Visual Arts

In Latest Show, NXTHVN Tells The Truth

by | Oct 6, 2022 9:37 am | Comments (1)

A large red empty speech bubble stands on the sidewalk outside NXTHVN in Dixwell. Its object lies in inviting visitors to rest, contemplate and reflect,” as an accompanying explanation puts it. But as it stands on Henry Street, it also feels like a portal, setting expectations for what’s in store for the rest of the show. Through it, one can see people milling about in the foyer of the gallery space — and beyond that, a commotion of mylar, and anyone who’s in it moving around like they’re in a snowstorm. What’s happening in there?

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Ely Center Rocks The Block

by | Oct 3, 2022 8:57 am | Comments (2)

Brian Slattery Photos

Sunday afternoon found Trumbull Street between Whitney Avenue and Orange Street closed for the Ely Center of Contemporary Arts first block party — featuring the gallery’s latest shows inside the John Slade Ely House and a bazaar of art, zine, clothing, and food vendors lining the street, serving a steady stream of visitors. As DJ Dooley‑O headed into a festive set outside and the Ely Center filled with voices inside and out, the block party felt true to its name.

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Photographer Finds The Story In The Picture

by | Sep 27, 2022 11:10 am | Comments (0)

Joy Bush

Loose Screw.

The title photographer Joy Bush gives to the image — Loose Screw — suggest something about the sense of humor she wants the viewer to have in looking at the piece. But it also offers some direction for how to look at the image. The first thing that jumps out, after all, is the chair. But the story, whatever it is, starts with the screwdriver balanced on the power outlet. What’s it doing there? And where is the screw it was brought out to tighten? Is it between jobs? Has it been forgotten? Where is the owner of that chair? There’s a sense of incompletion; something hasn’t happened yet, but it’s about to.

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Artspace Exhibits Dive Below The Surface

by | Sep 22, 2022 10:32 am | Comments (0)

Ilana Harris-Babou

Still from Leaf of Life.

The tree in the image from the short film Leaf of Life has spread its branches wide, offering inviting shade, protection — and perhaps nourishment. The fruits that artist Ilana Harris-Babou has placed in its branches are healthy enough, but the way Harris-Babou has rendered them, there is something fake about them, a little suspicious. We want to eat well. We want to be healthy. We want to live better lives, in greater harmony with our neighbors and with nature. But how do we know when we’re doing that? How do we know if we’ve been had?

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Yale Art Exhibit Spotlights Celebrated Yoruban Sculptor

by | Sep 21, 2022 8:44 am | Comments (0)

Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè

Ẹnìkan Ìí Pèrò or Ẹnìkan Kìí Pa Èrò (Two Heads Are Better than One).

The piece, by famed Nigerian sculptor Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè, depicts two mothers with two twins. The style is soaked in tradition, but the sculptor has also found his own voice within that tradition, and in turn, given his subjects their own voices as well. Look closely, into the abstraction, and you can see the individual expressions of the figures, the things that make them unique, perhaps a mixture of dignity and worry in the adults, a sense of determination and mischief in the children. Look even more closely and you understand more of the relationships among the figures. The two mothers are themselves twins, and they are supporting each other; their outside arms, meanwhile, are there to protect and guide all of their children. They’re a small society unto themselves, even as they’re connected to everyone around them.

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Ely Center Gets Religion

by | Sep 20, 2022 9:13 am | Comments (0)

The small first-floor gallery of the Ely Center of Contemporary Art is flooded with multicolored light. It darkens the room overall but has the effect of making the atmosphere in there more vibrant. The gallery becomes a place where you might want to linger, the way people linger around any places that are alive with color, from rooms strung with Christmas lights to meadows full of wildflowers. It’s a place to take a breath and, in keeping with the theme of an exhibit currently staged there, think about new beginnings.

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Visiting Sculptor Lukman Alade Fakeye Goes With The Grain

by | Sep 15, 2022 12:41 pm | Comments (0)

Valerie Richardson Photo

Lukman Fakeye at the Yale School of Art.

Lukman Alade Fakeye set up his tools and a block of African mahogany wood in a large workspace on an upper floor of the Sculpture Department of Yale’s School of Art. It was the first day of a week-long residency as the School of Art’s Fall 2022 Hayden Visiting Artist, during which time he would be creating a new sculpture and speaking with classes and individual students. Fakeye is in the sixth generation of his family’s lineage of Yorùbá woodcarvers, working within a larger tradition that extends back hundreds of years. 

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Drag Rides The Edge For Pride Week

by | Sep 15, 2022 9:44 am | Comments (5)

Brian Slattery Photo

Iridessa Søul LaFlare performs for PRIDE.

Host Maddelynn Hatter broke in the crowd at Gotham Citi Cafe on Orange Street Wednesday night by establishing a few guidelines regarding drag shows.

