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Eleanor Polak |
Aug 17, 2023 8:35 am
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Rushnyky.
Stepping into the “Rushnyky: Sacred Ukrainian Textiles” exhibit at the Blessed Michael McGivney Pilgrimage Center feels like stepping into a particularly cozy little house. Faux-stone columns and archways line the walls, framing display cases made to look like wooden cabinets. Lying within the cases and draped over the walls, the rushnyky — long, decorative or ritual clothes — draw the eye with their bright patterns and delicate lacework, transforming a sterile, unlived-in museum space into a warm and welcoming abode. In the words of the Ukrainian proverb printed on the wall, “a house without a rushnyk is not a home.”
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 15, 2023 8:36 am
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Linda Mickens
Unclaimed.
Linda Mickens’s sculpture Unclaimed stands at the back of City Gallery like an altar, a centerpiece. “This piece gives voice to the countless victims who died, isolated and alone, to a disease that devastated the world,” Mickens’s accompanying statement reads. “Their angels claim them, forever ensuring that their souls do not languish, nameless and faceless in mass graves for eternity.” The note clarifies what Unclaimed is about. But it’s not necessary to bring home the work’s emotional message. The pile of shoes, the tattered wings, the angel’s sad, caring expression are more than enough to bring out the artist’s concern for suffering, and her call for compassion and understanding.
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Eleanor Polak |
Aug 11, 2023 8:58 am
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Shelley Stoehr-McCarthy and son Luca McCarthy make collages.
Inside the upstairs gallery at The Institute Library at 847 Chapel St. sat a table littered with paper, magazines, paintbrushes, glitter, scissors, stickers, and a giant jug of glue. Outside it was rainy and humid, but the room — set aside for a collage workshop entitled “A Time To Breathe: an Oasis Workshop” — formed a little oasis itself. Not just a refuge from the weather, but a safe space for creativity to roam free.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jul 31, 2023 9:07 am
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Eleanor Polak Photos
Zines, zines, and more zines, at Bike Co-Op-hosted fair.
The Bradley Street Bike Co-Op overflowed with glossy prints, eye-catching artwork, and colorful personalities for a Zine Fair that offered an opportunity for connection and collaboration, as well as a meeting ground for artists of all different mediums.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jul 28, 2023 8:46 am
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Zoe Jensen Photo
Issue 11 cover featuring coeditor Mar Pelaez.
Connectic*nt, a bimonthly zine that has created a space for artists and writers from across the state to experiment with words and visuals — as well as an ever-growing community that thrives on sharing with and uplifting each other — turns two years old this month. The anniversary issue, the zine’s 11th, will be released this Saturday, July 29, complete with celebratory events including a DJ-centric dance party (now famously known as Club C*nt) at Diesel Lounge on Friday night and a zine fair at Bradley Street Bike Co-op on Sunday.
Under the helm of current coeditors Zoe Jensen and Mar Pelaez, the publication has come a long way from Jensen’s original plan of publishing a single zine that included the art and writing of friends who had been distanced from each other during Covid shutdowns. The public demand for more, and the fun being had by everyone involved, was too much to not let it become a regular and permanent part of the new normal.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 27, 2023 8:54 am
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Autumn Nelson
Self-Indulgence.
Autumn Nelson’s canvas is the first piece in “The Past Pushes Forward” — an art show installed in the top floor of the Blake Hotel at 9 High St., now until August 31 — to greet viewers as they exit the elevator. It’s hung in just the right spot so that the canvas functions as a double of the subject matter. The mirror that reflects the painter is held up to the viewer as well. Do we love ourselves as much as Nelson loves herself? How much are we allowed to love ourselves? Why is it fraught to even ask that question?
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Eleanor Polak |
Jul 21, 2023 9:51 am
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Eleanor Polak Photos
Ruth McInton Cogswell's silhouettes of New Haven characters.
“Profiles: Ruth McInton Cogswell and Dorothy Cogswell” — the latest exhibition at the New Haven Museum at 144 Whitney Ave. — highlights the lives and work of two women who played an important role in the Elm City’s early 20th-century local art scene. The mother-daughter duo of artists used watercolors, pencil drawings, and silhouettes to pay tribute to the people of New Haven and commemorate their history. Through the Cogswells’ work, the show provides a tour of the city’s past, where viewers can recognize familiar figures and learn new aspects of their history.
