Updates from the PAR-Projects blog...

Northside Summer Market is just around the corner!  Join us THIS Saturday, August 8th from 9am - 2pm for OVER 65 YARD SALES that run concurrently with the Route 127 World's Longest Yard Sale.  Our central location will take place at CAIN, located at 4230 Hamilton Avenue.  This year, we're excited to have our maps available digitally, a few days earlier than normal!. The majority of yard sales, including our central location sales at CAIN, will only run Saturday 9am - 2pm. See the 65+ Saturday only locations on this map! In accordance with the Route 127 World's Longest Yard Sale, a small portion of sales will take place Thursday - Sunday. Find the all weekend long sale locations here. A s in y ea r's past, we will have printed maps at the PAR- tent at CAIN.  BUT, in addi tion to having maps and sales at the central location Poverty Liberation Collective and Third Way Peace Fellowship will be hosting a special collaborative Solidarity Saturday...

Pictured above is where we're taking things. It's a dream. Better yet, it's the visualization of a dream fueled by past successes, a strong support system, and unconventional thoughts on how to bring people together to celebrate the arts.

As ArtsWave & The Greater Cincinnati Regional Chamber noted in their recent Economic Impact of Arts & Culture report (pages 14 & 16) , PAR-Projects — our BIPOC-led arts & education organization — has been working to build an inclusive and welcoming space to highlight and promote the work of local and regional creatives for a number of years. Specifically called out was the fact that our small team has raised and invested over $850,000 in this effort since acquiring our "HQ" building and outdoor space in 2015. And most notably, these dollars were used specifically for capital investments, outside of day-to-day expenses for operations and events.

This past July, Jonathan Sears — Executive Director of Cincinnati-based PAR-Projects — found himself traveling halfway across the country to Kansas City to meet with a diverse collection of artists. The reason? He was tapped to help plan a regional conference that's convening hundreds of arts-leaders to help strengthen the connectivity of artist-run initiatives located throughout The Midwest. Aptly named MdW  (pronounced "Midway") , this group of artists, like him, lead creative spaces across The Midwest. And while a segment of the coalition toured PAR-Projects back in April (2024), this was officially his first in-person meeting with the MdW arts coalition. So how did all of this come about? As Jonathan notes, in April of 2024, when a large group of artists showed up for a tour,  an odd level of comfort & conversation was achieved while exploring the 15,000 square foot expansion space of the PAR-Project Campus. At the

Hey There!

  If you Blinked too hard you may have missed it. With the help of organizations like ArtsWave, Greater Cincinnati Foundation, and The Carol Ann & Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation, both civic and cultural leaders are creating powerhouse experiences. Our town's symphony is thriving. Our major museums are producing nationally recognized exhibitions. Even our ballet and playhouses are making headlines. Cincinnati is doing BIG things! Then there's us. Over at PAR-Projects, we don't make much noise. Why not?...  Well... until now, we were still waiting our turn in line. There's a whole lot of fast action clutter out there. But in the same breath, there's a lot of fizzling out as well. Because of the latter, our goals have simply been to keep our head down, keep working, and be the best we can be. The cool thing is we've never changed our mission and we've always held ourselves to the highest of standards — press or no press. We too have BIG things to accomplish...

Elena Masrour was born on May 5, 1990 in Tehran, Iran. She received her BFA in Fabric & Textile Design from Tehran University of Art in 2013 and received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Kansas State University in 2022. She currently lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio where she is a visiting faculty-in-residence at the Cleveland Institute of Art.   Masrour was interested in art from a young age, especially as a legacy artist. She recalls being ten years old and attempting to copy a self-portrait her grandfather completed, to her grandfather’s great amusement. In high school, she was afforded the opportunity to take several elective drawing classes and soon realized that artist was to be her path in life. At Tehran University of Art, Masrour initially studied fashion design. However, she encountered great difficulties in the field, finding few real opportunities for creative enterprise due to the strict dress code enforced by the Irian government. She recalls a experienc...

What's in a photo? As the old saying goes, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’  This is still true in today’s galleries as artists work to maintain the delicate balance between self, story, and subject as they attempt to share untold stories and perspectives with the world. I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Raymond Thompson, Jr., an artist disguised as a photojournalist, whose project “Appalachian Ghosts” is on display in the Gallery @Studeo-PAR through July 2022. We chatted candidly about how he sojourns this path using his background in journalism to root his work creating subjective archives of the Black experience in American history. On his journey to photojournalism: “When I started school I wanted to be a biologist… something practical… so I stumbled through trying to find something super practical.  But Northern Virginia Community College had a photography class.  So I started taking those darkroom classes and it was like ‘ooh this is cool.’ I fell i...

Most of our conversations, at least the most memorable ones, happened over lunch. Soup and salad; that's what we did. We chatted about which fresh vegetables from the garden made it into that day's lunch and we chatted about techniques that were perfected for that day’s soup. “Remember Jonathan, always save a little of your stock for the next batch. That’s how the French do it. It keeps your flavors alive — balanced.” The Dr. Driskell I knew was a humble man — an artist of media and an artist of life. And while we hung out in his Hyattsville studio from time to time, woodblock printing and encaustics weren’t really my thing, so our connections were much more about finding ways to live and breath as an artist. From time to time, he’d give me a lead on some art finds — a rare Romare Bearden for example — but really, most chats of ours were just about life. Still, he knew I was an obsessive maker in the digital media/sculpture realm, so from time to time he’d make sure to note tha...

