Arts + Culture : Innovation + Startup News

Lovers of WWII-era Americana should kick off their shoes and bop to this news: Retrocentric, a boutique that offers the combination of professional salon and photography sessions, also celebrates the glamorous pin-up styles of yesteryear.

The business' all-female staff works to ensure customers, non-models especially, are completely comfortable. All of its “retrofitted” photo sessions include selections from a classic pin-up wardrobe themed around clothing that was popular in the American Midwest during World War II, along with hair and makeup by Eros Salon.   

Founded by Sailor Gruzleski, Retrocentric will be celebrating its first year in Cincinnati later this summer. To help commemorate that achievement, the Retrocentric team is selling a 2013 charity calendar called “Pin ups for Pound Pups.” Featuring pin up girls with rescue dogs from local shelters, the proceeds will benefit Cincinnati’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Living historians like the Retrocentric team help preserve the rosier side of turbulent times in America. While most able-bodied men were overseas, the ingenuity and strength of the women left behind helped stabilize the homestead. By taking on jobs typically held by men, Gruzleski says, women found unique ways to preserve their delicacy and femininity while still struggling under society’s wartime duress. It's an important cultural footnote that's shadowed by the glamorous eye candy of Retrocentric’s portfolio.      

Eros Salon (featured at Bridalrama) is open for non-pin up related appointments inside Retrocentric.

By Sean Peters

It’s a good thing for everyone involved when artists find their niche. In Lindsay Nehls’ case, the Cincinnati music community provides the perfect home for her artwork.

Poster illustration and photography have been her chief projects as a commissioned artist. There’s a psychedelic joyousness to her drawings, which lends itself well to some of the bands she’s worked with. SHADOWRAPTR, her first album art client, recently released “Love a Good Mystery.” Nehls’ cover art is a mixture of hand-illustrated and digital art, a fitting accompaniment to SHADOWRAPTR’s jazzy, experimental rock music that, like Nehls’ work, is beyond convenient classification.

Nehls has worked with a number of other musicians, including locals like The Happy Maladies, Gorges, Whitfield Crocker and Majestic Man and Chicago’s Zamin. 

Nehls works out of her garage, which is heated by a potbelly stove in the winter. She’s currently working to master screenprinting, since T-shirt designs go hand in hand with album cover art. Nehls wants to be able to be a one-stop shop for bands.

Some of her fine art illustrations are available on Tumblr, which serves as her primary online portfolio. 

By Sean Peters

Arcade Legacy is a mecca for gamers, with more than 68 arcade machines ready to be played and no quarters needed. Gamers can pay at hourly or monthly rates. Arcade Legacy also buys, sells and trades pretty much anything that has to do with gaming and movies.   

Old-school and high-tech at the same time, Arcade Legacy is a veritable museum of video game history. Classics like the Missile Command arcade cabinet and the Jurassic Park pinball table sit in the same room as Guitar Hero. There’s also the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles side-scrolling brawler game, which could be found in nearly every respectable pizza place 25 years ago.

There are also more than 1,000 console games that guests can play on TVs or on a giant wall. Visitors can essentially visit  the coolest nerd on the block—in this instance, Jesse Baker. Baker, the store’s founder, grants them unlimited access to his massive gaming treasure room for a nominal fee.

Located in the sparsely populated Cincinnati Mall, Arcade Legacy is a beacon for dedicated gamers and shoppers. High demand for birthday parties and social events has led Baker to consider expanding his business to a larger location in the mall, which is undergong a major overhaul.

In celebration of its first anniversary, Arcade Legacy launched a mission to offer every single Nintendo Entertainment System game that’s been made—something like 760 titles—in alphabetical order. Baker has just hit the letter “B.” Since January, gamers have met at Arcade Legacy on Wednesdays for “Beat it or Die Trying.” Anyone can sign up to play their favorite games in the NES’ massive library and show off in front of a crowd.

By Sean Peters

Local craftsman Dave Behle and his wife Deb started Spoonin’ Jewelry soon after their retirement. The couple repurposes silverware into unique rings, pendants and bracelets. At first glance, it’s hard to tell that the pieces were originally used at dinner time.

Deb Behle worked in the University of Cincinnati registrar's office, while her husband taught industrial education classes. They were prompted to expand their business by their daughter, Caitlin Behle, who is a blogger and coordinator for SpringBoard ArtWorks. With her encouragement, Spoonin' Jewlery found its identity.

After a few years of perfecting his tools and technique, Dave felt confident enough to stand behind their offerings.

“Anybody can bend a fork,” he says. “The real challenge is finding the right way.”

