by
Brian Slattery |
Feb 22, 2024 9:41 am
|
Comments
(1)
A giant squid seems to erupt from the floor of the gallery. Not far away, another wooden figure, more abstract, takes on a shape that could be leaning into the wood’s natural form and could have deviated far from it; from the finished product, it’s hard to say. Close by, there’s an abstract canvas with the contours of a cityscape, the hulking buildings rising from streetlights into darkness, all of it reflected in water. Unifying these works — by William Kent and Leo Jensen — are both the aesthetic sense of the era in which they were created and a more universal spirit of exploration. They’re what happened when the artists making them tried new things.
by
Chris Volpe |
Feb 21, 2024 11:52 am
|
Comments
(0)
Timmy Maia performs at the ball.
Chris Volpe Photos
Cindy Schofield and Jozzi Pizzolato dance up a storm.
Two hundred revelers helped the New Haven Free Public Library Foundation raise $50,000 Tuesday night at the annual Mardi Gras fundraising bash at the Elm Street main branch.
by
Brian Slattery |
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.
by
Karen Ponzio |
Feb 21, 2024 8:48 am
|
Comments
(1)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Ross Gay: "The hope is to be unmade in the process.”
Ross Gay practiced what he preaches last night at Possible Futures, as the poet, essayist, and teacher offered a grateful crowd a selection of his work encompassing joy and tenderness that brought them from rapt silence to riotous laughter and everywhere in between.
by
Donald Brown |
Feb 20, 2024 11:09 am
|
Comments
(5)
Curtis Brown Photography
Long Wharf Theatre’s current production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge — running now through March 10 — marks not only a return to the “old neighborhood,” but also a return to a classic American play by a master of realist drama.
by
Brian Slattery |
Feb 16, 2024 9:28 am
|
Comments
(0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Shaunda Holloway’s Nature’s Children greets viewers as soon as they enter the second floor of the gallery at Creative Arts Workshop. Over the shoulder of that piece, Aisha Nailah’s HERstands ready, like an ally. From the doorway, it’s easy to see that the pieces in the show, by multiple artists, share affinities in form and color, as well as subject matter. The diversity of the voices is vast. But they’re all in the same cause together.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
Feb 15, 2024 12:40 pm
|
Comments
(5)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Emojiis: Closed Valentine's Day, ordered to stay closed after 11.
A bar has been barred from expanding its hours — after a plea by the owners of Emojiis on Middletown Avenue got more thumbs down than smiley faces from local police and next-door neighbors.
by
Michael Russem |
Feb 15, 2024 9:12 am
|
Comments
(4)
Bruce Oren Photos
Howard Gralla (pictured above; one of his books, below): A rare gift to mix beauty with utility.
Book designer Michael Russem gave the following eulogy at the recent funeral of Howard Gralla, a leader in the field who lived in Westville.
Yesterday morning I was in a used bookstore in Boston and spotted a book designed by Howard that I love: Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library. It’s 9 × 12 inches, over 650 pages, and it weighs more than seven pounds.
This massive book had scores of Post-it notes poking out the top. The book was clearly well-used. Those Post-its were proof that Howard had done his job.
by
Brian Slattery |
Feb 14, 2024 4:42 pm
|
Comments
(4)
Brian Slattery Photo
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Congressional staffer Lou Mangini, fest chief Shelley Quiala, and A&I staff at Wednesday's announcement.
The International Festival of Arts and Ideas has received a federal grant for $45,000 to support two of its events this June — adding to a larger pot of federal support for the organization as it lays out its lineup for the summer and charts its path forward as an organization for this year and beyond.
by
Brian Slattery |
Feb 14, 2024 9:23 am
|
Comments
(1)
Brian Slattery Photo
New Haven artist Sarahi Zacatelco.
On the walls of Atticus on Chapel Street, just above diners’ heads, is a row of mixed-media artworks that brighten and enrich the space, making it feel both more vibrant and more homey. But a closer look suggests complication, symbolism, layers of meaning.
As accompanying labels explain, the pieces are loaded with significance. The first encapsulates a prayer from the culture of the Huichol in Mexico for health, home, and a long life. In the second piece, the flower — associated with the Aztec deity Huitzilopochtli — was used to remedy fever and burns. The third represents the Aztec and Mayan god Quetzalcoatl and his abilities as a seer. It only gets richer from there.
by
Donald Brown |
Feb 14, 2024 9:07 am
|
Comments
(0)
Guevara, Stamm, and Ouf.
