Arts & Culture

"Union Square" Sketches Revealed

by | Sep 13, 2024 4:22 pm | Comments (65)

Contributed Rendering

Renderings for the future of the Church Street South site, including a "central green" pictured here, were revealed...

Laura Glesby Photo

...at a packed meeting on Thursday.

Townhomes shift into high-rises as the buildings transition from the Hill to Downtown, anchored by a central green.” In the mix is a coffee kiosk, an outdoor theater, and a pedestrian promenade.

A team of architects and designers sketched out those ideas on Thursday for a future mixed-use, mixed-income development at the vacant site of the former Church Street South housing complex and the current Robert T. Wolfe public housing apartments.

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And The Weekend-Film Winner Is ... ?

by | Sep 13, 2024 3:00 pm | Comments (0)

Lisa Reisman photo

"Nightmares" cast and crew: D. Jeff Bell, Ann Bell, Darrell Bellamy Jr., Clifton Bey, Myron Attoh, and Ian Mann, at Armada Brewing for awards night.

Director-producer Darrell Bellamy Jr. was in a creative slump — but he had already signed up to participate in the New Haven 48 Hour Film Project, an annual summer competition to make a short movie over the course of just two days.

I had to go for it,” said Bellamy, co-creator of the upcoming thriller Marblehead,” as well as Get Yer Mind Right,” a coming-of-age YouTube series.

Several weeks later, he found himself at a raucous 48 Hour Film Project awards ceremony at Armada Brewery — buoyed by two award nominations, and waiting to see if he and his team would make it out on top.

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Artists Make Light At Gateway

by | Sep 12, 2024 8:53 am | Comments (0)

Liah Sinq

For a split second, the kid is in the hands of gravity, but you just know he’s going to be all right. Maybe it’s the matching pajamas that give it away. It’s Christmas morning, perhaps, and the kids want to play with a father, or an uncle. But what really seals the deal on the tone of the piece is the quality of the sunlight, streaming through the window behind them. It lets us see the care the adult is putting into it, lets us see the way the kid is enjoying the ride. He may be falling, but the landing will be safe.

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Film Charts Hardship Of Being A Schizophrenic Brother's Keeper

by | Sep 10, 2024 9:16 am | Comments (1)

We first see Duane Luckow backlit. He’s filming himself with his phone. Hey everybody, can you see me?” he asks. We can’t. But then he turns into the light, and there’s his face, looking concerned. I’m going to give you a little tour of this place,” he says. He shows us a bedroom, clean, well-lit, and very institutional. There’s a teddy bear on the bed. I’m not supposed to be filming this,” he says, but gives us a view out the window, of a courtyard garden. That’s the only thing I have hope for,” he says, that someday I’ll get out of this place.”

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Time Has Told: These Hoodies Are A Hit

by | Sep 9, 2024 11:56 am | Comments (3)

Courtesy of Josh McCown

Time A Tell's Josh McCown in action with Moroccan-born American rapper French Montana at Oakdale Theatre.

Jayce Greene, 10, and his mother pushed through the door of Time A Tell, the clothing store and smoke shop at 1700 Dixwell Ave. He was looking for a Time A Tell hoodie.

All the kids on my team are wearing them,” said Jayce, a student at Worthington-Hooker School and member of the Elm City Elite basketball team, as owner Joshua McCown brought out a selection of sizes and colors in the high-ceilinged, warmly-lit space. They’re all over New Haven,” his mother added.

That’s an index of the quantum leap that McCown, 20, has taken in the two years since opening his shop with a mission to leverage his eye for fashion into being his own boss and realizing financial freedom.

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Pizza Club Serves Up Slices Of Art

by | Sep 9, 2024 8:45 am | Comments (2)

Karen Ponzio Photo

Michael Pollack and his pizza monument.

The subject of pizza is always on the minds of New Haveners, whether it’s deciding what kind to order and where to order it from or what makes the perfect pie and slice. On Friday night, those pies and slices were unveiled as the theme of a world premiere art exhibit at District NHV. New Haven Pizza Club: Discover the Art of Pizza” showcased the four-year-long odyssey of artist Michal Pollack to commemorate everyone’s favorite meal as a contemporary symbol representing a local legacy. 

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CT Folk Festival Bridges The Generations

by | Sep 9, 2024 8:38 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

Leyla McCalla.

A flurry of rainstorms throughout the afternoon on Saturday didn’t keep the CT Folk Festival and Green Expo out of Edgerton Park — nor did it keep stalwart listeners away, to hear from some of the finest voices of two different generations of artists upholding traditions and carrying them ably through the present and into the future.

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Artist Trashes Never Ending Books

by | Sep 6, 2024 9:29 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery photo

A deer head with flowers for eyes. Streams of color stretching down from the ceiling. And, on a couple dozen cardboard panels, all manner of people, in all manner of poses. It’s all part of This Art is Trash,” an exhibition at Never Ending Books on State Street by artist Alice Prael that puts humanity into the things we usually throw away.

