Visionaries & Voices

Founded in 2003, Visionaries + Voices is a Cincinnati area non-profit that provides exhibition opportunities, studio space, supplies and support to visual artists with disabilities. Creating with a range of mediums — from clay to colored pencils —  artists work in V+V studios with facilitators and visiting artists to create works that go on view in one of the organization’s five annual exhibitions

Whether they work in the studio daily or weekly, roughly 130 artists create within the program, whose mission is growing a more inclusive arts community in greater Cincinnati. Through their work, V+V has brought awareness to found and self-taught art, and built momentum around a new area of collecting. “It’s difficult for artists to produce work as a profession, while also market, exhibit, and promote it,” says Skip Cullen, Exhibitions Director. “We help people get their work out into the community and the world.”

The organization counts an eclectic mix of artists among their members, many of whom have received regional and national recognition. EBTH worked with V+V to curate 100 examples of works from their artists in an effort to generate awareness and support in funding their charitable efforts.

Courttney Cooper

Using everyday BIC pens and repurposed paper, Cooper creates intensely detailed maps from his physical and psychological memories of Cincinnati, OH. He has exhibited extensively, including at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati and The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center, Covington, KY. He is represented at Western Exhibitions Gallery in Chicago.

Andrew Hostick

Hostick’s art starts from observing printed historical references and advertisements. He then abstracts and simplifies the imagery, carefully balancing color relationships until the entire surface is saturated. Andrew has been an employee at Kroger for over 25 years. He was recently featured in the 2015 Outsider Art Fair and has exhibited at Morgan Lehman Gallery in NYC.

Curtis Davis

As a sculptor, painter, collector and illustrator, Davis is a prolific artist that who creates two dimensional images and pieces that are assembled, painted, reworked and expanded with paint. Each layer unifies and abstracts the original found objects finding a new meaning with their forms.

Kevin White

Using non-traditional materials and unconventional building methods, White’s installation art leverages intimacy to create an illusionistic space. He dismisses unnecessary embellishments, abstracting subjects to the simplest forms, with each layer unifying and abstracting original objects finding new meaning.

Jenny Crowe

Whether pushing oil pastels across paper, slicing drawings into pieces, or collaging, Crowe uses people, animals, words, and nonrepresentational shapes to develop a narrative. Her process is methodical, filling the voice of empty space until the viewer is trapped somewhere between the impulse to read and a pure visual experience. Her work has been exhibited at Western Exhibitions in Chicago and the “Outsider Art Fair in New York.