If you ever know any drag queens, you know the most important rule — other than to be able to paint your face — is to be kind,” she said. All of the queens have passed the test. They are very kind. Which is good, because I am an awful person.”

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At Kehler Liddell, Artists Dive Into Body And Spirit

by | Sep 14, 2022 9:03 am | Comments (0)

Kim Weston

The image appears to come apart at the seams in front of you. In one quadrant is a dancer, strong and in her element. But around her the image quick degrades. The colors break apart and crash into one. It’s just the sort of happy accident that some artists, like Kim Weston and JLS Gangwisch, seek out and exploit. That image was a glitch. People thought we created it together but I thought it was perfect for this show. It’s where Jeffrey and I meet. There are no accidents. That image was supposed to be that way,” Weston said. There’s such beauty in its technical disaster. Who says that’s not supposed to be there? Why isn’t my whole card destroyed? It was just that image. What energy source or force created that moment? And here, Jeffrey comes around and says he wants to do a show together.”

The show — Cadence” — is running now at Kehler Liddell Gallery through Oct. 9.

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New Haven Paint And Clay Club Has Day In The Sun

by | Sep 13, 2022 9:00 am | Comments (0)

Anne Doris-Eisner

Hidden Lives.

Hidden Lives, Anne Doris-Eisner’s piece submitted to the 2022 active members’ exhibit of the New Haven Paint and Clay Club — on view now until Oct. 8 at the gallery in Creative Arts Workshop on Audubon Street — is immediately recognizable as a natural form, a gnarled part of a tree. But somehow in the way Doris-Eisner has rendered the details of those textures, she has made room for abstraction as well. The more we look, the more we see: figures curled in the bark, shapes suggestive perhaps of more human forms. And, at the same time, it’s possible to stop trying to find anything in the shapes and just accept the texture for what it is, an intricate network of lines, interesting enough as it is to not require us to name it.

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Latest Art Installation Renews Spirit At mActivity

by | Sep 8, 2022 9:10 am | Comments (0)

The walls of mActivity — like the walls of other New Haven-area businesses — keep getting a little brighter, thanks to an embrace of public art that is now transforming buildings outside and in. In the case of mActivity, the art is the result of series that began in 2017. Curated by Barbara Hawes, the series has hosted a wide array of New Haven-based artists, from public art maestro Kwadwo Adae to graffiti artist Michael Deangelo, from photographers Phyllis Crowley and Sean Kernan to painters Vienna Hinkson and William McCarthy.

For the rest of the month of September, visitors can now see the works of artists Esthea Kim and Eliza Shaw Valk, whose work mirrors the mood of the hottest season and, in keeping with the fitness center’s mission, captures some of the renewed spirit many have found in exercise during the pandemc.

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TikTok Titans Take Less-Traveled Road

by | Sep 6, 2022 4:43 pm | Comments (6)

Nora Grace-Flood Photo

Pedestrians of the world unite! Stalls and Weber make synchronous TikToks on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard.

Two TikTok phenoms concerned with pedestrian safety set out from the outskirts of Ella T. Grasso Boulevard Sunday morning — with the intention of spotlighting one of New Haven’s, and the state of Connecticut’s, most dangerous stretches while on a viral walk.

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A Year After 1st Queer Open Mic, East Rock House Celebrates Milestone

by | Aug 30, 2022 8:48 am | Comments (0)

Lindsay Skedgell Photos

Your Queer Plant Shop.

The outer edge of Pitkin Plaza on Sunday was lined with rare plants, bursts of pollinators, handmade leather goods, zines, and two birthday cakes of four different flavors. Nestled between vibrant murals, performers sang and folks from all around New Haven filled the brick park. One man next to a mural waved a cigar around in circles, dancing to the music Love n’ Co played. The band’s singer — Lovelind Richards — had various shades of blue painted across her eyes in thick bands. A leather worker from Beacon Craft Studio stitched a deep maroon leather piece with thick thread. It was East Rock Houses first birthday.

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Black Wall Street Festival Brings Out The Artrepreneurs

by | Aug 29, 2022 9:27 am | Comments (2)

Brian Slattery Photos

The music poured onto Temple Street all the way from the plaza in the middle of the block, directing and enticing a steady stream of pedestrians and shoppers to the long rows of canopies set up for the Black Wall Street Festival, an afternoon-long event designed to showcase a wide range of Black entrepreneurs.

Thanks to the robust turnout, a live band, and a pervasive sense of cheer, the festival was true to its name, turning Temple Street Plaza into something like bazaar meets block party. 

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HeArts Beat For Justice

by | Aug 29, 2022 9:17 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

Rev. Jeremiah Paul.

The Rev. Jeremiah Paul, pastor for Hamden Plains United Methodist Church, held his hand high as he spoke to the crowd assembled to hear him at Hamden’s Town Center Park on Friday evening. His audience were members of his congregation, but also from the greater New Haven community, a mix of languages, ages, cultures and creeds. Among them were artists selling their pieces and food truck vendors feeding the people. 

