Four artists use found objects to create a novel installation at the Southern Ohio Museum.

Mother Nature’s wrath can be a thing of beauty. That’s what Darren Baker, curator of the Southern Ohio Museum, discovered one afternoon last fall as he wandered the banks of the Ohio River in Portsmouth following a flood.

The receding waters had left a magnificent find behind: a rectangular patch of maple that reminded Baker — a furniture maker — of a pergola. There was also a generous assortment of stumps that resembled the heads of bulls, birds and goats, and a tangled rootball that looked like an old-fashioned TV antenna. >>

It’s safe to say that few restaurants that have opened in the Dayton area in recent years have gotten the kind of buzz that attended Rue Dumaine. And once diners started making hard-to-get reservations, they discovered what all the anticipation was for: This is a restaurant that definitely has the goods.

The wife-husband team of Anne Kearney-Sand and Thomas Sand Jr. seem unruffled by all the attention; after all, Peristyle, the New Orleans restaurant they owned before moving back home to the Dayton area, had been widely acclaimed. What they’ve introduced to southwest Ohio diners is an intriguing mixture of cool, unhurried professionalism and a deep, abiding passion for food, flavors and ingredients. >>