According to Dave, Deb is in charge of polishing the silverware before he bends and twists the metal into jewelry.

There are so many challenges associated with this practice that Dave customized his own tools to help shape and size each piece. After years of practice, he says he can craft any ring to a specific size.

From floral rings to lavish silver bracelets with insets, the pieces are in no way kitschy or whimsical. They are, however, environmentally friendly — Spoonin' Jewlery really does reduce, reuse and recycle.

“A lot of silverware ends up at the junkyard because nobody wants to polish it,” Deb says. Instead, the Behles take forgotten pieces of silverware and turn them into beautiful and practical keepsakes.

After spreading their business through craft and trade shows — their next show will be in Paducah — Spoonin’ Jewelry has also found sellers, including Spotted Magpie in Over-The-Rhine and Fabricate in Northside. The Behles also operate their own small mom-and-pop shop on Etsy. 

By Sean Peters

Rebecca Huffman’s circuitous route to UC’s Fashion Design program both inspired and informed her non-traditional senior thesis, Design Genius. More methodology than consumer good, Design Genius is a learning module that teaches students the value of education and the building blocks of problem-solving as they design their own products.

Unveiled at UC’s DAAPWorks, Design Genius takes a fresh approach to making learning relevant for kids of all ages, which is exactly what recent grad Huffman, 24, who works for LPK, wanted. 

“I knew that I wanted to do something that would help kids,” says Huffman, who spent a year working as a preschool teacher before starting her design training at DAAP.

As she considered what her culminating project for college would be, she thought back to a studio class in which she’d designed and created a real project, then put it up for sale in real life. Through that process, and its embrace of design-thinking, she saw the value of the disparate classes she’d taken through her academic career, from math to marketing and writing to psychology. And she felt empowered.

Her work as an LPK co-op increased her experience with design-thinking, an approach to problem-solving more often seen in Fast Company than elementary schools. 

“Design Genius is an attempt to solve the problem that our kids are facing by instilling a greater sense of educational purpose,” she says. 

She describes Design Genius on her website as “the culmination of five years of study and extensive research on the Creativity Quotient, Design Thinking in education, the concept of ‘failing forward,’ sociocultural trends impacting Generation Z, and the educational and social development of Tweens.”

What that looked like, in the end, were three, one-and-a-half hour sessions in two schools—St. Ursula Villa and Pleasant Ridge Montessori—in three different classes. Fourth and fifth grade students examined case studies in the form of fictional diary entries. Then, they ideated, revised and designed real products to help solve the problems of their fictional “customers.” 

“They learned everything I was trying to teach them,” Huffman says. “It was amazing.”

The students not only learned from the project, they loved it. Huffman received unprompted thank-you notes and testimonials when the students presented their products. She’s convinced that with a little tweaking, she can develop a fully functional learning module that can help young students not only design products, but create and sell them. 

By Elissa Yancey
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For many listeners, the best album sounds like a live performance, which sits perfectly well with Jacob Tippey of Ramshackle Recordings.

Tippey believes a song sounds best when recorded with limited interference—spared from a gang of overdubbed and mutated parts that can bury its soul. His work hearkens back to recording's early days, when one-take tracks were necessities because of limited technology and materials. 

“I believe in using the resources you have,” says Tippey, who views himself as a documentarian. 

He works to ensure clients record in the best possible setting for their sound. That could mean adjusting sound-absorbent panels to soak up or reflect the music in the walls of the Curtis, Inc., audio studio, or taking the client to the altar room of an 1800s church, the space he also calls home, to allow for a blooming natural reverb.

So far, Ramshackle Recordings has put down tracks with SHADOWRAPTR, The Happy Maladies and Till Plains. 

By foregoing the luxury of heavily altered and modified tracks, Tippey simplifies the recording process.

By Sean Peters

How does a dietician with a tendency toward the macabre end up creating sometimes shocking illustrations for local and national bands? Through a combination of nightmare-chasing exercises and a desire to break out of her routines.

Cait Pantano, who graduated from Miami University in Ohio, is now keeping busy illustrating her take on moments of extreme mental and physical sensation. Some are sexual; others show debilitating pain. No matter the topic, Pantano’s art reflects her observations in dark and often comedic drawings of the human body.

Her inspiration comes from a very personal space. “I have nightmares almost every other night,” Pantano says. So she took one recurring stress dream--one during which she loses all of her teeth--and drew the image to get it out of her head. “I don’t think I’ve had that dream again.”

Encouraged by her friends to share her work, Pantano's humorous and macabre sensibilities were met with enthusiasm when she she began uploading images of her illustrations to Tumblr. Soon, musicians began commissioning her to create their album art. Recent clients include Cincinnati's The Pinstripes and Wisconsin-based Daniel and the Lion.

