To sample some of the very best that Ohio artists have to offer, go Downtown and stop in at the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery — or go to the gallery website for an online tour — and experience the 2021 Biennial Juried Exhibition. 

Be prepared to want to spend some time with this rich exhibit representing 53 of the state’s artists. Each work has a fascinating backstory that adds to its enjoyment and appreciation.

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Welcoming visitors at the gallery door is “Judy POW81-A,” a sculpted brown-and-white-spotted dog created by artist James Mellick of Milford Center. The real dog that inspired the work befriended and was befriended by an American soldier in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II. Their story is touching. 

Julianne Edberg’s “1950s Dress” is a suspended sculpture made of paper — mostly from cut-up old children’s books — wrapped around small cardboard triangles. The dress’s retro jacket and full skirt are intended, the Cleveland Heights artist writes, to comment on the bland decade of the title “but may be creepier in effect.”

Nearby are two huge sculptures by artist Michelle Stitzlein of Baltimore, Ohio. From a distance, “Horizon Fringe — Boucherouite Series” looks like a colorful fiber wall hanging. Up close, you see that it is constructed of hundreds of pieces of old garden hoses, electrical cables and computer wires, sort of a trompe-l’oeil homage to textiles. Her “Toklat-Fynbos Series,” also made of old, recycled commercial materials, is a recreation of the mosses, lichens and fungi the artist saw during a residency at Denali National Park in Alaska.

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Columbus artist Ron Anderson captures dancers in his beautiful oil painting “Ballerinas Taking Court.” In the moving acrylic painting “Cooking Clips,” Jennifer Murray of Westerville considers the material objects left behind when her grandmother moved into a nursing home. 

Cincinnati artist Susan Byrnes employs the metaphor of sweeping — involved in house cleaning as well as in change — in her colorful wall installation “The Sweeping Meditation,” more than 40 multicolored brooms hanging at attention on the wall.

Hundreds of small cardboard houses — some dark and some lit from inside — are stacked on top of one another in what artist Nicki Crock of Galloway describes as a “topsy-turvy investigation into the curious, odd and sometimes magical atmosphere of architecture and community.”

Juror’s choice awards went to Alli Hoag of Toledo for “Trace Decay,” in which the head of a real taxidermy fawn is surrounded by a swarm of crystal butterflies; Max Markwald of Cleveland, who commemorated his gender transition with a larger-than-life self-portrait, “Twenty-Seven;” and Thomas Hudson of Richmond Heights for his realistic painting “For $2.00.” 

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Best of show honors went to !Katie B Funk! for her enormous wall piece “junk dazzle silhouettes,” in which the Columbus artist has collaged hundreds of black-and-white photographs of herself in a variety of positions and expressions, all backlit by an eerie orange-pink glow. 

“I made my body childish, manipulative, and ethereal,” she writes. “I made my body rabid, sleazy, and aloof.” She also made her body and this work express a variety of moods — playful, energetic, disturbing and always mesmerizing. 

The powerful, compelling, beautifully crafted works in this exhibit were selected by jurors Jessimi Jones, executive director of the Springfield (Ohio) Museum of Art; Kevin Lyles, art professor at the University of Rio Grande; and Columbus artist and educator April Sunami. They selected the artists from almost 1,800 applications with criteria that included craftsmanship, compelling content, strength, feeling and, as Lyles stated, “an attempt to show something new.”

Well done, jurors and artists. 

The "2021 Biennial Juried Exhibition” continues through Jan. 7 at the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery, 77 S. High St. Hours: noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays. Masks are required. The full exhibition is available online. Visit www.oac.ohio.gov.