Artists Show The Way To Open Studios

The diptych, by Robert De Matteo, offers two shapes that strongly echo each other, but are from quite different models. The one on the left is easier to identify right away, as a brain scan from an MRI. The image on the right, though, might require a look at the title. Sure enough, it’s drawn from a satellite image of Charles Island, off the coast of Silver Sands State Park in Milford, the sandbar that connects it to the mainland at low tide clearly visible. The visual pun is funny. The idea that the forms would mirror each other closely says something a little deeper, about recurring patterns in nature, perhaps about how we aren’t as separate from our environment as we might like to think.

Charles Island On My Mind is just one of a panoply of small works that are part of ​“Glorious Index,” ​“a tactile, miniature visual compendium exhibition” running at the Institute Library on Chapel Street through Dec. 15 that also introduces the artist-run New Haven Open Studios, the month-long, city-spanning celebration of visual arts running through the end of October. Curated by artists Martha Willette Lewis and Maxim Schmidt, the show includes the work of no less than 50 artists, many of whom will be opening their studios at events this weekend and for the rest of the month at various locations around town.

“Glorious Index” works just like an index in the back of a book might, were you to read it first (an interesting idea for any book with an index), as the show gives you a small glimpse, a taste, of what each artist is about. In that sense, it’s also a thorough teaser for the weeks ahead — at Amplify the Arts in the Eli Whitney Barn and at the studios in West Haven on Gilbert Street this weekend, Oct. 12 and 13; at Erector Square and Marlin Works on Oct. 19 and 20; and in Westville and at NXTHVN and Highwood Square on Oct. 26. (For a full listing of events for New Haven Open Studios, see Erector Square’s website.)

All of the pieces in the show are actually quite small, requiring the viewer to get pretty close to see what’s going on. Several of the artists in the show use that scale to create a moment of intimacy. A viewer who really engages with a piece is rewarded, either with much detail that was invisible from a distance, or with subtleties of shading and texture that are more pleasurable after the work of discovering them. 

Joe Fekieta’s piece, Demolishing a patriarchal system of absolute authority, because of endless imperialistic conflicts victimizing the silent majority left demoralized by broken promises of prosperity made too often and the depressing images of soldiers returning home in a flag-draped coffin, actually lives up to its title as a satire-drenched portrait of chaos and depredation compressed into a small space. Atelier Cue’s Luminary Night is cozy in its depictions of lamplight and evening shade. And Phyllis Crowley’s Bliss benefits from its scale by seeming first, for all the world, like an abstract painting or a piece of calligraphy before it reveals itself as a photograph of sunlight playing on water.

The show has as much sculpture as painting. Susan Clinard offers up a small boat, almost as a prayer. Martha Willette Lewis’s Mem’brane takes a glass bulb and a piece of crumpled paper to make an object that looks almost like a gravity-defying science experiment. Margaret Ulecka-Wilson’s Sea Urchin makes ceramics look like a much more soft, delicate substance. Jennifer Davies’s Three Fungi so resembles its namesake as to seem to have grown from the wall.

Meanwhile, Maxim Schmidt’s My Dog’s Eyes reads almost as a miniature in miniature, as the skull — too small to be a dog’s, or at least most dogs — throws the scale of the rest of the objects out of whack. The visual dissonance is fun, engrossing, and easy to get lost in, somewhat like the maze of studios at West River Arts in Westville, or the warren of workspaces in Erector Square, both of which and more will be thrown open soon enough. We just have to keep our eyes open, too.

“Glorious Index” runs at the Institute Library, 847 Chapel St., through Dec. 14. Visit the library’s website for hours and more information. Visit Erector Square’s website for a full list of New Haven Open Studio events.