The 56th season of the Yale Cabaret, the audacious theater in the basement of 217 Park Street on Yale’s campus, is called “Sandbox.” The Cab’s team for the 2023 – 24 season — co-artistic directors Doaa Ouf, a projection designer, and Kyle Stamm, a lighting designer, both in their second year at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, and managing director Annabel Guevara, now completing her fourth year in theater management at DGSD — said “the mission of Cab 56 is to create theater that invokes a sense of curiosity and playfulness, giving artists permission to dig and unearth treasures within themselves.”
by
Brian Slattery |
Feb 13, 2024 9:14 am
|
Comments
(0)
Brian Slattery Photos
It’s not just the large paintings covering the walls that suffuse the gallery with color, though they go a long way toward transforming the space around them by themselves. The balloons making their way around the gallery floor help out a lot, too. Even if the gallery is quiet — has a party just finished, or is one about to start? — they encourage a different way of engaging with the art, a little less formal, a little more festive. Maybe, in another sense, they help us let our guard down, and be more open to what the art has to say.
by
Karen Ponzio |
Feb 13, 2024 8:58 am
|
Comments
(0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Qween Kong share the love.
While many were getting ready for the last big football game of the season this past Sunday, a local music series was getting restarted over on Elm Street, as Three Sheets welcomed back the first of its popular Unplugged shows in a long while. Presented by Booger Z. Jones in conjunction with series creator Sara Scranton, two bands — on this day, the New Haven-based Hell Fairy and Qween Kong — would present a selection of their songs in a more stripped-down fashion than usual, acoustic and accompanied by stories of how they were made and what inspired them.
by
Lisa Reisman |
Feb 12, 2024 9:13 am
|
Comments
(3)
Lisa Reisman Photo
David Daniels at author talk at Stetson Library.
The Sunday, Aug. 21, 1994, edition of the Connecticut Post pictures a young Black man in police blues holding a hangman’s noose. The man was David Daniels, a police officer. The noose was left on his patrol car.
by
Karen Ponzio |
Feb 12, 2024 9:05 am
|
Comments
(2)
Karen Ponzio Photos
James Ivory and Brian Meacham
Friday night’s installment of Yale Film Archive’s The World of James Ivory series offered another type of double feature: a viewing of the 1965 film Shakespeare Wallah, followed by a Q&A with the series’ namesake, James Ivory. Fans of the legendary director, who gifted the Archive with selections from his personal film collection in 2023, were treated to the 35mm version of Shakespeare in all of its black and white glory, in the presence of Ivory himself. Afterward, they had the opportunity to hear Ivory discuss the film with managing archivist Brian Meacham, and ask him questions of their own.
by
Karen Ponzio |
Feb 12, 2024 8:58 am
|
Comments
(0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Members of the Urban Life Experience Book Discussion group.
As the temperature outside edged close to 60 degrees on Saturday, a warm and invigorating meeting of minds and hearts came together inside the Wilson branch of the New Haven Free Public Library for 2024’s first monthly installment of the Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
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.”
by
Brian Slattery |
Feb 9, 2024 9:07 am
|
Comments
(0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Suzu Sakai on the Shubert set she designed.
A member of the stage crew was doing some last-minute cleanup of the set at the Shubert, in preparation for a rehearsal of Yale Opera’s The Rake’s Progress, the opera by Igor Stravinsky set to run at the venerable College Street theatre Feb. 17 and 18. At first glance, it may have looked like he was vacuuming a vast Persian rug. A second glance, however, might show the design on the floor for what it really is: the back of an enormous playing card. More than just an arresting visual pattern, the scintillating floor is part of a set design decision that, for the opera’s director, was the key to opening up Stravinsky’s work to better connect with audiences.
Developers returned to the City Plan Commission with a promise: If they get permission to transform a Shelton Avenue industrial building into self-storage units, the artists currently working there can stay.
by
Brian Slattery |
Feb 8, 2024 9:16 am
|
Comments
(1)
Brian Slattery Photo
Dallas Ugly Wednesday night at Cafe Nine.
Cafe Nine on Wednesday night was the scene for delicate ballads, bright harmonies, and gritty rhythms as three bands — Pyramid Rose, Dallas Ugly, and the Split Coils — played sets with passion and commitment to the cause of country, rock ‘n’ roll, and keeping live music rolling in the Elm City.
by
Brian Slattery |
Feb 7, 2024 9:07 am
|
Comments
(1)
Brian Slattery Photos
Rodgers.
Performers and audience members arrived at Cantean on Whitney Avenue in Hamden en masse Tuesday evening before the posted start time of 6 p.m., quickly filling the space and the open mic’s sign-up sheet. Each performer had enough time for two songs. Host Steve Rodgers announced that he had “two and a half rules.” First, the songs all had to be originals. Second, audience members had to keep quiet for the performances. And third (Rodgers was joking about the “half”), everyone should remember to support Cantean by buying food and beverages.
“Any more rules?” someone in the audience said.
“Play good music!” someone else said, to laughter.
by
Karen Ponzio |
Feb 7, 2024 9:00 am
|
Comments
(0)
Kathleen Turner in a scene from Serial Mom.
In a scene early in the film Serial Mom, Beverly Sutphin (played with deadly perfection by Kathleen Turner) kills a fly that has intruded upon her loving family’s breakfast. The dead bug is then shown close-up in all its sticky, gory glory, insides exposed to the world. That scene sums up the 1994 John Waters cult classic shown last night as the first entry in Best Video’s February film series, which follows the theme “Til Death Do Us Part,” highlighting four movies that explore dysfunctional relationships.
