by
Brian Slattery |
Dec 2, 2021 9:21 am
|
Comments
(0)
The portrait of the Foote sisters — Anna and Amelia — dating from around 1860 appears early in “Children of the Elm City,” the new exhibit at the New Haven Museum running now through winter 2022. It’s in the first section of the exhibit, dedicated to portraiture from the 18th and 19th centuries, before the advent of widespread photography.
Because the exhibit is partially geared toward children, a lot of questions appear in the text accompanying the exhibit. One might not expect those questions to be as provocative as they are.
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 30, 2021 9:24 am
|
Comments
(1)
From now until the end of December, visitors to Cafe Nine will see a change of art on the club’s walls — the photographs and paintings of Leigh Busby, who as a photographer has become one of the most sharp-eyed chroniclers of life in New Haven, particularly during the unrest of 2020, where he was there, camera in hand, to document the outrage and the energy of that summer and show the city to itself.
In combining his photographs and paintings into one show, Busby allows even those familiar with his work a chance to see how he moved from painting to photography, and the lines that carry through all his work.
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 19, 2021 9:00 am
|
Comments
(1)
R.F. Wilton
Baby Tubelegs With Shoes.
The baby in the middle of the image might just be a doll, but in the photograph it seems as though it’s been brought strangely to life. Is it a ruler, looking out over its broken domain? A performer playing for a mute audience? A judge passing down a verdict to the condemned? It’s an image that overflows with a sense that we’re looking into another world, adjacent to ours but darker and stranger, made up of the things we thought we threw out. Something’s coming from that world into ours, and maybe we’re both frightened and fascinated to find out what it is.
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 18, 2021 9:20 am
|
Comments
(1)
Dutkanicz with 4 Attempts at Being an Individual.
The dozens of colored shapes in New Haven-based artist Andrzej Dutkanicz’s paintings might at first appeared to be scrambled, almost in motion, because the visual effect is scintillating. But the lines that divide the canvas, and the focal dot in the middle of it, suggest something else is going on, a kind of symmetry and repetition. At first glance, it’s hard to say what it is. But the system is there, and for Dutkanicz, it’s the combination — of randomness and rules, of chaotic motion and unchanging order — that makes the art. And for the next month or so, that art will be gracing the walls of Never Ending Books on State Street as a show titled “Works.”
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 17, 2021 9:08 am
|
Comments
(1)
William Frucht
Pink Blanket.
It’s a photograph of a couple on a beach on a hot summer day. On one level, it’s all perfectly normal, almost banal. He’s checking something on his laptop; she may or may not be nudging him with her foot. But in its form it seems almost coordinated, that the two people are dressed only in black and white, that they’ve then chosen a hot pink blanket to rest on, a bright orange bag to bring, a bright purple cup to drink from. And then it’s all framed by just sand, without a wave in sight.
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 16, 2021 9:11 am
|
Comments
(3)
Brian Slattery Photo
The Mo-Pho — a soon-to-be mobile photo studio and event space run by Teresa Joseph and Chris Randall, partners in the photo business The Notorious P.I.C. — started off four years ago as an idea in Joseph’s head. This week it took a major leap forward into reality with the acquisition of a double-decker bus from Liverpool, with more in the spring sure to follow.
For Joseph, it’s not just a dream of hers coming to life; it’s also a manifestation of the support she and Randall feel from the community around them.
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 9, 2021 8:34 am
|
Comments
(1)
From a distance on Audubon Street, it looks like a city has sprung up inside the gallery space of Creative Arts Workshop, stretching far back into the building. Come a little closer, though, and you see that the buildings are rusted, almost derelict, the windows empty. Go inside the gallery and explore, and you come across the small outline of a person, lying there as if outlined in chalk. There’s a small tablet close by, but its screen glows only a blank blue.
Where are all the other inhabitants? What happened to them?
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 8, 2021 9:04 am
|
Comments
(1)
Leigh Busby Photo
The ceremony for the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s 41st annual arts awards returned to being an in-person event on Friday, as people gathered at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts at Southern Connecticut State University to honor several of New Haven’s artist educators: Miguel Gaspar Benitez, James and Tia Russell Brockington, Allen “Dooley‑O” Jackson, Linda Lindroth, Patrick Smith, and Bill Brown and Sally Hill.
