8th Billboard “Masked Up”
by | Jun 9, 2020 3:48 pm | Comments (0)
Maya McFadden Photo
The eighth and final billboard was put on display Tuesday for the city government’s Covid-19 “Mask Up” campaign on Middletown Avenue.
Visual Arts
Drone’s Eye View Of A BLM Message
by | Jun 9, 2020 10:20 am | Comments (1)
Contributed Photos
Jada and Madison (Maddy) McAulay (pictured) started a neighborhood Black Lives Matter chalk event to turn West Elm Street into “West BLM Street” for a day.
SalonThrive Aims For The Sky
by | Jun 1, 2020 12:17 pm | Comments (0)
The Zoom visit to artist Chris Ferguson’s studio filled up fast, as 20 people joined within two minutes of each other. Ferguson, in his studio next to a painting of an outdoor scene, smiled back.
“Is this where all the masterpieces come from?” someone on the meeting said. Ferguson laughed.
Ponybird Returns to Nature
by | May 28, 2020 10:13 am | Comments (2)
Jennifer Dauphinais Photo
Dauphinais at home among the flowers.
In the Crevasse, Munching the Sweet Leaf, and The Hawk’s Nest sound like they might be the titles of new songs by local folk singer-songwriter Jennifer Dauphinais, who performs under the moniker Ponybird.
They are, in fact, the titles of the first three episodes of another Dauphinais project, a YouTube series called “The Cursing Gardener” that follows Dauphinais in her trials and tribulations in connecting with the earth and attempting to cultivate and grow a garden.
Photographs Show The City Again
by | May 27, 2020 10:45 am | Comments (3)
Roderick Topping Photos
In one photograph among the six grouped together, the picture is just of a brick wall. But the diagonal light both sparks the existing pattern in the masonry and makes it more complicated. Those strong diagonals then make their appearance again, but this time as an architectural feature. Then it happens again, only now the diagonal is pure shadow, of a spiked fence, with a bicycle and a hydrant to bear witness.
“It was one of those bright. sunny days,” said photographer Roderick Topping of the first image. The light drew his eye to the pattern in the brickwork. But as the photographs in the open-air show at Studio Duda on Wooster Street show, Topping’s eye is drawn to the details of the Elm City nearly everywhere in town he goes. His camera lets us see what he sees; he shows us the city again.
Influencers “Mask Up” To Save Lives
by | May 18, 2020 4:48 pm | Comments (3)
Smitty Bop answered his government’s call — and masked up to convince people who trust him to do the same.
Artist Makes The Repairs
by | May 13, 2020 10:01 am | Comments (0)
Joy Bush Photo
Rosenthal.
“We’re whole and broken at the same time,” said artist Judy Sirota Rosenthal, in delving into a concept that has fueled her art for decades.
She invoked the Japanese practice of kintsugi, whereby pottery is repaired by filling the breaks with gold, drawing attention to the break and making it part of the object’s history. She found resonance between that Asian practice and a lyric from Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, who drew from Jewish, Buddhist, and other belief systems in the lyrics to his songs: “There’s a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” She described a life in which working on art, on oneself, and on the world around us were part of the same thing.
“Making for me has been the work of my soul,” she said.
Ely Center Leaps Into Virtual Space
by | May 6, 2020 9:25 am | Comments (0)
Generalova Kate
Revelation.
Generalova Kate’s Revelation is part political cartoon, part street manifesto, simple and provocative. It has an effect even without Kate’s explanation, conveying the raw immediacy of today’s headlines and a sardonic, intriguing distance from them.
“It became a “revelation” for me when the news began to report that doctors are subjected to aggressive behavior by the urban population,” Kate, who lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, writes in an accompanying statement. “This is due to the fact that people panic and are afraid of being infected by doctors.” Revelation, she explained, was made in solidarity with health workers, who help protect so many from the virus but are vulnerable themselves.
Local Musicians Get A Virtual Stage
by | Apr 28, 2020 10:06 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photo
The three organizers (and this reporter) at our Zoom Meeting/interview
With all of the city’s venues, stages, and gathering places closed due to Covid-19, New Haven’s various communities have been longing for a way to get together and share talent, vibe and ideas. Anthony Allen has found a way to do that through his website At Home in New Haven, a virtual space set to provide participants with a variety of entertainment, instructional programs, and more.
