TOP: A painting by Larry Womack is one of the pieces on display at the 5th Street Gallery exhibit at Middletown Arts Center. The 5th Street Gallery is in the Hilton Hotel on the corner of Fifth and Race streets in downtown Cincinnati.
How to go
What:
5th Street Gallery exhibit
When: Reception 6 p.m. today. Exhibit runs through Feb. 5.
Where: Middletown Arts Center, 130 N. Verity Parkway
Info: (513) 424-2417.
BOTTOM: Middletown’s Phyllis Sadler looks at her silk scarves as Joe Drury organizes his recycled kiln-formed glass art as they prepare their exhibit. The 5th Street Gallery is a collaborative of 14 Cincinnati-area artists who work in all kinds of mediums.
Staff photos by Nick Graham
MIDDLETOWN — Starting today and lasting about a month, the Middletown Arts Center’s address changes to 5th Street.
No, the Middletown Arts Center isn’t moving. And Verity Parkway is not being renamed. Instead, the center welcomes the artists and artwork of Cincinnati’s 5th Street Gallery, which has one significant local connection.
That connection is one of its artists, Phyllis Sadler. In addition to being a Fairfield resident, Sadler is the former executive director of the Middletown Arts Center, having served in that position from 1985 to 1990.
Sadler is now a fiber artist, specializing in making wearable art. Like many of the artists in the 5th Street Gallery, her art serves a philanthropic purpose. Proceeds from her work go to Cincinnati’s Save the Animals Foundation.
“I’ve just always liked fiber. I made my first quilt when I was 8 years old and I just can’t stop,” Sadler said.
The 5th Street Gallery, founded in 2005, is in the Hilton Hotel on the corner of Fifth and Race streets in downtown Cincinnati. It’s a collaborative of 14 Cincinnati-area artists who work in all kinds of mediums, from painting to drawing to jewelry to glass and beyond. All of them have had their work shown nationally, and some have an international reach, said artist Joe Drury.
Drury is the glass artist, whose work is a way of recycling. The Northern Kentucky man’s work is made of everything from street lights to broken windows.
“I found out Rumpke (the waste management company) wasn’t recycling and just putting it into their mountain, So from me, you buy a piece of art and you’re helping to save the planet,” he said.
The artists also have commercial aims. Asked what viewers might take away from the exhibit, Drury said “Hopefully (the viewers) will take quite a lot of art away because they’ll be buying it.”
But the 5th Street Gallery has loftier goals, too. Its founder, Ober-Rae Starr Livingstone, said, “We want people to see that a piece of sculpture is as creative and expressive as a painting. We want to show the extent and the the quality of art in Cincinnati and the surrounding area.”
The exhibit opens with a reception at 6 p.m. today and the artwork hangs through Feb. 5.
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