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    CityBeat Recommends

    Art: Andy Warhol at the Wexner Center

    "Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms" at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus is surprising. It makes Warhol fresh again but also in some ways is far more exciting than the more prim-and-proper 2002 Los Angeles show, even though it has less of his classic artwork. It has important examples of his art but is vividly about his life and times. Through Feb. 15, 2009.

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    Art: Contemporary Print Making at Manifest Creative Research Gallery

    For the Contemporary Printmaking exhibit, Manifest's Creative Research Gallery's call for submissions brought in nearly 400 works by 160 artists for this juried show. Curator Jason Franz made the final cut to 22 works by 13 artists from seven states and the United Kingdom. The multitude of means for printmaking allow for effects not possible from any other discipline. Manifest’s stated aim with this show is “to explore the range of methods and results currently being achieved within the bounds of such processes.” Tuesday-Saturday. Through Jan. 9.

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    Music: Hugh Peanuts Whalum

    St. Louis Jazz mainstay and uncle of and inspiration to renowned Smooth Jazz fave Kirk Whalum, “Peanuts” Whalum has been playing music for seven decades and shows no sign of slowing down, even as he enters his eighties this year. The singer/pianist/saxophonist played around his hometown of Memphis in his teens before heading to Central State in Dayton, playing in the school Jazz band and performing at Carnegie Hall with Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Eckstine. After years of playing with Miles Davis, Nat King Cole and several other legends, Peanuts landed a solo gig, forcing him to develop his piano skills on the quick. Since then, Whalum’s smooth and lounge-y show (and subsequent albums) has been lauded primarily for Whalum’s rich vocals and ace interpretative skills. Whalum comes to the Blue Wisp for shows Friday and Saturday.

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    Events: Game Junkie

    Exercise your thumbs and stock up on RedBull for Cincinnati’s largest gaming festival. Game Junkie Presents: Winter Wonderland will be jam-packed with more than 20 video game stations, including Rock Band 2, Atari 2600 and PlayStation 3 to play all night long. There will also be tournaments featuring such games as Halo 3, Soul Caliber IV, Street Fighter II HD and many more. And if the games aren’t enough to keep you occupied, there will be a place for you to dance into the night along with tunes on an epic sound system. But don’t worry about running out of energy; there will be a snack and caffeine bar open for the duration of the gaming fest. The event will be held at 7 p.m. at Lakota East High School in Liberty Township.

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    Onstage: Performance and Time Arts, Live Art Collision

    The inaugural 2009 Performance and Time Arts Series is kicking off the new year with “Live Art Collision,” a collaboration of seven up-and-coming performers. Be entertained by choreographed dance to poetry works, a one-woman play, an audience-interactive art work, a music-movement theater piece as well as a male and female duo who beats on drums and expands your Japanese vocabulary. It’s a collection of performances that delve into the souls of the artists, invite a little humor and examine aspects of social being. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at College Hill Town Hall.

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    Art: China Design Now at the Cincinnati Art Museum

    "China Design Now" is a comprehensive exhibition of hundreds of objects elaborates on the booming innovations presently taking place in the fields of design, fashion, and architecture throughout China. The exhibition is split into three sections, corresponding one of those design areas with an eastern coastal city: Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. The exhibition continues through Jan. 11, 2009. $8 for adults; $6 for seniors/college students; $4 for children ages 6-17; free for members and children under age 6.

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    Art: Maria Lassnig at the Contemporary Arts Center

    It is astonishing that Maria Lassnig, whose work is presented in an impressive solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), is widely unknown in the United States. She is an influential force throughout Europe, working in Vienna for the past few decades. Closed Tuesdays. Through Jan. 11.

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    Comedy: Vince Morris

    “Comedy to me is true,” says stand-up comic Vince Morris when asked about what makes him laugh. “It’s what I can relate to or something that someone is being honest about,” he says. “If you’re being honest about what you’re talking about, and it comes from the heart, then that makes me laugh. When I watch other people, to me, that’s what true stand-up is.” Morris performs Thursday-Sunday at Go Bananas in Montgomery.

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    Art: Supplemental Ornament at the Weston Art Gallery

    In her brand-new exhibition, Supplemental Ornament, at the Weston Art Gallery in downtown’s Aronoff Center for the Arts, Murphy-Price presents sculptures and prints that simultaneously focus and exaggerate the relationship between our internal identities and the selected accoutrements that extend our personalities into an array of surrounding decorative objects. All the work on display has been made since she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 2005. She now resides in Bloomington, Ind. Simultaneous with her show the Weston also is displaying, through Jan. 10, sculpture by Dietrich Wagner of Erie, Pa., and Pixel paintings by Cincinnati’s Jimi Jones. Tuesday-Sunday.

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    Art: Homework at NVision

    Homework includes mixed-media paintings, collage and embroidery by Arynn and Joel Blazer. he artwork of the husband-and-wife pair fits right in with NVISION’s eclectic mix of vintage and handmade clothing and furniture. The figures in Joel Blazer’s work are reduced to distorted shapes in colors that defy reality and recall decades past. As evident in “Family Portrait,” patterns and prints from dress patterns or cardboard give depth to his two-dimensional work. Arynn Blazer’s work also has a vintage feel. For “Inner Beauty,” she embroidered organic shapes on floral fabric and framed it beside a mirror. Hung beside her husband’s “Floral Portrait,” the mutual influence is clear. Through Jan. 18.

