A woman dressed as a wedding cake gyrating on a pedestal. A 6-foot-long root beer Popsicle melting into a plastic wading pool on a summer night. A dozen pieces of Double Bubble that each had been chewed the same number of times, then dried and gold-plated. Polaroid photos of a young man eating identical sandwiches in different McDonald's. Ice cream sculptures. A fetching cityscape of gingerbread sealed inside a Plexiglas case with 1,000 satisfied roaches. If one of the goals of art is to make indelible impressions, then CAC's early 1970s exhibit, Eat Art, succeeded splendidly.

It's 1973. Music by the composer John Cage will be performed at an opening at the CAC, and John Cage himself is there. Because I'm the art critic for The Cincinnati Post, I am introduced to him. He's standing next to me, actually, when the performance begins. A woman plays, on a "prepared" piano, a composition with quite a lot of silence in it. Longish periods in which there's no sound at all. Cage is rapt, more silent than the piano, but makes a small movement. I look down at his feet. One of them is tapping without sound to the nonexistent music.

Working at the CAC in the spring of 1984, I was part of an installation of a light sculpture by artist Rockne Krebs from Washington. I assisted him to install a laser sculpture on Fountain Square using three large, water-cooled argon lasers. The downtown project involved many sites and people who helped us place the lasers at Carew Tower (Dr. Leon Goldman and Charles Fleischmann), Fifth Third Bank (Phillip Long) and the Polk Building (Ruth Meyer, Taft Museum). The city of Cincinnati's public works and safety departments helped us use the square and control street lighting. The Federal Aviation Administration allowed us to aim the lasers into the sky, and we worked with the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates lasers.

Krebs figured out the actual placement of the lasers and mirrors to reflect around the Tyler Davidson Fountain. We worked at night to align and focus the lasers and mirrors, using binoculars and walkie-talkies up on ladders and roof tops. It was prom season, so it was interesting to see the reaction of the formally attired high schoolers dazzled by the blue-green light coming from all different angles. It was a sublime experience, and I'll always remember it fondly.

I remember a moment. It was one of those turning points, a single offhand comment, the kind you have no idea at the time what it really means. It was early 1989, and I'd just left a job at The Cincinnati Enquirer for a position at Cincinnati Magazine. CAC Director Dennis Barrie was telling us that a potential glitch had just turned into a windfall. It had been a hectic time for the CAC: "We were losing our curator, so we had some slots open on our schedule." Barrie was delighted to have just found a touring show that had a slot open that matched his open dates.

I remember thinking, "There's a lucky guy. He loses his curator and still manages to scramble and book a show so there's no gap on his schedule." He told us the show, to open in April 1990, was a collection of pictures by the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Yeah, lucky guy.

When the picketing of the Mapplethorpe exhibit was going on, I was guest directing a CCM theater production, The Curse of the Starving Class. There was a scene with full frontal male nudity, and no one noticed. No one picketed the show. Everyone was busy picketing the photos at the CAC. I also remember attending a wedding reception at the CAC, which seemed a great use for the space, and all of the art around made me feel like it was a terrific new beginning for the couple.

The line stretched around the block onto Fourth Street. Robert Mapplethorpe had come to town, and Simon Leis was doing everything in his flummoxing power to make the night memorable. We dropped out of line, went to dinner and came back. After midnight we finally reached the door where occupancy codes were being rigidly enforced: Two out, two more in. CAC Director Dennis Barrie and Board Chairman Roger Ach stood there, shaking hands, assuring members and guests that as long as people wanted to enter and see the photographs the CAC would remain open. And it did. Bravo, Dennis. Bravo, Roger.

I used to joke that CAC openings attracted people who must have been imported from some other, more hip city. That was never more true than in September 1996. New CAC Director Charles Desmarais kick-started his first full season with a travelling exhibition about tattoo designs, Pierced Hearts and True Love. At the show's opening party, the CAC set a new standard for events: More than 1,000 guests crammed into the center's space. As I walked in at mid-evening, I detected the pungent smell of ... car exhaust? Then I heard revving engines and stuttering mufflers and watched a string of bikers who'd been invited to the party -- aboard their Harleys -- bounce down the CAC's steps, pivot around the Mercantile lobby, glide past the Walgreen's onto Fifth Street and roar off into the night. Back inside, a frenzied disco was in full swing, and a fashion show saw many local citizens baring more than their shoulders to show off their own tattoos. I asked myself, "Is this really Cincinnati?"

At the members' opening for Yoko Ono's exhibition in September 1997, there were two large floor areas: One area was covered with rocks on the floor, and the other was empty. That was it. People were allowed to do whatever they wanted with the rocks to express themselves. Many were collecting rocks from the pile and creating smaller piles in the other space.

