by | Aug 18, 2020 8:14 am | Comments (3)
Mister Wonderland.
Opening Night of the live event portion of the NHDocs festival — happening Wednesday, Aug. 19 on Wooster Street at the legendary Sally’s Apizza — will be celebrated with a film that digs into New Haven’s theatrical past.
Continue reading ‘New Doc Focuses On New Haven’s “Mr. Wonderland”’
by | Aug 17, 2020 11:32 am | Comments (3)
Eamon Linehan
Sarahi Zacatelco painting a new bench on Grand Ave.
Local artists Sarahi Zacatelco, Eamon Linehan, Israel Sanchez, and Joel Celi faced a blank canvas in the form of a freshly painted white bench right outside of Evolution SD Hairstudio on Grand Avenue.
by | Aug 17, 2020 8:32 am | Comments (0)
NHDocs
NHDocs: The New Haven Documentary Film Festival — now in its seventh year, a week of films by documentary filmmakers from all over the country — begins on Tuesday, Aug. 18, with two online offerings that have one thing in common: the incomparable country music star Johnny Cash.
by | Aug 14, 2020 8:15 am | Comments (1)
Titus Kaphar
Analogous colors.
On one wall of NXTHVN’s gallery is a possibly already-iconic painting: A Black mother, eyes closed, her hair kept from her face by a headband, cradling only the silhouette of a baby. New Haven-based artist Titus Kaphar painted it in reaction to the killing of George Floyd, and in June it ended up being on the cover of Time magazine.
Facing that image, on the opposite wall, are a series of black pieces of paper that contain faces and words and crossed out lines. One side of the gallery is a short shock; the other is a lake of layers to sink into.
Together, they make up “Pleading Freedom,” a small but deep exhibition of work by Kaphar in collaboration with memoirist, poet, and attorney Reginald Dwayne Betts that has much to say about the condition of being Black in America at a time when people’s ears are prepared to hear that message as much as they have been in a generation.
by | Aug 13, 2020 2:24 pm | Comments (2)
Joel Schechter
by | Aug 13, 2020 9:30 am | Comments (2)
Brian Slattery Photo
Clinard.
Statues stand together, a small family of them, somehow radiating both fear and total resolve. A pair of shadows huddle under rafters. Another group stands together, bearing witness, demanding to be counted. The pieces are all part of a larger exhibit by New Haven-based sculptor Susan Clinard focusing on refugees, migrants, and border crossings, for a new journal seeking to use groundbreaking ways of representing art to perhaps change hearts, minds — and policy.
Continue reading ‘Sculptor’s Work Crosses Borders, Breaks Ground’
by | Aug 12, 2020 11:01 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Mueller.
The crisp rim shot from the snare drum snaps out the beat to start “ReRecorded Syntax,” from Revisionist: Adaptations & Future Histories In The Time Of Love And Survival, the new album by June of 44 and its first in 21 years. The bass joins, pulsing on the groove, followed by two guitars that work in unison to create a mood that’s both urgent and atmospheric. The vocals only heighten the vibe, with lyrics that are both fractured and focused. The picture is clear; we just can’t see all of it. “Without air, still breathing,” the voices intone.
by | Aug 11, 2020 9:08 am | Comments (1)
Before the latest installment of Animation Celebration! — a film discussion series hosted by the New Haven Free Public Library — a participant beamed as the Zoom meeting for the discussion began to fill up.
“I’m watching all these movies I wouldn’t have watched!” she said. And “talking more about it makes you feel connected to it more.”
Continue reading ‘Animation Series Grapples With Russian Master’
by | Aug 10, 2020 12:05 pm | Comments (1)
All the huge strong limbs toppled down
Long beautiful maples, old and young, on the ground
by | Aug 10, 2020 9:43 am | Comments (0)
Wally in 2019.
“No No,” the first song from Wally’s EP Live, starts with stacked, keening three-part harmonies that reach all the way back to the brother acts of the 1950s but feel very much of the moment. “I can’t love you anymore, but I’m trying,” they sing. The rest of the band falls in with a easy, lilting groove that seems both sunny and melancholy, like the last days of summer.
That’s before the guitar opens up with fuzzy distortion that lets the drums hit harder. Soon voices and instruments are all weaving together to bring the song to its emotional peak, before they all fall away — and then, suddenly, launch into high gear, complete with guitar and saxophone freakout.
by | Aug 7, 2020 4:07 pm | Comments (2)
Dead all at once or in waves and curves
That’s today’s to-be-or-not-to-be no matter whom you serve
by | Aug 7, 2020 1:20 pm | Comments (3)
Maya McFadden Photo
Smitty Bop: Newhallville proud, on the move.
Rising New Haven rapper Smitty Bop, known for music videos celebrating New Haven and local street life, has broadened his message in a new single to target police brutality nationwide and support the Black Lives Matter movement.
Here’s the hook:
I ain’t with that cappin shit /
A cop killin me? I ain’t having it /
won’t get down on my knees like I’m Kaepernick /
cops killing with they knees, that ain’t average /
by | Aug 7, 2020 1:09 pm | Comments (2)
Contributed Photos
When Mahogany Lowery went on field trips as a child, she needed an adult with her to give her insulin and make sure her blood sugar levels were not too high or too low. Her diabetes hospitalized her every year, she recalled.
