The Center for Public Engagement with Science (PEWS) is a proud sponsor of an upcoming event focused on celebrating the creatives behind the Cincinnati’s Foodshed: An Art Atlas project! Learn more about the Atlas below, then register for the reception and panel discussion (Thursday, May 8th)!
About the Art Atlas
Cincinnati’s Foodshed: An Art Atlas is a visually stunning and thought-provoking exploration through the past, present, and future of the Cincinnati Tristate region’s food economy. This collection blends artistic storymaps, historical insights, and community-driven research to celebrate the people, innovations, and businesses that have shaped the local food movement. With contributions from farmers, chefs, activists, and artists, the Atlas serves as both a beautiful artifact and a call to action for anyone passionate about creating a more sustainable and equitable food system.
Learn more about the Art Atlas here!
Art Exhibit, Reception, and Panel Discussion
Thursday, May 8th, 2025
5:00-8:00pm
Clifton Court Hall
University of Cincinnati
2800 Clifton Ave, Cincinnati
Hang out with the Artists, Designers, and Story Shares who helped to create Cincinnati’s Foodshed: An Art Atlas! Enjoy light food and beverages as you browse through an exhibit featuring work from the artists behind the project. Hear panelists talk about their experience creating artwork for the Atlas (panelist bios below!) and have a chance to ask them any questions you might have. This exhibition celebrates the creatives behind the Art Atlas project, and is an opportunity to meet other people interested in art, sustainability, food systems, and community-driven research. For more information, visit: https://www.cincinnatifoodatlas.com/
This event is sponsored by Green Umbrella & The Greater Cincinnati Regional Food Policy Council, The UC Center for Public Engagement with Science (PEWS), and the UC College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services, and Information Technology (CECH)’s Office for Innovation & Community Partnerships.
The artists’ work will be on display in Clifton Court Hall Monday May 5th through Thursday May 8th. Come by to check it out!
Meet the Panelists
Mel Musie is an environmental planner and map enthusiast currently based in Philadelphia, PA. As a proud University of Cincinnati alum, they have a love for Cincinnati and its rich history. They’ve also always been fascinated by the nexus of culture, food and data science. In their spare time, they enjoy gardening and cooking vegan cuisine.
Mark Harris’s artwork and writing concern the visual culture and literature of intentional communities and avant-garde groups. He is researching representations of plant cultivation in the Caribbean and the wider African diaspora. Recent exhibitions and projects of his work include Let it GO! tulip planting (with Carmel Buckley), Wave Pool Gallery, 2023; Monsieur Zohore: MZ.25 (My Condolences), M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023; The Scripts Found in a Bottle, Found in Can, Found in a Discourse, The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, 2022; Speculative Magenta Hauntology, Ruschwoman, Chicago, 2022; 木timbreland木 (with Yoshi Nakamura), Cincinnati, 2020; Facts ‘n’ Figures, Kunstraum am Schauplatz, Vienna, 2020; Camp Street Corner, Wave Pool, Cincinnati, 2020; Songs the Plants Taught Us, Anytime Dept., Cincinnati, 2019; Plastilene, fluc, Vienna, 2018; Sparrow Come Back Home, ICA London, 2016-17. Selected recent publications include Sonic Wilderness: Mad Vinyl Records, AADR, Spurbuchverlag, 2022; “A Note on Hallucinatory Film,” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, 2021; “Caribbean paradigms of noise and silence,” Small Axe, 2021; ‘Rebellious Type: the visual acoustics of Kamau Brathwaite’s typographic derangements,’ Manifold: Experimental Criticism, 2020; ‘Turntable Materialities,’ Seismograf, Denmark, 2017; “Intoxicating Painting,” Journal of Contemporary Painting, 2017; and ‘The Materiality of Water,’ Aesthetic Investigations, 2015.
Karen Boyhen believes in drawing as an essential daily practice. Her sketchbook contains drawings that generally fit into two categories: observation and imagination. The observational drawings are of spaces she inhabits and people she sees while waiting or traveling, and things of importance such as drawings of pasta shapes, varieties of birds, and ALL of the yoga poses. The drawings from imagination stem from childhood memories and her attempts to anthromorphize creatures. Notes are often kept of the next “big” idea. Other drawing interests include editorial illustration, surface pattern design, diary comics, and making “likes and dislikes portraits” of willing subjects. Karen earned a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design at Central Connecticut State University, and took illustration coursework at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. She then worked professionally in Connecticut and New York City before moving to Cincinnati in 1999. She’s held positions as art director at a publishing company, and most recently as a Creative Director at arts non-profit Visionaries + Voices, while freelancing for interesting clients along the way in many different industries.
Calcagno Cullen is a social practice artist, arts administrator, and community organizer. She is a sculptor of institutions and sees her creative work as that of making connections and fostering asset-based community development. She spends her days focused on arts and culture giving and leadership as a Program Manager at the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile Foundation. She is also the founder and was the inaugural Executive Director of Wave Pool Arts Center, a gallery, studio space, and socially-engaged arts activator in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also previously worked in the education department of SFMOMA, the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View, California and was the Director of Adobe Books Backroom Gallery in San Francisco. She is a member of the women’s art collective The FemFour, and collaboratively organizes the traveling exhibition and catalog of Women’s March posters entitled ‘Still They Persist.’ She has also curated and organized a multitude of exhibitions including ‘Dial Collect’ in 2013 at SOMArts in San Francisco, ‘Social Medium’ at Wave Pool, a segment of ‘Bay Area NOW 7’ at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Survival Adaptations at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. She has been artist in residence at The Center for Great Neighborhoods in Covington, KY, Lo Studio dei Nipoti in Calabria, Italy, Teple Misto in Ivano Frankivsk, Ukraine, and in Sardegna, Italy. Her work has been shown in solo shows at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, and elsewhere. The majority of Cal’s work involves ‘listening deeply’ to both neighborhood and artists’ needs, and finding ways to creatively pair them in order to turn deficits into assets. She is deeply committed to developing equitable solutions to problems using art as a catalyst.