by | Mar 17, 2020 10:12 pm | Comments (1)
Vegan Ahava owner Poreyah Benton prepares tofu wraps in her truck.
Allan Appel File Photo
Sandra’s Next Generation co-owners Miguel and Sandra Pittman.
How restaurant owners are adjusting to the COVID-19 sit-down shutdown.
by | Mar 17, 2020 10:09 am | Comments (0)
Posted by Brian Slattery on Sunday, March 15, 2020
How does one visit an art gallery in the midst of social isolation and quarantine? It seems all roads still, somehow, lead to Facebook.
Continue reading ‘Art Exhibit Broadcasts Live From Quarantine’
by | Mar 16, 2020 11:13 am | Comments (4)
Brian Slattery Photo
Grunerud.
Nick Grunerud, a.k.a. Underwear, starts off his latest release, CORONA, Light, The Coronavirus Musical, with what sounds almost like a public service announcement, echoing off the sides of apartment buildings. “Welcome to coronavirus, the album. You cannot wash your hands for 32 minutes. Enjoy!”
It’s an apt setup for “Phase I: Time to Waste,” which finds Grunerud assuming the mentality of someone who is already a little weary of the societal changes the virus has wrought. “So we don’t want to waste our time buying masks and Purell,” he sings. “We don’t want to waste our time doing nothing / We don’t want to waste our time buying masks for nothing.” It’s the last time that gets the treatment, as Grunerud repeats it and stacks harmonies on it. At a time when many are just asking what it is they should be doing, Grunerud is asking a somewhat more complicated question: What will our response to the outbreak mean?
by | Mar 13, 2020 11:47 am | Comments (2)
Emily Hays Photo
Common Ground 10th graders Eliana Solano and Corey Boyd-Morton listen to visiting artist Kwadwo Adae.
Solano sketches a representation of the coronavirus COVID-19.
Eliana Solano sketched a virus with a diamond-shaped head and insect-like legs next to an Earth on fire, books, dollars and the word “expectations” in big block letters. The drawings partially filled a globe of anxieties and other thoughts held up by a small sketch of Solano herself.
Local artist Kwadwo Adae was warming the Common Ground High School class up for a group art project about climate change and its effects on students’ lives. Adae has visited the class weekly to build up to the project — one of numerous nontraditional, eco-conscious approaches that recently won the school a national award and a state seal of approval.
Continue reading ‘Common Ground’s Green Approach Wins Recognition’
by | Mar 13, 2020 8:29 am | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen photos
Free bowls of ramen at Menya-Gumi.
Customers line up outside of the new Orange Street restaurant.
Three hundred free bowls of ramen at a new Japanese restaurant on Orange Street trumped local lunch-goers’ concerns about going out to eat during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, as local restaurateurs scrambled to prepare for tough months ahead as people hunker down at home and public events are canceled.
by | Mar 12, 2020 4:45 pm | Comments (0)
by | Mar 12, 2020 8:00 am | Comments (0)
It almost feels as though the camera is floating through space, and the violins are planets. There is a sense of rushing movement, of racing across the top of the instrument, as though the viewer were a molecule of air moved by the sound the instrument is making. And off in the distance, that sound seems to be made visible, a swirl of light like the aurora borealis. It could also be a digital effect. But it’s not.
by | Mar 11, 2020 11:58 am | Comments (1)
In a studio somewhere, artist Jarrett Key stands in front of a blank canvas. Their hair is tied up in the shape of a brush. Without a word, they dip their hair into a small bucket of paint, then back up to the canvas behind them. They tilt their head back and begin to paint, without really being able to see what’s behind them.
It can feel trite to say that the process of creating a piece of art is part of the artwork, but Key’s movements are so balletic that in this case, the statement feels true. Understanding how the paintings were made gives more meaning to the finished paintings.
by | Mar 11, 2020 7:43 am | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen photos
Questioners at Tuesday night’s meeting (clockwise from top left); Dawn Wright, Kerry Ellington, Deniqua Washington, Prakeen Doodala.
HGA
One proposed layout for a new Dixwell Plaza.
Dixwell neighbors, business owners, and community organizers pressed the local developers behind Dixwell Plaza’s planned $200 million overhaul to prioritize affordable housing and to minimize the displacement of existing retail, in a project that will be led in part by an architect who helped design Washington D.C.‘s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Continue reading ‘Dixwell Plaza Revivers Pressed On Details’
by | Mar 10, 2020 9:17 pm | Comments (0)
Local universities are telling students to stay home and resume classes online, at least for a while.
by | Mar 10, 2020 12:16 pm | Comments (2)
Mike Franzman Photo
Isabella Mendes: Classes move online; live-streamed performances?
Performances in the immediate future are disappearing left and right. The prospects of other performances weeks or even months away are uncertain. For musicians and other artists who count on these events for income, the coronavirus outbreak has already taken a toll.
