve experienced, what you’ve ruminated on, and take it with you in your everyday life. Question your assumptions.”

To read the entire transcript of Huie’s interview click here: WYHTranscription.  Race: Are We So Different will be on view at COSI from January 28th through May 6th.  In addition to the exhibit, COSI is partnering with many local organizations to keep the conversation going.  Visit their website at www.cosi.org to see how you can become a part of the discussion.

The resultant book, “Gay In America” has intimate portraits of men from Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and every state in between.  For three years Pasfield traveled over 54,000 miles to photograph over a hundred different men and collect their stories.  In it there are cowboys, priests, architects, fathers, brothers, sons, and neighbors.  

“Their stories are really abut the human condition, and about love, and loss, and life, and how being gay affects those things,” explains Pasfield. “ You don’t have to be gay to appreciate them and learn from them.” 

One story comes from Martin & Peter, the former is the brother of Columbus native Lynn Stecklein.  When Martin’s liver was failing, Peter his partner became a living donor without hesitation.  “He and Peter just celebrated twenty years together,” says Stecklein.  “He’s a wonderful man, fighting for his life.” Martin came out to Lynn while she was going through a divorce and she says, simply: “It means absolutely nothing to me that my brother is gay.  I love my brother no differently than if he were married with three kids.”

Both Lynn and Scott share the same sentiment about the positive impact of “Gay in America” can have.  Whether it’s someone struggling with their own sexual identity or a parent learning how to cope, Lynn shares the crux of the message: “[It is] a book that says, ‘It’s ok.’ ‘You’re ok.’ Take a look at these people from every state in the United States. They’re ok. And you are too.”

“I wish [Gay in America] it existed when I was a kid,” Pasfield divulges. “So I made this book for kids.  You know, that you could go anywhere, do anything, and be anyone you want as a gay man.”

What does it mean to be gay in America?  There is no clear answer, no single defining notion.  However, that seems to be the point.

“I was able to heal as a gay man myself in many ways through this project in finding wisdom from men all over the country,” says Pasfield.  “In it I learned that I’m ok.  It’s ok to be gay.”

To purchase the book “Gay in America”, visit your local bookseller or visit www.gayinamerica.us

From the Grinch himself to Cindy Lou Who, the conservatory is proudly displaying the largest exhibition of original artwork of Chuck Jones straight from “Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.  Legendary animator and director Chuck Jones had over 250 films under his belt and a nearly 70 year career.  More famous than his name are the everlasting characters he brought to life such as Bugs Bunny, the Roadrunner, Elmer Fudd, and the list goes on.

Bonnie Roche, Curatorial Assistant at the Franklin Park Conservatory, tells the story of how the film came into existence. “Chuck Jones originally met Dr. Seuss [Ted Geisel] in World War II when they were in the animation department and they did a cartoon called “Private Snafu”.  “Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas” came years after that and [at the time] Dr. Seuss didn’t want to make any more movies because he was done with Hollywood.” If not for Chuck Jones’s convincing, the enduring holiday classic we have come to love might not have existed.

Roche also discusses the animation process that made “Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas” come to life.  “Back then there were no digital [movies], they had to draw every single second, every single movement they had to have a drawing for.  Understanding that there’s so much more appreciation that goes into the film.”

You can appreciate the process yourself at the Franklin Park Conservatory through January 4th, 2012.  Accompanying the original artwork from the Chuck Jones Center for creativity are gingerbread houses inspired by Jones’s legendary characters.  Visit http://www.fpconservatory.org/ for hours and more information.

“The connection to plants has really been my entire life,” says Hayes.  “Growing up on an agricultural farm, and [I was] always outside.”  Hayes attended graduate school at Parsons in New York City and immediately found a way to stay connected to nature.  Within the first week, she began working as a gardener.  She laughingly admits, “I don’t think I’ve ever really adjusted to living in New York City, and I’ve been living here for over 20 years.”

Her deep connection to plants is immediately apparent in her hand blown glass terrariums. The amount of love, care, and commitment to the inhabitants of her sculptures is similar to that of a mother to an infant. “It’s unbelievable because it’s all of the time. My entire life is devoted to it.” Hayes will tend to plants for years at a time before even considering sending them off into the world.

Whether or not you’re a nature lover yourself, Hayes’ microcosms of plant life invite you to look closer, to see the delicate variety of plants, and to investigate the tiny landscapes enclosed in glass.  The lushness in each encapsulation transports you outside the four white walls of a gallery to whatever imaginary landscape lives in your mind.

While on display at the Wexner Center, four Ohio State Students tend to Hayes’ creations.  Watching them trim and arrange the plants, carefully water and polish them gives a small insight into the amount of time Hayes devotes to her plants.  The act of creating “caretakers” is another component to Hayes’ vision, what she calls her “tribe.”  Hayes: “I would hope the building of this tribe will educate on how we view our relationship to nature and our role and responsibility.”

In addition to the exhibit at the Wexner Center, Hayes was commissioned to design an outdoor garden installation entitled Wexner Center Rooftop Garden that is a permanent addition to the Wexner Center. The exhibition is on display through December 30th in the Wexner Center galleries, and Hayes’ will do an artist’s talk there  on November 16th at 7:00 in the Film and Video theater.

For hours and information, visit: www.wexarts.org

“Caravaggio has one of those lives that makes a great novel,” supposes Dominique Vasseur, Curator of European Art at the Columbus Museum of Art. “He knew that he was tremendously talented, but as his fame increased so did his reckless behavior.” Regardless of the artist’s penchant for jail cells, the juicy details of his infamy are far outweighed by his impact on the art world.

The exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art features a single Caravaggio painting, “Ece Homo,” surrounded by the work of his contemporaries inspired by his bombastic, challenging style. “Caravaggio’s art comes at the very moment when his is able to dramatically change the art world,” says Vasseur.  As Caravaggio was rising in the art world, it came at a time when art had become “Very effete…and unnatural in appearance.”  And we can see, even with just one of his paintings, how his striking realism, transformative use of light, and direct storytelling changed the art world.

“Even though Caravaggio made his career as a painter of religious subjects, there is something so elemental, they are so human, that some people call Caravaggio the first Modern painter.”  

It is rare that a single artist has such an effect on his peers. Vasseur compares Caravaggio’s impact on the art world to that of Pablo Picasso in the early 1900s, or Andy Warhol in the 1960s. Vasseur elaborates: “Because his work was so different, young artists were coming from all over to see his work and totally blown away by them, and wanted to paint like Caravaggio was doing.”

Last year was the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio’s death, and his confrontational style and frank realism are still provoking reactions now as much as in his own time. “And that’s remarkable because in many art movements, such as the impressionists, it [impressionism] was very radical at the time.” says Vasseur.  “We don’t think Impressionism is radical now, we think that it’s lovely, it’s beautiful.  Caravaggio’s art on the other hand still has that edge, it’s got that sheer gutsy-ness, that truly shows him to be a master of his time and of our time.”

You can see the master’s work as well as ten of his contemporaries through February 5th at the Columbus Museum of Art, located at 480 W. Broad St., Columbus, OH 43215.  For hours and information, visit their website at www.columbusmuseum.org.