by | Oct 20, 2023 5:17 pm | Comments (10)
Say Cheese...
... Gioia is open!
The long line outside Pepe’s pizzeria might soon extend across the street, now that Gioia — a new Italian restaurant, bar, gelateria, and market — has opened its doors at 150 Wooster St.
Continue reading ‘Gioia Spreads Tables And Joy For Grand Opening’
by | Oct 20, 2023 8:55 am | Comments (0)
Sarah Goodridge
Rose Prentice (1771-1852).
Prentice looks like a no-nonsense woman. The depiction of her is simple, but it appears to capture some of her essential nature. Prentice looks smart, curious, and strong. But she also looks a little tired, like she’s been carrying a lot of weight. That she can bear it doesn’t make it any less heavy.
Continue reading ‘YUAG Art Show Turns The Numbers Back Into People’
by | Oct 19, 2023 9:34 am | Comments (0)
Among the digital video detritus of Kit Young’s installation at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art is a cracked screen with a sign rarely seen in a gallery: “Please touch.” With the first hesitant brush of a finger, there’s almost no effect. But press a little harder, and the cracks bloom with almost bioluminescent patterns. Whether this effect is something Young designed or discovered is beside the point. In pressing into the screen, the viewer has helped make the art happen —even if, just as quickly, it starts to fade.
by | Oct 18, 2023 8:32 am | Comments (0)
Paul Wolfer Photo
Chaser Eight.
Saturday night’s Cafe Nine show — starring New Haven-area rock ‘n’ roll favorites Chaser Eight, pop-punk Gen X‑ers The Dollyrots, and Maryland-based newcomers Kings of The Wild Things — brought a much-needed serotonin boost to the week’s end. Concertgoers drove hours, from places as far away as Syracuse, N.Y. and parts of Wisconsin, to join New Haveners in packing the nightclub, leaving little room between the front door and the stage.
by | Oct 17, 2023 12:12 pm | Comments (4)
Maya McFadden Photo
Student broadcasters on set, ready to report.
John S. Martinez School eighth graders perfected the lights, turned on their camera, and were ready for the action of bringing back the school’s Sea Sky News broadcast.
Continue reading ‘"Sea Sky" Student Broadcasters Get The Scoop’
by | Oct 17, 2023 8:49 am | Comments (2)
Brian Slattery Photos
Jeremiah McCullough, Christopher Samuels, Azaad Mamoon.
All through the play Paradise Blue by Dominique Morisseau — running at New Haven Academy from Oct. 19 to Oct.21 — trumpeter Blue struggles with his music. He’s trying to play just the right note. Some days he gets close. Some days he’s a million miles away. But he’s starting to think he’s never going to get it. It’s an encapsulation of the conditions of his life, the way everything he has is starting to slip away from him. And it’s driving him a little crazy.
by | Oct 16, 2023 8:49 am | Comments (6)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Karimah Mickens admires Jasmine Nikole's work at this weekend's Amplify the Arts festival at Eli Whitney Barn.
Susan Clinard's sculptures on display, for Amplify the Arts.
The soul-stirring sculptures of Linda Mickens, both large and small, anchored one corner of the Eli Whitney Barn. Across the room, Michael Jackson’s iconic Off the Wall album cover in the style of Saint Phifer faced portraits of women dancing and laughing as seen through the eyes of Jasmine Nikole.
Those neighbored the dazzling array of faces created by Shaunda Holloway, while between them lay stairs leading to the open studio of Susan Clinard, where a seemingly endless number of her own sculptures that one could see themselves and just about anyone else in the world in stood, sat, and hung from the rafters.
by | Oct 16, 2023 8:40 am | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photo
Vaneh Assadourian, Ava Lalezarzadeh, Anita Abdinezhad, Bahar Beihaghi, and Shadee Vossoughi.
Five female friends prepare for the wedding of one of them. High-spirited, vivacious, thoroughly at home with one another. They are Iranian, in Karaj, Iran, and it’s 1978, just before the monumental change that occurred when the Shah fled Iran and the country was taken over by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Muslim fundamentalist, in 1979. Much of the poignancy of Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here — now playing at Yale Repertory Theatre through Oct. 28, directed by Sivan Battat — stems from that introductory scene. We won’t see these five together again, and none of them will ever again be this light, vain, frivolous, raunchy, and comfortable with one another. It’s a scene that becomes, in hindsight, more and more rich in possibility the further the play goes into these women’s occluded futures, eventually reaching 1991.
Continue reading ‘Yale Rep Weighs The Private Costs Of Revolution’
by | Oct 13, 2023 9:00 am | Comments (3)
Linda Mickens.