On the wall was a very nondescript telephone with no signage. Word had spread that Yoko was known to call and speak to people attending her previous exhibits in other cities. I intentionally hovered near the phone, and it rang about 30 minutes after we got there. I picked up the receiver, and she announced, "Hello, this is Yoko Ono and, if you wish, I will answer one question." I asked about the stories I'd heard of how she met John Lennon. She corrected a few details, which I've since forgotten, but overall the story I'd heard was pretty accurate. She then asked me to describe what was happening at the CAC. I told her about the people making their own personal rock piles. She asked if I'd done anything with her exhibit. I told her I'd made my own rock pile and what I was thinking when I did it.

Yoko then asked if anyone else wanted to speak with her; a line was forming behind me. She asked if I'd do her a favor and instructed me to whisper the words "I love you" into the ear of the next person to speak on the phone. He was a biker-looking guy, about 6-foot-4 with a long ponytail. I did exactly as Yoko asked me. He casually replied, "Thanks, man."

Aged nearly a score, about three years ago, my earliest sensations of the CAC relay my first foray coupling art "viewer" and arts "writer." Satisfying the curriculum of my Current Arts Forum professor Joan Robinson, An Active Life was the second review I'd ever authored (the first was Julie Taymor's show at the Wexner Center). I can't recollect my take on the giant bronze robot outside the CAC, but the Walgreen's attic wasn't even a blip on my local radar before that point. In fact, I'm sure I thought the only institution that exhibited art was the Cincinnati Art Museum. Can you imagine my surprise at art and "fun" together? Somewhere between the ping pong table, rearrangeable table-top tiki beads, interactive Carsten Holler sculptures and a "flying machine" in the old rotunda, I fell in love.

My most vivid memory is when I saw the unveiling of the designs for the new building. I was immediately struck by the truly operatic proportions of the new space, matched by the significance it represents in our community and beyond. The building concepts also inspired the idea of having Zaha design an opera for us. The energy and proportion of her designs are so operatic, it's amazing. We're still hoping to realize that dream someday.

My fondest memories of the CAC hail from the mid-1980s. Amy Banister (now director of public relations at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County) and I held similar posts -- she at the CAC and I at the Taft Museum. We were both recent transplants to Cincin-nati and used to pal around and provide mutual support. Programming at the Taft was conservative, to say the least, and I was always envious of Amy's opportunity to hobnob with the "like, totally cool" artists and performers.

I recall one CAC series that featured the likes of Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Ping Chong and Sankai Juku. Being the quintessential "personal handler" to the stars, Amy was instructed to find a live peacock for Sankai Juku, which she dutifully accomplished -- a bird called "Ham" from a farm in New Richmond, a nervous fellow who required his own dressing room. From putting out public relations fires to peacock wrangling, her job was never dull.

I also remember the CAC's competition for the earthworks sculpture at Sawyer Point. Andrew Leicester's winning entry with its gothic-inspired pig-capped smokestacks was a huge embarrassment for much of Cincin-nati's citizenry and played itself out on the editorial pages and with protesters sporting "snouts" at City Hall. It's nice to see the success of the Flying Pig Marathon and Big Pig Gig -- apparently Porkopolis has finally embraced its "swine" roots. Once again the CAC was ahead of its time!

Of the many shows at the CAC that have affected my thinking over the years, none has had more impact than last year's Sprawl. There were several of the 14 installations I didn't much care for. In fact, at the time, I remember thinking it wasn't among the center's best exhibits. But the theme of "sprawl" was impossible to ignore. Found objects littered the space of installations, which seemed to spill one on top of the other. The impact was overwhelming. For months afterward, I found myself looking at my own suburban neighborhood in profoundly different ways -- how the construction zones seem to spring up one from another, how there seems to be increasingly less and less space to breathe. I give former CAC Curator Sue Spaid credit for pulling off such a provocative and original exhibition.

I remember when the Contemporary Arts Center was a giant bus shelter, a place to kill time between connecting Metro transfers. Boooring. Back then I didn't get it, and I always thought it tried too hard. And that dumb-ass robot out front looked like a B-movie prop or a relic from an amusement park. Then Robert Mapplethorpe trotted out his cache of elephantine black penises, and Sheriff Simon Leis broke out his leather and put self-expression and Cincinnati's myopia on trial. I've been down with the CAC ever since.

Scenes from our relationship: wig-splitting poetry, Adrian Piper's political polemics of racial identity, the Neoancestral-ists' postmodern/post-Motown shanty towns and now the ahhhh of Zaha. My CAC prayer: Lord, don't let it choke on the vomit of its own percolating hype. And may art save us, every one. Amen.