by | Sep 21, 2021 12:24 pm | Comments (5)
Photo Courtesy Ghislane Palumbo
A new photography exhibit in Westville weaves together the harrowing and the mundane, humor and hard work, to celebrate life, family, and the strength that can come from connections to the past.
by | Sep 10, 2021 7:53 am | Comments (0)
Marjorie Wolfe
Pavilion.
It’s a seaside pavilion, framing an island off the Connecticut coast. But the way the image is cast, it doesn’t allow for simple idyll. It’s peaceful, sure, but also lonely. There’s the tranquility of isolation, but also a sense of insecurity. It is, said photographer Marjorie Gillette Wolfe, “evocative of what I went through” during the depths of the Covid-19 shutdown, as she found herself alone and outside in “protective spaces, but in another sense, not protective at all.”
Continue reading ‘Two Artists Find Inspiration In Isolation’
by | Sep 8, 2021 7:42 am | Comments (2)
Emily Pruitt
Anti-Romantic.
The young woman at the center of Emily Pruitt’s Anti-Romantic looks as if she has a story to tell, but she’s not going to tell us what it is. The photograph itself conveys conflicting emotions — humor and defiance, playfulness and a little bit of dread. That, as it turns out, is the point.
by | Aug 30, 2021 3:09 pm | Comments (20)
Kwadwo Adae at work on the Bouchet mural.
As you drive through New Haven on Henry Street, you will notice something at the intersection of Dixwell: Across from a derelict lot is a magnificent mural in progress on a wall that was once pink.
The image consists of cascaded portraits of a Black man rendered in gradients of color. The man is Edward Bouchet, a New Havener who was the first Black man to get a doctorate in the United States. Bouchet got his Ph.D. in physics from Yale in 1876. Yet, most children in the Elm City don’t know about him.
Muralist Kwadwo Adae hopes to change that one brushstroke at a time.
by | Aug 19, 2021 8:07 am | Comments (3)
Nathaneil Donnett Photos
From the sidewalk, you might see it from across the street. It looks like it’s supposed to be there, a bit of straightforward wooden fencing that might contain an electrical box or some other public utility.
But if you look closely, you might notice one slat of the fencing is painted a deep blue. If you cross the street, you’ll see the wood is patterned, and that the whole object stands as an entirely different kind of public utility.
Inside the fencing is an altar that celebrates music and the celestial world within — and for — a community
by | Aug 17, 2021 7:40 am | Comments (1)
The woman in the picture has a look of worry and determination on her face, but what really draws the gaze is the machine gun she’s pointing a little too close to the viewer’s direction. Even if we’re not the target, we might be in the line of fire. Then there’s the words spilling out all around her. Hustle hard, they say, and keep on with a narrative about just having to provide for a family, defend home. Who is she? Are the words her interior monologue? Or are they both part of a greater whole?
by | Aug 13, 2021 8:58 am | Comments (0)
Lisa Toto
Can’t Sleep.
Lisa Toto’s Can’t Sleep is a portrait of insomnia familiar to anyone who has suffered from it. Its multiple exposures detail what it can be like — first being in bed unable to lose consciousness, then getting up, because why not, you’re up anyway, then thinking better of it and getting back into bed. It also captures the way time seems to split in the depths of sleeplessness, the sense that every second is passing with unbearable slowness, and at the same time, the unpleasant realization, upon looking at the clock, that it’s far too late to get a good night’s sleep. The subject is rendered more poignant by its sense of privacy. Should we even be looking? But that’s also the moment that we connect with the subject, through shared understanding.
by | Jul 30, 2021 9:17 am | Comments (0)
Courtesy Yale University Art Gallery
Yashima Gakutei, Three Crabs at Water’s Edge.
An arts editor returns to the Yale University Art Gallery for the first time since the museum reopened after its long pandemic shutdown.
by | Jul 27, 2021 8:43 am | Comments (2)
Brian Slattery Photos
Jamon and July Rouse, Johnathan Mitchell, and Shannon Harrell, Jr.
