Westville Brings The Heat With Open Studios

by Karen Ponzio | Oct 30, 2023 9:33 am | Comments (0)

The last weekend of October finally gifted the city a warm and sunny Saturday, but nowhere was it hotter than Westville, where a two-day neighborhood event — part of the artist-led City-Wide Open Studios — encompassed everything from galleries, creative collectives, and private residences to Edgewood Park and even pods on Central Avenue.

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In "After Picasso," Artists Reckon With A Giant

by Brian Slattery | Oct 27, 2023 8:39 am | Comments (2)

Cynthia Beth Rubin’s collage crackles with energy, as colors vibrate off one another and forms within forms, textures within textures, rub against each other. Keen senses of both aesthetic freedom and control of technique suffuse the piece — which, it turns out, hearken back to a famous artistic ancestor.

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Artist-Led Open Studios Take Over Erector Square

by Brian Slattery | Oct 23, 2023 8:35 am | Comments (1)

Artist Chelsea M. Rowe marries festive colors to a violent act in her art, a contrast that opens up the possibilities for interpretation. There’s no getting away from the pain, the blood spilling from both figures as they split from one another. But it’s not just a portrait of torture. It suggests a form of creation and change, too: the chance to survive, make something different.

The sense of energy, connection, and a little bit of revolution in Rowe’s piece was in the air at the artist-organized City-Wide Open Studios’ Erector Square weekend. 

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Marlinworks Open Studios Falls Into Place

by Karen Ponzio | Oct 23, 2023 8:21 am | Comments (0)

The top floor of the Marlinworks Eagle building in East Rock was the setting for the opening of the studios of a small but dazzling array of artists on Saturday afternoon, with a display of works as eye-grabbing as the foliage of East Rock Park right outside their windows. The five artists — Linda Lindroth, Nancy Karpel, Craig Newick, David Margolis and Jo Kremer — were participating in the artist-organized City-Wide Open Studios weekend this past Saturday and Sunday, which also included events in Erector Square and City Gallery. 

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YUAG Art Show Turns The Numbers Back Into People

by Brian Slattery | Oct 20, 2023 8:55 am | Comments (0)

Prentice looks like a no-nonsense woman. The depiction of her is simple, but it appears to capture some of her essential nature. Prentice looks smart, curious, and strong. But she also looks a little tired, like she’s been carrying a lot of weight. That she can bear it doesn’t make it any less heavy.

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Solo Artists Band Together At ECOCA

by Brian Slattery | Oct 19, 2023 9:34 am | Comments (0)

Among the digital video detritus of Kit Young’s installation at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art is a cracked screen with a sign rarely seen in a gallery: ​“Please touch.” With the first hesitant brush of a finger, there’s almost no effect. But press a little harder, and the cracks bloom with almost bioluminescent patterns. Whether this effect is something Young designed or discovered is beside the point. In pressing into the screen, the viewer has helped make the art happen —even if, just as quickly, it starts to fade.

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Amplify The Arts Raises The Barn

by Karen Ponzio | Oct 16, 2023 8:49 am | Comments (6)

The soul-stirring sculptures of Linda Mickens, both large and small, anchored one corner of the Eli Whitney Barn. Across the room, Michael Jackson’s iconic Off the Wall album cover in the style of Saint Phifer faced portraits of women dancing and laughing as seen through the eyes of Jasmine Nikole. 

Those neighbored the dazzling array of faces created by Shaunda Holloway, while between them lay stairs leading to the open studio of Susan Clinard, where a seemingly endless number of her own sculptures that one could see themselves and just about anyone else in the world in stood, sat, and hung from the rafters. 

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Artist Finds The Balance

by Brian Slattery | Oct 13, 2023 9:00 am | Comments (3)

If the works of artist Linda Mickens — one of the recipients this year, along with fellow artist Jeff Ostergren, of a grant from the Bitsie Clark Fund for Artists — were to all appear in one gallery at the same time, you could line one wall with a choir of angels, in various poses, heads tilted toward the sky or downward, wings folded or unfurled. 

On the other side of the gallery, though, would be a woman with nails for hair, screaming, a machine gun in her lap; faceless statues in hoodies, the victims of police shootings. Light and darkness, held in suspension, with the artist always moving from one to the other and back again. And maybe, with the piece she’s about to create, finding just the right balance between them.

