Visual Arts

Local “Monster” Puts The Color Into “Doonesbury”

by | Jul 21, 2016 2:53 pm | Comments (4)

DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO

Corsillo with YUGE!

Design Monsters’ George Corsillo, a self-described font freak,” has earned a book jacket design credit for YUGE!” (30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump), a timely new anthology by nationally syndicated Doonesbury cartoon creator and Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Trudeau.

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“Shuffle & Shake” Dances With Time

by | Jul 21, 2016 7:44 am | Comments (0)

Allan Appel Photo

Arts Council Executive Director Cindy Clair with the lucky chapeau.

This Dr. Seussian hat is not in Shuffle & Shake,” the playful new show that combines painting, photography, mixed media, and a literary installation at the Arts Council’s Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery on Audubon Street.

Yet all the nine artists in the show owe the lucky hat a debt of gratitude as their names, written on small slips of white paper, were randomly chosen out of more than 600 fellow members of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven.

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Happy Marriages Abound

by | Jul 15, 2016 7:48 am | Comments (0)

Allan Appel Photo

John Harris and Laura Barr beside Debbie Hesse’s “Alcove,” plexi, color gels, mylar.

Eighteen of New Haven’s most newly married couples are not only getting along great — they’re also willing to open up and tell you the secret of their happy pairings.

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Vision, Cash, Volunteerism Power Westville’s New Public Art

by | Jul 7, 2016 8:33 am | Comments (4)

DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO

Detail of the 150-foot mural by Faring Purth.

A group of children skip along the image of an elongated, reclining figure, as if swept up by a magical energy field. The process of discovery leads them past swirling lines trailing from mandala-like starbursts, part of the internal galaxy that animates Marielle” — as in, the light of Marielle, a new mural and the latest installation in a series of recent public art works commissioned by Westville Village Renaissance Alliance (WVRA).

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Art Adds Spice To Soup

by | Jun 30, 2016 7:50 am | Comments (0)

Artist Photo

“How It Happens,” mixed media.

In chain-store Singapore, where she had been teaching for a year, Jessica Hanser dearly missed being able to go to independent local coffee shops where she could hang out and enjoy not only the culinary fare, but also the local artists the small businesses helped to support.

On her first day back and out and about in New Haven, Hanser thus hit the jackpot at Atticus Bookstore and Cafe on Chapel Street.

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Meg Bloom Doesn’t Have The Answers, Just The Art

by | Jun 24, 2016 7:00 am | Comments (1)

Allan Appel Photo

The artist at the exhibition.

It may be a haunted glade in a liminal forest. It may be the patterns of the universe. It may be the Grim Reaper and friends doing the hokey pokey, or the gossamer traces of a coven of witches. Or an old folks’ home for decaying lumps of cotton candy or wasps’ nest. Or it may be just what it is — artistically arranged soaked, cooked, and stretched fibers of the Thai kozo or mulberry tree.

Whatever it is, Meg Bloom is not about to tell you

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Art By Paula, Just Hold The Coffee Grounds

by | Jun 23, 2016 6:51 am | Comments (0)

Allan Appel Photo

Owner and curator Konareski.

Paula Konareski likes to make her walls beautiful with art for her customers. And only once, years ago, did she exercise a little censorship: when the photos on the wall displayed drains clogged with food scraps and gobs of discarded coffee grounds.

You can’t really blame her.

The walls in question are at Cafe George by Paula. It’s an eatery beloved and well patronized, and a bit of a hidden treasure at 300 George St.

For 14 years Konareski, as owner and eclectic curator, has offered the space free of charge to budding and accomplished artists to display their work during the busy breakfast and lunch times, and reap 100 percent of the profits from sales.

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Pictures Meet Sound

by | Jun 21, 2016 7:16 am | Comments (0)

Courtesy Artspace

There’s a green box, flattened, framed, and hanging on the wall. Next to it is an enormous wad of crumpled yellow paper, also flattened and framed. Not far away, another flattened box has the word India printed on it.

What is the intention of the artist? How do I, who know little about visual art, begin to approach it?

From an audio speaker nearby, Laurie Anderson’s unlikely 1982 hit O Superman” starts. And suddenly it’s as though some conceptual and emotional door has opened to Linda Lindroth’s art — whose works these are — and I walk through it.

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Corsair Propels Local Artists

by | Jun 16, 2016 7:42 am | Comments (6)

DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO

Old architecture meets new at 1050 State Street.

Proclaiming that this isn’t just another project,” Andy Montelli, Post Road Residential founder and developer of Corsair, a new luxury residential complex at 1050 State St., has not only embraced a slice of New Haven manufacturing history in the project’s creation, but commissioned some of New Haven’s best-known artists and artisans for site-specific installations at Corsair that highlight local manufacturing and the spirit of a people building a nation.

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Refugee Art Inspires, And Shakes You Up

by | Jun 15, 2016 7:30 am | Comments (0)

Allan Appel Photo

“Refugee Suitcase,” mixed media by Ahmed.

