Brett Levine

Willie Cole is no stranger to Birmingham audiences. His work was the subject of a 2007 touring retrospective and a 2013 solo exhibition at beta pictoris gallery, so one might wonder what revelations could possibly appear in "Willie Cole: Transformations" at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts.

Viewing Lauren Alyssa Howard’s show “How Did I Not See This Coming” is like being caught in a redneck remake of the Wizard of Oz meets Twister with a healthy dose of Coal Miner’s Daughter thrown in. More simply, Howard combines elements of fantasy, tragedy, family history, and ol’ time religion to construct a personal history that is archetypally Southern and rooted equally in the past and the present.

If there were only two things that might strike terror in the hearts of the average American, they would likely be Iran and drugs. So, Taravat Talepasand’s exhibition “Not an Arab Spring” begins from a place of wry wit and dry humor that may escape many viewers. For other viewers, the challenge may be greater given the fact that the one ubiquitous image of Ayatollah Khomeini is not necessarily as iconic to a younger generation of US viewers, but for Talepasand this is not an issue.