If the works of artist Linda Mickens — one of the recipients this year, along with fellow artist Jeff Ostergren, of a grant from the Bitsie Clark Fund for Artists — were to all appear in one gallery at the same time, you could line one wall with a choir of angels, in various poses, heads tilted toward the sky or downward, wings folded or unfurled.
On the other side of the gallery, though, would be a woman with nails for hair, screaming, a machine gun in her lap; faceless statues in hoodies, the victims of police shootings. Light and darkness, held in suspension, with the artist always moving from one to the other and back again. And maybe, with the piece she’s about to create, finding just the right balance between them.
by | Oct 13, 2023 9:00 am | Comments (0)
Jeff Ostergren
Redpilled/Bluepilled (Stamford, Connecticut; Rainy Day - After Caillebotte).
It’s a street scene in psychedelic colors, pointilism with an extra point, as though you’re walking down an urban street with your mind thoroughly altered. But If the overall composition of the painting looks familiar, that’s because it’s explicitly taken from Gustave Caillebotte’s 1877 painting Paris Street; Rainy Day. The figures in that painting, however, are replaced with figures from contemporary pharmaceutical ads. The building in the background is the former Purdue Pharma building in Stamford. It’s the beginning of unpacking what artist Jeff Ostergren’s project is about.
by | Oct 12, 2023 4:00 pm | Comments (2)
Regina Winters-Toussaint.
While a student at the Yale School of Architecture in 1992, Regina Winters-Toussaint created her own summer internship. As one of the first counselors for LEAP, then a new youth enrichment program in New Haven, she moved into Westville Manor public housing, where she mentored the young people living there.
That willingness to steep herself in the experience of those who would live and work in the structures she built is among the reasons for the induction of Winters-Toussaint, who died of cancer at 47 in April 2016, in the CT Women’s Hall of Fame, according to its executive director Sarah Lubarsky.
Continue reading ‘Regina Winters-Toussaint To Be Inducted Posthumously Into CT Women’s Hall of Fame’
by | Oct 12, 2023 11:32 am | Comments (0)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Slattery, Goldfield, Sanneh, Hughes, and Rawls-Ivy at Wednesday's panel.
Like in-person local news reporting, local arts and culture reviewing is going through a paradigm shift from old-school corporate for-profit media to new-media nonprofit models. A panel of old-school panelists shared perspective on that shifting landscape Wednesday with purveyors of the new.
by | Oct 12, 2023 8:51 am | Comments (0)
Asher Joseph photo
The TV Girl All-Star Traveling Band.
A line snaked around Toad’s Place into the courtyard off of York Street on Monday evening as “Lonely Girls” and “boys who act their age” filed into the venue, headlined by TV Girl, a California-based indie pop band that took the internet by storm this year with a series of viral hits.
Continue reading ‘TV Girl Broadcasts To The "Freaky Little Teenagers"’
by | Oct 11, 2023 12:00 pm | Comments (1)
Abiba Biao photo
Maya McDuffie (left) instructing young Hamden dancers.
Sitting on Lia Davila’s office floor, directly in front of her desk and constantly in her line of sight, is a row of five trophies. The trophies, which stretch all the way up to her chest, serve as a reminder of the grind, grit, and glory her students put in over the summer at the Turn It Up Dance Challenge in Orlando, Fl. in order to bring those awards home to Hamden.
Continue reading ‘Trophy-Winning Academy Keeps Hamden Dancing’
by | Oct 11, 2023 8:46 am | Comments (0)
Joy Bush
Suspended Disbelief.
Photographer Joy Bush’s piece, Suspended Disbelief, leans into the surrealism and humor of taking two images and combining them into one. On one level, the match is incongruous; one of them, it takes a second to notice, is upside-down. On another level, though, it works as a cohesive whole, inviting the brain to make sense of what it’s seeing. One plant could be the roots of the other, drawing nutrition from the sky below. In a way, that improbable idea works as an introduction to the larger effort at hand. “Process,” the show Suspended Disbelief is a part of, is itself a part of a larger effort among New Haven’s visual artists to bring back City-Wide Open Studios, happening this month all across town.
by | Oct 10, 2023 4:51 pm | Comments (0)
Maya McFadden photos
Norm Clement uses sage to cleanse attendees of negative energies.
Monday’s Indigenous Peoples' Day cultural celebration on the New Haven Green.
Sage smoke, traditional dancing, and a “prayer of the four directions” filled the Green Monday afternoon as dozens gathered for an annual ceremony honoring Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Continue reading ‘Sage Smoke Wafts Over Indigenous Peoples' Day Ceremony’
by | Oct 10, 2023 12:19 pm | Comments (0)
Lisa Gray Photos
Wine Down CT’s end-of-summer event, Dear Summer, went down Sunday evening. If you get a chance to go to their next event, get your ticket early because they sell out fast, and I see why. Wine Down CT — which, according to Aislin Magazine, started hosting lusciously curated events as a riff on Wine Down Wednesdays, popularized by the TV show Insecure — throws fabulous day parties that draw hundreds of people to hang out, taste great food, vibe to good DJs and live music, imbibe scrumptious libations and generally have a good time.
by | Oct 10, 2023 10:18 am | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden photos
Emonie Jackson, mastering pop art with Hillhouse art teacher Rebecca LeQuire.