The New Haven native has spun those memories into fiction with her first book, Greatness Over The Rainbow. The book, to be released on Amazon on Friday, follows four kids living in a city like New Haven who experience chronic illness and the deaths of family members and overcome those challenges.
by | Aug 7, 2020 10:30 am | Comments (0)
Gregory Antollino
Grande Olde Flag.
She stands with a U.S. flag umbrella over her shoulder, wearing a top made from red, white, and blue ribbon. But she’s no ordinary patriot. There’s a spark in her eyes that suggests something more complicated.
We don’t have the context for photographer Gregory Antollino’s image. Was it at a protest or a Fourth of July parade?
Either way, there is something nonconformist going on, fueled by an energy born from age, not despite it. “I’m age 81 but my parade is not done,” her sign reads. Everything in the photograph would lead us to believe her.
by | Aug 6, 2020 7:06 pm | Comments (2)
Sophie Sonnenfeld Photo
Vibrant fish, turtles, and other water critters have been popping up out of storm drains across New Haven this summer, reminding New Haveners to keep their trash away from the drains.
The last batch of these “runoff art” creatures came to life on Thursday in front of the Christopher Columbus Family Academy at the corner of Grand Avenue and Fillmore Street.
Continue reading ‘Storm Drain Creatures Emerge on Grand Avenue’
by | Aug 6, 2020 9:48 am | Comments (0)
Amanda Duchen
I Am … A Dreamer.
A cluster of heads floating like balloons on stalks. An oil painting of a woman eating a hoagie. A connection with a goddess. All these and more are part of “I Am…,” the latest riotous exhibition at Kehler Liddell Gallery, which is now open by appointment and for limited weekend hours.
by | Aug 5, 2020 1:54 pm | Comments (4)
Laura Glesby photo
The green bridge in its largely green surroundings.
Don’t look now — but a 121-year-old bridge is changing color. By popular vote.
by | Aug 5, 2020 11:02 am | Comments (0)
Kwadwo Adae
Kerry, Addys, Norm, Sarah, Vanessa, Ericka.
We know the subjects of the paintings are protestors because of the crowds assembled behind them, silhouettes gathered with raised arms and picket signs. One carries a bullhorn. Another has the Puerto Rican flag emblazoned on a tank top. Another throws a fist in the air to reveal a tattoo on the wrist.
As the accompanying notes say, “New Haven painter and activist Kwadwo Adae celebrates his compatriots and heroes” in these series of portraits.
The subjects are Kerry Ellington, Addys Castillo, Norm Clement, Ericka Huggins, Sarah Pimenta, and Vanessa Suárez. Adae has depicted them in their “protest armor.”
In putting them side by side by side, Adae deftly connects past to present. He shows that the protests of 1970 over the Black Panther trials in New Haven have cast a long shadow, and suggests further that they are part of a continuum, an even longer thread stretching back perhaps to the beginnings of the country.
by | Aug 4, 2020 9:44 am | Comments (12)
Mural in process.
Paul Mayer, owner of Cafe Nine on the corner of State and Crown, looked up at the mural of jazz legend Sun Ra that now graces the side of the building that houses his bar.
“I’m blown away,” he said. It was his first time seeing it in person, along with the accompanying boom box painted on a Dumpster.
by | Aug 3, 2020 10:15 am | Comments (1)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Todd Lyon get a leg up on the big move.
Like the vintage wares it has been selling for over 15 years, Fashionista Vintage and Variety will be continuing on in a new way and space: 85 Willow St., to be exact.
The beloved shop closed its doors at the corner of Whitney and Trumbull last week. It will be moving its abundance of top hats, taffeta, and everything else to its new home in the MarlinWorks building in East Rock this week.
by | Aug 3, 2020 10:01 am | Comments (1)
New Haven’s Premier Concerts/Manic Presents concert promoters have found way to stage live shows this summer — and keep everyone safe: Do it on 10 acres of manicured farmland with 8‑foot-by-8-foot “social distancing grids.”
by | Jul 31, 2020 8:15 pm | Comments (0)
Alisa Bowens-Mercado with husband John Mercado (right) and Two Roads’ Phil Markowski (left) ).
This stout tastes like oats, chocolate — and social justice.
by | Jul 31, 2020 4:14 pm | Comments (12)
Alana Dina, Craig Gomes, and Evongee Smart outside Pacifico.
Laura Glesby Photos
South Bay and Pacifico tables bustling on Wednesday night.
Ray Andrewsen felt like he was in Paris. Alana Dina, the Big Apple.
In reality, they were dining on pear and walnut salad and guacamole on College Street in New Haven — not inside eateries, but right out on the sidewalk, part of a Covid 19-sparked experiment that’s breathing new life into downtown’s battered restaurant industry.
by | Jul 31, 2020 12:03 pm | Comments (3)
“Ah, can I do – birch trees
And two diamond pick axes,”
by | Jul 27, 2020 12:28 pm | Comments (2)
Kevin Sanchez Walsh
I dreamed I was in a foreign city
Traveling with my wife