Jimi Jones, a longtime active member of the Cincinnati arts scene, discovered he could incorporate pixels — the building blocks of computer graphics — into his paintings. Results of that breakthrough can be seen in the vibrant works at the Weston Art Gallery. Jones’ paintings are big, stridently colorful and speak to you immediately ... they need your close attention. Tuesday-Sunday. Through Jan. 10.  

Andrew Au is a fellow of infinite jest who takes infinite pains to commit his jests to paper. For his text accompanying this show, he's adopted an antique style, reflective of biblical pronouncements but also handy in sending up scientific jargon. He has so much fun with it that senses reel.  

Ralph Lauren, along with every WASP-engendered, suburban-circumscribed good-taste notion of the good life gets it in the eye in Carlton Scott Sturgill’s finely crafted and very funny show, Afterlifestyle, at the Art Academy of Cincinnati's Pearlman Gallery. The Ralph Lauren lifestyle, so commercially viable, seems to Sturgill akin to a quiet death by boredom. Sturgill’s versions of Ralph Lauren magazine ads show the models with closed eyes — already they have succumbed. He is perhaps the first artist ever to employ paint chips for satiric ends and, in another neat turn, he recycles Ralph Lauren shirts into handsome funereal flower arrangements. Death, anyone? Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday. Through Dec. 12.  

Stop by Parkside Café in Walnut Hills between for an exhibition of Everage King’s small but choice paintings. They portray places you might know: The familiar Northside corner “Chase and Hamilton,” a front porch in “Withrow Vista,” “Mt. Auburn Hillside” among them. King, whose day job is installing art at the Cincinnati Art Museum, is a DAAP graduate and has a good eye for a telling scene. He works with ease in acrylic, gouache and that often ill-used medium, watercolor. Parkside is a breakfast/lunch place, open 7 a.m.-3 p.m. daily, and is also establishing itself as a site for art by local artists. King’s show will be up through January.  

Andrew Au is a fellow of infinite jest who takes infinite pains to commit his jests to paper. His show, the binarians, at Clay Street Press through Jan. 17, takes on a controversy that has been in local news as recently as last week when the Cincinnati Zoo, a scientific institution, caught heat for a joint tourism effort with Kentucky’s Creation Museum, which denies evolution. He uses light boxes and etchings as art and for his text accompanying this show, Au has adopted an antique style, reflective of biblical pronouncements but also handy in sending up scientific jargon. Saturdays and by appointment.  

Ralph Lauren, along with every WASP-engendered, suburban-circumscribed good-taste notion of the good life, gets it in the eye in Carlton Scott Sturgill’s finely crafted and very funny show, Afterlifestyle, at the Art Academy of Cincinnati's Pearlman Gallery, 1212 Jackson St. in Over-the-Rhine, now through Dec.12. The Ralph Lauren lifestyle, so commercially viable, seems to Sturgill akin to a quiet death by boredom. Sturgill’s versions of Ralph Lauren magazine ads show the models with closed eyes – already they have succumbed. He is perhaps the first artist ever to employ paint chips for satiric ends and, in another neat turn, he recycles Ralph Lauren shirts into handsome funereal flower arrangements. Death, anyone? Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.  

It begins with a strange and stiff little figure from the 17th century, "Robert Gibbs at 4-1/2 Years." Young Gibbs appears as a miniature adult, in the fashion of the times, holding gloves as his father might, painted by an artist known only as the Freake-Gibbs painter.  

In what could easily have become an exhibition larded with cuteness, Children in American Art at the Dayton Art Institute instead provides an unusual journey through changing concepts of childhood in America. The show provides a fine mix of acknowledged masters and works by anonymous or little-known artists. “Child in a Rocking Chair” (1876), by one of the latter, is strange but fascinating. The child subject has a large and worried head, out of proportion with its tiny protruding feet. While these untutored works have their own interest, it is a relief and pleasure to come upon Winslow Homer’s “Boys in a Pasture” (1874), in which every element is simple and perfect. Tuesday-Sunday through Jan. 4, 2009.  

In what could easily have become an exhibition larded with cuteness, the Dayton Art Institute presents childhood as interpreted by American artists from the 17th through 20th centuries.  

Turning adversity into a virtue is something artists are good at. The adversity of being an artist in a Communist society that forbad direct social criticism steered Anderle into a body of work well suited for comment on the human condition. So prints became Anderle's dominant form of expression through much of his career.