The camera is a curious instrument. Its purposes run from mundane to exotic and include a sweeping range between, but the odd thing is that the operator of the instrument is reflected whatever the purpose may be.  

My grandmother would say to me, in German, “Paper is patient,” explaining that one could write anything he or she wanted on paper, whether true or false. Though I’d always associated the quote with the written word, I was reminded of it while considering Pulp Art, a show by 11 paper artists at the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center.  

“Experimenting is what art is about,” Jens Rosenkrantz told his audience in the small, early 19th century rooms at Betts House last Saturday afternoon.  

This may seem a strange way to start a review of the year in Cincinnati’s visual arts, but the piece that stays with me the most — haunts me, really — doesn’t even fit any traditional definition of art.  

If you’re looking for cliché presents, head to your nearest department store. If you and your favorite recipients are looking for a memorable exhibit, head to the Weston Art Gallery for Straight from the Soul, a 25-year retrospective by the Atlanta artist.
  

Matthew Rolston has taken close-up portraits, startlingly realistic headshots, of some 200 figures — colloquially known as dummies — at Fort Mitchell, Ky.’s Vent Haven ventriloquism museum. The results are in a new book, Talking Heads, to be published next month by Pointed Leaf Press.
  

Shhh! There’s a tree sleeping inside Phyllis Weston Gallery. You’ll want to be silent — not because you might awaken it, but so that it can awaken you to Shinji Turner-Yamamoto’s thinking.
  

A hybrid of a boutique hotel, a fine dining restaurant and a museum, downtown Cincinnati’s 21c Museum Hotel is a jaw-dropping, sui generis masterpiece.
  

NINE is just fine — both the name and the Carnegie exhibit. The title discloses only the number of artists, who represent ceramics, sculpture, painting, glass and mixed media. The show is without an obvious or assigned theme. But rather than feeling like a mish-mash, it works.  

If Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Herb Ritts could have a drink together, they’d find so much to talk about that the drinks might just keep coming. The Cincinnati Art Museum’s total collection of Toulouse-Lautrec prints (43) and posters (eight) fill niches at right and left of the Great Hall balcony entrance to Herb Ritts: L.A. Style, providing that sensuous outlay of black and white photographs with an historic backdrop.  

Plodding feet and murmuring voices mingle up the gallery stairs. Students Alvin, Ben, Chad and Matt have arrived from local community building organization Starfire and settle in front of laptops loaded with their digital photos as another day of art education begins at Prairie Gallery.
  

The Covington home of artist Jeremy Johnson is a frozen menagerie. Hollow skulls cast a shade of the macabre on the dining room-turned-dissection studio.  

What’s a nice girl like Emily Brandehoff doing making gory paintings like this? Young sweethearts look as if they’re from Our Town, except they’re chewing one another to a pulp.
  

Nestled between Black Plastic Records and Styles of Essence, 4029 Hamilton Ave. is a modest building with a sign reading, “Northside International Airport” adorning the storefront. The name itself coupled with the chalkboard outside advertising tacos is enough to pique the interest of passersby.  

Why are Hollywood glamour photographs on display at the Taft Museum of Art? FotoFocus isn’t reason enough; the Taft likes to establish a tie between the renowned permanent collection and temporary exhibitions. So what is Myrna Loy doing here?