Soapbox is launching a periodic series to highlight the work, processes, and challenges that Cincinnati’s creative professionals face. For the first installment, Soapbox will profile recent and current artist residencies at Manifest, which maintains a Drawing Center at the edge of Clifton, near Camp Washington and Northside and a gallery in East Walnut Hills.
Cincinnati has long been lauded for having especially robust artistic institutions for a city its size. Its symphony, ballet, and museums are revered. However, in the past, many of its young residents who have demonstrated prodigious artistic talent have been steered to launch their career elsewhere – akin to having abundant spectator sports but a dearth of training fields to hone athletic talents.
Jason Franz, who earned his BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, in 1988 and his MFA from UC’s DAAP program in 1998, co-founded
Manifest with two others in 2004 as a two-part (Gallery and Drawing Center) arts nonprofit organization committed to providing a nurturing environment for artists to perfect their craft. That summer, the organization began offering open life drawing sessions for artists of all skill levels in an unheated and uncooled warehouse studio in Covington, KY while renovating a storefront on Woodburn Avenue that would become Manifest Gallery, which still operates there today. In 2021, Manifest purchased a stately former funeral home on Central Parkway and over the next year transformed it into its Drawing Center, where it offers a broad complement of painting, drawing, and photography courses, among others.
“As Manifest has grown, its mission has become more clearly defined,” Franz said. “It’s always been centered on standing for excellence in the visual arts and championing high standards. I grew up in this area, and early on committed to staying and helping elevate our arts community.”
A vital facet of fulfilling this mission is its creation of its Manifest Artist in Residence (MAR) and Scholar in Residence (SIR) one-year programs. Launched in 2012, MAR and SIR have enabled artists from diverse backgrounds to develop their techniques and broaden their perspectives to yield artwork with richer depth and context. Some artists serve a two-year stint by moving from one residency to the other.
Adam Mysock, Manifest’s education and studio program manager, who joined Manifest in 2017, said an organizational priority is minimizing redundancy with other local arts organizations. For example, its Drawing Center has the goal to introduce stone lithography as an artistic discipline, a specialized pursuit gaining interest with few other options outside of a university. Manifest seeks to complement the many types of arts programming in the region, filling a gap and bolstering the creative vitality of the region’s arts scene while also connecting it to a national and international network.
The machinations and expertise of artistic instruction are certainly important, but art’s intangibles – inspiration and an environment that foments exploration and imagination – are equally important.
“As an organization that serves artists and the public, we’ve set out to create a sanctuary,” Franz said. “Its space must be respectful of the artists’ intention, with the energy of an audience attending a performance. Being supportive of an artist and their striving for excellence should create the same excitement and gestalt as a concert.”
Manifest strives to embody these ideas through its MAR and SIR programs. Franz said the organization’s goal is recruiting artists who, based on their submitted portfolios and what’s gleaned through the interview process, are well matched in personality and passion.
“We’re looking for artists who are complementary, even if they don’t work in similar ways,” Franz said. “The ideal scenario would yield a variety of artistic disciplines, but after we have completed renovations and convergence of all Manifest programs under one roof, this may become even more of a priority.”
The aforementioned renovation entails an extensive retrofit of the Drawing Center’s interior with significant infrastructure upgrades that will enhance its capacity to educate and support Greater Cincinnati’s artistic community and the general public. The goal is to have this complete by the beginning of 2026, when Manifest will become the Manifest Center for the Visual Arts.
The profile of these three artists reflects diversity of artistic talents, approaches, and motivations, with a common thread of giving props to an inspiring creative community.
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Megan painted this 64 x 60 in. canvas, titled Frame Apart, with flashe and gesso in 2023.
Megan Wolfkill
A native of Memphis, Megan worked diligently to develop her painting acumen despite attending a high school without a defined art-education track. She found her stride as an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, which offers one of the nation’s elite BFA programs as a studio arts and dance double major. Coincidentally, Mysock served as one of her Tulane professors.
“Our selection process includes blind resume reviews, so I didn’t know Megan was selected until afterward,” Mysock said.
She previously completed residencies at the Penland School of Craft in Bakersville, NC, and the Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, GA in 2019 and 2020 before pursuing her MFA from the University of Tennessee.
Wolfkill, 28, said that one way her work has evolved is her progression from geometric, rigid shapes to more fluid, abstract forms. She currently has an unframed canvas painting hanging at the Manifest Gallery titled “Orange Couplet.” Not referencing Shakespearean romantic musings, the piece depicts a number of “mirror” subjects that despite their apparent similarity, reveal asymmetric elements that convey how people’s perceptions of what they see can differ from what their eyes reveal.
She painted the piece during January and February at her now-former Knoxville studio. She’d been reading about mirrors and reflection around the time of Orange Couplet’s creation, which inspired her work.
“I wanted to convey how what we see is often so ephemeral and forgotten with the passage of time,” she said. “There are so many details to absorb in what we see, so there is often a discrepancy between what’s perceived and what’s real. Also, the idea of connection, and how much of our lives are defined by near misses.”
Megan painted the piece on untreated canvas, which enabled the paint to be absorb and create an earthier patina that accentuated her preference for warm hues. During its creation, she cited inspiration from two abstract painters, American Helen Frankenthaler and German Charline Von Heyl.
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Megan, who graduated with a BFA from Tulane with a double major in studio art and dance, painted this earlier this year, entitled Scatter, with flashe, oil pastel, chalk pastel, colored pencil, and paper.Megan is new to the Cincinnati area, having just moved here at the beginning of July to begin her SIR tenure. However, she’s already gleaned a positive impression of Cincinnati’s arts community and looks forward to engaging across generations. While enrolled in her MFA program, she served as undergraduate teaching assistant, where experienced proved the perception that modern collegians’ attention is intractably drawn to phones and other devices isn’t accurate.
