Westville

Artists Become Curators At Kehler Liddell

by | Jul 5, 2024 8:31 am | Comments (0)

Jennifer Knaus

Jennifer Knaus's Oval, now showing in "Artist as Curator."

Jennifer Knaus’s portrait pulls in the viewer in five different ways. There’s the vivid color choices, the exquisitely rendered, phantasmagorically fecund hair. But perhaps more than anything, there’s the element as old as portraiture itself: the gaze of the subject of the portrait back at the viewer, direct yet complex. What is the subject thinking? And with a painting like this, it’s possible to take that question a step further: What is the subject thinking about us?

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Breast Cancer Preventers Raise Awareness

by | Jul 1, 2024 11:07 am | Comments (8)

Abiba Biao photo

Crenshaw (right) teaches Tanasia Edwards how to perform a breast self exam.

Jacquelyn Crenshaw isn’t new to spotting breast tumors. Having worked in mammography for more than 40 years, she urged a crowd of over a dozen women to get their annual mammograms, perform monthly breast self-examinations, and above all, know your breast density.”

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Brennan Wins One For Mom & Dad

by | Jun 28, 2024 3:10 pm | Comments (33)

Thomas Breen file photo

Compassionate son Liam Brennan: ADU? YIMBY!

Liam Brennan’s elderly parents will be able to live just steps away from their grandchildren — while maintaining the independence of residing in their own detached home — now that the city’s zoning board has approved the conversion of the former mayoral candidate’s backyard garage into a two-story accessory dwelling unit (aka ADU”).

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Broken Umbrella Serves Up Slice Of History

by | Jun 4, 2024 9:11 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

On Monday night, members of A Broken Umbrella Theatre gathered in the theater company’s rehearsal and performance space in Westville to roll the clock back to 1929, close to the origins of New Haven’s apizza culture.

In the scene they rehearsed, Pete Jr. (Otto Fuller) wants to introduce his friend Charles (Jonah Alderman) to the rest of his family: mother Lucrezia (Susan Kulp), Cousin Mike (Matt Gaffney), and Uncle Jimmy (Lou Mangini). Mike and Jimmy, behind the counter, roll out dough and slide apizza in and out of a brick oven. Charles isn’t there just to make friends; he wants a job.

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Artists Find The Beauty In Paying Attention

by | May 31, 2024 8:14 am | Comments (2)

Frank Bruckmann

I-95 East Norwalk.

Frank Bruckmann paints the sky to convey a sense of the clouds roiling overhead; perhaps it’s getting dark, or threatening rain, or both. In the dimness, the lights in the painting are blurred by atmosphere. Metal signs gleam in the reflected light. Bruckmann gives it all emotion and loving attention, which makes it all the more interesting that his subject isn’t a beautiful landscape, or an important person, but a snarl of traffic on I‑95.

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Punq Noire Opens The Stage

by | May 24, 2024 9:26 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery photo

Allie Bee stood in front of an admiring audience in the downstairs space of Westville’s Third Space. Tracks they’d made themself played behind them as they took their time unfurling melodies they’d written on bass. The first one, groovy, insistent, they said, was called Wayward Giant.” The second one, hazier and jazzier, was called Blue Moon,” named after a smoothie of the same name that they’d made at work.

Inspiration comes in weird places,” they said.

An enthusiastic voice came from the back: Yeah it does!”

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Westville's ArtWalk Cultivates New Artisans

by | May 14, 2024 11:34 am | Comments (1)

Abiba Biao photo

Elizabeth Laconi, Anne Hartjen, Shayla Streater, and Amayah Smith.

Amid the sea of vendors and artisans on Saturday afternoon at the 27th annual Westville ArtWalk neighborhood festival and arts market, 11-year-old Amayah Smith looked around in awe at the multitude of goods people had to offer, from handmade soaps to crochet plushies. Amayah could imagine herself taking part, so folks better watch out at next year’s ArtWalk for a new business — “‘Mayah’s Joy” — bringing homemade stickers to you.

