Select Company

Summerfair Select, an exhibition of works by 16 outstanding local artists, opens at The Weston Gallery, 650 Walnut St., this Friday, Nov. 21, 6 to 8 p.m. The opening reception celebrates this enduring regional arts grant, featuring work by Cincinnati-area artists who received Summerfair Aid to Individual Artists Awards from 2022 to 2024.

“It’s an honor to showcase these exceptional artists at The Weston Gallery,” says Jayne Utter, managing director of Summerfair. “The growth they have had due to our support is heart warming. The creativity from each of them is not to be missed.”

To celebrate this enduring regional arts grant, the Weston Art Gallery presents 16 Cincinnati-area artists who received Summerfair Aid to Individual Artists Awards from 2022 to 2024. The exhibition opens Friday, Nov. 21. The Weston Art Gallery is at the Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut St. in downtown Cincinnati.

The artists featured in the exhibition are all recipients of Summerfair Cincinnati’s Aid to Individual Artists Awards. Summerfair’s longest running award program, the AIA Awards are presented each year to artists living within a 40-mile radius of Cincinnati.

The artists in the exhibition are

Sherry Cucinotta Ackell has been an artist and performer throughout her life, with early dance classes influencing her first ceramics pieces, dance figurines. After winning multiple awards in the Midwest Ceramics Show, she attended the University of Cincinnati as a double major in musical theater at Collage Conservatory of Music and art at the college of Design Architecture and Art. She currently works a sculptor at Turtle Creek Pottery.

Steven Finke received a BFA from Ohio University and a MFA from the University of Miami in Florida. After graduate school he settled in Ohio and taught sculpture at Northern Kentucky University for 32 years. He currently lives in Southwest Ohio where he is working on a long term environmental project that integrates sculpture and forest in an aesthetic reflection on impermanence.

Jason Franz is a Cincinnati-based artist and educator, who has served as the co-founding executive director of the nonprofit Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center for the past 21 years. He received a BFA degree from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati. After a decade serving in the exhibitions department at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and before and after the launch of Manifest, he has taught drawing, painting, and design at AAC, UC, and Xavier University.

Peyton Harshfield is an artist based in Northern Kentucky, known for her dynamic and engaging creations that transform public spaces into vibrant community focal points. She graduated from Northern Kentucky University with a BFA in integrative media, specializing in sculpture and painting. Her education provided a strong foundation, allowing her to blend techniques and materials in innovative ways.

Lindsey Kiser has worked in scratchboard for 34 years, a medium she finds uniquely capable of capturing intricate details, light, and drama. She is a member of the International Society of Scratchboard Artists. Kiser studied art at Georgetown College, drawing and art history at Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, England, and received a doctoral degree from NKU Chase College of Law.

Pam Kravetz is an artist, curator, artistic director, and art educator born, raised, and living in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is a regionally and nationally recognized visual artist with more than 50 art exhibits and installations, with works ranging from ArtWorks street art to installations at Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital to Contemporary Arts Center.

Paul Kroner is a lifelong maker, with creative instincts that first led him to a career in graphic design, earning his degree in graphic design from the University of Cincinnati. But his passion for fine art remained a constant thread. In his late 40s, that passion took center stage, and his art practice fully emerged.

Jee Eun Lee, born and raised in South Korea, has been an exhibiting artist for more than 20 years. She received her BFA. and MFA. in sculpture at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea, and moved to the U.S. in 2010, where she earned a second M.F.A. degree at Syracuse University, New York. She is currently the head of the ceramics area at Northern Kentucky University.

Joshua R. Maier lives and works as both artist and educator in Cincinnati. Growing up, he divided this time from farmlands spanning Southern Ohio to Northern Kansas. He earned his BFA in creative writing and 3D art from Bowling Green State University of Ohio. After nearly a decade of working as an artist in Kansas City within the production glass art industry, as a production potter, and an academic studio technician he began his graduate studies at the University of Missouri – Columbia in 2013. There he received his MFA in Ceramics & Sculpture

Lisa Merida-Paytes holds an MFA from the University of Cincinnati and a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She uses paper, copper and steel wire together while strengthening the materials with liquid starch, paper clay slip and epoxy. She has taught at all levels throughout the Midwest and served in various professional positions, including gallery director at FUNKe FIRED ARTS and art director/founder of the Kennedy Heights Art Center.

Emily Moores earned her BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA from The University of Cincinnati. Her work consists of hand-cut and ornately layered materials, which create both wall works and large-scale installations. Emily’s work investigates the playful engagement of the body as essential to understanding and experiencing spaces or objects.

Brigid Patricia O’Kane earned her BFA from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Mich., and her MFA from the University of Cincinnati. She co-founded Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center, a not-for-profit arts organization in Cincinnati. She shares her expertise as an associate professor at the UC where she teaches drawing and advanced studies at the undergraduate and graduate levels. 

Charity Rust-Jordan is a multidisciplinary artist and educator, who holds a BFA in Spatial Arts from Northern Kentucky University, and is certified to teach mindfulness and mediation. As an instructor, she provides workshops and classes largely focused on ceramics and an Art and Mindfulness. 

Gary Sczerbaniewicz, born in Upstate N.Y., earned a BFA in sculpture from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an MFA in sculpture from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an MFA in sculpture from the University at Buffalo. He served as visiting assistant professor of sculpture at the University of Notre Dame and is currently assistant professor of spatial arts – sculpture at Northern Kentucky University.

Sara Torgison is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus in ceramics and fiber art. She received an MFA from the University of Cincinnati– College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (2021) and a BFA from Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, CA (2010). Her work often blends media, extending finite and fragile surfaces to emphasize and inhabit marginal spaces.

Stephen Wheeler holds a BFA in painting from Northern Kentucky University, and describes his work at “whimsical realism,” creating colorful scenes and characters from the realm of imagination and play.

The AIA Award was the area’s first program designed to distribute funds to individual artists. The application process is extensive and winners are selected by outside experts in a blind screening process. The $5,000 award can be used for anything from funding research, assisting in the creation of new works or purchasing supplies and material for production. To provide further support for its AIA recipients and to demonstrate the impact the grant has on their artistic development, Summerfair mounts a triennial exhibition for the twelve most recent award winners in partnership with The Weston Gallery. The exhibition continues through Jan. 11, 2026.