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    Holiday: Ice Skating on Fountain Square

    Fountain Square is fun even in winter because if they can’t have live music, dancing and beer, they have ice skating, which is nostalgic, cuddly childhood kind of fun. The 7,000-square-foot rink (roughly the size of the rink at Rockefeller Center) is right in the center of the square with a view of the fountain and some buildings. Don’t worry about bringing your own skates; you can rent skates there. There are also lockers for your shoes, benches to sit on while you lace up your skates/watch other people skate and a heated tent with vending machines for drinks and snacks.

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    Art: Brush, Clay, Wood at the Taft Museum of Art

    Ed and Nancy Rosenthal haven’t technically opened their home to the public, but the exhibition, Brush, Clay, Wood, on view at downtown’s Taft Museum of Art allows us a peek into their life just the same. The exhibition documents an art collection that began in 1980 with a 3-foot-tall Chinese vase. From there, the Rosenthals — not to be confused with Ed’s brother, Richard Rosenthal, and his wife Lois, the Contemporary Arts Center’s prominent benefactors — ventured on a “collecting odyssey,” as Taft Senior Curator Lynne Ambrosini calls it. The couple traveled throughout China and New York and chose pieces that struck them. As such, their collection runs the gamut of media, size, form, era and technique. Through Jan. 11.

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    Art: Tim Schwallie and Mike Hancock at Aisle Gallery

    Aisle’s new exhibition features artsits Mike Hancock and Tim Schwallie, who have assembled disparate parts into noisemakers and paintings. Hancock’s circuit-bent interactive objects sound off in response to the viewer — knobs, amplifiers and one’s proximity to the pieces create the electronic noise. These pieces have their various switches and circuit boards arranged into simple sci-fi robot faces. Schwallie’s collaged paintings were made between 1988 and the present. Defiant, punky politics have been layered over the top, found panels, such as mass-produced Jesus paintings, to become portraits of Bush, Condi and the rest of the retiring administration. Exhibition continues 1-4 p.m. Monday-Friday through Feb. 13.

    News

    Train Wreck

    Ballot initiative coalition led by NAACP chapter targets city's streetcar plan

    A diverse coalition of groups led by the NAACP's Cincinnati chapter that blocked Hamilton County officials from increasing the sales tax in 2007 to build a new jail has set its sights on another project: the city's proposed streetcar system. A petition drive has been launched to place an issue on the November ballot to prevent Cincinnati officials from spending money on the streetcar project without first getting approval from city voters.

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    Wessels

    Winds of Political Change in 2009

    As I learned working on a political campaign this fall, guessing is a genuine art form for politicos of all stripes. Each person guesses over another's guess about what might happen next, and the cycle continues ad nauseam. Accuracy is fine and all that, but speculation and rumor-mongering is much more fun. In that spirit, here are my predictions for 2009.

    Music

    Sweet Child '09

    A look into the crystal day-planner to see the year's upcoming music news

    It's almost beyond belief that we're on the cusp of the last year of the first decade of the new millennium. What does 2009 hold for us? Axl Rose will release a 10-CD box set of material that was considered for 'Chinese Democracy,' while the late Tupac Shakur will mount his first posthumous tour.

    News

    Are You Really You?

    How to keep your identity from being stolen and used by others

    Personal information also is spread all over the place. The video store wants a driver's license number, social security number and credit card number in case you don't return your movies; they say the information is used to track you down so you can be reimbursed. Where are those paper applications stored at the video shop? If they're locked up, who has a key that would allow access? What kind of safeguards are in place to prevent an unscrupulous employee from getting his hands on that information?

    Music

    Wonk, the New Punk

    Fresh Folk Rock/Bluegrass/Indie trio Wonky Tonk hits the road like true warriors

    Once upon a time she had a Chuck Taylor collection. Now, cowboy boots. Around seven pairs, less than $5 apiece. This day, Wonky Tonk wears white, fringed boots. She and her band of the same name (with Moriah Lawson and Nick Mitchell) are 'fresh and going strong.'

    Movies

    Gran Torino (Review)

    Clint Eastwood bids a limp farewell to acting in the laughable Gran Torino

    Clint Eastwood is not a gifted actor. Twenty years ago, that wouldn’t have been a particularly daring critical statement. The odd outlier like Tightrope notwithstanding, he was known primarily as a guy who could squint one-dimensionally while firing a gun or squint one-dimensionally while being punched by an orangutan.

    Art

    Breaking Down Walls

    Base Cooperative Gallery celebrates the Age of Obama

    As Barack Obama prepares to become America's 44th president on Jan. 20, there are many who see something of themselves in his progressive, time-for-a-change victory against the ruinous Republican status quo. Those include visual artists working on the fringes, showing in urban co-op galleries with limited hours or in coffee houses and group shows at alternative spaces.

    Diner

    Bootsy's Produced By Jeff Ruby (Review)

    Bootsy's is a welcome addition to Cincinnati nightlife

    If there’s a heaven for hairdressers, fashionistas, people on first dates and older women from Miami recovering from cosmetic surgery, Bootsy’s Produced by Jeff Ruby would be it. Packed into the two-story building across from The Aronoff Center where Pizzeria Uno’s used to be, Bootsy’s draws the young, the old and the beautiful.

     
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