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Artist Finds The Drug In The Paint

by Brian Slattery | Oct 13, 2023 9:00 am | Comments (0)

It’s a street scene in psychedelic colors, pointilism with an extra point, as though you’re walking down an urban street with your mind thoroughly altered. But If the overall composition of the painting looks familiar, that’s because it’s explicitly taken from Gustave Caillebotte’s 1877 painting Paris Street; Rainy Day. The figures in that painting, however, are replaced with figures from contemporary pharmaceutical ads. The building in the background is the former Purdue Pharma building in Stamford. It’s the beginning of unpacking what artist Jeff Ostergren’s project is about.

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In Hillhouse Classroom, "Art Is Power"

by Maya McFadden | Oct 10, 2023 10:18 am | Comments (1)

With pop artist Keith Haring in mind, Hillhouse High School junior Emonie Jackson imagined up a chicken leg, to-go cup, and ketchup bottle all with arms and legs — and then penned those images to paper, honing her own creative style and skills amid her classroom’s dive into recent art history.

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Never Ending Books Scares In The Season

by Brian Slattery | Oct 10, 2023 8:32 am | Comments (0)

The Volume Two collective at Never Ending Books threw open its doors Friday night for a seasonal art opening running at the space at 810 State St. through the end of the month — not of fall foliage and decorative gourds, but of ghosts, ghouls, and other visions of the macabre, as New Haven prepares for what is, in some ways, its most celebrated community holiday. The exhibition, called ​“Vol. Boo,” is a collaborative art show featuring the work of 15 artists who all took the chance, some playfully, some seriously, to explore and illuminate the darker side of life.

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New England Obscura Brings Oddities To Annex

by Karen Ponzio | Oct 9, 2023 8:51 am | Comments (0)

Are you in the market for a pair of snake bone earrings or maybe even a lizard wet specimen? Or maybe you’re more into resin earrings or keychains of your favorite pop culture icons, but you still want to check out some taxidermy creatures and gravestone rubbings as well? All that and way more were waiting for you and purveyors of the odd, the weird, and the wonderfully obscure at the third annual New England Antiques and Oddities Exhibition, held this past Sunday afternoon at the Annex YMA Lounge and Hall on Woodward Avenue. 

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Artists Connect Soul To Soul

by Brian Slattery | Oct 6, 2023 9:41 am | Comments (0)

In ways that photographs can’t capture, the installation of ​“Impossible Souls” — running now through Oct. 29 on the second floor of the Hilles Gallery of Creative Arts Workshop at 80 Audubon St. — makes moving through the gallery feel almost like swimming. Along with the art on the walls, and the art on large columns, numerous pieces are suspended from the ceiling in such a way that they drift and spin with the climate-controlled air. The overall effect quiets the space. It makes you move through the gallery with extra care, knowing that the art isn’t always where you might expect it to be. 

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Artists Build Worlds At CAW Show

by Brian Slattery | Oct 4, 2023 11:34 am | Comments (0)

The look of Jihyun Lee’s Doll Shelf partakes at once of the past and an imagined future. 

The collection of objects has the feel of a cabinet of curiosities, the contents of the shelves of an old house, even maybe a beloved junk shop. But the red tint gives it a science fiction twist. They could be as much artifacts of the future as of the past. Or perhaps that tint transports us into the future, looking back at the fleeting present.

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Afternoon Tea Steeped In Afrofuturism

by Lisa Gray | Oct 3, 2023 10:41 am | Comments (0)

The description online read: ​“In this ephemeral haven of sonic and poetic delights, the Afrogalactic Tea Party invites you to immerse yourself in a curated experience of taste and culture.” 

The Sunday afternoon event at the flower and lifestyle shop Bloom on Central Avenue in Westville was part of the ongoing 6th Dimension Afrofuturism festival, a series of art exhibits, talks, screenings, and other gatherings running now through Oct. 25. 

I love a tea party, and coupling one with Afrofuturism intrigued me, so I headed to the festival website to grab a ticket, which was pretty reasonable at $23. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

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Sketchers Draw Inspiration From New Haven

by Karen Ponzio | Oct 3, 2023 8:19 am | Comments (3)

Yet another downpour threatened to upset many events planned for Saturday, but not the meet-up for the New Haven Sketchers. The local club of artists, who meet up every week or so, had scheduled to gather at the Yale University Art Gallery to take in and take down the sights of Chapel Street and its surrounding stores and locations — and the weather and other adjustments to the norm did not deter them.

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Artist Takes Notes From A Compassionate Future

by Brian Slattery | Sep 26, 2023 8:34 am | Comments (0)

The central figure in Birthing a New Sky (Mira and Sora) has immediate, obvious associations with the Buddha, and with meditation and enlightenment. But it’s not just a generic picture of a spiritual leader. The silhouette is specific; it’s an individual, a real person, alive today. Colors course through the shape of their body, the shadows of multitudes of people. The image buzzes with movement and growth, but also exudes balance and peace, connection with nature and with the self. It points toward the future with a sense of genuine, earned lightness and hope.

