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Brian Slattery |
Oct 30, 2024 8:44 am
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Effy Gray Photo
Gelsey Bell: “The piece is designed so that people start off feeling apocalyptic. Then they can go on a journey that leaves them in a different place."
Over a pulsing synthesizer, musician and composer Gelsey Bell ends the final song of her opera with the line “I’m struck by morning / the orange line of light / low and fast, revolving flight.” By then, however, to the listener the meaning of that first noun is ambiguous: does she mean “morning” or “mourning”? The line carries the weight of both meanings with ease.
It’s part of Bell’s experimental opera MƆɹNIŊ [Morning//Mourning], which “inhabits a world in which all humans have disappeared from Earth,” Bell writes. “An ensemble of five vocalist/multi-instrumentalists witness and guide the audience through the changes on Earth as forests grow back, new species evolve, and the human-made world erodes away. The piece is a fantastical and playful exploration into the dire political and ethical contradictions that structure current human relations with nature.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and Honda Smith with firefighters from Engine 15 who work with kids at The Shack ...
... as artist David Coardes stands before mural of Alder Smith painted by Imani Roberts.
In the midst of a spirited game of Bingo among a group of senior citizens at The Shack, there was an interruption. It was U.S. Senator Chris Murphy stopping by — to get an up-close look at what makes the West Hills community center work so well.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 29, 2024 8:34 am
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André Holland and Andra Day in Exhibiting Forgiveness.
A man with frazzled hair and beard gets mixed up in a liquor store robbery and is badly hurt. He stumbles to his brother’s house, where his wounds are tended to, his hair and beard trimmed; in the shower, he cries until he’s shaking, the water at his feet stained with dirt and dried blood.
Somewhere else, in a clean, opulent modern house, a talented painter appears to be on the brink of art stardom. His works are already fetching big money in the art market, and his next set of paintings looks to be an even bigger hit. But the painter is deeply uncomfortable with his success, maybe scared, maybe even angry. How are the two men connected?
Exhibiting Forgiveness — written and directed by celebrated artist and NXTHVN founder and president Titus Kaphar, making his debut as a filmmaker — explores that connection, and in the process, lays bare the ways that love, pain, art, and family history can twist together in potent ways.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 28, 2024 8:57 am
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Brian Slattery photos
Awilda Sterling-Duprey in "...blindfolded" ...
... soundtracked live by Jesse Hameen II, Morris Trent, and Johnathan Moore, at NXTHVN.
In the large common area at NXTHVN on Henry Street, a temporary, two-segment wall was erected, mounted with black paper. Artist Awilda Sterling-Duprey moved in that small space, a blindfold over her eyes, large pastels in her hands — improvisational jazz helping guide her way, during the last weekend of New Haven Open Studios.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 25, 2024 8:53 am
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At the beginning of a night of music at Three Sheets on Elm Street on Thursday, Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) volunteer Andrew Zumwalt-Hathaway lauded both New Haven’s musicians and DESK as two ingredients that make the Elm City great. He noted that volunteering for DESK has become “one of the most fulfilling parts of my life.”
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 24, 2024 10:36 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos.
Goodnight Blue Moon
As the outside temperature last night stayed a bit warmer than your typical October, inside Best Video the atmosphere was super cool, and not just because the AC was on. Two bands — Portland, Ore.’s Blue Darling and New Haven’s own Goodnight Blue Moon — made Wednesday more celebratory than just the halfway point to the weekend with their sweet harmonies, lush melodies, and lyrical loveliness.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 23, 2024 9:52 am
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Edwin Austin Abbey
Compositional Study for The Hours in the House of Representatives Chamber of the Pennsylvania State Capitol, Harrisburg.
It’s a painting of time, but it’s portrayed as a celebration, a dance, a whirl of energy. The artist, Edwin Austin Abbey, focused on “the dynamics among the figures and their movements,” an accompanying note states. “The transition from day to night remains unresolved, but the exuberant movement of the daylight hours is described with great clarity.” It’s a 24-hour party — a perhaps surprising way to render the ceiling of the legislative chamber of the Pennsylvania State Capitol.
