A new street has opened up in the Audubon Arts District. Only it’s indoors.
The intimate little thoroughfare of a gallery at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven at 70 Audubon, formerly the Small Space Gallery, is now called the Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery, renamed last month in honor of one of the city’s leading philanthropists.
Crosby died two years ago, but not before he helped to make the case for the economic significance of the arts and to create the Regional Cultural Plan, which stabilized the city’s major arts institutions. Click here to read his bio and encomiums by Alderwoman Bitsie Clark and others.
Because I’ve always enjoyed looking at art from a strolling gait, down a corridor, as opposed to inching my way along the four walls of a room a bit like an inmate, this venue is among my favorites in the city. If you think art should be seen in an unpressured, leisurely way, as a promenader as opposed, say, to as a prisoner in a cell, then the former Small Space is really a large space of the mind and of the eye.
The first show in the newly monickered corridor is the Photo Arts Collective’s annual members’ exhibition, called Spectra 2009. Hank Paper’s challenging portrait of a past and present generation confronting each other, as well as the viewer, is illustrative of a wide range of work in color and black and white, from both professional photographers to serious amateurs, that is on view through May 22nd.
The digital prints of Kenneth Hanson, such as “Cloud Forest: Moss and Rhododendron, Paro Valley, Bhutan 2008” (at the top) are some of the most polished in the exhibition. An especially arresting image is his “Tigers Nest Monastery,” a view of a religious complex of solid stone yet also teetering above a gorge and seen from an almost impossible angle as if the viewer is compelled to hold the end of a string of prayer flags that begins in mid air.
It transports the viewer into that perspective of Buddhist permanent impermanence, which is perhaps a kind of definition for photography itself.
Other work in Spectra 2009 that makes you slow down your promenade and look twice, if not more, are the architectural facades of Alan Shulik, Archie Stone (well named for his subject!)
Mary Ann Ott’s black and white close-ups of an ancient staircase also intrigue the eye. If she had not titled this work “Macchu Picchu,” it might seem a construct of shapes made of foam that don’t exist in the world at any altitude.
In photography it’s hard to do something new that’s not just for newness’s sake but for the sake of a wider or deeper meaning, and so it’s not surprising that a number of the works in Spectra 2009 also echo, albeit lovingly, past photographic masters.
Joy Bush’s composition of several headless bathers along with a foot-ball carrying dog recall the documentarians such as Weegee and Morris Engel. And Art Johnson’s “Felicia” poses a set of Barbies in distressed wooden niches that recall some of Walker Evans most iconic backdrops, as does a group of discarded urinals, which seems almost like a human family huddled in a shed, photographed by Joe Azoti.
The show begins with Dana Osborn’s digital print “Guilford Lake 1980” beneath the new “street” sign for the gallery.
Other artists in the show include Christopher Beauchamp, Penny Cook, Rod Cook, Jim Fiora, Matthew Garrett, Bob Giannotti, Sharon Hirsch, Roy Money, John Weinland, and Marjorie Wolfe.
The exhibition was organized by members of the collective.
The Photo Arts Collective is one of the most venerable and long-running programs at the Arts Council. Director of Communications David Brensilver estimated it had about 100 members from the Greater New Haven area who meet monthly at the Kehler Liddell Gallery. Any photographer who is a member of the Arts Council can join by going to the collective’s site or calling the Arts Council at 772‑2788.