PU$H is a clothing line run by three friends who grew up together around New Haven — Shannon Harrell, Jr., Johnathan Mitchell, and Jamon Rouse — with a passion for sports, fashion, and improving the situation for themselves and their community. But it’s really the product of a family, the “family we chose,” Mitchell said.
Continue reading ‘New Haven Gives Friends A PU$H Into Fashion’
by | Jul 22, 2021 9:34 am | Comments (0)
Animation by Eva Lee, Sound by Michael Joel Bosco
Eye Spy.
Eye Spy morphs from image to image fast enough that you have to pay attention to see the narrative. Seals and other ocean life change into plastic bottles on the beach, the manmade objects that found their way into a bird’s stomach. Then back rushing ocean waves, lush coral of vibrant colors, sea turtles and teeming schools of fish. The music is serene with powerful, tidal undercurrents. The loop between the vivacity of the ocean and the damage we have done to it is causal in both directions. It gives us a sense of what’s at stake in the effort to adapt to climate change, and what could be if we manage to do enough.
by | Jul 16, 2021 9:13 am | Comments (0)
Joy Bush
Troubled Turnips.
The turnip’s gnarled skin and desiccated sprouts stand out all the more because of the vivid red background they’ve been placed in front of. Nearby is a head of lettuce rendered inedible by time and neglect, a beet imploding with rot, a potato molding and sprouting at the same time. Joy Bush’s vibrantly decaying vegetables are part of “The Shape of Color” — the latest exhibit at City Gallery on Upper State Street, running now through Aug. 8, featuring the work of Bush, Judy Atlas, Rita Hannafin, and Tom Peterson — and, it turns out, born of a deeply political moment.
by | Jul 5, 2021 9:27 am | Comments (0)
Kate Henderson
Mitochondrial Eve.
Kate Henderson’s Mitochondrial Eve stands in Kehler Liddell Gallery like an altar, a place to make an offering to art, science, and perhaps a higher power all at the same time. The figure in the middle, holding aloft a shape that evokes an egg, partakes of past representations of religious figures and fertility goddesses. The plants growing up around her suggest fecundity. But the letters floating around her give it away; it’s the protein sequence of DNA, the building blocks of life, that turn a double helix into a celebration of life.
by | Jun 30, 2021 8:41 am | Comments (3)
Contributed Photo
From top left: Layo Bright, John Guzman, Alyssa Klauer, Africanus Okokon, Daniel Ramos, Warith Taha, Patrick Quarm, Marissa Del Toro and Jamillah Hinson.
Seven artists and two curators have won yearlong fellowships at the Dixwell-based art center NXTHVN.
The fellows hail from Brooklyn, Texas and Ghana and came out on top from among over 325 applicants to get to New Haven. One fellow, Africanus Okokon, was already living in New Haven and attended Yale for a master’s degree in fine arts.
by | Jun 17, 2021 9:33 am | Comments (0)
Allison Baker’s installation transforms the front gallery of the Ely Center of Contemporary Art on Trumbull Street into something between a playground and an uneasy dream. All is glittering, but also unnaturally balloon-like — whether it’s immediately recognizable objects such as hangers, brassieres, and cleaning gloves, or less obvious (but no less glittery) shapes strewn on the floor and suspended from the ceiling. Further exploration reveals that the installation spills over into the next room, taking over half the first floor of the building. It’s fun, yes, but threatening in its entertainment. Everything is fine. Everything is wrong.
by | Jun 15, 2021 8:00 am | Comments (1)
It’s a lunar volvelle, a device dating to the medieval era used to chart the passage of the moon across the sky and determine days and dates. But this particular volvelle has two distinguishing features. First, it involves fragments of poetry. Second, the family members of poet and artist Monica Ong appear in a small parade in the center as one moves through the possible positions on the volvelle. Using the volvelle also reveals different fragments of poetry, so that each day produces a new poem, introduces a family member, all in the process of scientific observation.
by | Jun 13, 2021 12:30 pm | Comments (3)
Steve Hamm Photo
Painting by numbers is no longer the home crafts fad that it once was, but two New Haven artists dusted off and rejuvenated the practice for a socially-conscious mural project in the Hill neighborhood on Saturday.
by | Jun 8, 2021 6:16 pm | Comments (8)
Adam Weber Photo
Newly completed designs in State/Chapel crosswalks.