These days, legislative bodies, state and national, are usually described as slow at best and dysfunctional, even dystopian, at worst. But the mood among public artists in Pennsylvania was different at the beginning of the 20th century, as it was, apparently, in several places across the country.
If an artist were asked to paint the ceiling of a legislative chamber now, what would they be inclined to depict?
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 22, 2024 9:57 am
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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.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 21, 2024 9:39 am
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Amelia Ingraham artwork
Hey, Erector Square! Who you calling "meat face?"
Erector Square was full of people and art, as the second year of the fully artist-run New Haven Open Studios packed the building complex — so much so that, in addition to the many artists who had flung open their studio doors to visitors, many more had set up displays in entryways, intersections, and hallways, giving the sense that everywhere one went, there was art on the walls, and conversation happening.
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 21, 2024 9:28 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos
Linda Lindroth.
Old boxes that offered a new perspective, companion paintings that presented an alternate version of freedom, glass beads that each seemed to encase their own miniature world, and a model of a home you could fit in the palm of your hand: all of this and more were available for viewing in the artists’ studios at Marlin Works on Willow Street this past weekend as they opened to the public once again as part of New Haven Open Studios.
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 18, 2024 1:37 pm
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Karen Ponzio photo
Olmo-Rivera, Zumwalt-Hathaway, and Werlin.
What happens when a Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen volunteer and New Haven arts and culture scene superfan decides to combine the two things near and dear to his heart? The New Haven Cares Festival of Arts and Music is born.
The brain child of Andrew Zumwalt-Hathaway, this newly created fundraising event will transform some of the city’s hottest night spots into places where donations can be collected for the annual DESK Thanksgiving For All program, offering both good will and a good time.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 18, 2024 9:27 am
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Joan Marcus Photos
Hilary, a middle-school student, has just moved to Falcon, Colorado. She wears all the wrong clothes, says all the wrong things, and most of the other students are ready to tease her for it, except one, who reminds them to ask themselves what Jesus would do. Socially, things might be looking a little bleak. But Hilary has an improbable secret weapon to get in with one group of girls — a passion for, and deep knowledge of, keeping horses. They start to get to know each other. What happens when the conversation moves from secret weapons to secrets?
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 17, 2024 10:03 am
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A still from the film "Go Fish".
The 1994 film Go Fish opens in a classroom where the teacher asks the class to make a list of “women that you think are lesbians or that you know are lesbians.” The answers she gets are everything from Eve to Virginia Woolf to Margaret, Dennis the Menace’s next-door neighbor. One student then asks why they are making the list. The teacher responds: “Throughout lesbian history there has been serious lack of evidence that’ll tell us what these women’s lives were truly about.… lesbian lives and lesbian relationships, they barely exist on paper, and it is with that in mind and understanding that meaning and the power of history that we begin to want to change history.”
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 16, 2024 9:40 am
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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.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 15, 2024 9:24 am
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Dan Greene, sometimes of the Mountain Movers, cast a dislocating spell on a rapt audience at the Institute Library Saturday night, with a tremolo guitar and his echo-drenched voice. He was singing a song about a usual habit, of meeting friends downtown and hanging out in parking lots. But one night, he sang, “was different because / I didn’t know where I was.” The eerie sense of unease tipped into the surreal. “We all turned into birds / and flew over the town / we turned back into wolves / when we touched the ground.” Had they been wolves all along?
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Jabez Choi |
Oct 14, 2024 12:18 pm
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Jabez Choi photo
Shayel Rodriguez (center) with her parents at Hispanic Heritage Month celebration.
On the lookout, at Cross.
Wilbur Cross tenth grader Shayel Rodriguez gathered with 12 other student dancers in the school’s gymnasium to perform Puerto Rican bomba, Colombian cumbia, and Brazilian samba– to help celebrate the cultural heritage of the school’s diverse and growing Hispanic population.
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 14, 2024 8:54 am
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Karen Ponzio photos
Jasmine Nikole's art ...
... and Redemption, by Linda Mickens, at Amplify the Arts.
