- [Announcer] Funding for "The Art Show" is made possible by The Rockwern Charitable Foundation, The L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation, Montgomery County, The Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, The Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.

Additional funding provided by... And viewers like you.

Thank you.

(energetic music) - In this special edition of "The Art Show," a "Polyphonic Pyramid," (energetic music) a city hall mural, and a "Voyage to Atlantis."

It's all ahead on this BLINK edition of "The Art Show."

(energetic music) (energetic music) (energetic music continues) Hi, I'm Rodney Veal and welcome to "The Art Show," where each week we provide access to local and regional artists and arts organizations.

For four consecutive days in October, the 2026 iteration of BLINK dotted the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky landscape with light installations, projections, and murals.

As the sun set, visitors explore glowing cityscapes brought to life by regional, national, and international artists and groups.

We're putting the spotlight on a handful of BLINK Artists who've called the Cincinnati area their creative home base.

First up are Brent Keltch and Cedric Cox.

Brent is a multifaceted artist whose specialties include but aren't limited to sculpture, painting, and projection mapping.

Cedric is a contemporary painter whose vivid compositions invoke music, nature, and more.

Together, they merged their artistic visions into an interactive project, blending painting, video, and projection in Cincinnati's Smale Riverfront Park.

Check it out.

- [Brent] I've been making abstract paintings for about 25 years.

They're very celebratory.

They have a very vibrant aspect to them, and it kind of captures my inner human spirit.

Acrylic painting has been my kind of forte in the way that I capture my artistic expression.

- [Brent] My art is kind of related to life in general as far as people's likes and dislikes, and I try to capture that in my art.

I'm a big fan of where I live in the city and take great pride in it, so I like to do a sculptural pieces, installation pieces that kind of celebrate the city and celebrate where I live and who I work with.

- I'm a visual artist specializing in painting.

- I work in metal sculpture, wood sculpture.

I do projection mapping, installations, kind of painting, multifaceted.

- This is our official first time working together at BLINK.

Brent and I are working together at Essex Studios in Walnut Hills on a "Polyphonic Pyramid" for BLINK 2026.

I was teaching a class in one of the studios here at Essex Studios, and I was walking by and I saw Brent projecting vivid, wild, exciting imagery with music and sound.

I wasn't thinking about BLINK too much or applying for BLINK, but when I saw what he was doing, I was like, "Let's collaborate.

Let's do something."

- It was kind of a no-brainer because we both work in bright colors.

We both have a deep appreciation for the city we live in.

We both want to spread the joy and the excitement of working with art and doing art installations and public art especially.

- It's basically an enlargement of a prototype that Brent created of a smaller pyramid where he projected on before, but we wanted to take it on a massive level.

So it's three elements.

It's projection mapping, it is a 3D sculpture created by Brent, and it's gonna feature my paintings, which are kind of like the Cubist, Picasso-esque grid upon which Brent will orchestrate his musical elements, his photography that he's done and projection mapping graphics to where we create this visual symphony.

(energetic music) It keeps the eye moving around all four sides.

It's kind of like a sacred symbol of just our solid partnership, our vision, Brent's vision, Brent's fabrication skills, his architectural management, everything that he has done and practiced within his profession as a sculptor and as also as a graphics artist, it's a celebration of that and also my painting as well.

- [Brent] I'll basically use a 360 camera.

I'll have it out of my roof and just drive around town.

I'm incorporating some of that into the projection mapping.

- [Cedric] It embodies both of us.

- We wanted to create something that's a joy all the time, 24/7.

Somebody goes out there during the day when BLINK hasn't even started, they're gonna be able to enjoy Cedric's painting.

They're gonna be able to enjoy the structure.

And if they come at night, it's gonna be amazing because it's gonna be lit up, it's gonna be bright colors.

And so it's all just a celebration and that's what we wanted to bring to the table.

There's no reference material for that.

There's no reference material, you know, for the structure that we built.

We say yes and then we figure out how we're gonna actually do it.

(laughing) And so that's the fun part, you know, the kind of, you know, putting things together, see what's gonna work.

Things kind of change a little bit and it's a fluid situation, but we always were centered on what the ultimate outcome was.

And the most important thing is the art.

One of the biggest challenges was finding a space to prime these giant canvases.

- That's true.