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Artists Bend Time's Arrow

by | May 14, 2024 8:29 am | Comments (0)

Sean Patrick Gallagher

These Wine-Dark, Warming Currents, Rising.

In Sean Patrick Gallagher’s series of paintings, the sea roils red. The image is clear enough, but the title brings home the allusions the artist is leaning toward. Wine-dark,” the famous moniker for the ocean in Homer’s classical Greek epics. The others are more contemporary, pointing to the effects of climate change. The series of paintings together act almost like a film. Move through the gallery fast enough, and the floor might feel like it’s surging beneath your feet.

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Family Dollar Shoppers Don't Want Change

by | Mar 19, 2024 4:25 pm | Comments (5)

Alex Ankrah and Josephine Bailey: Family Dollar is a top-dollar date space.

Mother and daughter Hinasta L and Celeste Burrell left Family Dollar with Rockin’ Protein, hand sanitizer, period pads and heavy hearts — as they prepared for potential closure of the only store in the city keeping their pockets lined with more than lint.

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Blighted Scientology Building Returned To Tax Rolls

by | Mar 8, 2024 2:28 pm | Comments (42)

Paul Bass Photos

No sign of "religious" activity: Assessor Pullen (left); portions of the blighted Scientology building.

Scientologists will have to pay taxes after sitting on plans to resurrect Ron Hubbard’s spirit inside the deteriorating doors of a former furniture store — now that the city revoked the church’s tax-exempt status.

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Students, Governor cARTie Hearty

by | Mar 5, 2024 9:45 am | Comments (0)

Students Monday outside the parked cARTie bus.

cARTie museum educator Nicole Pappo reads to students outdoors.

When asked does art matter?” second graders Mercedes, Mason, and Elia agreed yes.” Then they showed some of the reasons: Mason drew a sign reading art = peace.” Elia drew a self-portrait. And Mercedes drew a rainbow, reading I love art.” 

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Artists Walk The Path

by | Feb 21, 2024 9:34 am | Comments (0)

Roy Money

Emeishan View 2.

The view of a mountain in Sichuan, China is breathtaking, though not for the usual reasons. Photographer Roy Money doesn’t train his camera on the usual kind of tourist pictures — the highest peak, the widest vista, the prettiest temple. Instead, he has an eye for the beauty in the details, the shape of the land, a mat of vegetation, curls of fog. Pictures of famous vistas might make us want to go there. Pictures like Money’s might give us more of a sense of what it’s like to already be there.

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Pols, Pom-Poms Celebrate Pizza, Magnets

by | Feb 9, 2024 4:50 pm | Comments (5)

This reporter's favorite student as seen during Friday's Davis magnet school pep rally.

Nora Grace Flood Photos

Ernie's owner Pat DeRiso tries to get orders out for delivery while reporters hound him about National Pizza Day.

A plethora of pizza, pom-poms and politicians flooded Upper Westville Friday morning amidst a pair of symbiotic popularity contests – in which every party was a winner.

The slices of of za and strings of plastic were featured in two separate city celebrations taking place around the corner from one another. 

Over at Davis Academy, students screamed out of ostensible excitement or, perhaps, excess energy as their principal announced that both The Magnet Schools of America and the University of Connecticut have recognized the school for innovative excellence.”

Down the street on Whalley Avenue, politicians and thin-crust fanatics packed like anchovies inside Ernie’s Pizzeria for National Pizza Day and a proclamation by the governor naming New Haven the Pizza Capital of America.”

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Students Grill Senator

by | Jan 26, 2024 12:38 pm | Comments (33)

Laura Glesby Photo

"I can't quit": Blumenthal fields sharp Qs from Mauro-Sheridan fifth-graders.

If you had to either quit or work with Donald Trump as president, what would you do?”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal faced that question and others about his role in the future of American democracy — not at a press conference, or on the Senate floor, but in Lauren Bitterman’s fifth-grade classroom at Mauro-Sheridan school.

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