Imagine yourself peering through the large end of a telescope, looking at the world in miniature. You feel blown out of proportion, almost godlike, a giant out of Gulliver’s Travels staring down at people the size of insects going about their days. But as you look, you begin to notice details in the minute, humanity condensed to an anthill ready for your inspection. You see the big picture, made small.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 18, 2023 9:24 am
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Esthea Kim
Textures and Elements.
The ribbon that winds its way through Esthea Kim’s four paintings — each titled as a series, Textures and Elements — presents itself as a mystery. The light cloudscapes Kim has painted on each of the canvases are ambiguous enough, as they suggest both peace and a sense that they conceal something. The ribbon connects them all, invites the viewer to understand the four paintings as a whole. But to what end? Is there a meaning to be sussed out? Or is the connection itself the meaning?
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 14, 2023 8:15 am
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Frank Bruckmann
I-95 N. Benson Rd.
Frank Bruckman’s paintings of the highways around the state have been a thread running through Kehler Liddell Gallery’s programming for years. The technical ability and attention to detail brought to such a mundane subject has layers of meaning attached to it. On one level, no one said that paintings can’t be funny, and there’s humor in every brushstroke. But there’s also the message built into the skill and hours brought to the canvas: driving in traffic on the interstate may seem like something to get through, something to forget. But we all spend hours of our lives doing it. Maybe it’s important for that reason alone — as important, in its own way, as a naval battle, or a visitation from a saint.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 11, 2023 11:31 am
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Courtesy Yale Peabody Museum
This torosarus skull, now part of the collection of the Yale Peabody Museum, was found at Lightning Creek in Wyoming in 1891 by American paleontologist John Bell Hatcher. A few years later, Hatcher would go fossil hunting in Patagonia and write a book about that expedition that would be published in 1903. Even with his success at the time, he may not have predicted that his star in paleontology would rise to the point where, in 2018, author and fellow paleontologist Lowell Dingus would publish a book about him called King of the Dinosaur Hunters.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 5, 2023 8:42 am
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SHAN Wallace
New Haven Block Party.
SHAN Wallace’s New Haven Block Party captures the essence of its title and then some. It conveys something of the way the past and present can collide on some of Dixwell’s streets, how the shadows of what used to be there can feel as present as what’s there now. But it honors what’s there now, too: the people, the places, the energy that make up the neighborhood as we experience it today. True to the season, it feels like a hot summer day, when windows are open and radios are loud, and people are ready to talk to each other on stoops and street corners in ways the colder months won’t allow.
Artist Frank Bruckmann with John Jessen's portrait.
More than 100 library folks, family members, city and state officials, and admirers from a broad and diverse swath of New Haven gathered for an artistic remembrance of the life, spirit, and humanitarian example of the late former City Librarian John Jessen.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 3, 2023 8:49 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Celine Who at Seeing Sounds.
Celine Who let out a melisma of notes that floated through the air of the skate park in Edgewood Park. They commingled with the voices of vendors and of friends chatting, the scents of arepas and vegan Caribbean food. On the other side of the skate park, Eastine Akuni pumped out music from a second stage to a crowd brought to their feet on the lawn in the shade. It was early in the day for the second year of Seeing Sounds, the music and art festival organized by Trey Moore. Already a few hundred had arrived, and many more were coming.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 28, 2023 8:51 am
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(1)
Yige Tong's
Confluence.
The figure in Yige Tong’s Confluence connotes both safety and vulnerability. She may be at rest, sleeping comfortably. She may also be protecting herself, or recovering from hurt. The sense that both readings are in play is amplified by a closer look at the piece, where the viewer discovers that the background is made up of fragmented and interwoven images of the faces of small children and adults. Family members? Friends? Strangers? The pieces of the past surround her. Some may give comfort. Others remembrance of pain. A final part of the image lies in seeing what’s in the woman’s hand: a remote control for a camera. She has taken her own picture, put it up for others to see. The image of her body is meant to pass something along, deliver a message, maybe find connection.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 26, 2023 8:57 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos
Paxx Headroom performs at the Black Box.
