Last year, the Taft Museum of Art embarked on a new series of exhibitions called Keystone Contemporary. The goal is that each exhibition would feature one local emerging artist who's been invited to respond — directly or abstractly — to the Taft’s collection, the historical house, its interior décor or perhaps even other special exhibitions on view at the museum.
The first Keystone Contemporary exhibition last year featured a series of new works by local realist painter Emil Robinson. An oversized painting of a cloudy sky was accompanied by three oval works: two figure paintings and a digital photograph of the artist’s studio wall. The relationship between Robinson’s tender, studied paintings and the Taft’s collection of figurative and landscape oil paintings was clear. The ovals even made sense in relationship to the circular enamel paintings on the watches at one end of the room. One felt that Robinson’s work celebrated the traditions in art-making upheld in the Taft collection and added to them with contemporary works.
The Taft’s second selection is less obvious but no less appropriate. Kristine Donnelly is a local installation artist who works with printmaking and cut paper to create highly ornamental tableau from basic materials. A Cincinnati native, she graduated with a Master of Fine Arts and a Master of Arts Education from the University of Cincinnati in 2009 and received a Summerfair Individual Artist grant the same year. She's shown locally in numerous exhibitions at venues like ArtWorks and Carl Solway Gallery.
Go here to read Matt Morris' full review of Kristine Donnelly's Paperwork, which continues through Oct. 24.