Continue reading ‘For Artists, Coronavirus Hits Bottom Line’
by | Mar 10, 2020 12:13 pm | Comments (0)
Two friends, Grace and Asta, are running through a summer house with a bundle of burning sage. It’s to drive the evil spirits from the house, says Asta’a mother Kate. Asta’s showing Grace how it’s done, as they bless walls and windows, doorways and floors. Then, in a hallway, Asta stops and screams. There’s a dead rabbit on the floor. How it got there, or what it means, is anyone’s guess. Kate brings the body outside. But the spirit seems to linger.
by | Mar 9, 2020 12:14 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
A drab stretch of wall beneath the I‑91 overpass at Middletown Avenue and Front Street gives a grey, dull, cold concrete welcome — really a non-welcome — to Fair Haven. That may soon change with an artistic facelift.
Not from the state Department of Transportation, which owns the wall, but thanks to Fair Haveners who voted to spend $7,500 of public money to use art to improve the northern gateway to their neck of the city.
Continue reading ‘More Art To Enliven Fair Haven’s Northern Entryway’
by | Mar 9, 2020 12:08 pm | Comments (0)
Tom Peterson
Dreamscape 11.
Balconies bathed in dark light under a red sky. A pale streetlight in a neon atmosphere. A window flashing yellow under an angled roof and a black cloud. These are among the images in Tom Peterson’s “Dreamscapes,” a series of photographs that take over City Gallery on Upper State Street until March 29, with an opening reception on March 12.
by | Mar 7, 2020 11:51 pm | Comments (6)
Food, music, friendly tug-of-war unite Fair Haven, Heights as 2‑year closing looms.
by | Mar 6, 2020 1:09 pm | Comments (2)
Allan Appel Photo
It happened about nine years ago — - three months after Dominick Splendorio opened his dream eatery, Zafra, a Cuban-themed restaurant and rum bar on Orange Street just above Elm.
The place was packed, having already developed a word-of-mouth following. A warm, gracious feeling spread among the guests, between the servers and the customers.
Amid the hectic serving of mojitos and ropa vieja, Splendorio’s then bartender tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Stop. Look up. See what you’ve created?”
by | Mar 6, 2020 12:04 pm | Comments (0)
Thomas Breen photo
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison, with City Librarian John Jessen: Attending an HBCU was the “best decision that I made in my life.”
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison knew almost nothing about historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) when she submitted an application to Morgan State University her senior year at Hillhouse High School.
After four years surrounded by peers, teachers, and administrators who looked like her, talked like her, and held a shared understanding of what it means to be black in America, she knew she had made one of the best decisions of her life.
Continue reading ‘Alders & Library Partner For HBCU Doc Screenings’
by | Mar 6, 2020 9:03 am | Comments (4)
Youtube
Scenes shot in New Haven from Smitty Bop’s videos.
Smitty Bop boasts he is “so New Haven.” And he is telling the world in detail what that means — in song, and on video.
“I love my block,” he proclaims in one of his newer videos.
The rising rapper also has this to say about his hometown:
All I see is drug dealing, gang banging …/
Life’s a gamble, that’s why we carry eights …/
You’re Kermit Carolina and I’m Toni Harp/
Which means I’m winning and you losing …/
by | Mar 5, 2020 6:14 pm | Comments (0)
by | Mar 5, 2020 1:24 pm | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
King and Pettway.
There are fleeting moments in Skeleton Crew — playing at Collective Consciousness Theatre through March 22 — where time seems to stop. We’re in the break room of a Detroit auto plant, and though the noise of the factory is running outside, inside is where the action happens. Times are tough at the plant and the relationships among the people who work there are wearing thin. Conversations get had that can’t get taken back. Secrets are kept and then revealed. And then, at the end of several scenes, it’s just one character alone onstage — Faye, played by Tamika Pettway. The fluorescent lights blink out, and the set is bathed in blue, and the weight of the world seems to settle on Faye’s shoulders, reflected in Pettway’s worried eyes. What is she going to do?
Continue reading ‘Collective Consciousness Theater Works It Overtime’
by | Mar 5, 2020 1:23 pm | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
75 Dollar Bill
After a Tuesday that wasn’t so super for a lot of folks, Wednesday provided a much-needed respite in the form of a double bill at The State House featuring New Haven’s own Headroom and returning favorites 75 Dollar Bill from Brooklyn. Could everyone decompress and feel the music? The answer was a hearty yes.
Continue reading ‘Two Bands Get Meditative At The State House’
by | Mar 5, 2020 1:11 pm | Comments (0)
Contributed photo
Lisa Dent
The artistic director of a Portland, Oregon-based visual arts nonprofit will be the next executive director of Artspace as the longtime leader of the innovative Ninth Square gallery and cultural institution plans to step down later this spring.
by | Mar 4, 2020 1:15 pm | Comments (0)
Amanda Roberts
Lunar Spell Book.
Amanda Roberts’s Lunar Spell Book is emblematic of “Witchy” — the exhibit now running at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art through April 19 — not only because of its marriage of ancient ideas about magic possibly at play in the modern world. It’s also because it shares a wall with a dozen other pieces of art that, individually and collectively, become a celebration of feminine power in all its forms.
by | Mar 3, 2020 2:54 pm | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
On the set at Cafe Nine for the filming of a new music video.
by | Mar 2, 2020 1:13 pm | Comments (2)
Helena Chen Carlson Photo
Deborah Elmore at Saturday’s event.
As over 50 people gathered on the floor at Wilson Branch Library, Deborah Elmore acted out a skit in which she played the role of a hospital doctor and a television news reporter.