A multicolored fabric sculpture created by Kat Wiese seemed to float between the trees that framed one entrance to the Eli Whitney Barn. At the other entrance, visitors were greeted by the vibrant bodies and faces painted in vivid colors by artists Jasmine Nikole on the left and Darnell “Saint” Phifer on the right.
The music of R&B legends, courtesy of DJ Q‑Boogie, could be heard from everywhere, boosting the vibe of each and every artistic creation as Amplify The Arts entered its second year at the storied Hamden location and third year in total, continuing its mission — as reiterated on Sunday by organizer Karimah Mickens — of presenting a space for especially BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and young artists.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 14, 2024 8:46 am
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Brian Slattery photos
Sculptor Susan Clinard, as New Haven Open Studios comes to West Haven.
Victor Smith: "If my heart had not been broken, if I had not been in so great distress, if I had not decided to express my hurts through my paintings, I probably would never have been discovered."
Inside Susan Clinard’s Gilbert Street studio on Sunday afternoon, the West Haven space was full of New Haven faces.
People chatted in the corners among the sculptures. One viewer shared a long moment with a figure in a boat. People exchanged waves and hugs. It was all part of New Haven Open Studios’s second weekend, which encompassed Amplify the Arts in East Rock, but reached to the Gilbert Street studios in West Haven as well, where artists threw open their doors — as they will again next weekend, Oct. 19 and 20, in Erector Square and MarlinWorks, and in Westville, NXTHVN, and elsewhere the weekend after that, Oct. 26 and 27.
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Laura Glesby |
Oct 11, 2024 2:36 pm
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Flicker
Are these prairie dogs wondering what makes them prairie dogs?
Laura Glesby Photo
Jeff Cibulas, with Jenny Trujillo at last NHDoc screening: “I’d rather see the truth and know how horrible it is.”
Prairie dogs have a word for “human.” They talk about us in a language with nouns, adjectives, and variable dialects — even though, to most of us, their words sound like unintelligible squeaks.
I learned that delightful fact at the last-ever film screening by NHDocs, from a vegan advocacy film about what it means to be human in a world of other animals.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 11, 2024 9:02 am
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Robert De Matteo
Charles Island On My Mind.
The diptych, by Robert De Matteo, offers two shapes that strongly echo each other, but are from quite different models. The one on the left is easier to identify right away, as a brain scan from an MRI. The image on the right, though, might require a look at the title. Sure enough, it’s drawn from a satellite image of Charles Island, off the coast of Silver Sands State Park in Milford, the sandbar that connects it to the mainland at low tide clearly visible. The visual pun is funny. The idea that the forms would mirror each other closely says something a little deeper, about recurring patterns in nature, perhaps about how we aren’t as separate from our environment as we might like to think.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 10, 2024 9:35 am
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Rita Hannafin
Rita Hannafin's Float, on display for Open Studios.
Rita Hannafin’s Float hangs in the midst of City Gallery’s latest show on Upper State Street, a quilt of bright, shifting colors, surprising shapes, dynamic contrasts, and ultimately, cohesion.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 9, 2024 8:42 am
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Anna Webber Photo
Christian Sands.
“Good Morning Heartache,” the opening track on Christian Sands’s latest album, Embracing Dawn, begins with a warm, gently unfolding gesture from the piano, an easing into consciousness. But then there’s an insistent ping from somewhere else. Something’s off, something’s wrong. A beat settles in, heavy and lethargic, with strings adding extra weight. It’s an exploration of a state of mind, in which maybe everything will be okay in time — but it’s not okay now.
Bechard: It's difficult to run a film fest when "there's no movie theater in New Haven."
After a decade-long run of bringing documentaries and filmmakers from all over the country and beyond to New Haven — and, for a brief time in October, turning the city’s downtown into a documentary lover’s paradise — the New Haven Documentary Film Festival has come to a close, and will have a final farewell screening on Wednesday, at the Cannon on Dwight Street.
Gracy Brown, with Kay Anderson: Saturday's Lit fest was filled with "kindness and community."
Inspired by James Baldwin’s commitment to telling the truth, Jacqueline Brown raised her hand to ask a question of the two literature scholars in front of her.
“In your personal experience, how has his work taught you to find joy? How has his work incited you towards action?”
