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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?”
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 7, 2024 8:18 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos
Luca McCarthy at work: “I’m very anti-garbage. Nothing is garbage.”
One view of the CAW exhibit, featuring pieces by Simmons, Giroux, McCarthy, and Brantley.
You know October is here when New Haven sidewalks are dotted with fallen leaves, and art studios and galleries are open for all to see. Open Studios 2024 began on Saturday with a variety of locations ready and waiting to share art in a variety of media, including City Gallery, The Institute Library, the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, and Creative Arts Workshop (CAW).
CAW, however, had a unique set up offered to the public. While an exhibit by eight artists from the Ely Center’s 2024 open call was on view on the first floor of the Hilles Gallery at CAW on Audubon Street, those same eight artists were on the second floor, creating new pieces and greeting visitors who wanted to engage them in discussion about their work.
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 2, 2024 9:41 am
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Karen Ponzio Photo
The Psychedelic Furs: Still making music that's fun, sexy, and a bit dangerous.
October opened with a one-two punch as the dreamy double bill of the Psychedelic Furs and The Jesus and Mary Chain turned College Street Music Hall into a post-punk version of heaven.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 1, 2024 8:50 am
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Do you have a mind’s eye, the ability to not just remember, but visualize the past? Do you have an interior monologue? Rich childhood memories, full of sights, sounds, and smells? For science writer Sadie Dingfelder — speaking to an audience of about a dozen Monday night at the Edgewood Avenue bookstore Possible Futures — the answer to all these questions and a few more like it were a clear no.
And until just a few years ago, she thought the same was true for everyone else. Until a fateful trip to the grocery store led her to become the subject of a few lab studies, and to the work of New Haven-area science journalist Carl Zimmer, and on and on — heading toward the edges of neurologists’ understanding of how varied the human experience can be.
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Donald Brown |
Oct 1, 2024 8:49 am
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Artistic Managing Director Sarah Machiko Haber.
The life and death of viral celebrity. Keeping the stories of ancestors alive. Death and rebirth.
The mythological phoenix is famed for rising reborn from its own ashes. Chosen as the title for Yale Cabaret’s 2024 – 25 season, the name is fitting — not only for the themes running through what the Cab is producing this year, but because the Cab is a student-run theater that has “died” and been reborn 55 times before. Each season has new artistic directors and managing directors who, in a manner of speaking, rise from the ashes of their predecessors.
“Beautiful!” a passing motorist called out while heading downtown Monday on Chapel Street.
“Thank you!” Jessie Unterhalter said for the tenth? 20th? time of the day.
Unterhalter didn’t want to be rude. People passing by the once-blank warehouse wall at Chapel and East Streets have brightened to see the swirling bright colors Jessie Unterhalter and Katey Truhn have been painting there for the past three weeks. Unterhalter appreciated their appreciation.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 30, 2024 8:37 am
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Kelly Jensen Photo
Taylor Ho Bynum.
Cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum smiled from the stage at Firehouse 12 Friday night, explaining how good it was to be back there. “I cannot imagine my life without it,” he said, from his collaborations with Anthony Braxton to his numerous performances there with other groups. On Friday, however, he was there with UK-based pianist Alexander Hawkins, as part of the Crown Street bar- recording studio-performance space’s fall jazz series, running now into December.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 27, 2024 9:23 am
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Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel in Megalopolis, which feels at times like an object lesson in what happens when no one is able to tell a filmmaker when his ideas are bad.
The lights dimmed in a movie theater Thursday night for maybe the most prime example of an arthouse film to come along this year, and together the audience watched as Cesar Catilina, played by Adam Driver, edged out of his office window to stand on a metal ledge at the edge of a skyscraper, balancing vertiginously over traffic. He wobbled, and almost began to fall.
It was the opening scene on opening night for legendary director Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie, Megalopolis: A Fable, but we weren’t in an arthouse theater. We were in Cinemark, in North Haven, the closest place screening the limited-release film. With the Criterion closed and New Haven without a first-run theater of any kind, would it be the same?
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 26, 2024 9:23 am
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In the short film Dendrostalkers, the view is from the driver’s seat of a car curving along a dirt road through a forest at night. The trees are thick and dark, then give way to a clearing, a pile of fresh lumber. The narration speaks of foreboding. The car stops, and something springs from the pile of dead trees, a new limb, animated, making shapes in the air. It’s the next step in evolution, maybe a dispatch from the future. It’s an art project that has something to say about our relationship to the forest now.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 25, 2024 11:47 am
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Brian Slattery photo
One of the many artworks on display at the first ever show hosted by a Legion Avenue mental health, addiction, and homelessness services nonprofit.
The pill bottles hang suspended in the air, a testament to their ubiquity and the damage they cause. Behind them are arrayed a series of facts and statistics about drug overdoses. Over 1,000 people die from them in Connecticut every year. Since 1999, almost 1 million have died nationwide, with opioids accounting for two-thirds of those deaths.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 24, 2024 9:22 am
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Carol Strause FitzSimonds
Flora and Fauna #23.
“My art is a living thing, a labor of birth, exasperation, growth, change, and joy. Printmaking has always been my primary passion, from exploring traditional Old World techniques to new 21st-century materials and technologies. Wanting to expand my art into a more sculptural tactile experience led me to experiment with altering published books and to crafting one-of-a-kind books from my original prints and drawings. I find my image inspiration in the everyday of nature, ordinary places and things, and the human form.”
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 23, 2024 9:12 am
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Magdalena Abrego crouched over her pedalboard Sunday evening at Never Ending Books on State Street, and unleashed a lush, complex soundscape, a series of guitar-made tones layered over one another, now vibrating together.
As the sounds continued pulsing around her, she began to play simple chords, laying down a rhythm, a chord progression. On the downbeat, Mali Obomsawin and Willis Edmundson joined Abrego. The soundscape switched off in a second, and the band — Deerlady — sounded, suddenly, like a rock band. But the impression was left, and a point made, that the trio was drawing from a broad musical vocabulary. Which made sense; the last time Abrego, Obomsawin, and opener Allison Burik were in town, in May 2023, they were playing music that brought together elements of traditional Abenaki song and free jazz at Firehouse 12. Deerlady deployed a different sound, but still had the same searching sensibility.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 20, 2024 11:16 am
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Series co-organizers Shelton, Mattison, Czepiel, and Jessen.
A room full of writers and fans of the written word gathered Thursday night at Best Video for the first installment of the Sleeping Giant Reading Series, an event aimed at creating a space where authors not only share their works, but gather in community with others to offer support, make connections, and have a little fun.
Co-organizers Alice Mattison, Sandi Shelton, Kathy Czepiel, and Heather Jessen — all New Haven-based writers — will be curating a two-hour event every third Thursday of the month. The first hour will feature professional readings by published authors. The second hour will be dedicated to shaking away that oft-felt sense of isolation many writers have by sharing a “Writer’s Happy Hour” where they can chat with each other about their work and writing in general.