Bitsie Fund Open For Arts Grants
by | Apr 13, 2020 10:37 am | Comments (0)
Courtesy Bitsie Fund
Clark.
The Bitsie Clark Fund for Artists, established in 2018, is now accepting applications from New Haven-area artists for 2020. The deadline to apply is May 1.
Creative Arts Workshop Opens Online Doors
by | Apr 8, 2020 9:28 am | Comments (0)
In his basement studio on Edwards Street — but before a virtual audience of 30 — sculptor Charles Jones explained on Tuesday night how to build dishes out of clay.
He didn’t use a potter’s wheel, or particularly specialized tools. He had a length of wire. He had a rolling pin. He had scraps of wood and paper, and some foam, and pieces of Plexiglas that he explained he had found in the trash.
“It’s really just a matter of looking around and finding things that’ll work,” he said.
Continue reading ‘Creative Arts Workshop Opens Online Doors’
Artist Delivers Message From Kitchen
by | Apr 2, 2020 10:12 am | Comments (2)
As the evening light began to fade on Pearl Street, a message began to appear in one of the first-floor windows. The letters emerged from a warm, yellow field of fabric: “Fear is a terrible driver and a worse tour guide.”
It was the third of many projected daily messages that are the latest project from artist Martha Lewis, who, like many artists, is adapting to practicing art during the Covid-19 outbreak.
Covid Classics Goes International
by | Apr 1, 2020 10:35 am | Comments (1)
Before Sam Haller’s “anchors aweigh” booty shorts graced the pages of The Guardian this week while he pretended to eat a doll’s head, before they were written up around the world, and before comforters were recognized as accurate renaissance garments, four roommates were chatting on a Google hangout in quarantine.
Sculptor Gives Thanks In Place
by | Apr 1, 2020 10:23 am | Comments (4)
For you.. doctors and nurses. Thank you thank you for your tireless service and humanity. 🙏Andrius Zlabys for your music composition
Posted by Susan Clinard on Thursday, March 26, 2020
The video only lasts a minute, but it seems longer, in the best sense. In it, sculptor Susan Clinard lets us see one of her latest pieces from all angles, as the piece slowly rotates. Two figures stand in the center of it. They have each others’ backs. The face masks identify them as health care workers. And they’re engaged in the simple gesture of laying hands on ailing patients. Andrius Zlabys’s accompanying piece guides us in our reaction. The central figures’ gestures are kindnesses that carry risk, and the piece is bearing witness — to the danger nurses and doctors face, and their bravery in facing it.
Artist Keeps Classroom Open
by | Mar 26, 2020 11:53 am | Comments (1)
Posted by Illustrator and Artist: Amie Ziner on Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Chuckles, a ring-necked African dove in mid-molt, is perched on the top of his cage, strutting, cooing, and preening. Artist and educator Amie Ziner explains that “preening is what birds do to clean their feathers and to make them more usable for flying. Now, Chuckles can’t fly, not because he was ever hurt or anything, but because he has special feathers.” Feathers, Ziner explains, that she talked about the day before.
Edgewood Park, Wednesday, March 25
by | Mar 25, 2020 5:04 pm | Comments (4)
Paul Bass Photos
“Art Is Going To Save Us”
by | Mar 20, 2020 10:37 am | Comments (3)
Chris Randall Photo
Chris Randall Photo
Brian Slattery Photo
From his car, sidelined photog launches “Porch-Ritz” portrait project outside New Haveners’ homes — and helps keep a community stitched together, person by person.
Art Exhibit Broadcasts Live From Quarantine
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’
Photographs Capture The Music
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.
NXTHVN Breaks Down The Myths
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.
More Art To Enliven Fair Haven’s Northern Entryway
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’
Photos Turn City Inside Out
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.
Artspace Taps New Executive Director
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.
Ely Center Casts A Spell
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.
Touch-Up Planned For Alleyway Optical Illusion
by | Feb 28, 2020 1:26 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Laura Clarke doesn’t know the exact number of people who have stopped in their sidewalk peregrinations to view the optical illusion art work down the Chapel Street alleyway leading to Temple Plaza. She believes it’s more than the number who attended Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Continue reading ‘Touch-Up Planned For Alleyway Optical Illusion’