PRESS
Music Hall's roof will be 'naked' no more after latest restorations
June 2021
Cranes are returning several 4-foot-tall finials to the roof line of Music Hall, one of the final elements of the iconic building to be restored to its original Hannaford design.
143-year-old Music Hall restoration project underway
May 2021
Music Hall, a National Historic Landmark in Cincinnati, is undergoing a facelift. And when you are working to restore pieces of a building that is over a century old, it takes some special skills and precision.
ArtsConnect project is turning trash into art
March 2020
One man's trash is another man's treasure is an old saying proving true for the latest ArtsConnect project through the Pomerene Center for the Arts. Detritus is focused on turning recycling materials into works of art with one piece being installed May 8 at the artPARK on Main Street. Guest artist Jamie Payne has been working with about 25 students at Coshocton High School.
Kitchen Convos Ep. 41: 2017 Cincinnati Food & Wine Classic
October 2017
Luis Laya and James Payne of Fire Lab are the designers and master builders of Cincinnati Food + Wine Classic’s Live Fire Grill Pavilion. Hear their fascinating and unique story of how their desire to build a local community around the tradition of open fire cooking began with a challenge from their colleagues at Rookwood Pottery.
How Artists Can Help Remake a Town
April 2017
M.L.K Jr. boulevard in Covington is big, six-lanes-across big. Even so, the grand opening last September of the newly rehabbed Hellmann lumber mill—now artists’ studios, community meeting rooms, and CGN’s offices—was impossible to miss. After all, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That day, the fire was built to roast pigs, okra, and corn dumplings—on special grills hand-forged by Fire Lab, a previous CGN grant recipient—for the kind of diverse, dynamic crowd civic organizations strive to attract and very seldom do.
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University of Cincinnati professors challenged wood sculpting students to cut the cord
October 2018
"We were donated this 200-year-old piece of white oak, a cross cut out of it, and that just seemed to be the perfect shape and size," Payne said. "The class hollowed out the center of the wood with a bonfire."