Carlos Kirklan: Art is "an escape," and a chance to create.
With pop artist Keith Haring in mind, Hillhouse High School junior Emonie Jackson imagined up a chicken leg, to-go cup, and ketchup bottle all with arms and legs — and then penned those images to paper, honing her own creative style and skills amid her classroom’s dive into recent art history.
by | Oct 10, 2023 8:32 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
At Friday's "Vol. Boo" art opening.
The Volume Two collective at Never Ending Books threw open its doors Friday night for a seasonal art opening running at the space at 810 State St. through the end of the month — not of fall foliage and decorative gourds, but of ghosts, ghouls, and other visions of the macabre, as New Haven prepares for what is, in some ways, its most celebrated community holiday. The exhibition, called “Vol. Boo,” is a collaborative art show featuring the work of 15 artists who all took the chance, some playfully, some seriously, to explore and illuminate the darker side of life.
by | Oct 9, 2023 1:54 pm | Comments (32)
Thomas Breen photo
David Generoso by the ex-Columbus statue's plinth: "We think it was was something that was stolen from us unjustly."
A half-dozen members of a group called the Italian-American Defense League gathered in Wooster Square Park to celebrate Columbus Day — and to renew their call for a return of the long-gone statue depicting that federal holiday’s namesake.
The group charged with coming up with a new Italian heritage-celebrating sculpture for that same spot of Wooster Square Park, meanwhile, has now raised $320,000 out of its $400,000 goal.
Continue reading ‘Columbus Defenders Call For Statue's Return’
by | Oct 9, 2023 8:51 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos.
Bones and more.
Are you in the market for a pair of snake bone earrings or maybe even a lizard wet specimen? Or maybe you’re more into resin earrings or keychains of your favorite pop culture icons, but you still want to check out some taxidermy creatures and gravestone rubbings as well? All that and way more were waiting for you and purveyors of the odd, the weird, and the wonderfully obscure at the third annual New England Antiques and Oddities Exhibition, held this past Sunday afternoon at the Annex YMA Lounge and Hall on Woodward Avenue.
Continue reading ‘New England Obscura Brings Oddities To Annex’
by | Oct 6, 2023 9:41 am | Comments (0)
BRIAN SLATTERY PHOTO
In ways that photographs can’t capture, the installation of “Impossible Souls” — running now through Oct. 29 on the second floor of the Hilles Gallery of Creative Arts Workshop at 80 Audubon St. — makes moving through the gallery feel almost like swimming. Along with the art on the walls, and the art on large columns, numerous pieces are suspended from the ceiling in such a way that they drift and spin with the climate-controlled air. The overall effect quiets the space. It makes you move through the gallery with extra care, knowing that the art isn’t always where you might expect it to be.
by | Oct 6, 2023 9:18 am | Comments (3)
Allan Appel photo
Rashaan Boyd inside A Hustler's Vibe: "They’ve been looking for me so long, now [here I am!]”
Thanks to a combination of foot traffic and web traffic along with deep neighborhood roots, the newest entrepreneur on lower Edgewood Avenue is about to hit his 1,000th customer and has a new six-month lease in hand.
That entrepreneur, Rashaan Boyd, breathed new life into a vacant storefront at Day and Edgewood with his A Hustler’s Vibe clothing outlet and is going strong.
He is among the merchants the Independent is interviewing who are figuring out how to make small business work along largely residential stretches of Edgewood Avenue.
Continue reading ‘Dwight Entrepreneur Makes The Hustle Work’
by | Oct 5, 2023 11:07 pm | Comments (3)
Allan Appel photo
A painted hinge, ready to be cleaned up on Wednesday night.
There’s an unusual and still little known new hospital in New Haven: It doesn’t accept most insurance, patients for the most part perform the treatments on themselves, and — most remarkably — it makes the old new again, well, at least look new, provided you are a hinge, doorknob, rosette, latch or lock.
by | Oct 5, 2023 10:00 pm | Comments (0)
Contributed photo
At the Sept. 29 New Haven Museum meetup, with author Michelle Hord.
The following photos were submitted by Links member Sheila Carmon about a Sept. 29 book signing and meet and greet with Daytime Emmy Award winner, author, and media executive Michelle Hord. The event was organized by the New Haven chapter of The Links, Incorporated.
Continue reading ‘Author Meetup Explores "The Other Side Of Yet"’