Paul Bass Photo
Eugene Dawson on work break, with “Capricornia.”
Eugene Dawson took a break from building one of New Haven’s new apartment complexes to summon the spirit of the stars and a child’s possibilities.
Dawson, 45, a mason by trade for 21 years and an artist by avocation, did that during a break Monday from his job erecting walls and elevator shafts for the 299 apartments and 6,100 square feet of retail space arising at the 2.72-acre 87 Union St./44 Olive St. lot (pictured above).
He does that during a lot of breaks.
He retired to his mobile studio, a.k.a. the Explorer he parks on Olive Street across from the construction site.
There he pulled out his “doodle pad” to sketch out his latest visions.
Dawson flipped through the pad to explain the thinking behind some of those works in progress. (You can watch him explain in the above video.)
He’d been working on “Capricornia,” shown in the photo at the top of this story.
“She comes from the Zodiac stars,” Dawson said. “I’m going to keep [the picture] black and white. Because the universe is light and dark.”
He doesn’t have a title yet for the above work in progress. He does have a theme: opposites: “You can’t have wet without dry. You can’t have light without dark. … Opposites are necessary.”
This piece depicts and a man and a woman sharing one brain, one mind — with a child developing inside them. “Everything inside this child is the thought: I love you. I need you. Everything inside a child is possible from within.”
Art has been Dawson’s passion, ” a gift from God,” since he was 3 years old. One day, he recalled, “I woke up from a nap in preschool. The wood door had a face on it. I lay on my cot as a toddler. I traced the woman’s face that the wood grain made. I grabbed a crayon. I went crazy on the wall; I scribbled on it real bad.” He didn’t get in trouble. “They told me to try it on a paper.” So he did. He has been making art ever since, even as he bore down to develop his career as a mason. (Contact him at 203 – 449-1936 for quotes on masonry work or artworks.)
The time was approaching for Dawson to leave his parked Explorer and return to bricks, blocks and cement, to building the new New Haven. He said he can focus longer on his work at his home studio. Meanwhile, he predicted, the boom re-envisioning New Haven will hit Bridgeport next.