“Art is physical, you’re present in a room with it,” she said. “People appreciate authenticity, and art and the creation process connect with an audience.”
Chris Marin
A native of Lubbock, Texas, Chris Marin earned his BFA from Texas Tech university, and his MFA from the California College for the Arts in San Francisco. He describes his style as surrealist, which he describes as “focusing on people-focused imagery and scenes that couldn’t exist with overlapping, stacked images.”
Marin noted that he typically mixes several types of media, such as drawing with charcoal, painting with oils and acrylics, and weaving embroidered pieces into his work. He noted that art and design are more universal to people’s experiences than they might think.
“We all wear clothes and select colors for our cars and rooms in our house,” he said. “We all make decisions based on colors and textures that appeal to us. When you think about art this way, it becomes are lot more accessible.”
After fulfilling a residency at Lubbock’s Charles Adams Studio Project, he next moved to Baton Rouge, LA to assume an adjunct professorship at LSU, and although he appreciated the stability a role in academia provided, he appreciated the opportunity to create and develop that another residency would provide, and he successfully applied for Manifest’s 2023-24 SIR.
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Chris Marin’s career has taken him from native Texas to California, Louisiana, then Cincinnati. This charcoal and permanent marker sketch, entitled Canela (the Spanish word for cinnamon), is reference to the tabby in the foreground.Marin said being a fan of standup comedy influences his artistic approach: “A viewer on looks at piece of art for two to five seconds, so like a comic, an artist has to make a strong impression to connect,” Marin said. “You have to give them a reason to pay attention and engage.”
To achieve more than provocation, artists must be authentic and “bring their A game” that equate the energy of artistic creation with live concert performances. That energy is also essential to creating a conversation to help bring the connection between artist and audience.
“I don’t think we can do enough to explain our motivation as artists,” Chris said. “We read the same news and feel the same impact as citizens. I think it’s important to weigh every side of an issue when interpreting or presenting a political or social issue. There are times when I’ll play devil’s advocate and present the opposite of remind the viewer there are multiple sides to an argument. Most of life takes place in a gray area.”
During his year in Cincinnati, he’s been impressed by our civic enthusiasm for the arts: “The diversity of arts presented and taught in our community is impressive. I’ve encountered so many hobbyists who are serious about learning how to improve their art.” As he transitions from SIR to MAR for 2024-25 for a second year at Manifest, Chris reflected on the challenges of an artist’s lifestyle.
“I work full time at a running-shoe store, and have part-time gigs that support my art,” Chris said. “On my off-time, I have to stay diligent and persistent to keep creating. It’s more work and less glamour than it might seem to most people, but I’m often reminded how much it’s worth it.”
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Kitty has lived in Cincinnati since 1994, with her journey as a painter sometimes paused by life events and transitions. This piece, entitled Convergence, reflects how topographic maps and weather patterns inform her work.
Kitty Schroeder
On the front wave of the Baby Boomers at age 78, Kitty Schroeder doesn’t fit the typical artist-in-residence profile. The daughter of a government meteorologist, the demands of his job required Kitty to move 14 times as a child. She was an artistically inclined child, though her youthful aspirations leaned towards becoming a concert pianist. However, her aunt’s painting talents provided inspiration to experiment with canvases.
Schroeder said her creative journey has been a circuitous route. Jobs as a paint-store clerk and substitute teaching, including working as an art teacher for 3
rd to 6
th grade students, helped to pay the bills and she continued to develop her skills over the years. In the early ‘90s, she was accepted into UC’s MFA program, which provided a catalyst for her next career phase. During her studies, she said a weeklong workshop with Robert Reed, a Cincinnati-based artist, who she credits instilling a deeper perspective in the way she views her work.
“Like life, painting is full of push and pull, such as when you have moments of time or space between strokes,” she said. “In those spaces of stopping and starting, the work will change because I have. I’ve usually begun working by accessing pieces of life I was currently in the midst of.”
After earning her MFA in 1994, Schroeder served as an adjunct professor at UC and NKU, though life priorities after a remarriage put her painting career on hiatus. In 2005, she picked up her brushes and began working again, and in 2010, a retrospective at the Indian Hill Gallery reinvigorated her work.
In her approach, Schroeder said she likes to mix her media, including drawing, painting, and embroidery, and enjoys the concept of “ghosted” images created by developing collages atop old drawings.
“A lot of my instruction came in bits and pieces over the years,” she said. “It took a lot of practice for me to be able render faces well with a paintbrush. I didn’t receive much technical instruction for a long time. It took a while to develop my creative voice.”
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Kitty Schroeder’s piece, entitled Jetstream, was influenced by her father’s career as a government meteorologist and symbolizes her concern over climate change.
During her Manifest tenure, her father’s vocation influenced her work. Topographic maps and meteorological patterns conveyed on them became the subject of several of her pieces. These paintings served the dual themes of conveying how climate change has influenced weather patterns, and how weather represents a point of connection. No matter your circumstances or beliefs, Mother Nature impacts you.
Another series, which she titled “Still Voices” was inspired by the photos of missing children displayed on postcards distributed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Some of these were rendered as painted hanging banners, and others as well mounted paper sketches, but all represent an effort to memorialize and humanize the victims.
Kitty described her yearlong Manifest residency as intense, and she hopes to maintain a steady, if somewhat slower, pace as she pursues project possibilities.
“I see a lot of possibilities for more projects centered around the environment and climate changes,” she said. “Whenever art raises a social issue, it still has to provide an aesthetic and merge a lot of different concepts. But I’m inspired to keep working.”