The Hill’s right down the street. Wooster Square? East Rock? Right down those other streets.
by | Jun 8, 2021 8:32 am | Comments (0)
Sheila Kaczmarek’s English Sycamore grabs the eye as soon as you enter City Gallery on Upper State Street. Viewed one way, it appears almost as if it could move, like a mobile. Viewed another, it’s possible to imagine it’s growing out of the wall. Its organic forms add up, fully, to an enveloping composition — and it’s possible to imagine it could have kept growing, or that the pod in the middle of it might hatch. That sense of completeness and open possibility isn’t just part of the finished piece, but also is present in the way it’s made.
by | Jun 3, 2021 8:40 am | Comments (0)
Kaitlyn Higgins
The Art of Breathing.
It’s a series of faces moving through an intense range of emotions. Maybe it’s the same person over a period of time. Maybe it’s multiple people in the same moment. Maybe the difference isn’t all that important. Kaitlyn Higgins’s The Art of Breathing is both a study in how to render emotions in paint and an expression of all those moments at once. It’s part of a series of paintings by Higgins that explore parallel senses of outward claustrophobia and inner turmoil. There are no easy answers, but in the accurate rendering of the situation, there’s communication and compassion.
by | May 31, 2021 11:55 am | Comments (0)
Maya McFadden Photo
Taylor used plaster and paint for portrait of her granddaughter
Arizona Taylor.
Dozens of lively faces of women Friday evening empowered the room at Poetic Haven for a pop-up women empowerment exhibit.
Continue reading ‘Faces of Women Light Up “Poetic Haven” For A Night’
by | May 27, 2021 9:07 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Brown in the studio in October.
New Haven-based artist Amira Brown‘s Bailout Gallery has returned — this time to try to raise funds to rebuild Palestine. As its tagline on Instagram reads, “we sell art and raise money for causes. That’s it. We support Palestine and reject anti-Semitism.”
Continue reading ‘Bailout Gallery Raising Funds For Palestine’
by | May 25, 2021 3:49 pm | Comments (1)
Paul Bass Photo
Eugene Dawson on work break, with “Capricornia.”
Eugene Dawson took a break from building one of New Haven’s new apartment complexes to summon the spirit of the stars and a child’s possibilities.
by | May 25, 2021 9:27 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photos
There was already one message written on the large black circle with the prompt “I hope,” written in several languages. That first inscribed message read “that our memories will not all be of darkness.”
The disk was located at the entrance to the Wooster Square Farmer’s Market this past Saturday morning. A woman with a child in a stroller approached the disk with a white marker. She knelt and added her own message. Within the hour, many more would follow.
by | May 21, 2021 9:19 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
The art on the walls of Claire’s Corner Copia, on the corner of Chapel and College, thrums with energy, vibrant colors, and shimmering textures. But there’s a heaviness there, too.
Neither simply joyful nor simply sorrowful, the work of New Haven-based artist Shaunda Holloway uses old motifs in new ways; it reaches back in order to move forward, with strength and resolve, mindful of the sorrows of the past but hopeful for the future.
Holloway’s pieces are the latest to be exhibited as part of an artist-in-residence program at Claire’s.
As friends and fellow artists dropped by on Thursday to have a snack or dinner and offer congratulations, Holloway had a chance to revisit how her artistic practice has developed in the past decade, and in what new directions it may point.
Continue reading ‘Shaunda Holloway, Claire’s Artist In Residence, Moves In New Directions’
by | May 19, 2021 9:15 am | Comments (0)
Hank Paper
L.A. Life.
The two shows at Kehler Liddell Gallery — “Parallel Worlds,” by Robert Bienstock, and “L.A. Color, East Coast Weather,” by Hank Paper, up now through June 20 — hang well in the gallery together, unified by a love of strong lines and bold color. But Bienstock’s pieces are paintings and drawings, while Paper’s are photographs. Bienstock’s pieces chronicle the past year and a half. Paper’s are the documents of a lifetime of work.