by | Jun 7, 2017 12:11 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
“Ward Rounds,” by Robert Riggs, lithograph, 1941
You’re a young doc on duty late one night at Yale-New Haven Hospital. In walks a morbidly obese person, reeking of alcohol, disoriented, and with a distinct foreign accent. To use medical training lingo, he’s “presenting” with pain in the left upper quadrant of the chest. How do you stay objective during your examination?
by | Jun 6, 2017 12:55 pm | Comments (0)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
Wisdom at his Whalley Avenue store.
The calm that couturier Neville Wisdom exudes standing in front of his Westville Village showroom while casually sipping his vegetable power smoothie is deceiving.
It is Sunday and his shop is officially closed, but it’s the final week in the lead-up to his spring-summer fashion extravaganza at Corsair this Friday, June 9, and there is not a day — or moment — to be wasted.
by | Jun 2, 2017 12:10 pm | Comments (1)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
Grouping of Waterman beetles.
The Peabody Museum’s latest exhibit — the opening of which drew an overflow crowd to the third floor — combines powerful two and three dimensional artworks that will forever change your perception of beetles. Yes, beetles, those small flying and crawling insects many of us commonly, if not mistakenly, call bugs.
by | May 31, 2017 12:03 pm | Comments (0)
Gallery Photo
The artist with his “Run Around,” acrylic on plywood with rotating panel.
Many artists play with visual ideas, but artist Bob Gregson quite literally wants you to touch, rearrange, wheel, walk, and even spin his painted constructions at Creative Arts Workshop.
Just do it gently while you think big thoughts about order, chaos, and maybe even Wonder Bread.
by | May 26, 2017 7:58 am | Comments (0)
Zachary Riegelmann Photo
Crowd at the courthouse unveiling.
Ten judges, draped in black, jostled for views from the front of a federal courtroom, while a dozen more spilled into the jury box.
Tipped off that U.S. District Court Judge Janet Bond Arterton was finally getting her due, the visiting VIPs did not want to miss seeing their longtime colleague framed and, maybe, even hung.
by | May 26, 2017 7:44 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Detail from el-Yasin’s “Unframed.”
At the Institute Library on Chapel Street, they’ve got the evidence. They’ve got the perpetrators, too — the artists themselves. They’ve even got some of the accomplices.
Yet they have no crime. Just engaging thought provoking art, including a 25-foot long braid of dryer lint.
by | May 23, 2017 1:38 pm | Comments (4)
Lucy Gellman Photo
A sign for drivers passing through Cedar Hill.
Thomas Breen photo
Ansley pitches East Rockers.
Thanks to support from the rest of East Rock, isolated Cedar Hill will receive $10,000 toward a grassroots beautification effort designed to build community pride and to connect to surrounding areas of the city currently separated by highway overpasses.
Continue reading ‘East Rock Gets Behind Cedar Hill Campaign’
by | May 23, 2017 12:15 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
“Old Converse,” by John Barnes
This dapper and venerable “Old Converse” sneaker practically speaks its own charming welcome, inviting viewers to come look at it. The painting by John Barnes is one of 223 works by 90 artists on view in the fifth edition of “The Art Of Aging,” the annual show organized by the Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut at its offices at One Long Wharf Drive.
by | May 19, 2017 2:16 pm | Comments (8)
Allan Appel Photo
Artist Stewart outside her studio.
Sarah Stewart turns out oil-on-linen paintings in the factory complex that once turned out erector sets for the nation — and now New Haven’s zoning rules are catching up with the economic transformation there.
by | May 16, 2017 2:13 pm | Comments (8)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Ansley, near proposed wall: Let’s help them take it somewhere else.
Cedar Hill’s graffiti vandals may get an unexpected summer gift — four sprawling, concrete slabs they can decorate under a highway.
There’s only one catch. They’ll have to spell out, in paint, what it means to be a good neighbor.
by | May 16, 2017 12:13 pm | Comments (0)
Courtesy Beinecke Rare Books Library
William Carlos Williams in his garden.
How many rare book and manuscript collections can you visit leaving with a pack of zinnia seeds?
by | May 14, 2017 2:43 pm | Comments (0)
A steady rain couldn’t keep people away from ArtWalk, held in Westville Saturday afternoon. Though the neighborhood’s central streets were missing the usual crowds during the annual event, Edgewood Park stayed lively, and indoor activities in the artists’ studios in West River Arts and Lyric Hall on Whalley Avenue ensured ArtWalk kept its tradition of celebrating the arts — for 20 years and running — alive.
by | May 12, 2017 7:55 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Cayla Lockwood, “It Was The Least I Could Do,” mixed media, 2017.
There’s a model of a barbed-wire fence erected in a sandy landscape, like part of an elaborate train set. The political context, given President Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, is obvious. At first, that context might make the letters spelling out You’re Welcome read like a taunt, a message from the authorities who built the fence to the people on the other side of it, the people being kept out. But look a little closer and you’ll see the hole clipped in the fence, big enough to crawl through.
And then, there on the ground next to the hole, a pair of pliers, and a ball of yarn. A story unfolds. No sooner was the fence built, but the hole was made, and the sign put up.
You’re welcome. Maybe the phrase isn’t just anticipating thanks for making it easier to get through the fence. Maybe it’s also a statement about the reception that people might get once they crawl through that hole. If the authorities are trying to keep people out, maybe a lot of people think letting more people in is just fine.
by | May 11, 2017 8:00 am | Comments (0)
Peter Amlutski Photo
Are you suffering from photo-weary eyes?
