I got to do a lot of fun things this weekend, including have dinner with my girlfriends at Pitrelli’s, meet my mom and aunt and grandma at Blue Jay Restaurant, check out Cincy Shirts, and eat a coney snack at Camp Washington Chili before helping to set up for a fundraiser for UpSpring at my favorite place in the city, the American Sign Museum. I also had a flight from The Woodburn, had lunch at Quán Hapa (again), took in the awesome weather at Washington Park, and saw Matilda the Musical at the Aronoff Center, which was an awesome production. But my favorite was an event held at The Woodward Theater.
Saturday was the inaugural Pop Art Con Cincinnati, a live art convention and the first of a series of pop-up events organized and executed by Gorilla Cinema, the creative minds behind Cincinnati’s beloved The Overlook Lodge and The Video Archive. It is so important to me to support local — and especially our local events and artists — and Pop Art Con was a wonderful way to do just that. 
The Woodward Theater was the perfect venue for this event, as the vendors were situated on its two floors — about ten on the second floor, which overlooked a first floor with about ten more vendors, plus a full bar and a stage with a DJ to provide a soundtrack to your interactive artwalk experience.
There were jewelry makers, screen-printers, comic book artists, painters, and blind contour drawers, and it was a really great first event. It was well organized and the talent was impressive. If Pop Art Con is any indication, it’ll be really fun to see where they can take their future pop-up events.
Here are some pictures from my experience:

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Pop Art Con Cincinnati 2017 at The Woodward Theater

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DIY Printing pressing a t-shirt for me onsite

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Completely in love with this DIY Printing shirt

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Blind Contour Drawings by Popped Art, a mobile gallery

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Blind Contour Drawing by Popped Art

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Brett Gray, of Brett Gray Art, working on a charcoal piece

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Brett Gray, of Brett Gray Art

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DJ Will Ross

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Anthony “Tank” Mansfield, artist/designer/illustrator, in front of some of his work

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Justin Stewart, all-around art badass, working on a sketch

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Justin Castaneda’s booth, featuring his children’s book and other illustrated work

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Billy Tackett, at work on his impressive splatter paintings