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 2, 2021 7:54 am
|
Comments
(3)
Hiroshi’s Chair.
It’s a painting of a room, rendered with fidelity, but suffused with light and sadness. Even without knowing who Hiroshi is, there is a sense of loneliness to the scene, though it’s not abject; there’s comfort there, too. It turns out that Hiroshi is a close relative of the painter, Steven DiGiovanni, and the family lost Hiroshi to Covid-19. The story brings into focus what’s in the painting already. In the way DiGiovanni depicts the room, and especially the chair, well-worn, well-loved, we feel it all, both Hiroshi’s absence and his presence.
by
Brian Slattery |
Nov 1, 2021 9:24 am
|
Comments
(3)
Brian Slattery Photo
Matos at her new downtown haunt.
A customer walked into Kiara Matos’s new storefront ceramics studio and gallery on Orange Street looking to buy two matching mugs she had seen earlier on the shelf. The problem: In between visits, another customer had come in and already bought one of them.
by
Brian Slattery |
Oct 27, 2021 9:12 am
|
Comments
(0)
On one level, Christian Curiel’s painting of the woman by the water is realistic; she’s sitting in a natural position, not like she’s posing for a picture, but like she’s just gotten out of the water. But ritual soaks the atmosphere around her, in the way her face is painted, the flowers in her hair, the candles floating on the water. Then there are the shapes in the air around her that have no place in a realistic painting, as if Curiel has made visual the intangible spiritual act that has just taken place. In the end, though, you might say the key to the whole painting is the cinderblock at her feet. It looks at first like it’s resting in the shallows, but the woman’s feet suggest the water’s deeper than that. Is the cinderblock floating in the water? Are all the rocks floating as well?
by
Brian Slattery |
Oct 25, 2021 8:02 am
|
Comments
(1)
Roderick Topping photos
New Haven-based photographer Roderick Topping has been documenting the Elm City throughout the pandemic and before. That work is now being celebrated with a new exhibition at the New Haven Museum called “Strange Times” that, in the first week of its opening, garnered media attention from WTNH, the New Haven Register, and the Yale Daily News. What does it mean that Topping’s photos — which he’s been posting on social media as he takes them — have been collected, and now resonate so strongly?
by
Brian Slattery |
Oct 21, 2021 7:59 am
|
Comments
(0)
Emily Herberich
Jacob’s Ladder.
The shape of a staircase crosses Jacob’s Ladder, but it offers only the suggestion of a structure. Which planes are the steps and which are the risers? The ghostly shapes using the staircase only confound the reading of the physical space, as they each follow the stairs according to their own rules, their own sense of gravity. Some appear to be using the opposite sides of the planks compared to other figures. The smoke rising from a candle is almost funny, as it moves up for neither the viewer nor the being holding the candle. What’s going on?
by
Brian Slattery |
Oct 20, 2021 10:23 am
|
Comments
(5)
Brian Slattery Photos
Minto.
At Artspace on Monday, as part of the Open Source Festival, artist Allison Minto was on hand to continue her deep dive into New Haven’s Black community, helping people preserve their own familial past while marking a moment of time in the present.
by
Brian Slattery |
Oct 18, 2021 8:48 am
|
Comments
(5)
Brian Slattery Photos
It was quieter than in years past, for the obvious Covid-19-related reasons. The hallways of Erector Square weren’t quite so jammed, the conversations were a little more subdued.
