After six years, 84 happy-hours, two weddings, and one divorce, the monthly art-themed get-together calls it quits — with a city networking mission accomplished.
Since 2001, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven has been holding an Artspot each month. The happy-hour mixers featured food, drink, art, and music in a different city art venue each month. Over 100 people gathered Thursday night for the final Artspot, inside the glass-and-marble main chamber of the Yale School of Architecture Gallery on Edgewood Avenue. In addition to the drinks and hors d’oeuvres, the Valentine’s Day event included a live band, conversation hearts, t‑shirt giveaways, light-up V‑Day pins, and even some spontaneous love poetry.
Mission Accomplished
“This is our finale,” said Bobbi Griffith (pictured with Arts Council staff, at left above), events director for the Arts Council and Artspot’s perennial coordinator. “After six years, Artspot has fulfilled its mission.” The event was designed as a networking opportunity to bring together young professionals, graduate students, and business people and expose them to arts in New Haven. Griffith said that there’s less of a need for events like Artspot now than there was in 2001. “We were the first networking group, and now they’re all over,” she said.
Soonil Chun, director of finance at the Arts Council, said that Artspot began as a means to create more of an audience for art in New Haven and quickly turned into a singles group.
The group has apparently been successful for some. Griffith said that there have been two weddings of couples who first met at Artspot. “One of them ended in divorce,” said Griffith. “But the other couple’s been married for a year, and they just had a baby!”
Overhearing this, Artspotter Jessica Kubat remarked, “I met my boyfriend at Artspot!” Kubat, a research assistant at Yale, and her boyfriend Dan McLeggon, a sales manager in Milford, have been dating for a year and half, ever since they discovered their common interests at an Artspot in the summer of 2006.
Kubat said that she has enjoyed getting to know New Haven through Artspot. “It’s always in a different location,” she said, “You really discover New Haven by going to all the different places.”
Paul Stabach, a research scientist at Yale, was interested in discovering women when he went to his first Artspot in 2003. “I was looking to pick up chicks, and I scored that night,” said Stabach.
“And we’re still friends,” he added happily.
Stabach said he’s put his pick-up days behind him. Now he comes to Artspot for the art and to mingle with the New Haven community. “It’s a weird mix,” he said. “It’s a combination of art students, and the bike community, and business people in suits.” Stabach said that he’s disappointed now that Artspot is ending. “Now I only have Critical Mass to look forward to each month.”
A Two-Tiara night for Bobbi
Moving through the crowd and greeting the “regulars,” Griffith was the recipient of not one, but two glittery plastic tiaras. The first was from the Arts Council staff. The second was from a group of half a dozen New Haveners who have been frequenting Artspot for several years. One of these was Rob Rocke (at left in photo), who said that one of his fondest Artspot memories was when it was held at the Neighborhood Music School, an evening that included free 10-minute music lessons. “Everybody has a beer or two and then goes for a guitar lesson.”
In addition to other non-tiara presents from her co-workers, Griffith received a gift bag from Rocke and his friends: a box of chocolates and trivia game.
Griffith wasn’t the only one to leave with more than she came with. The music was interrupted every couple of songs by a giveaway. Prizes included T‑shirts and tickets to the Shubert. Giveaways were accompanied by the reading of a newly drafted poem, fresh from the poem-writing station (next to the drinks). Slips of paper were printed with an incomplete rhyme for Artspotters to complete. Read one poem: “Roses are red, violets are blue. Too bad for Artspot, we’ll all be blue.”