By Sean Peters

Final Friday is going international this month with a kick-off event for "Get Up," a dynamic mural fashioned by world-renowned graffiti artist Maser. The Cincinnati piece is the second of a series of inspirational public art installations that Maser is creating across the United States.

The colorful mural features figures that are pushing and pulling each other out of situations in which they've been mired, explains Andrew Salzbrun, managing partner at AGAR. The Over-the-Rhine based company, which creates authentic "immersive experiences" between brands and consumers, brought Maser to Cincinnati.

Maser and AGAR first connected during a project they worked on together, a skateboard park in Bentonville, Ark. As the company found out more about Maser and his work, they thought he would make a great addition to Cincinnati's public art culture.

"This piece is about positive social messaging," says Salzbrun. "It's about grabbing one's neighbor or peer and pulling them up out of a bad a situation. That situation could be debt, it could be addiction, it could be poverty. The figures are hoisting each other, and striving to get each other out of the bad situation."

Maser began creating the mural in mid-March. It's on a wall in the Pendleton neighborhood—at 522 E. 12th St. It's at the intersection of 12th, Pendleton and Reading. The mural was filled in with primer and finished in spray paint.

The mural will officially be unveiled this Friday as part of Pendelton's Final Friday. Dubbed "An Urban Ballyhoo of Artistic Expression," the free reception will be held from 7 to 11 p.m. in the warehouse next door to the mural. Inside, Maser will be showcasing additional art installations, and live music will be provided by Archer’s Paradox, Black Signal and DJ Clockwork.

“Maser is not only shedding a positive light on graffiti,” says Josh Heuser, owner of AGAR. “He is inspiring and motivating people through his unique art style.”

Maser has been creating art across the globe since 1995. You can see his work in Austria, Belgium, Copenhagen, Germany, Holland, London, Prague, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, as well as his birthplace—Ireland. Maser has studied fine art and achieved a qualification in Design Communication. Among his many achievements, he has been awarded with a membership to the International Society of Typographic Designers.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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With a focus on the quality and design of its inventory, the fashion boutique known as Substance strives to sell its customers clothing that will stay fashionable for years by rejecting the seasonal craze that tends to encourage fashionistas to completely “update” their wardrobe.

Instead, Substance practices sustainability by offering durable and fashionable products that are projected to stay fashionable four to five years longer than other garments.

“We sell the clothes you keep,” said Christina Getachew, founder and owner of the fashion boutique Substance. “That’s our motto.”

Getachew adopted this attitude toward fashion after working in the industry in New York City for years. While she still does business with many East Coast designers, she has a special appreciation for community-driven initiatives that encourage locals to interact.

Substance takes great pride in showcasing locally designed and sourced items, including Molly Sullivan’s “Metal Bark” line of jewelry and knitwork by Pauline Sung. Rachell Wagers, a co-op student from the University of Cincinnati’s school of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, currently tends the store and offers clothing of her own making.

Located in Over-the-Rhine, this is the second Substance in operation—the original location is in Columbus. A prerequisite for Substance to open for business is that it is located in a revitalized building, and reuses older locations instead of wasting the resources to build another storefront.

“It’s nice because the buildings already have their own character,” said Getachew.

With an array of high-end but affordable women’s clothing and accessories, Substance is a fashionable addition to OTR’s line of storefronts.

By Sean Peters

TEDx, an independently organized intellectual conference licensed by the global TED event, will be hosted by Xavier University at the Cintas Center on April 17. Last year's premiere of TedxXavierUniversity was met with great success, and this year's event will include a multitude of speakers.

TEDx was started to mimic the larger TED’s format with multiple speakers, demonstrators and performers who seek to share “ideas worth spreading.” Nicholas Turon took on the lead role in organizing this year’s event with Xavier students who study the full spectrum of academic disciplines.

“I love TED and everything it stands for,” says Turon, who studies music education. “This is something we can be proud of. We’ve helped create an environment you don’t normally get in classes.”

Organized entirely by Xavier students, they view TEDx as an important legacy to leave for future students.

“There’s only so much you can do to change a university in four years,” says Sam Seigle, who is the head of speakers and sponsors for the event. “This is our special opportunity to make a lasting tradition. We hope it will grow more prestigious every year.”

Due to budgeting constraints, the event will have a smaller capacity than last year's. While 2012 reached its registration limit of 400 attendees within a week, this year, there will only be 200 available seats. Turon says the scaled-down event will offer participants a more intimate experience with speakers.

