by | Dec 4, 2024 9:23 am | Comments (0)
Craig Frederick
Breath.
Craig Frederick’s Breath looks lighter than its materials. If it were a sea creature, it appears like it could be spiraling through the water. If it were in flight, it could seem like it was made of paper, corkscrewing through the air. It makes space for itself in the gallery, as if it’s just passing through, and we happen to be there when it stops for a minute.
by | Nov 27, 2024 9:32 am | Comments (15)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Best Video's Rai Bruton, with Lyric Hall's John Cavaliere: “Places like this and Best Video will only last if we work together.”
Lyric Hall Theater came full circle on Tuesday night as the beloved Westville venue partnered with Best Video for the first night of its new monthly film series for New Haven movie fans.
Continue reading ‘Best Video, Lyric Hall Pair Up For Film Series’
by | Nov 25, 2024 10:13 am | Comments (23)
Thomas Breen photo
That's some mighty fine "beton brut.”
A pair of six-story concrete “gigantic megaliths” on Fountain Street have traded hands for $28 million — leaving 150-plus Westville apartments under new ownership for the first time in two decades.
by | Nov 19, 2024 9:37 am | Comments (5)
Update: Tuesday 11:37 a.m. A maintenance crew has repaired a broken heating system at Edgewood School, and the heat is back on in the building, schools spokesperson Justin Harmon reported Tuesday morning.
“The first of the two pumps has been repaired and reinstalled,” Harmon told the Independent.
A previous version of this story follows:
by | Nov 14, 2024 3:21 pm | Comments (41)
Allan Appel Photo
Sen. Winfield (right), with Alder Marx: "Most of the kids are not repeating and do not belong in jail."
A chronically under-staffed police department 90 officers short meets a national post-pandemic rash of juvenile vandalism, car thefts and life-threatening joy riding that makes everyone feel unsafe.
That “perfect storm” for policing that has arrived in New Haven was analyzed in a crime and safety-focused Westville-West Hills Community Management team meeting Wednesday night.
Continue reading ‘West Siders Press Pols On Car Theft Quandary’
by | Nov 4, 2024 12:00 pm | Comments (2)
Police arrested three Wolcott residents caught in a stolen Crown Vic — as cops worked to thwart two street takeovers, one in Newhallville and another in Westville, this weekend.
by | Oct 25, 2024 1:48 pm | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen photo
Welcome to Picklville CT ...
Lisa Reisman photo
... at the intersection of Valley & Blake in Westville.
On a recent afternoon at Pickleville CT, the new Westville indoor pickleball facility along Blake Street and Valley Street near Whalley Avenue, Winny Sanchez was “dinking” for the first time in her life.
Continue reading ‘New Haven Picklers Can Now "Dink" Indoors’
by | Oct 22, 2024 9:57 am | Comments (0)
Eddie Hall
Contuse and Reflex.
Eddie Hall’s artwork at first glance comes across as a high-gloss study of bold geometric shapes, akin to the forms produced by fiber artists or, in some cases, older video games. But the reflective surfaces also give something away: look again and you see that the glass isn’t in front of the canvas; it is the canvas, and part of it is transparent, revealing the wall behind it. Even bolder, sometimes the surface is a mirror. Stand in front of it, and you become part of the image.
by | Oct 16, 2024 9:40 am | Comments (0)
Allan Greenier
Untitled (Karloff).
It’s a transfixing stare, made more intense by the medium. A woodcut hearkens back to an earlier time — and, in German Expressionism, an earlier mode of expressing anxiety. But Allan Greenier’s much more modern piece makes a strong case for the old medium’s abiding ability to create arresting art. He also gives it an interesting spin, in that the face in the picture is that of Boris Karloff, best known as the monster in 1931’s Frankenstein.
by | Oct 8, 2024 8:30 am | Comments (16)
Allan Appel photo
Stacey Abrams (right), and interlocutor Emily Bazelon: "If you’re interested in peoples’ lives being better, that’s politics.”
State government is by far the least understood in our system, and in many ways the most important to get right if we want to achieve the goals of democracy.
Former Georgia state rep and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams made those remarks, by turns trenchant yet largely apolitical, at the Hopkins School Monday afternoon before no fewer than 1,200 enthusiastic, applauding young people.
by | Sep 23, 2024 4:18 pm | Comments (7)
Laura Glesby Photo
Harold Jones, in the "flow" scooping early fall leaves in Upper Westville.
“You can’t work with a cluttered mind,” said Harold Jones as he de-cluttered the Ijeh family’s front yard — on a job outing where stories of incarceration and reentry, witnessed and experienced from different angles, had a chance to intersect.
by | Sep 17, 2024 8:59 am | Comments (0)
Sven Martson Photos
Rochester Truck Door.
The profile, of a cartoon crone, is easy to see — easier than seeing what it really is. Keep looking and you might see other faces as well. But keep looking, and you see that it’s all something else, that your mind is finding patterns, meaning, in a chance encounter. “I was walking around in Rochester one day, and before crossing a street, I looked to the right, and down at the end of the alley was a shiny truck door reflecting the distorted image of the building across the street,” Sven Martson notes. “My point of view was all important. Just a few inches to the right or left and the image broke up and disappeared.” It’s only a reflection of a building. But it also reflects something else, in the way we find so much else in it.
by | Sep 12, 2024 12:15 pm | Comments (22)
Thomas Breen file photo
Harvest Mart advertises its wares, with the help of a novelty-sized blunt.
Hassan Alsufyani wanted to open up a convenience store at the entrance to Westville Village.
