Ophelia Alone Artist Talks & Closing Reception

Please join us for an evening of art, music & celebration of sisterhood. We will gather in a series of soulful events centered around lifting up our sisters and circling up with our community, starting with this exciting opening reception for the exhibition

- FEATURING ATISTS TALKS BY OUR OWN -

Resident Artist, Mary Barr Rhodes,

and Collaborator, Llyod Greene,

at SoHza Sister Boutique

from 6-9pm

- WITH SPOKEN WORD PERFROMANCES PRESENTED -

By Participants in The Ophelia Alone Spoken Word Workshop

Led By Kim Belew

Renowned artists Mary Barr Rhodes and Lloyd Greene present fresh interpretations and join community conversation fueled by spoken word performances inspired by “Reviving Ophelia.”

Each event explores the resilience and creativity of young women, channeling Ophelia’s story into a rallying cry for well-being, empowerment, and artistic expression.

Spoken word participants will share their pieces during the closing reception, amplifying voices and stories that resonate in today’s world.

Find your voice. Redefine your narrative. Celebrate with Sohza.

This is a community appreciation event, with complimentary light refreshments to enjoy!

Feel free to bring something to share, if you like.

Come when you can, leave when you must.

Bring a friend, or your whole family - the more the merrier!

Hope to see you there!

Artists Statement

Holly Doan Spraul, owner and director of Wash Park Art located in Cincinnati. curated an art exhibition for the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company to run during the showing of A Room in the Castle. The exhibition, entitled Angels and Ministers, is a collaboration in cyanotype, photography and mixed media - a modern interpretation of some of the supernatural and ethereal characters and enigmatic and philosophical themes of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

Now these works and additional works play on the aftermath of tragedy, what remains? Our exhibition, “Ophelia Alone,” reimagines the world of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” if only Ophelia survived. Here, the familiar drama of vengeance and madness unravels into a solitary reckoning—Ophelia, the perennial observer, is no longer drowned by circumstance but endures as the sole keeper of Elsinore’s haunted corridors.

This body of work explores the weight and liberation of being left standing. Through photography, painting and mixed-media works, Ophelia’s voice reverberates in an empty court, her gaze lingering over the remnants of intrigue, ambition, and loss. The absence of Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and Polonius transforms the palace into both tomb and cocoon. Ophelia, stripped of role and reference, confronts her own survival. She is not only a relic, but a witness—of love twisted, innocence tainted, and history rewritten in the hush after catastrophe.

Artists have responded to Ophelia’s solitude as a generative force. Their works surface new identities for her—mourner, queen, mythic…threading herself out of a labyrinth of grief. The exhibition becomes both memorial and genesis, asking: Who is Ophelia when freed from all eyes and edicts? What meaning can be gathered from the ruins she inherits—broken garlands, empty thrones, fragments of theater scattered in the dark?

“Ophelia Alone” invites viewers to encounter silence as narrative and survival as an act of creation.

- Marry Barr Rhodes

MARY BARR RHODES is an internationally acclaimed artist working out of Cincinnati, OH.

Her artwork is in numerous prestigious corporations such as Graydon Law Firm, First Financial Bank, Von Lehman Accounting, KMK Law and Johnson Investment Counsel. Her artwork is also in numerous homes across the United States, Europe and South America. Rhodes serves as an artist, educator, facilitator, consultant and curator.

Recent highlights include an award by Venue Magazine and being named Artist of the Year by Art Design Consultants, as well as, a publisher’s award by Polly Magazine. She was recently commissioned by a new boutique hotel, The Kinley, and was awarded a light installation at Par-Projects. You can find her work each year at the prestigious Context Fair during Art Basel in Miami.

This will conclude a series of events centered around the exhibition. If you can not not make the Closing Reception, please save the date and sign up to join us for one of these events preceding it in this series held at and presented by SoHza Sister Boutique:

Ophelia Alone - SoHza Book Club - 2nd Sundays

Book: Reviving Ophelia

Sunday, September 14th, 2025

Sunday, October 12th, 2025

11 am - 1 pm

(New book in November)

Recurring Community Appreciation Event - FREE

Ophelia Alone - Spoken Word Workshop

hosted by Kim Belew

Saturday, October 11, 2025

10 am - 12 noon

Love offering of $20 appreciated

Ophelia Alone - Artist Talks & Closing Reception

with Mary Barr Rhodes

Saturday, November 8th

6 pm - 9 pm

Community Appreciation Event - FREE

Hope to see you there!