We had a little rain shower, which I consider a blessing from the heavens,” he said amiably. With the sun out, the show was ready to start.

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CAW Plays Mood Indigo

by | Aug 26, 2022 8:36 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

A dozen students gathered around a long table in a second-floor studio in Creative Arts Workshop on Thursday evening, busily preparing strips of white fabric with woodblocks, clothespins, and rubber bands. CAW instructor Annie Trowbridge moved from one student to the other, pouring on ideas, humor, and enthusiasm. On the other side of the room, smelling of ammonia, was a bucket containing one of the most well-known and beloved natural dyes in the world. Before the class was over, that color would transform several yards of fabric and maybe change a perspective or two.

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Art Brings Freedom — And Business — To Blue Orchid

by | Aug 25, 2022 8:55 am | Comments (0)

There’s a reason for the vibrant colors in Sarahi Zacatelco’s self-portrait. That’s how I feel now,” Zacatelco said. I’m a survivor,” she said, and those colors mean freedom” — freedom from a bad situation she left behind, and freedom to accept the support of others she has found in New Haven. It’s also a celebration of the freedom to work on myself and to work on my art. I left everything behind. All the depression. All the hard feelings. Everything.” It’s the same impulse that led her to make a painting of a pair of wings. Now I’m flying,” she said. Now I’m free.”

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“Exchange” Prompts Art Treasure Hunt

by | Aug 23, 2022 8:55 am | Comments (3)

Brian Slattery photo

The gloriously trashy wonderland of garage-art "Auto."

A garage full of treasures. A squirrel on a tightrope. A tree full of wishes. These are among the discoveries that await those who embark on The Exchange, a treasure hunt of an art show that is the brainchild of New Haven-based artists Suzan Shutan and Howard el-Yasin of SomethingProjects.

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Flowers For The Hill

by | Aug 18, 2022 5:50 pm | Comments (10)

Olivia Gross Photo

New mural on the side of the Hillside Community Shelter.

Kwadwo Adae, center, with his son Kwasi and Katherine Tombaugh, assistant muralists.

Artist Kwadwo Adae unveiled a new 45-foot-high mural in The Hill neighborhood on Thursday -– and this one is there to stay. 

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Photos Capture The Upper State That Was

by | Aug 11, 2022 8:55 am | Comments (5)

Karen Klugman

Jerry at Jerry's Antiques, 928 State.

Jerry stands with his hand on his hip, a cigar angled improbably out of his mouth. He’s wearing a hat from another time. The shop behind him is from another time, too, an older New Haven that’s increasingly hard to catch a glimpse of. The photograph is accompanied by a quote from Jerry, addressed to the photographer: Say, you ain’t Polish, are ya? John here said you might be Polish. You’re Italian, ain’t ya? You look Italian.… Lithuanian? Romanian? Well, at least you ain’t a Jew. Say, you ain’t Jewish, are ya? Old John, he and I just like to kid around. What are you anyway?”

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Artists Breathe A Sigh Of Relief In CAW Exhibit

by | Aug 10, 2022 9:09 am | Comments (0)

Vasilisa Gladysheva

Melting Face.

Vasilisa Gladysheva’s potted plant at first looks precarious, perched on the edge of its podium, but that’s the point. The piece is, in a very real sense, about balance. There’s tenuousness versus serenity. There’s the combining of the whimsical and the functional, while also having something to say about the thoughts of the mind, or perhaps imagination. Is the figure in the vase sleeping and dreaming the plant into existence? Or is it about how all thoughts can grow? Regardless, what is clear is both the artist’s playful intentions and the skill with which the piece is made.

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In Neverending Exhibit, Artist Craig Gilbert Keeps Riding The Wave

by | Jul 26, 2022 8:46 am | Comments (0)

It’s a chicken leg, mounted on a wooden board like a hunting trophy or a piece of taxidermy. But then something else is going on with it, a cascade of white circles, dynamic enough to almost seem to be moving across its surface. For some, the circles might seem like soap, the leg being washed clean. For other, they might look like mold; the chicken left out of the fridge too long. Or what if someone decided not to interpret it at all? To just accept the shapes and shades for what they are, just patterns across the chicken’s skin?

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Artspace Makes The Familiar Unfamiliar

by | Jul 22, 2022 8:50 am | Comments (1)

A group of men chat on the street corner. Behind them, a hamburger rotates slowly, to serene music. An astronaut tumbles through space. Prisoners of war get anti-communist propaganda tattooed on their chests and backs. A White man muses on the fear White people have of retribution from Black people about slavery.

It’s a quiet summer night on Crown Street, but something is disrupting the flow — and in its disruption, is reminding us of the flow that we’re in almost all the time and usually don’t pay much attention to.

The disruption makes us aware of how we’re subtly being disrupted all the time, without us being entirely conscious of it. What would happen if we were to wake all the way up to that fact?

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