The website of the Riffe Gallery provides the virtual exhibition and the schedule for artists’ live talks. Credit: Courtesy of Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery.
“Build it: Artists Creating Community in Ohio” gathers artistic work celebrating the art community and human activities bringing people together — far from the common visual of the lonely artist creating in solitude.
In addition to hosting a virtual exhibition on its website since Jan. 28, the Riffe gallery has scheduled several one-hour live talks on Facebook with a different artist every two weeks until April 10. Jessica Hess, the curator of the show and the host of the art podcast, “I Like Your Work,” said that she came to Columbus from Boston with the idea of shaping a community of artists in Ohio.
“I look at community art as people coming together that have a common interest, which is illuminating the lives of others, invigorating a city or town creatively and supporting other artists,” Hess said.
When she was in Boston, Hess said she brought artists together with events and talks tied to the podcast. In doing so, she said she built connections with different artist networks.
“I really loved the community that it started to build between artists and also within the Boston arts. So when I moved to Ohio approximately two years ago, I was really interested in meeting artists who were creating spaces for others,” Hess said.
Hess said she compiled the artist panel through personal research on the internet, Instagram and her own network. She then scheduled studio visits, 70 percent of which were made before the pandemic. Hess said she was reluctant at first to include artists she couldn’t meet in person, but it turned out to provide more depth to the exhibition.
“It opens up a lot of dialogue between the artists because instead of having to travel three hours, I could jump on a Zoom session and ask them questions to really get to know their work,” Hess said.
Gloria Ann Shows, a Columbus-based artist, contributed to the show with print works. She gave a live talk Wednesday about her work and her background. She said she was born in the Philippines and — before settling in the United States — regularly moved to different places because of her father’s work.
She said this sense of impermanence and the multiculturalism she lived with suddenly became crystal clear as she landed in Oklahoma.
“I spent a lot of time hoping for signals from other mixed kids or even Filipino Americans who would wallow with me in their lack of roots or confused sense of heritage,” Shows said.
Her personal memories of uprooting shape her art, as it can be intended for communities or individuals inside communities that do not feel in tune with their environment.
Shows said her work is mostly figurative and strongly influenced by cartoons — a significant part of the visual culture of her childhood.
“I have always found in the simplicity of cartoonist figures an opportunity to project similarities into each character, beyond what’s expressed in their actions,” Shows said.
Shows said another body of her work leans toward landscapes. When she draws them, she focuses on islands and mountaintops.
“Locations that are difficult to access from my current position, either from a level of effort it would be required to travel or due to the imaginary nature of these places — this reflects the distance between now and then, here and there,” Shows said.
Shows said she addressed the cultural pressures to assimilate into communities. She replicates the Eastern art perspective of vertical stacking space, a perspective method without a horizon line. Later on, Shows said, the horizon line became a dominant feature in Eastern art due to Western influence.
The next live talk will take place on the Riffe Gallery Facebook page Feb. 17 with Glen Cebulash, a Dayton-based artist.