Drag kings, fairy hair, tarot readings, visual art, and a vivacious vibe that pulsed with community: these and more filled the event room, art gallery, and gathering area now known as the Black Box this past Saturday night at Witch Bitch Thrift. The Whitney Avenue thrift store has created a space within its space that can be used for anything from a contemplative sanctuary to a meeting area for clubs, classes, open mics, and more.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 22, 2023 9:00 am
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Brian Slattery photos
Old projectors and such, up for grabs ...
... at Artspace's sale on Wednesday.
The pumping music and impromptu skatepark set up at Orange and Crown gave the first signal that something was changing on that Ninth Square corner — as a recently closed visual arts gallery sold off frames, chairs, televisions, and other goods from its now ex-home.
One of New Haven’s leading downtown art galleries has closed up shop, leaving its longtime Orange Street home less than half a year after the departure of its former executive director.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 15, 2023 8:09 am
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Water Under the Bridge.
It’s hard to look at Joyce Greenfield’s Water Under the Bridge and not think of the recent smoke from forest fires in Canada that choked the air last week. All the signals are there — a wall of angry flames, a sky full of soot, the land seeming to melt away in the heat. But that’s not what the painting has to be. It could be autumn, the fiery colors the result of the changing of foliage. The dark sky could be rain clouds. Either way, the painting is about transformation. Fast or slow, destructive, creative, cyclical, the brush strokes mark the change.
by
Allan Appel |
Jun 14, 2023 8:58 am
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Allan Appel photo
Artist Adae with Common Ground student Leon Armstrong.
Kids with hands upraised half way between shouting hallelujah and playing volleyball with an immense sun. A green plant as imposing as Jack’s beanstalk growing out of the palm of one girl’s outstretched hand while goats, cats and two hens, notably a Buff Orpington and a Polish chicken, dash happily underfoot.
Those joyous images are at the heart of “Class of 2025,” a lush and engaging mural executed by long-time New Haven muralist Kwadwo Adae and the entire sophomore class (thus the title) at Common Ground High School.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 13, 2023 9:03 am
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(1)
John Hatch
Tea Time with Marcel Duchamp.
John Hatch’s Tea Time with Marcel Duchamp catches the eye fast, with its shiny surface and improbable, delightful shape. It takes a second to see how all the parts fit together — the tea kettle, the bell of a horn, the metal legs. It then invites speculation. What sound would it make if you boiled water in it? Some tea kettles whistle, or even sound like trains. Maybe this one plays a jazz solo. It’s possible to let the mind wander in this way because for all the relative seriousness of the execution, the piece itself is, above all, fun.
Josh Philie finishing up one of the new Coogan murals.
The city’s youth and recreation department handed cans to graffiti artists to spray away on the walls of Coogan Pavilion and Edgewood skate park — in the hope of retaining a family-friendly feeling for the summer.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jun 9, 2023 9:09 am
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Erin Shaw
Protect Us From Ruin.
Erin Shaw’s Protect Us From Ruin shows photographs of three shadowed women confined within wooden panels like church windows. Each panel is wrapped with colorful bands that both imprison and protect the figures.
That dichotomy, between protection and captivity, represents the friction between Shaw’s identity as a member of the Chickasaw Nation and a Christian. “As long as I can remember, I’ve had one foot in two worlds,” she explains in an accompanying statement. “It’s been the work of my life to live in that tension as best I can, understand and reconcile it.”
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 6, 2023 8:33 am
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The paper houses are perched on the ragged edges of foam cliffs. There are places in the world like it, where people have built actual houses in unlikely places, on rocks all too close to the water, on stilts over surging marshes, on the sides of mountains. But the houses in this art exhibition push it all just a little further. Upon closer examination, some of the structures are more improbable than real houses could be. Others are built high overhead; you’d have to have wings to live there. Finally, there are the houses built on a wall’s vertical face, oriented sideways. To live there, you’d have to defy gravity.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 2, 2023 8:30 am
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Robert Bienstock
Concentricity 3.
Robert Bienstock’s Concentricity 3 is an abstract piece, but the lines are evocative of several natural forms at once. They could be the shapes on a topographical map, depicting hundreds of square miles of land. They could also be organic or inorganic forms growing under the light of a microscope. Bienstock may make conceptual art, but the patterns point toward the real.