- Finding a space to lay out a 20 foot by 20 foot canvas and prime it and then figure out how to paint it and get it up on the wall sturdy enough that we could paint it because it... And it was funny because, you know, there was challenges, but it came into place.

- There are things that I know how to do and there are things that Brent can do better or knows more than I do about certain things and there, you know, things where I'm short and Brent is successful in and things that I'm successful and Brent has his own way of doing things.

And I think when we work together, I think what ends up happening is we're able to fill in those gaps.

So I think naturally you partner with somebody knowing that they are gonna be able to carry the load in certain areas and you're gonna be able to let them handle the load and vice versa.

People had a chance to come down to Smale Park and experience a vivid orchestration of lights, sound, movement.

They had a chance to interact with the piece.

They had a chance to just be a part of the artwork and celebrate both Brent and I's contributions to the actual magical monolith that it is.

And it was just a beautiful experience.

I think BLINK opened up everybody's minds and opportunities and inspired us all to go beyond the studio and ask ourselves, how can we make what we do accessible to a larger audience and in a different way?

And that comes through collaboration.

I think every artist in BLINK in some shape or form is collaborating with a fabricator or someone else to figure out those problems and actually create work that celebrates their creativity, but at the same time, how their work can relate to the community.

- [Brent] There's nobody more or less important in BLINK, whether it's the person that just dresses up with a bunch of lights on and runs around town, or if it's somebody that builds a giant pyramid and projects onto it because they all accumulative make what BLINK is and it's about spreading the word of art and life and joy and happiness and community and getting together.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) - At first glance, the artwork of Chase Melendez may look as if it's been created digitally, but lean in closer and you'll see the artist's incredibly precise brushwork that turns blank canvases and empty walls into geometric feasts for the eye.

Drawing on his creative world of "candy pop sci-fi abstraction," Chase transformed an exterior wall of Covington, Kentucky's City Hall with a mural for BLINK.

Let's take a look at Chase's technicolor art and process.

(energetic music) - There's something else about art for me and like making art being unreal and the colors I use aren't real and it's like, why not make them fun and out of this world instead of like making something that you see every day?

My name is Chase Melendez and I'm a visual artist.

This is my first time as an official BLINK Artist.

(shutter snapping) I grew up in Washington State, so I'm a West Coast kid, (shutter snapping) but Cincinnati has put its hands on me and I've been here ever since.

Geometric abstraction is kind of what the work is and the murals, sculpture, installation is a voice that is getting pushed through.

I don't limit what that visual language is getting expressed to.

It all looks kind of similar or the same, but it's very specific to whatever the medium is.

It's not repeatable over and over in different locations.

It feeds from the locations, inspired by the locations, and kind of all mathematically equates in that location.

So if it's a 5,000 square foot, all of a sudden the shapes get bigger and there's more room, but then it's little, then they get smaller.

So it's always expanding and kind of controlling, but also presenting the same way and no matter what the medium is.

I describe my current body of work or my work as a whole as a "candy pop sci-fi abstraction."

It's got the candy-like colors, bubblegum colors.

It's abstract and it has like a little bit of a darkness to it in terms of the sci-fi of where I'm coming from in terms of creation.

One thing that a lot of people might not realize, it depends if you're from a certain age, but a lot of like my work, I say, is influenced by early video games.

My idea with every piece, whether it's a mural or a canvas, is I want people to feel like they can live in that piece.

That's when I know something's working.

To me, they're like backgrounds, like they're worlds, and you can move across from left to right or you can move in and out.

The precision in my work has grown to that point, to be honest.

When I first started painting a long time ago, I was very gestural.

(shutter snapping) My canvases and stuff, I'm not taping, I'm not using any tools.

It's just by hand, trying to make it as sharp as possible.

My outdoor murals, same kind of thing.

Finding that precision or making it appear like it's artifice or not painted is part of the fun for me.

I'm not one that names their murals, so my project for BLINK doesn't specifically have a name.

I like in all my paperwork and in all my files, it's just "Covington City Hall, BLINK 26."

So it's the Covington City Hall mural, (laughing) the new Covington City Hall building.

Being on the Kentucky side is awesome.

I'm a Covington resident, that's my neighborhood.

I love what BLINK does every year that they've been there and to be a part of it, like growing because it's growing in Covington this year, I think it's great.