Does the epidemic of selfies have you just about convinced that rampant egotism is infecting the very foundations of civilization itself? Flummoxed by the gazillions of things to see on Instagram? Alarmed that the tsunami of images is sweeping away the very value of the individual picture and its ability to communicate?
Have I got a cure for you.
Continue reading ‘Photobook Exhibit Asks You To Puzzle It Out’
by | May 10, 2017 7:24 am | Comments (5)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Leslie Mozell, Cecilia Payne, Ashanti Payne, and Taliyah Stanley, and Bwak.
The next time you’re walking on Whalley Avenue, a bright blue, black and orange butterfly may catch your eye and encourage you to throw your trash away instead of littering.
Continue reading ‘Trash Cans Sprout Wings To Keep City Clean’
by | Apr 21, 2017 12:07 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
The artist with her “Remendando Mi Patria.”
Artists have a stage and they sure should use it. They could sense dangerous shifts in the body politic before non-artistic citizens do, and they should act on on these instincts. And poets are always in the midst of difficult times — it comes with the profession — so they could guide others when the difficulties spread.
by | Apr 20, 2017 12:01 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Chan, with one of her puppets, faceless with frozen emotion.
Onnie Chan’s father was a very well-known business and media personality when he died in Hong Kong more than two decades ago.
Chan, only ten years old at the time, was rushed from one public funeral to another with paparazzi trailing her. For further protection, she and her mother left the home she knew for good and Chan became something of a world traveler. She never really connected to what had happened at that turning point in her life.
Until she came to New Haven.
by | Apr 20, 2017 7:48 am | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Jack Ryon in the trench’s dugout.
Jack Ryon’s great-great-grandfather earned a silver star taking out a German machine gun nest during World War I. The 11-year-old had known about machine guns and some other things about the war that was to have ended all wars.
Yet he had no idea about how narrow, dark, and scary were the trenches in which his great-great-grandfather had served until he entered one, right here in New Haven.
Continue reading ‘A Trenchant World War One Exhibit at K of C Museum’
by | Apr 19, 2017 7:42 am | Comments (0)
Yale University Art Gallery Photo
Marwan Kassab Bachi, “The Three Palestinian Boys,” 1970, oil on canvas.
The sprawling canvas of Marwan Kassab Bachi’s “The Three Palestinian Boys,” featured in the “Modern Art from the Middle East” exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery until July 16, shows three young boys who seem palpably scarred by the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. They look almost like burn victims, whose taut, pink skin has been grafted on. Their eyes have shrunk down to small black holes. One of the boys’ faces is cut out of the frame entirely. These children do not look like children: They appear in their baggy clothes to be at once oversized and emaciated.
Continue reading ‘“Modern Art From The Middle East” Cuts Through The Noise’
by | Apr 10, 2017 7:41 am | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Wright with his “Panels 37-46,” mixed media on wood panel.
When he was a kid surfing three or four times a week on the California coast, Jeremy Wright waited for the perfect wave to come to him. Then he rode it, catching the next curl, and the next, with propulsive speed, hoping, of course, that it would never end.
by | Apr 10, 2017 7:38 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
The artist beside one of the all-untitled works in the show.
When he returned from a reception for his Neighborhood Walks exhibition back in 2015, photographer Tom Peterson experienced strange heart rhythms.
They turned out to be atrial fibrillation, which then led, shortly afterward, to a triple heart bypass.
Then in 2016, he had to deal with a carotid artery that wasn’t behaving.
It’s no wonder his new show — all white, calming minimalist photographs — is called “Solace.”
by | Apr 7, 2017 8:00 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
The artist with her “Build Your Dream House.”
About to enter the home-buying market in the Trump era?
How about an absolutely great deal on a fantastic unit beautifully located behind a wall?
Liz Antle‑O’Donnell will give you a great, great deal. I mean a fantastic deal on your very own customized home.
And all for only $25.
Is that a great deal or what?
Continue reading ‘Walls And Enigmatic Canyons Come To Westville’
by | Apr 7, 2017 7:29 am | Comments (0)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
Arts meeting at Community Foundation.
A roundtable meeting of the Arts Industry Coalition — a group of area arts organizations, arts leaders, and stakeholders organized by The Arts Council of Greater New Haven and hosted by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven in its offices on Audubon Street — discussed what can be done to save the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and what might be done if they are dissolved, as a current budget proposal from the Trump administration suggests they could be.
by | Apr 5, 2017 8:00 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Weavers Donna Batsford and Ann Graham stood behind a long wooden table in the River Street Gallery at Fairhaven Furniture on Blatchley Avenue, surrounded by dozens of textiles of dozens shimmering textures and colors, along with the dozens of weavers who made them. She thanked Fairhaven Furniture for allowing the exhibition to happen, but most of all, she said, “it takes a guild” to put on a textile exhibition of this size. And by “guild” she meant the Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut.
Continue reading ‘Weavers Tie Past To Present At Exhibition’
by | Mar 29, 2017 10:02 am | Comments (0)
Courtesy Lillian Goldman Law Library
One of the cutest shows — and certainly the most moo-velous in all New Haven — is in the most unlikely of places: The Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale’s law school at 127 Wall St.