Ridha Ali Ahmed travels light.

His suitcase contains only an always-sharp pencil for the endless forms to be filled out, a demure but sturdy heart locket full of love, and a long-stemmed rose. The valise is only about two by three inches, is open to the air on both sides, and has a black handle almost too tiny to see or even grasp.

Yet this Refugee Suitcase,” and creative work like it, have enabled its creator — a member of the persecuted Turkmen minority in Iraq — to travel very far, eventually settle in New Haven, become a U.S. citizen, and, most importantly, stay sane through the healing powers of art.

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Textiles Weave Ancient and Modern Together

by | Jun 13, 2016 7:52 am | Comments (0)

Yale University Art Gallery

Inca tunic, 1500-1552. Camelid fibers and dyes.

The fabric starts as a bold field of red, showing off the astonishingly high thread count, before it gives way to a black-and-white checkerboard pattern that repeats for the remaining length of the piece. It’s a thoroughly modern celebration of geometry, color, and simplicity. And it’s about 500 years old.

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Photographers Home In On Home

by | Jun 9, 2016 7:00 am | Comments (0)

“Serro Scotty Sportsman.”

Photographer Marjorie Gillette Wolfe wanted to study the personality of a mobile home when it wasn’t mobile any more, and instead just hanging around at the owner’s stationary home.

Another photographer, Mark K. St. Mary, wanted to know if he photographed differently when away from home — that is, with the wider, discovering eyes of a traveler. Or with eyes challenged to overcome the more familiar if working at home.

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Artists Inspired By Battle At Silk Road

by | Jun 8, 2016 7:10 am | Comments (2)

DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTOS

Painting and photo by DiGiovanni.

Several brawls are now in progress as you read this — a biomorphic choreography of human outrage and agitation and the chaos it inspires. It’s the subject of artist Steve DiGiovanni’s paintings presently sharing space with the new work of artist Megan Craig at Audubon Street’s Silk Road Art Gallery.

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Mono is Many

by | Jun 6, 2016 7:04 am | Comments (0)

Allan Appel Photo

Shah graduated from Southern in 2013 with a major in printmaking.

The traffic in the cities of Gujarat in western India was so bad this spring — minimal order amid always imminent chaos — that Meghan Shah started painting lines on inexpensive scarves she bought on the street corner for 60 rupees each, which is less than a dollar.

After a while she realized what she was doing: investing in her own unique transportation infrastructure that could carry her wherever her artistic imagination wanted to go, without delays.

Now back home in New Haven, that road is leading her to go back to graduate school in making textile art.

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“Le Goût du Prince” Has The Taste For Politics

by | May 31, 2016 7:34 am | Comments (0)

Yale University Art Gallery

Pierre Milan, after Léonard Thiry, “Female Mask,” from “Suite of Ornamental Masks”, mid-16th century. Engraving.

A rich, powerful person retires to his palatial home outside the city. He decides it needs decorating, and hires the best artists he can think of to do it. The collaboration between the artists, there in that place, produces an aesthetic that turns out to ripple throughout society, and in the years that follow.

Steve Jobs in Palo Alto? Donald Trump in Palm Beach? Nope: Francis I in Fontainebleau, France. In the 16th century.

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Art For Docs, And Hypochondriacs

by | May 31, 2016 7:30 am | Comments (0)

Allan Appel Photo

“The Bad Doctors,” etching, by James Ensor, 1895.

As the hypochondriacal nephew of seven doctors, I have it on good authority that young doctors often fear they are coming down with the diseases they study, especially in the early stage of medical training.

It’s also well known that they enjoy a good laugh to relieve the tension of the work.

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Today On WNHH Radio

by | May 25, 2016 7:21 am | Comments (0)

Lucy Gellman Photo

Amaya and Armstrong.

Applegate.

Today’s broadcasts on WNHH radio familiarize listeners with the fundamentals of Ramadan, celebrate some of New Haven’s newly-minted college graduates and seasoned videographers, tackle troubleshooting in the Midwest, and head for the soccer … er, football … field as summer begins. 

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Doors Of Perception Probe Mental Health

by | May 25, 2016 7:19 am | Comments (2)

Lucy Gellman Photo

Monahan with one of Bonanno’s works.

When Matt Feiner sailed over the handlebars of his bike in a freak accident, the impact shattered his bones and his helmet, shaking him to the core. Regaining his mental health would take even longer than the physical recovery.

A deep blue pen — and later, collages, one for every day of the year — helped, sketching out his recuperation in real time.

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Art of Aging Advances

by | May 23, 2016 7:00 am | Comments (1)

Allan Appel Photo

Artist Harriet Held and her daughter Roberta, with a surprise visit at the art show.

It began four years ago with 50 paintings contributed by 12 artists from 20 towns in southern Connecticut.

Roll the clock ahead to today, as the annual Art of Aging exhibition, organized by the Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut, celebrates older folks’ creativity and contributions. It now attracts 78 artists, contributing 180 works, from 43 separate towns.

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