It's only good for Kentucky and we have lots of space to grow, so I think it's only gonna go up.

My mural in Covington is really an extension of me kind of mixed in with the visual language that the building's already building.

Madison Design kind of selected colors and had a visual language, a wayfinding way through the building that is similar to my work, geometric shapes, kind of patterns, that kind of stuff.

So it was a natural fit for my work to get put on the outside of the building.

I think my work is interesting for a government building (laughing) and I'm ecstatic that they chose me or kind of wanted me to be a part of it.

My canvas work, when I'm coming up with a plan, how I'm creating it is more improvised and like, I mean, it looks like really controlled, but it starts out kind of like jazz, you know, like, oh, this shape is gonna influence this shape, and then we're kind of going here, and I have the time on a canvas to kind of find it.

On a mural, you don't have time to find that on the wall, so it happens, like, in the computer.

I'm doing the same thing on a computer.

I like graph paper, just basic graph paper, and then I do quick, like, marker sketches, not color, just black and white lines, like (imitates drawing) draw those out.

I just do multiples of that with the dimensions, and that's just to get the flow going.

And then once you get some line drawings that you kind of like, then I go to the computer and essentially do the same thing on the computer.

But at the computer, I build with color.

So I have the colors already loaded and I'm building orange block here and then I'm putting something in and then just jazzing it all up and moving it around.

It's just a dance when I'm coming up with design.

Oh, this is working, this is working, this isn't working.

And then it's just back and forth, back and forth until it comes to a place where everyone's like, "Okay, let's go."

It's very rewarding to be able to create a piece that's gonna be here after BLINK.

For me, I know it's probably because I'm biased, but like BLINK's always been a mural festival.

I get excited about the mural artists that come in.

I get excited about the walls that go up, and then they're staying here and then we're collecting all these artists and all these walls in the city and it's making Cincinnati really interesting.

(energetic music) (energetic music continues) - Fashion is more than what we wear.

It can tell a story, create a mood, and bring people together.

For designer Asha Ama, that spirit of collaboration is at the heart of her work.

At BLINK, she brought fashion, music, and movement together, collaborating with local musicians and a new generation of young designers from across the region.

It was a celebration of individual creativity, but also of what can happen when artists inspire one another.

Let's take a front row seat with Asha Ama and her creative collaborators as they light up the runway, BLINK style.

(energetic music) - I grew up in a creative household.

Both my parents, they were like blue collar, but they both were very creative.

Like my dad was an artist and my mom was a seamstress, but really a designer.

I don't think she saw herself as a designer.

She's just like, "I know how to sew and make clothes."

It's funny because I am like a very Type A book smart kind of girl, so I was an annoying kid.

I like wanted my A-plus.

I didn't like As or A-minuses.

I was the kid who was at my teacher's office hours if I got an A-minus and I'd be like, "What did I do wrong?

Can I do some extra credit?

What can I do better next time?"

But I never really saw myself as a creative because I don't think I really saw Black female creatives doing it for a living.

I think I was surrounded by a lot of Black creativity, but I didn't know fashion design was even a career, which is kind of crazy looking back on it.

And turns out I'm really good at design, and my teacher was like, "You're a fashion designer."

She pushed me to go toward DAAP because her husband was the dean at the time.

And it's funny because looking back, I learned how to hand sew when I was probably around 10.

I used to hand sew costumes for my little sister and make her be my model.

I still harass her into modeling for me present day, and she always closes out my show, which is great.

And then my mom taught me how to machine sew.

I was supposed to be a fashion designer, but I didn't know that that was a career.

When I did my DAAP senior thesis, I remember my collection looked so much different walking down the runway because I wanted tall, like Black glamazons on the runway.

I want models that look like me, just taller.

(laughing) That in of itself was hard, to be the only Black girl in my section and to be creating pieces where the references are like "Coming to America," nobody gets it, and you know, kind of feeling like, "Okay, am I not good at fashion design?"

(laughing) When I was at DAAP and I was coming up with my senior thesis, I had always grappled with... Like I know I have this God-given talent, and so I always thought like, "Am I wasting this gift that God has given me by not doing something that's important?"

Traditionally, we look at like doctors, lawyers as this is something that is like worthy of intelligence and talent.

And so my senior thesis was called "Fearful Symmetry."

I thought about it and I'm like, in nature, there's so much symmetry and it's intentional design.