The organizers are eager to make TEDxXavierUniversity a continual success, which relies on spreading the word to promoters and interested audiences. Registration for tickets to the event is available here.

By Sean Peters

A small group of creatives have launched a Cincinnati chapter of CreativeMornings, which will host its first monthly breakfast and lecture March 22 at 21c Museum Hotel.

CreativeMornings was founded in 2009 in New York City by Tina Roth Eisenberg who owns Swissmiss, a design studio and blog. The concept brings together a wide variety of creative people—from solo entrepreneurs to large agency talent—once a month for breakfast.

Each chapter is organized by volunteers and supported by the community, which includes donated meeting space, coffee and food. Each month's breakfast features a global topic (March's is Reuse) and each chapter invites a speaker to talk on that topic. The lectures are recorded and streamed on the main CreativeMornings website.

CreativeMornings is growing, with nearly 50 chapters around the world. Among the newest are those in Cincinnati, Lima, Warsaw and Dublin. You can see the Cincinnati chapter's video application here.

Jeremy Thobe, from web design firm US Digital Partners, is the lead organizer for the Cincinnati chapter. CreativeMornings is a way to get creative folks across industries together before the workday starts, he says.

"There are a lot of events around here that are industry-specific or sales pitchy," says Thobe. "A lot of them are in the evenings. We thought this was a way to start the day on a high note, and meet people around our industries. We are very interested in what surrounds what we do, and that's harder for us to find here."

A group of about eight people are helping get the Cincinnati chapter off the ground. They've chosen this month's speaker, Bill Donabedian, co-founder of the MPMF and Bunbury Music Festival.

Organizers plan to bring in speakers from a wide variety of professional backgrounds from music, education, healthcare, writing and science. The breakfasts are free, but space is limited, so you have to register. The first breakfast has already sold out, so you'll have to wait for the next one or add yourself to the waitlist.

"We're only limited by our space—we want to keep this as accessible as possible," Thobe says.

CreativeMornings Cincinnati is seeking additional volunteers, speakers and sponsors. If you're interested, you can find the organizers online or by Facebook and Twitter.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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The Contemporary Arts Center will be playing host to the international creative conference OFFF, which is billed as a "post-digital culture festival," for the second year in a row.

OFFF is an event that encourages innovative and artistic thinkers to join together for collective inspiration. According to OFFF's website, participants will learn from “the most relevant artists of our time.”

“At a glance, what you notice first is the outstanding quality and the international perspective of the presenters,” says Molly O’Toole, director of communications and community engagement for the Contemporary Arts Center. “But it’s also the diversity of the audience. I’ve never been to an event or conference like this where the audience plays such a critical role in the experience.”

The presenters include an array of artists in many fields, “including illustrators, coders, motion graphic designers and more,” according to the event’s press release.

This year's featured presenters include artists James Paterson and James Victore; the acclaimed designer, filmmaker, author, designer and director Onur Senturk, who created animation and visual effects for several high-grossing films (his credits include The Dark Knight Rises).

Though the conference draws big names in the creative industry, its hosts are determined to make the event available to as many people as possible.

“It’s an affordable, accessible price point and fits with both the mission of OFFF and the CAC," says O'Toole. "It’s one of the reasons we felt strongly about bringing OFFF to Cincinnati. The level of access it affords is extraordinary. It’s an event where the region's impressive talent pool—eager students and new and seasoned professionals alike—can mingle and connect with each other and the international figures headlining the conference."

OFFF is an all-day event where creatives of all levels mix, mingle and share inspiration.

Tickets for the event are on sale here.

WHEN: Wednesday, March 6, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (doors and coffee at 8 a.m.)  
 
WHERE: Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut St., Cincinnati  
 
TICKETS: $50 ($30 student)

By Sean Peters

New to the scene, the up-and-coming record label known as Platter Party intends to introduce itself by releasing some classic tunes that founders believe were never given the proper chance to be heard.

There's a lot of really good music in Cincinnati that you have probably never heard, mostly because some of the city's coolest historic bands simply didn't release enough records.

Platter Party's first foray is "400 Years of What." Side one: Get Down People; side two: Do What You Like.

A Cincinnati funk band from the '70s, The What band made a name for itself as the premiere party band for the Queen City. They only released one record, a 45 through Counterpart Studios in 1975, which was recently repressed by New York's Dopebrother Records.

With little else to offer outsiders, only Cincinnatians who experienced the band in concert were able to understand the power of their music. That changes now.

Though the band has dissolved (with members Randy Wallace and Frank Waddy eventually playing with Funkadelic and Greg "Tuffy" Jackson, who went on to be a member of Zapp), unreleased live recordings have been unearthed.
 
