BY KATE BRAUER

This week our adventures in art take us south of the border . . . the state border, that is. This weekend, why not head across the river to appease your artistic appetite on the spirited red brick streets surrounding Covington's Mainstrasse district? Mainstrasse offers an eclectic mix of arts and crafts to explore in 14 different stores and galleries. You'll see everything from photography to pottery, painting to stained glass. The shops and galleries range from the elegant to the eccentric. Plus, every third Friday night offers the Mainstrasse Art Hop, with exhibitions on display throughout the village from 7-9 p.m. At Wonders Gifts & Art (609 Main St., Covington), you can shop for everyone on your list, with offerings including photography, paintings, books, cards and a wide range of specialty gift items. The Art Collaborative (638 Main St., Covington) is a more conventional gallery that contains works from various regional and local artists. At Jeff's Pottery & Art (612 Philadelphia St., Covington) you can browse an extensive collection of pottery and even see the kilns that fired the works. Into medieval history, handcrafted jewelry or really big knives? Gothic Edge (602 Main St., Covington) gives visitors a look at the art of the Middle Ages with various prints and jewelry, but the focal point of the store is a collection of weapons from all over the world. The store employees can tell you the history of the weapons including where they were made and what they were originally used for. . . . Traveling north of the river, keep your eyes open for the appearance of a variety of projects taking shape right now as part of the sixth annual Art in the Market, currently underway at Findlay Market (West Elder, Over-the-Rhine). Ask 15-year-old Kenneth Brandon Welch of Holmes High School why he participates in the program, and he won't mince words. "I do Art in the Market because I stay out of trouble and make money the honest way, and have less of a chance of being shot or killed or selling drugs." The program invites inner-city kids, ages 14-18, to work with students and teachers from the UC's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) to conceptualize, develop, create and install public works of art in and around Findlay Market. Art in the Market, a project of the University's Community Design Center in collaboration with the Citizen's Committee on Youthand Impact Over-the-Rhine, operates year-round, culminating with an eight-week summer program. Coordinated by graduate assistant Karen Hutzel, the summer 2002 program is in full swing, employing three DAAP students and 15 young people. Four teams, working collaboratively with professional artists in the community, are in the final stages of installing four major pieces of public art, including a series of colorful banners to be hung around the Findlay Market parking lot, a sequence of black-and-white paintings on the temporary construction barriers surrounding the Findlay Market House, an aluminum sculptural chair to be displayed in the Findlay Market vicinity and a tile mosaic to be installed on the retaining wall surrounding the west end of the Vine Street Playground. Keep tuned to CityBeat for an upcoming feature about Art in the Market. In the meantime, watch for the art as it pops up. For Welch, Art in the Market provides the ideal summer opportunity. "If you ask a kid on the street who likes to do art to come up here and get paid to do art, he probably would," he says. And that's a prediction DAAP is taking to the bank. . . . If you enjoyed the exhibition on modernism in Cincinnati at the Weston Art Galleryearlier this summer, you might want to check out Carl Solway Gallery(424 Findlay St., Over-the-Rhine) for another look at contributions made by artists to the modern art aesthetic. Currently on exhibition are prints of two premiere modern painters, William De Kooning and Frank Stella. A central figure of modern abstract expressionism, De Kooning -- along with Jackson Pollock -- is commonly identified as the central force behind the abstract expressionist movement. If you stop by the gallery you'll see a print of one of De Kooning's black-and-white paintings, an example of the artist in his most "abstract expressionistic" period, employing resonant imagery of mythic proportions. You'll also see a print from Frank Stella, an artist frequently aligned with minimalism. In this piece, however, you can readily discern the influence abstract expressionism had on his work. This exhibition will be on view until Sept. 1. If you like what you see, in Sept-ember the gallery will present a larger exhibition focused on Stella's work. Carl Solway Gallery has been busy this summer. Nam June Paik, widely regarded as the "father of video art" and long tied with the Carl Solway Gallery here in Cincinnati, has led in the fabrication of 16 cars for a sculptural project currently on display in Rockefeller Centerin New York. The nonfunctional, representational cars were assembled by Carl Solway and his staff. Info: 513-621-0069, or e-mail solway@ iac.net

E-mail Kate Brauer

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