Like yes, it is beautiful, but it's also clearly intentional and there's a designer to everything around us, like the way our bodies work, the way there's like symmetry in nature and animals.

I kind of realized and had an "Aha" moment that beauty and beauty creation and art as worthy and design as worthy of, you know, a life's dedication.

There's an armored feel, but there's a softness.

So I design from my inspiration, which is the Black woman, right?

And to me, it's a juxtaposition between hard when we need to be, strong when we need to be.

But then taking a chance on myself, I was ironically watching "Project Runway" with my mom and we were watching the owner of Marchesa and I was like, "I love her work.

I want to work for her."

So I just hopped online, shot them an email like Friday night, and I got a response back in a few hours, "Yes, you can start, you can come work here."

When I get to Marchesa, very "Devil Wears Prada."

The way the couture industry works is like really a bunch of free labor from kids.

So when I got there, it was like I was like the one kid from Ohio, nobody, people are like, "Do you live on a farm, or like Cincinnati 'First 48'?"

What I love about fashion is the couture side of fashion, which is fine art.

Of course, there is like trendy fashion, there's fast fashion, there's ready-to-wear.

All of those are cousins but that doesn't excite me.

So Marchesa was kind of me stepping out on my own and finding my own couture internship.

I want it to be so fun.

I've never been a functional or a practical girl.

Like in my real life, in my career, like I don't care for practicality at all.

And so with the ballet, the inspiration for it was beautiful.

Rena and I, we're friends to this day.

I love her, but we were just talking about in our own life how as Black women who are in creative careers and successful, how we often feel the pressure to make ourselves smaller, to make other people more comfortable.

So that was the piece that we came up with.

And so of course I'm like, "This has to be couture, this has to be artwork."

Rena really like encouraged me.

Like she had a moment where she was like, "Asha, you know, tell me what you're doing and I can like make sure the moves won't affect it."

And I'm like, "No, I want you to go all out, and I will like, meet you there."

But she was like, "I want you to do your thing and make it big."

So I think that was a really affirming process.

(energetic music) (singer vocalizing) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) Anytime someone sees any of my work, I want them to see themselves in it.

I think like to me that's the best art is like when it's personal, but for the people who get it on a deeper level, "Voyage to Atlantis," of course, we were at the Black Music Walk of Fame, so I'm like, "That's a no-brainer.

I love the Isley Brothers."

I grew up on so much amazing '70s music, including the Isleys.

I think that's what I'm most proud of is you can be talented, you can become famous or people can love you, adore your work, but if you're not a good person at the end of the day, what does it matter?

I've been blessed to have so much creative freedom.

That is always important.

I usually bring Black music and dance and references into all of my shows.

I love that I'm able to do stuff like that.

And when we talk specifically about the artists, they were amazing.

So we had Mic.

Carr & Shades, we had Khari and Montana.

And so to me, just like I love sharing my stage with my baby girls, I'm also like there's so much talent in Cincinnati that does not always get the stage that they deserve.

I firmly believe the young designers that I work with, the musicians that I work with, they're all going somewhere really big and, you know, you'll be able to say you saw them at my BLINK Fashion Show (laughing) before they were like international stars.

Young Asha would be gagged.

(laughing) I think she'd be like, "Wow, like, that's what we get to do and that's how your life looks?"

I think young Asha would be really excited to know that this is where we're headed.

And honestly, this version of me, I think, in 20 years will be really excited about where I headed, and I think she'll be... I think she would be proud of always betting on yourself and always, you know, taking the road less traveled, even if it was scary, even if it was a risk.

I think she'd be like, "This is a really cool life, and this was worthy of your parents' sacrifice to put you in those schools and put you in those places to have those opportunity, and you took full advantage of those opportunities."

So yeah, I think my homegirl would be proud.

(laughing) - And that wraps it up for this special BLINK edition of "The Art Show."

(whistle blowing) Until next time, I'm Rodney Veal.

Thanks for watching.

(energetic music) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) (energetic music continues) - [Announcer] Funding for the art show is made possible by The Rockwern Charitable Foundation, The L&L Nippert Charitable Foundation, Montgomery County, The Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, The Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation.

Additional funding provided by and viewers like you.

Closed captioning in part has been made possible through a grant from the Bahmann Foundation.

Thank you.