Arts & Culture

NXT HVN Puts Down “Roots”

by | Jun 3, 2021 8:40 am | Comments (0)

Kaitlyn Higgins

The Art of Breathing.

It’s a series of faces moving through an intense range of emotions. Maybe it’s the same person over a period of time. Maybe it’s multiple people in the same moment. Maybe the difference isn’t all that important. Kaitlyn Higgins’s The Art of Breathing is both a study in how to render emotions in paint and an expression of all those moments at once. It’s part of a series of paintings by Higgins that explore parallel senses of outward claustrophobia and inner turmoil. There are no easy answers, but in the accurate rendering of the situation, there’s communication and compassion.

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Musician Builds An Ark

by | Jun 2, 2021 8:31 am | Comments (1)

Build Yourself an Ark,” written by David Sasso, eases into its waltz time with a easy swing, a flourish from a mandolin. But Sasso’s voice carries instructions: Gather some gopherwood and build yourself an ark.” It’s an immediate reference to the story of Noah’s flood, but it’s brought into the present via a form of traditional music that Sasso gives a modern twist. Take along your loved ones; they may not all want to go / Don’t worry about your husband; he already knows,” he sings.

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Musician Makes “Isolation” Ecstatic

by | May 31, 2021 9:10 am | Comments (0)

Beckford.

Learn,” from New Haven-based musician Emil Beckford’s new album, Songs About Isolation, starts with a warm, arpeggiating synth line that instantly catches the ear. The beat that drops in behind it is as lush as it is danceable. It all gets stripped back again for Beckford to coo into the microphone: Conversation, misinformation, I just want to enjoy some relaxation / But you keep begging and in my head don’t wanna let you down / I’m antisocial, you never no show, say staying locked in the house isn’t good for ya / Get off your chair and forget your cares we’re getting out of town / I’m stuck to you like static cling, and while I’d never shake you / I want to tell you what I think, but if I did you wouldn’t hear me now.”

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Two Bands Rock Whitney Avenue

by | May 28, 2021 8:43 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photo

Spit-Take.

A dirty guitar chord echoed across the Best Video parking lot Thursday evening, summoning the crowd of a couple dozen to attention. The guitar came from Tim and Matt Rowe, opening for Spit-Take, continuing the cultural center’s practice of providing a stage for New Haven’s live music scene as the area emerges from the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic,

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District Opens Livestream To Live Audience

by | May 27, 2021 12:26 pm | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio Photos

Siul Hughes with DJ Collin In Kind

District Arts and Education turned their bi-weekly DAE Presents livestream into a live, on-site event Wednesday night as they invited a small number of guests in and added a food truck and outdoor musical entertainment — as a prelude to their indoor performance, that would be broadcast on Facebook Live.

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Wilbur Cross’s Drama Club Shines “A Light In The Dark”

by | May 26, 2021 8:42 am | Comments (2)

The cast of A Light in the Dark — the showcase from Lights Up Drama Club at Wilbur Cross High School, which will be broadcast June 4 and 5 — assembled in a rehearsal room at the school that would also serve as the beginning scene for the number I Feel So Much Spring,” from the William Finn-penned musical A New Brain.

As the music began, and music director Matt Durland conducted, all the voices behind the masks sprang to life.

The students glided across the floor as co-director Salvatore DeLucia weaved among them with a camera. It would all be edited together into a final product, with 17 other songs, in time for broadcast.

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Diary Disks Collect The City’s Memories

by | May 25, 2021 9:27 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

There was already one message written on the large black circle with the prompt I hope,” written in several languages. That first inscribed message read that our memories will not all be of darkness.”

The disk was located at the entrance to the Wooster Square Farmer’s Market this past Saturday morning. A woman with a child in a stroller approached the disk with a white marker. She knelt and added her own message. Within the hour, many more would follow.

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Shaunda Holloway, Claire’s Artist In Residence, Moves In New Directions

by | May 21, 2021 9:19 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photos

The art on the walls of Claire’s Corner Copia, on the corner of Chapel and College, thrums with energy, vibrant colors, and shimmering textures. But there’s a heaviness there, too.

Neither simply joyful nor simply sorrowful, the work of New Haven-based artist Shaunda Holloway uses old motifs in new ways; it reaches back in order to move forward, with strength and resolve, mindful of the sorrows of the past but hopeful for the future.

Holloway’s pieces are the latest to be exhibited as part of an artist-in-residence program at Claire’s.

As friends and fellow artists dropped by on Thursday to have a snack or dinner and offer congratulations, Holloway had a chance to revisit how her artistic practice has developed in the past decade, and in what new directions it may point.

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Reinaldo’s Corner

by | May 20, 2021 4:35 pm | Comments (0)

The vaccine lasts at least six months. You have to return to get vaccinated within a year.

I believe they didn’t know.”

Two Artists Thrive On Lines And Color

by | May 19, 2021 9:15 am | Comments (0)

Hank Paper

L.A. Life.

The two shows at Kehler Liddell Gallery — Parallel Worlds,” by Robert Bienstock, and L.A. Color, East Coast Weather,” by Hank Paper, up now through June 20 — hang well in the gallery together, unified by a love of strong lines and bold color. But Bienstock’s pieces are paintings and drawings, while Paper’s are photographs. Bienstock’s pieces chronicle the past year and a half. Paper’s are the documents of a lifetime of work.

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Today’s Ted Take

by | May 19, 2021 9:05 am | Comments (0)

Virtual Reality Artist Makes Walls And Streets Move

by | May 18, 2021 8:29 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

Giant birds in flight. Trees swaying in a light breeze. A child dancing in a dinosaur costume. A fading mural restored. They’re part of Here’s Another Story, a project that uses a virtual-reality phone app to allow people to walk the streets of Ninth Square and, through their phone screens, watch the public art there bloom into festive, fun, and meaningful animation.

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New Haven Paint And Clay Club Still Paints Life

by | May 14, 2021 8:42 am | Comments (0)

Vincent Calenzo

Bike.

The boy in Vincent Calenzo’s Bike wears an expression of wariness and awe. Before him stands a masterpiece — of engineering, sound, and speed. Not everyone is into motorcycles; most of us don’t know enough about them to appreciate them. But the way Calenzo, through his technique, renders the bike, we get to see it through his and the boy’s eyes. We get to feel some of its power.

In this way, Calenzo shows how, even in the age of easily manipulated digital photography, painting still has a lot to say, and let us see the present day in new ways.

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After Pandemic Pause, BBQ Soul Returns

by | May 13, 2021 12:11 pm | Comments (1)

Maya McFadden Photo

The Pervises’ new location at 554 Whalley Avenue.

Darryl Pervis.

Contributed Photo

Chicken wings, candied yams, and mac and cheese.

Darryl Pervis is back home on Whalley Avenue — and, starting Thursday, once again filling customers’ cravings for juicy BBQ chicken wings, sweet and sticky yams, and Mac and cheese.

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