Artists Cover Crises Global And Personal

The scene depicted in Rita Hannafin’s Sanctuary in the City could be of several places in the New Haven area, places that seem wilder than they should be given their proximity to people, whether it’s a stretch of the West River, or the Quinnipiac River before it reaches Fair Haven, or a part of the shoreline in West Haven. 

That Hannafin’s piece is a quilt, rather than a painting or a photograph, adds a layer of meaning. In calling more attention to the fact that the piece was made by hand, it makes us consider the traditional arts and the environment together. Both have long histories. Both have evolved to the present day. Both are worthy of preservation and study, not only for the ways that we can save them, but (to borrow a phrase from forest ecologist Suzanne Simard) the ways that they can save us.

Sanctuary in the City is one of several pieces in ​“Life After Life,” a show of works by Hannafin and Gwen Hendrix running now at City Gallery through Feb. 26. Hannafin and Hendrix have a few things in common. They are two of the gallery’s newest members, and both of them draw from rich textile traditions to make their art. In the case of this show, they also share a concern for similar subject matter.

Gwen Hendrix takes much of the inspiration for her art from nature, beginning with photography. In a iced-over brook in winter, for instance, she writes, ​“I am fascinated by the layers of leaves, sticks, grasses and air bubbles that are frozen spatially in place.” This ​“translates into my paintings by developing layers — of textures, patterns, shape, form and line.” The same impulse ​“led me to a natural progression of wanting to make 3D sculptures using fiber.“

Hendrix’s work on display at City Gallery has a particular focus, however, on our changing climate. ​“Look around,” she writes. ​“The earth and climate have had radical changes in just the time we’ve been alive. The relatively predictable seasons of our youth are now much less defined. Snowfall being less in some places, leaves accumulating several feet in others; rain comes in buckets or not at all; drought prevails and fires abound in the West; tornadoes and hurricanes are much more frequent and intense, all happening in places that would never get these events. All of it decimating the landscape in one form or another. This work is about that decimation — the rivers drying up, vegetation dying off, leaving bare earth and wind, and just how vulnerable we all are because of it.”

That mournful tone comes through in much of the work. Many of the pieces follow natural forms as if the art were a kind of amber, preserving what’s here now for the record. The final piece in the show, What Remains, perhaps takes it step further. It’s a dish towel but it has echoes of a shroud, taking on the ghostly imprint of a form that we can’t recognize. The original is gone, and even the shadow hard to read.

Rita Hannafin relates that ​“my lifelong love of art has found its expression in fabric. I revel in the simple act of placing one fabric next to another and am attracted to the endless possibilities offered by the materials and techniques. When I relax into the flow of sewing movements, cutting, sewing, quilting, I enter a zone of possibilities.” She explores how ​“the art quilt’s main focus is shape,” whether abstract, as most quilts are, or figurative, as some of Hannafin’s are. ​“Inspiration comes from various sources,” she writes. ​“My camera is a trusty companion for visual documentation.… With ideas and visual stimulation to inspire me, I find the meaning in doing. Cutting, moving, attaching, and quilting make my passing sensations and ideas tactile and permanent. My hands show me the way.”

But like Hendrix, Hannafin has more specific aims in the current show — two, to be precise. On one hand are pieces like Sanctuary above, that ​“explore the complexity and wonder of all living organisms.” Hannafin’s vivid color choices and intricate stitching allow viewers to trace the details of what she conveys, whether it’s a landscape or the surface of a leaf.

But then there are five quilts that, as Hannafin relates, ​“tell the story of an unexpected brush with mortality and healing.” Through quilts and short poems written by Hannafin and her husband, she tells the story of how her heart stopped during a routine procedure at a hospital in Bridgeport, and how medical intervention saved her. 

Quilts are often made to commemorate joyous life events — births, marriages, and the like — and to see the form deployed to mark a harrowing happening instead is especially moving. It is, of course, unlikely that the quilts will be used to warm Hannafin or anyone else. But their existence reminds the viewer that Hannafin survived her cardiac arrest, and recovered fully enough to make the quilts at all, and that in itself is a real comfort, and cause for celebration.