"My vision is to maintain the archival quality of the project, yet still express the living quality of the music," says Chris Burgan, head founder of Platter Party. "If it belongs anywhere, it's not locked away in a museum."

Encouraged to make Platter Party a successful startup, Burgan collaborated with Paul Coors, Sebastian Botzow and Jordan Bronk. Together, they've organized a fundraiser to help in their adventurous musical undertaking. Supported by donations from local businesses and entrepreneurs, the fundraiser's primary focus is generating revenue to aid in the release of 400 Years of What's "new" music in the form of a double LP.

Expect things to get real funky at The Ice Cream Factory in Brighton on March 2, because Platter Party expects to live up to its name.

"We took our name from old ads for clubs and bars in town," Burgan says. "They would feature live music many nights of the week, but sometimes a DJ would throw a 'platter party' and offer up records instead of a live band."

What's next for Platter Party? That all depends on how time treats classic funk music, so things are shaping up to be real cool.

By Sean Peters

Cincinnati's music scene continues its resurgence with new and growing festivals like last year's Bunbury Music Festival and the ongoing MidPoint Music Festival.

There are lots of details to keep in check when putting on a big, multi-day festival, and one local company has a hand in some of the most popular those music festivals and a wide range of events across the city.

Event Enterprises in Camp Washington is a full-service event production and management company for corporate communications and live events. The company's mission is to produce events that "entertain, educate and inspire."

Grant Cambridge started Event Enterprises in 2007. He was an intern, then freelancer for Backstage Backline, a local backline provider. After seeing growth in live events across the city, Cambridge began acquiring Backstage Backline, and building what is now Event Enterprises.

Cambridge, an Ohio University grad who majored in music and telecommunications, decided to create his own opportunity. "I thought it through, and it seemed like a potentially strong opportunity, and I had a background in the business," he says.

Event Enterprises has helped produced some of the city's big music events like Bunbury and MPMF. The company also has produced events for the Kentucky and Cincinnati symphony orchestras, Macy's, Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce, Procter & Gamble and the Cincinnati Reds.

Cambridge has two employes, a warehouse in Bellevue and works with about seven contractors on a regular basis. He sees a great future for his business, as public events and development in the urban core continue to grow.

"In the past five or six years there has been an insurgence of events in the core, with the Banks development, Washington Park, the Fountain Square renovations and all the development in Over-the-Rhine," he says. "The casino is about to open, and people are really interested in visiting downtown. I see a lot of opportunities."

By Feoshia H. Davis
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Jazzberry Chauffeur is a street artist-inspired clothing brand that mixes quirky designs with a bit of youthful philosophy.

Xavier entrepreneurship and economics student Brandon Pindulic co-founded the company, which is named in homage to a friend's rich uncle who employed a chauffeur dressed in a jazzberry suit until the Great Depression, when he lost it all, according to the business' website.

The company sells T-shirts, caps and outerwear that nods to that rich uncle's past, while also looking toward a dream-fulfilled future.

Each design tells a story, outlined on the Jazzberry site, where the brand is sold. For instance, there's this purple T-shirt that features a sunglasses-wearing, saxophone-toting red berry. The story? "A literal creation of our name, Jazz-Berry-Chauffeur. This scenic tee is also reminiscent to the roaring '20s when jazz musicians dwelled in nightclubs introducing American culture to jazz music."

The black Chauffeur Your Dreams T-shirt is described this way: "Everyone has dreams, goals and desires. At first they seem quite plain and ordinary, hence the basic JbC orbit illustrated on the front of the tee. But as people begin to learn more about other individuals' dreams and dig a little deeper, an intricate image of their life goals begins to appear, hence the rocket-equipped limousine scorching around a metropolis that inhabits some of the wealthiest individuals and most prized possessions sculpted on the back of the shirt."

Prices for the clothes range from $20-22 for tees, and $35 for hoodies.

Pindulic, who came to Cincinnati from New Jersey for college, co-founded the company in 2011 while still in high school.

"We started by selling shirts," he says. "We had these fresh designs, and worked with friends who were graphic designers. We started by selling to friends and family. We financed it ourselves, we just put in a couple hundreds bucks of our own money and it grew."

The typical Jazzberry customer is male, 15-24 years old, and into the brand's bold colorful graphics and casual, steetwear style, according to Pindulic.

This year, the business is preparing to offer more products, while beefing up its marketing presence.

Pindulic creates some designs as well as tapping some friends' creativity. He has worked with manufacturers inside and outside the United States to make the shirt, but that will change soon, he says.

"We've decided we are going to make all U.S.-based products for our new lines," he says.

By Feoshia H. Davis
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