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Sequential Artists Break The Frame

by Brian Slattery | Sep 22, 2023 8:33 am | Comments (0)

Two narratives are laid out on the wall. They follow at first familiar forms, a plucky young person setting out on a quest. But they quickly take an unusual turn. Within four panels, they’ve ended on cliffhangers that feel, in a strange way, almost existential. ​“Who is this?” one protagonist asks. ​“Who are you?” the other says. Laying them out in parallel adds to the fun. It points out the repetition. Are they just iterations of the same story? (Are most stories just iterations of previous stories?) Is there a moment when these story lines might come together? Or is this all there is?

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Artists Explore Themes And Variations, With And Without AI

by Brian Slattery | Sep 20, 2023 12:07 pm | Comments (1)

One wall of the gallery is a long stack of lively faces, the energetic style matching the animation in the faces. They match their subject, a clown in the old-school sense, more Charlie Chaplin than Ronald McDonald. The artist, Brian Flinn, has numbered the series under the title Auditions. It’s an entertainer looking for a gig. But for Flinn, it’s a sly double meaning, because it’s also a test run for new way for making art. Does it pass?

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MINIPNG Brings Maximum Creativity To Audubon Street

by Karen Ponzio | Sep 20, 2023 9:05 am | Comments (1)

Audubon Street is a promenade of institutions that ignite creativity and keep it alight. For the past year that street has also housed the storefront of artist/designer MINIPNG (a.k.a. Eiress Hammond), who has made a home away from home for fans of her original handmade clothing as well as lovers of vintage pieces and accessories from the late ​’90s and early ​’00s. This Saturday, Sept. 23, she is co-presenting an event that will be bringing an even larger creative crew to the street from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

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Wax Artist Makes It Look Natural

by Brian Slattery | Sep 19, 2023 9:08 am | Comments (0)

Aglow has been given the right name. It’s an abstract of shapes and colors, but the vibrant yellow in the background suffuses it with sun, with life, as if the viewer is looking upward through something — the slide of a single cell, or a lattice of bridges — into a summer sky. The way the colors keep separate, yet flow together, makes the effect possible, and that is the result of the technique the artist uses. That technique, it turns out, is the focus of the show.

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Erector Sq. Readies For City-Wide Open Studios

by Brian Slattery | Sep 7, 2023 8:30 am | Comments (2)

In artist Oi Fortin’s studio in Erector Square, seven artists were taking old signs for City-Wide Open Studios, salvaged from Artspace’s basement before it closed, and rearranging and redecorating them for a new purpose: the return of City-Wide Open Studios to the Fair Haven arts complex on the weekend of Oct. 21 and 22.

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Exhibition Takes Art To New Dimensions

by Brian Slattery | Aug 30, 2023 9:10 am | Comments (3)

Tea Montgomery’s installation greets the visitor who enters the art show at the Lab at ConnCORP for 6th Dimension, an Afrofuturist festival running in New Haven and Hamden now through Oct. 21. 

Its choice of materials, its structure, and its placement in the space create a combination of moods that clash against one another, whether it’s the soft drapery versus the raw pipes in the ceiling, the gauzy light from the windows versus the ripped fabric crawling across the floor, or the rattan chair, redolent of the famous photograph of Huey Newton, but empty now. Is it waiting for the next Huey? Who might that be? What future might they lead us into?

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Yale Art Gallery Crosses The Atlantic

by Eleanor Polak | Aug 25, 2023 9:08 am | Comments (3)

While the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) undergoes renovations, the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) has volunteered to host a selection of their paintings in an exhibition entitled ​“In a New Light: Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art.” The show — running now through Dec. 3 — houses over 50 paintings, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries, that attempt to capture the scope and breadth of British life at the time through a series of intimate glances into another country’s art and culture. ​“In a New Light” offers a glimpse into British painting with little explanation and few qualifiers, allowing viewers to simply view the artwork and draw their own conclusions.

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Brick Wall Sees Possible Abolitionist Future

by Eleanor Polak | Aug 23, 2023 8:24 am | Comments (1)

The outside wall of Possible Futures, the bookstore located at 318 Edgewood Ave., stood blank and dull against the street, devoid of inspiration and creativity. That was about to change. 

Tuesday marked the beginning of a 10-day-long painting project to design a mural, a tribute to New Haven local and celebrated prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore. The blank wall became a canvas, as muralists and community volunteers worked together to explore all the possible futures the space could hold.

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