Erector Square Overflows With Art

Erector Square was full of people and art, as the second year of the fully artist-run New Haven Open Studios packed the building complex — so much so that, in addition to the many artists who had flung open their studio doors to visitors, many more had set up displays in entryways, intersections, and hallways, giving the sense that everywhere one went, there was art on the walls, and conversation happening.

For long-time attendees of the Peck Street event on Saturday, who recalled years past when it was organized by Artspace, there was a sense of the Erector Square weekend returning to full strength after the disruption of the pandemic and Artspace closing. The art and conversation sometimes served as a direct link to the past. 

One hallway was filled with works by artists Joan and Frank Gardner — married artists who had a studio in Erector Square well over a decade ago and had worked together all their artistic lives. Joan worked ​“primarily on the world of fantasy and parody. The creative energy of her work is achieved through the use of playful and whimsical imagery interspersed with the darker side of fantasy. Her vocabulary is grabbed in bits and pieces from all over the art world, as well as her own autobiography, colored and collaged into large and small allegories,” an accompanying note explained.

The note continued that ​“Frank and Joan Gardner worked in studios in Erector Square for many years. Both, renowned artists, had prolific careers that covered many years and many mediums … painting, printmaking, drawings, bookmaking, film and fabric.” The Museum of Modern Art purchased all eight films they made, ​“ensuring their longevity in the field.” As ​“much of their work was done collaboratively, they can best be described as an ​‘artist couple.’… Much of the same imagery that inspired Joan, inspired Frank.”

One artist who had set up her art in a hallway was Mariellen Chapdelaine, who had a series of pieces drawn from the I Ching, ​“an ancient Chinese divination text,” a written statement explained. ​“Early in the practice, bundles of yarrow stalk were used to generate a number associated with one of 64 hexagrams. The hexagrams indicate an answer to a question or concern and represent a universally experienced condition or situation which has profound implications in the life of the questioner. There is little exactitude in the finished book and each hexagram should be used as a palette of meanings provided within specific boundaries which define the general direction or ambience of the response.”

Chapdelaine has been studying the I Ching for about 45 years and ​“I always did art,” she said, in addition to being a musician. ​“I wanted to represent some of the layers and layers of Chinese mythology in each hexagram, because each hexagram represents a universe of thought.”

“There is always a multitude of meanings,” in each part of the I Ching, she said. ​“There is never one meaning.” A challenge lay in figuring out how to represent that visually; she settled on collage and mixed materials. In one piece she combined two hexagrams, dealing with ​“crossing the river and not having crossed the river yet,” she said. The triptych gave her the space to depict yin, yang, and the space in between them. In her image, a fox was crossing the water between the opposites. 

“The whole point of crossing the river is not to get your tail in the water,” Chapdelaine said, even as ​“you have all these adventures trying to cross the river. You’re constantly vacillating within the paradoxes of life — yes and no, up and down — but in between there’s this place I call the paradise place.” It’s the ​“unity of opposites,” the ​“mandate of heaven,” ​“the singular moment all contradictions merge into an awareness of life.” 

For Chapdelaine, making art about the I Ching was also a way of engaging with the text. ​“Typically in the I Ching you don’t get to a state of enlightenment but I had to add that,” she said, to get at a singular question: ​“What’s it all about? The I Ching is all about balance. You’re always looking for poise, equanimity.” But there was room for sly humor, too. Of the fox’s position, she said, ​“it’s good to have a rest point so you can put a leg in, take a dip.”

Another of Chapdelaine’s pieces deals with ​“nearing a center of power,” which in the I Ching can be done in life or death, Chapdelaine said. Her piece depicts the planet Earth, where life happens, and ​“the door you go through” to reach the ancestors — which doesn’t require death to pass through. ​“The ancestor issues power” and makes judgment about you. Ancestor can issue a ​“mandate from heaven,” Chapdelaine explained; with such a mandate, someone can act with complete certainty of being correct. It’s ​“what we’re all looking for.” It’s also ​“very complicated,” she said.

Working in collage, in addition to meeting the challenge of working with the I Ching’s complications, allowed Chapdelaine to ​“experiment tremendously” with the layout of each piece. She didn’t know how many elements she would need until she made them. She added stars and organic life forms, ​“but then I wanted more intelligence,” she said. So she added satellites as ​“the yin and yang, the circularity of all of life and motion.” Lines created separation and ​“discrimination of parts” of her compositions. She kept adding things until it felt right. ​“I think I’m prone to being very maximal about it,” she said. 