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YUAG Offers Snapshot Of Mexican Photographers

by | Sep 5, 2024 9:29 am | Comments (0)

Manuel Álvarez Bravo

La hija de los danzantes.

It’s a famous picture, of a girl peeking into a window, and seems almost like a happy accident, a case of the photographer being in the right place at the right time. If so, that timing was nearly miraculous, due to the beauty in its formal composition. The circle of the hat echoes the circle of the window, while both offset the relentless diamonds on the wall. It succeeds in feeling like street photography and like an intricately composed image all at once. 

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Buttery Cake Ass, Read Aloud

by | Sep 4, 2024 9:12 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery photo

Sam Carlson and Aug Stone.

When we were, like, 15, 16, me and my best friend Trig used to go record shopping. And it was weird. Our local record store had this counter with all the cassettes behind it. The goods! You had to ask to see them,” a gregarious voice announces. Trig was always after Buttery Cake Ass’s Live in Hungaria album. Week after week we’d ask, only to week after week be disappointed. Truth be told, Trig much more so than I. I didn’t know anything about Buttery Cake Ass. But that’s the beauty of music, of any sort of artistic creation — that another’s excitement for it can infect you like this.”

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Yale Film Archive Goes On Surreal "Picnic"

by | Sep 3, 2024 9:15 am | Comments (3)

A still from Picnic at Hanging Rock.

The 50th anniversary of a Francis Ford Coppola classic, a historic documentary set in 1970s New Haven, and The Bride of Frankenstein screened on Halloween night: these are just a sampling of what Yale Film Archive is offering movie fans this fall, revealed along with a host of other anniversary screenings and premiere prints at the first screening of the semester this past Friday at the Yale Humanities Quadrangle. 

First, however, a capacity crowd was treated to a new 35-mm print of Peter Weir’s mesmerizing 1975 classic Picnic at Hanging Rock.

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Rocking Out While The Sun's Still Out

by | Aug 30, 2024 9:39 am | Comments (0)

Marisa Torrieri photo

Jammin out at Cafe 9 on a Sunday afternoon.

Turkey Vulture — a metal/punk duo of Milford-based couple Jessie May (vocals, guitar) and Jim Clegg (drums) — typically spend Sunday afternoons entertaining their two toddler sons. So when May growled into the mic and ripped into a distorted-guitar riff at Cafe Nine on a recent Sunday afternoon in early August, it felt wholly cathartic.

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French Film Series Turns Institute Library Into Le Cinema

by | Aug 30, 2024 9:26 am | Comments (0)

A still from Beauty and the Beast.

The Institute Library became le cinema Thursday night as its French film series — Bonsoir, Mes Ami(e)s!” — began with Beauty and The Beast (also known as La Belle et la Bête), the renowned 1946 film by Jean Cocteau based on the fairy tale originally published in the 1700s. The three-film series is being presented in conjunction with Best Video and is being hosted and curated by John Hatch, who recently organized a successful Italian movie series at the Chapel Street institution. 

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The Sound Waves

by | Aug 28, 2024 1:25 pm | Comments (0)

The History of Sound: Stories
By Ben Shattuck
Viking
July 9, 2024
306 pages

It’s a long story. And 12 short stories.

Ben Shattuck tells those dozen stories in his new collection called The History of Sound. The stories span three centuries. They interconnect in pairs — sometimes in passing, through an old painting or field recording buried under floor boards, sometimes more directly in traveling back in time to reveal the full story of a mystery that has been reinterpreted and rewritten by later generations.

In the process, Shattuck is telling us one story, about our legend-laden region of New England. And about telling stories, period.

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State House Compilation In The Works

by | Aug 28, 2024 9:47 am | Comments (0)

Local rapper Ceschi, to be featured in State House compilation.

The State House may be closed — but its music lives on, in recordings made of a wealth of live performances that happened during the much-loved former venue’s five-year run.

Former co-owner Carlos Wells has a plan to release some of those recordings via a digital compilation featuring four Connecticut artists — in what he hopes will be the first in a series that documents the vast array of local, national, and international acts that left their mark on the Elm City at the now-shuttered State Street spot.

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Artists Paint An Ailing Planet In Vivid Color

by | Aug 28, 2024 8:39 am | Comments (1)

Eyes on the Planet.

They’re eyes, but they’re taking in a universe of shifting shapes and colors. The piercing structures of the irises only accentuate how the rest of the eyes are swimming with color. In the middle of each pupil is an astronaut, which throws the scale of the image into question. On one level, it’s all fun and inviting. On another, it’s disorienting. The astronauts could be exploring a colorful new dimension. They may also be in danger.

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Three Albums Welcome The Young Guard

by | Aug 27, 2024 9:23 am | Comments (0)

Short chords from electric piano and synthesizer set the mood, contemplative but with a pulse. Estoy aquí / ya estuve allá / ya fui feliz / y acaba mal,” Ene de Nadie croons — I’m here / I was already there / I was already happy / it ends badly” — as the beat drops. The lyrics are full of longing and regret, while the music pulses on, the kind of song you can dance and cry to.

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