But local zoning law prohibits such a use at that spot — so he now sells strictly tobacco, bongs, e‑cigarettes, and vaping products instead.
by | Aug 27, 2024 1:10 pm | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen photo
So long, 949 Whalley's western addition?
The Church of Scientology has paid local taxes for the first time in 14 years for a vacant former furniture store in Westville Village — and is now looking to demolish part of that neglected property as part of a long-delayed renovation.
Continue reading ‘Scientologists Pay Taxes, Ready Partial Demolition’
by | Aug 22, 2024 9:28 am | Comments (1)
Ralph Levesque
Match Maker.
Ralph Levesque’s Match Maker, at first glance, looks like religious art, from the halo encircling one of the figures to the positions of the figures in relation to each other. We’ve seen the general idea before, in Christian medieval art. But the first glance proves deceiving, an overt meaning elusive. Who or what is the visage in the background? And why the faces on sticks? Are they mirrors? Portals? The title suggests that a transaction of some kind is taking place. But what? We don’t know what’s going on, but the sense of meaning, a belief system being enacted, remains.
by | Aug 16, 2024 8:39 am | Comments (0)
Sarah Groate with her two photos.
Sarah Groate’s photographs, Duke’s Arrival and Waiting at The Rainbow Bridge, married two of her great loves: photography and horses. Groate works at the CT Draft Horse Rescue, and she uses the horses there as both inspiration and the subjects of her art. “I just found that I loved photographing them,” she said. “They’re the true gentle giants.”
by | Aug 8, 2024 9:32 am | Comments (3)
The city’s premier outdoor concert venue won’t be quiet all summer long after all — now that four August shows have been moved from a Middlefield ski resort to the Westville Music Bowl.
by | Aug 6, 2024 8:22 am | Comments (1)
Carlos y su Movimiento Musical.
A dozen varieties of fruit flavors and a dozen Latin rhythms came together on Monday evening as the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance closed out HI Fi Pie, its series of outdoor concerts and pie-making contests held in Beecher Park, in front of the Mitchell Branch Library, in Westville.
Continue reading ‘A Blistering Merengue, & A Berry Good Time’
by and | Jul 14, 2024 3:55 pm | Comments (6)
David Sepulveda Photo
Mohamad Hafez observes window patching.
Police arrested a 62-year-old man with a history of mental health challenges in connection with a window-smashing spree in Westville Village.
by | Jul 11, 2024 2:34 pm | Comments (1)
Charlotte Anderholt’s cranberry tart pie with hazelnut crust.
Abiba Biao Photos
Harris, Ray, and Sarah Harris Wallman.
Harris Wallman only needed an hour to craft his delicious blueberry-mint-cream cheese pie for the summer’s first Hi-Fi Pie Fest. The base, made up of sugar cookie dough, had a cream cheese filling seasoned with lemon juice, lemon zest, and ginger. The pie couldn’t be complete without the pièce de résistance: a creamy blueberry sauce layered on top.
by | Jul 9, 2024 4:21 pm | Comments (14)
Elchanan Poupko
Still of Charlie Rich from Westville altercation video.
(Updated) A group of Hopkins alums are calling on the Forest Road private school to reinstate an employee who was put on paid leave five months ago following a verbal altercation between his wife and a neighbor over the war in Gaza.
Continue reading ‘Hopkins Alums Petition For Palestine Protester's Spouse’
by | Jul 9, 2024 12:23 pm | Comments (21)
Thomas Breen photo
949 Whalley, meet the tax man.
(Updated) For the first time in 14 years, City Hall has sent a property tax bill to the Church of Scientology for a long-vacant former furniture store in Westville Village.
Continue reading ‘Scientology Building's Tax Bill Comes Due’
by | Jul 8, 2024 11:45 am | Comments (2)
Eleanor Polak photo
Stephanie Berluti.
Stephanie Berluti of South Haven Farm was selling vegetables and greens at her stand at the CitySeed Edgewood Farmers Market on Sunday when she was approached by a man asking if she had any arugula.
Unfortunately, Berluti hadn’t brought any arugula that day — it had been too hot for it recently. The man was disappointed, but he still left her on a note of praise.
“He said my arugula ruined him for other arugula,” said Berluti. “This time of year, in the heat, farming can get you down, so it’s nice to get compliments.”
Continue reading ‘Farmers Market Brings Community To The Table’
by | Jul 8, 2024 9:24 am | Comments (2)
Love n'Co at Seeing Sounds.
Eleanor Polak photo
T!lt's Mike Scialla: “This is our last song, so we usually go crazy."
“You can do anything. That’s my main motto,” Lovelind of the local rock-pop-soul band Love n’Co told the crowd at Edgewood Park’s Seeing Sounds Festival. “It won’t be easy, but you can do anything.”
That proved a fitting tribute to the artistic accomplishment that was Saturday’s fest — which saw a swath of the park turn into a vibrant venue for beautiful clothing, delicious food, foot-tapping rhythms, and a feeling of camaraderie that lasted longer than the last notes of a song.
by | Jul 5, 2024 12:25 pm | Comments (25)
John Kritzman Photo
Bleachers at the Bowl. No more of this until Sept. 21.
The city’s premier outdoor concert venue doesn’t have any shows booked for July and August — with its last concert having taken place at the end of June, and its next concert scheduled for late September.
Why no live music these peak summer months? Because of “voracious competition” from Live Nation, which pays “exorbitant” prices to keep acts from coming to the Westville Music Bowl.