If you were around to remember . . . You may recognize the scene in the photo above. It's from our original scramble — the one that created the energy that led to the creation of PAR-Projects. We had just been illegally evicted from our original gallery space and 4,124 days ago, Cincinnati Enquirer thought you should know about it. To those of you who have been following along since those early days, thank you. When that photo was taken, all we were trying to do was figure out how to exhibit the year's worth of programming that we had planned. And well, as fate would have it, those two UHAUL trucks, a generator, some hazard lighting, a few hand-built stairs & a bridge proved to be a noteworthy solution. The crazy thing is in 10 years (+ 1 COVID year), that 300 square feet of mobile rental space has grown into over 20,000 square feet of indoor space & over 10,000 sq/ft of outdoor space . . . that we are thankfully able to own. Yep! That's the future of our campus pi...

  Somehow an entire year has passed, but COVID has not. The majority of our programming is now being scheduled for next year, 2022. That said, we do have some exciting things we'll start sharing here soon!

Yep. COVID-19. 

Photo by: Emily Palm for CityBeat Cincinnati As an organization, we push ourselves to the limit, sometimes a bit beyond. And from time to time, through these efforts, some extremely favorable opportunities present themselves. Call it luck. Call it dedication. Call it fate. What we know is that the BIG THINGS often happen unexpectedly and often would not be possible without others appreciating the day-to-day work we're putting in to create impactful movements throughout and alongside our community. A big "THANKS!" goes out to Steve Rosen and the staff of City Beat Cincinnati for highlighting our largest initiative to date, Studeō PAR- ... our efforts to create a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive artist community, here in Northside  Cincinnati USA. Click HERE or follow the link below to read what we're up to. https://www.citybeat.com/arts-culture/visual-arts/article/21111388/nonprofit-parprojects-looks-to-create-a-permanent-arts-complex-in-northsides-old-i...

|**| Artwork + Spiced Cider

We're doing a thing.  We did a thing.

While we created our first major project -- The State of Matter -- in October 2010, it was on this day -- October 2nd, 2015 -- that we were (finally) recognized as a 501(c)3, non-profit in the state of Ohio. Well, four years later, we quietly may have just put into motion the BIGGEST move we've ever made as an organization. Details will hopefully launch by the first week of November, but as we're in campaign mode, we don't want to distract from the fact that we need your support TODAY. The work we've been able to do -- from mobile art galleries, to corn mazes, to even that first (2010) walking tour of Northside that featured five spaces of fine-art-glass and studio demonstrations -- has always relied on the support of our community. So while we're making large strides towards our future, we do ask that you remember and celebrate some of the past work we've done today. Still, as something major happened a few hours ago, we think it would be great if you ...

The future of PAR-Projects' facility at 1662 Hoffner Street in Northside Photo rendered by: Team B Architecture & Design They said… How do these crazy dreamers expect they’ll be able to build an art and education space from nothing… in a city they’re still finding their voice in, with no huge donors lined up, no financial planners on board, and no experience in land development? Well… We were in our 20s, so our approach may very well have seemed overly-ambitious or even silly. But one thing most have realized by now is that we weren’t concerned. No risk, no reward. We knew we had a worthy mission. We knew we had good reason. And quite frankly, we now know we were some of the most determined artists, connected to some of the strongest artists, and unafraid to reach out to the more established artists to help us make things happen. This was to be an experiment on a grand scale, led by a tiny team of talent and determination. Of course there were some questions. Who ...

PAR-Projects would like to welcome Marcus Donaldson, our new development intern! Over the next few months, Marcus will help aid our fundraising efforts in ways we’re amped to share with you soon. Having previously worked with People’s Liberty and Chase Public, Marcus brings with him experience in content creation and strategy and is looking to add to his skillset in the world of development. Marcus joins the PAR-Projects team as part of the Cincinnati Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals ’ New Faces of Fundraising Program — a writer & strategist with tons of questions, he is motivated and excited by the arts and hopes to use his experience in communications to strengthen and build relationships for PAR Projects.

Because we can't (yet) offer all of our classes all of the time, we're asking our community to let us know what classes they'd be interested in seeing us offer in Kennedy Heights over the next year or two and what times would work best. Please find our two minute survey below. And if interested in viewing class descriptions, please visit our website — www.parprojects.com/Education — for more information. Thanks in advance for your participation!

Every year, a month after what is arguably Cincinnati's most creative few days of the summer — Northside's 4th of July Parade and Rock & Roll Festival — a humble neighborhood celebration takes place to invite everyone back into our community. This event is Northside Summer Market — a community-wide yard sale with free arts & music programming. And on Saturday, August 3rd, we're doing it again! As always, a day or two before the event, we'll release a printed and online map of all of our neighbors who have registered their houses' yard sales. But if you just want to visit Northside and go for it, two good starting places are the Yard Sale's Central Location at CAIN (4230 Hamilton Ave.) and our art-infused beer garden at Humble Monk Brewery (1641 Blue Rock St.).  This year, to help beat the heat, CAIN will be hosting a Cool Down Corner where festival patrons can enjoy grilled entrees, cold drinks, fresh fruit, FREE popsicles, kid's activitie...