But still, Citywide Open Studios — part of Artspace’s rebranded Open Source Festival — happened this past weekend: Artists threw open the doors of their studios, and on Saturday and Sunday people moved from spot to spot in Erector Square’s warren-like maze of hallways, visiting old friends, making fresh acquaintances, and in many cases getting the first chance since the pandemic began to see the art both longtime and new tenants of the Peck Street complex had been making since before the pandemic began.
by
Brian Slattery |
Oct 13, 2021 7:56 am
|
Comments
(1)
John T. Hill Photos
The image — to many New Haveners, an iconic one — is so vivid it seems like you can almost hear it, a murmur of voices, maybe a cacophony. Maybe there’s a speaker’s ragged voice echoing across the Green through a bullhorn. The two men standing nearby seem like they’re having a conversation. Is it worry or sarcasm on that man’s face, or something else? The one message that seems clear is coming from the young man’s face, front and center in the picture. His mouth is closed, but his eyes convey so much — even more than the little sign he has pinned to his shirt, that reads “Human Rights Not Violence.”
by
Brian Slattery |
Oct 8, 2021 8:27 am
|
Comments
(0)
The front gallery of Artspace, right on the corner of Orange and Crown, has been made into a living room of sorts. While the pieces are displayed on pedestals, as they might be in a museum, the warm tone of the walls beckons people in from the street. The carpet on the floor looks soft and inviting — even if it is made of shells. The pieces look old and worn, as if well-loved by users before being preserved. We can’t touch any of it, but we can be in the same space, with comfort and ease.
by
Brian Slattery |
Oct 5, 2021 8:30 am
|
Comments
(0)
Wangechi Mutu
Sentinel I.
Wangechi Mutu’s Sentinel I stands guard over its space in the Yale University Art Gallery’s exhibit “On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale,” on view now through Jan. 9. But it’s not a passive sculpture; in a way that no photograph can do justice to it, the piece appears to shift its shape as you get closer or farther away, and as you walk around the piece. The human figure morphs into something more like an animal, or maybe a plant, or maybe something more elemental, like fire or smoke. In a hall full of powerful pieces, it seems to protect and at the same time draw strength from the art around it.
Estate of Winfred Rembert / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Looking for My Mother, 2019; reprinted in new book about the art and life of Newhallville’s Winfred Rembert.
The railroad tracks stretched ahead for miles and miles. Winfred Rembert walked them all day and half the night, searching.
It would take a full 60 years for him to reach his destination, to find what he was truly looking for. He found it right before he died. And laid it out for the rest of us to see.
by
Brian Slattery |
Oct 1, 2021 8:28 am
|
Comments
(0)
The gallery space is an exercise in sensory saturation. The walls are covered in vivid drawings, other images that hover somewhere between representation and schematics for circuitry. There is music to listen to, projections to follow. There’s a video game to play, like Doom but weirder and glitchier; it’s a game that loves but also mocks other games. And over in the corner is a glassed-in booth, a fortune-telling machine.
The only issue is that, as advertised, it dispenses bad advice. Hit a button and it dispenses tickets. When this reporter tried it, half of them said “give up.”
by
Brian Slattery |
Sep 27, 2021 8:19 am
|
Comments
(0)
The collage on the walls of the bookstore is a riot of changing shapes, swimming text, faces melting in and out of form, like water in a stream. Around the collage, a series of faces, offering expressions that are both confident and challenging. They invite you in, but with an edge. You may be tested. You may be challenged. But you will be accepted. On one of the paintings is a statement hovering somewhere between a mandate and a mantra: “Be heard.”
by
Thomas Breen & Allan Appel |
Sep 23, 2021 3:03 pm
|
Comments
(21)
Finding A Line - New Haven image
A prefab skate park, coming soon to downtown?
Paul Bass photo
Next stop, George Street: Roberts and Joseph at their previous project, Scantlebury Skate Park.
A prefabricated skate park is one big step closer to landing in downtown New Haven, as parking authority commissioners unanimously approved a plan to host the artistic-athletic installation atop a George Street surface lot.
by
Brian Slattery |
Sep 23, 2021 8:03 am
|
Comments
(1)
Mary Lesser
Effects of Bad Government.
At first glance, Mary Lesser’s painting is playful, almost festive, the earth a bright orange, the characters frolicking on the slope a cotton-candy pink. But then it becomes clear that the house at the top of that hill is the White House, and the sky is black, and suddenly the whole painting inverts itself. Is it a frolic or a frenzy? A rampage? Once established, that sense of ominousness can’t be shaken — which is just how Lesser wants it.