Like many artists, Chapdelaine regards her own pieces with a critical eye. ​“Sometimes I hate them,” she said of her pieces, ​“though most of the time I like them.” Sometimes she questions the process of making art; she finds herself at Michael’s choosing beads, and making tiny holes in paper, and wonders what is driving her to create. But on another level she knows why: making art ​“is quite fascinating” because in the end there’s a sense that something is done; it ​“tells the story,” she said.

“It’s not an ego thing. You really have to look beyond yourself,” she said. ​“It’s like you have to consult with the story: ​‘okay story, are you done? Do you have more to say?’ ” 

At one of the Erector Square entrances, artist Amelia Ingraham had put up posters directing people to her gallery, using examples of her art as enticement. One photograph featured a tube of toothpaste against a flat blue background, emitting its slinky contents onto a toothbrush, except that the contents were raw meat. That was enough to pique this reporter’s interest. Inside Ingraham’s studio were dozens more examples of her conceptual, off-kilter, and often funny work, from a pile of chicken feet arranged in a pyramid on a plate to a shot of Ingraham’s legs done up as if they were made of cold cuts.

Ingraham said she used to create images by building out entire sets, but changed partly as a matter of practicality; simple backgrounds allowed her to work more quickly by herself. ​“I grew up in a family that ran an auction house, so I have vintage advertisements, furniture, and props that are so present to me.” She also does a lot of commercial photography, for advertisements. The photography on the walls of her studio are images she makes for herself. 

“I like it to be a little bit chaotic, but not too much that it’s a full diversion from what you can see naturally.”

The latest photographs in her studio can be conceived of as guests at a dinner party. Her images ask open questions. Of a woman eating a messy donut over a tall pile of napkins: ​“Who is she? How did she know she was going to be this messy with this donut?” Of a woman, whose face is beyond the frame of the picture, stealing shrimp by slipping one into her pocketbook. ​“What function is she at? What else is in the purse?” The idea is ​“to give room for someone else to interpret it in the ways they want,” she said.

Ingraham makes her images practically, not with digital editing; in the case of the toothpaste tube, she did it by jamming ground beef into a tube of tomato paste, and ​“here we are,” she said. She has another photograph of a chicken, expectantly and perhaps hungrily, standing over a pile of chicken nuggets.

Her photographs have elements of psychological and body horror, which she’s okay with, though ​“I don’t like to cross the line in an insane way. I still like beautiful things. Even the lady getting her tongue pierced with a skewer with olives,” she said, motioning to another photograph. In it, the lady’s tongue is held out of her mouth with forceps, the skewer ready to do its work, though there’s no contact yet. The lady appears to be a willing recipient of the procedure. ​“Kind of beautiful, but also a little dark,” Ingraham said. 

She has also done a shoot of her father shaving his beard, progressing through a series of bizarre facial hair styles. She’s drawn to food as a ​“way that we as humans communicate with each other. Everyone has to eat, and there’s so many different ways to showcase it.” Motioning to another image of a man cradling a large bundle of unwrapped meat products, from hams to sausages, she explained that people recognize a big honey ham, but ​“not necessarily in that man’s hairy arms,” she said.

“My eye is drawn to weird things. Some have more meaning than I care to say at the moment,” she said with a small laugh. But it’s more about engaging with viewers, giving then ​“a cool thing to look at. It’s in my head anyway, so it’s going to come out.” 

If the Gardners’ show connected to the past and Chapdelaine’s and Ingraham’s shows found them working up to the minute in the present, one aspect of the Open Studios program pointed toward New Haven’s possible future working artists. As with last year, Erector Square’s Open Studios also involved activities for kids to do; this year, they were invited to make monsters out of colored clay. 

“There should always be something active for kids to do” said artist Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez, who was overseeing the activity and also exhibiting work elsewhere in the building complex. ​“To be a truly inclusive space, you have to include everybody,” she said.

The response is ​“exploding. I’ve had 30 kids in here making monsters,” she said. They’ve made octopuses, ghosts, and spiders, rabbits with tennis rackets, worms with hats. ​“It’s been beautiful.”

She noted that she grew up down the block and didn’t know Erector Square was full of artist studios when she was a child. ​“I thought they were apartments. There was a parking lot with a lot of cars there all the time. I thought people just lived there.” Then she got a job at Artspace and worked on City Wide Open Studios. ​“That’s when I entered the building and saw everything. And now I’m showing work.”

“It’s nice to be here,” she said.

New Haven Open Studios concludes next weekend at Westville, NXTHVN, and elsewhere. Visit Erector Square’s website for complete listings.