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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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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.
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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.
by
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.
by
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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(1)
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.
by
Laura Glesby |
Jun 1, 2023 5:13 pm
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Laura Glesby Photos
Laura Boccadoro hangs up symbols of pride and "peace."
Paper cranes await a place hanging along Olmo's walls.
A flock of hand-folded, rainbow-colored paper cranes took flight inside Olmo Bagelry on Thursday morning, carrying a message of queer pride and affirmation.
by
Eleanor Polak |
Jun 1, 2023 9:04 am
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Eleanor Polak Photos
Haven String Quartet at Yale Art Gallery.
“Think about the relationship between listening and looking.”
So encouraged Jessica Sack, curator of public education at the Yale University Art Gallery and organizer of “Playing Images,” at an event that combined artwork with the music of the Haven String Quartet.
by
Brian Slattery |
May 30, 2023 8:53 am
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Brian Slattery photo
Isaac Bloodworth.
His characters grace New Haven’s walls and windows. His puppets appear on New Haven’s stages. Now and again, he himself appears at community meetings and labor events, helping facilitate the conversation while also keeping an eye on the goal of creating more equity, more inclusion, and more compassion. In his art and action, Isaac Bloodworth has had a hand in shaping the direction the Elm City is moving in.
by
Maya McFadden |
May 26, 2023 3:19 pm
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(2)
Maya McFadden Photo
The McKoy family wins the day at Celentano school art auction.
Not wanting to get outbid for a third year in a row, Nicole McKoy showed up to a Prospect Hill auction ready to spend big to be extra sure she’d win the drawings made by her two favorite artists — who just so happen to be her daughters.
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Brian Slattery |
May 25, 2023 8:16 am
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Esmeilyn Tejeda
Herterochromia Iridium.
Esmeilyn Tejeda’s Herterochromia Iridium is the portrait of a man and an exercise in style. Tejeda’s attention to the details of her subject’s face and the abstractions she introduces work together to reveal something of the subject, his strength and his vulnerability. The painting is part of a series of Tejeda’s, and the aim of that series — “an exploration of how facial expressions give way to deeper personal insights, the challenges of removing our masks to reveal who we are when confronted with public scrutiny, and the juxtaposition between the facade we display versus the emotions we attempt to subdue” — shines through.
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Brian Slattery |
May 17, 2023 8:55 am
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Danae.
Anastasia Mastilovic’s painting Danae may be named after a figure in Greek mythology, but her style makes the figure evocative of more. The woman could be a goddess or a mermaid. She could be in repose, or unleashing magical powers. Or perhaps it’s all a metaphor, about power, latent and dynamic, and how it can be used to transform the world.
by
Karen Ponzio |
May 16, 2023 11:29 am
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(8)
Peter Omalyev Photos
NHV Noise magazine
Are you one of those people wishing there was an events calendar listing local shows and helping you navigate what’s going on in New Haven and beyond? Well, a new zine by the name of NHV Noise is coming to a performance space near you, full of writing, art, and yes, that calendar.
by
Brian Slattery |
May 15, 2023 8:36 am
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Luxuriating in a warm spring day, ArtWalk — organized by the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance — brought out a crowd on Saturday for a full afternoon of art, craft, music, theater, food, and community.
