“Pop & Op” Brings Goofy Seriousness To Artspace

Myisha Darden’s friends in the last week of summer school stared at her as she shouldered from class to class a tote bag with its towel, change of clothes, and shampoo. They asked her where she was going, if she’d been kicked out, if she were suddenly homeless.

“No,” she answered. ​“I’m going to get popsicles [placed] on my head.”

The meltingly interesting result — large digital photographs of a dozen New Haven high school kids with the ice cream of their choice dripping from scalp to nose to cheeks — has gone on display at a downtown gallery.

Friday night marked the opening reception for the show, ​“Pop & Op.” It was put together by Erika Van Natta, an artist who led a baker’s dozen of city high-schoolers in this, the 30th year of Artspace​‘s Summer Apprenticeship Program.

A mixed-media and video artist with a penchant for what happens when the silly meets the daring, Van Natta has used food before in her films and other works, but never ice cream.

Darden and her good friend Joy Okeke got to see up close and personal how an artist can come up with an idea — to use materials of popular culture along with the techniques of optical illusion— and run with it. As important as nursing the idea along was to see an artist’s conviction in action despite the skepticism it might initially arouse, even among her apprentices.

That’s exactly the fulfillment of the experiential idea of the apprenticeship program, said Artspace Executive Director Helen Kauder. This year is the first photography has been the featured medium; Kauder said she can’t remember a more mellifluous outcome.

With 40-by-60-inch digital photographs of a kid like Walatsebi Lomotey with ice cream sandwiches melting on his head — - he called it his Chipwich Mohawk — how could there not be a smile on your face?

Kauder said there’s more than meets the eye in each photo, with much layering, and the surprise appearance of a hand holding a background textile, as if to pull the rug out from the illusion.

The kids met Natta from Tuesday to Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. taking turns deciding on their ice cream, choosing colors and patterns that appealed to them, pondering a theme for their autobiographical photo’ then selecting cloth as background, determining where mirrors might be held, composing a photo shoot, and finally doing it.

One day a kid was the subject with the melting ice cream. The next day she or he handled lights or props or camera, or led the jolly troop outside to make the next purchase from the Good Humor truck, one of the major beneficiaries of this year’s apprenticeship program.

Darden and Okeke were skeptical at the outset. As the work proceeded, they came to understand, as Okeke put it, ​“Erika was looking for the most truth.”

“I liked another picture that was like Marilyn Monroe,” said Okeke.

Van Natta convinced Okeke that there is a difference between a pose and a parting of the veil into character. She said the red, white, and blue colors that Joy had chosen reflected not only her temperament but her background as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants to New Haven, who came here when she was 5 years old.

If you look hard, you see the drips of blue ice cream are as dark as rivulets of heart’s blood, and that’s every bit as important in the composition as Okeke’s smile.

“We call this ​‘Statue of Lib-Arty,’” said Van Natta.

“It took all of this ridiculousness to get to the truth. You can’t be other than yourself when you have popsicles melting on your head,” Van Natta said.

Okeke is off to Luther College in Iowa in September to study neuroscience. Darden is going to Gateway. She’s not sure of a major. She said she’s fairly certain that if she stays with photography, she’s not going to be the subject but rather be behind the camera.

She said the apprenticeship experience showed her that ​“art can be made of anything, not jut pencil and paper.”

Pop & Op runs through Sept. 7, as do the other small shows that opened at Artspace Friday and make for a busy second half of summer down on Orange Street.

Those shows are ​“Cloud Forms” and ​“Thread,” sculpture by Dana Filbert and Adam Brent respectively; ​“Aurora,” a light and color installation by Meghan Grubb (pictured); Luke Hanscom’s Crown Street window photo installation ​“Within Walls”; and ​“Domestic Space,” unframed works from Artspace’s flat file on the theme of home, which was organized by interns Emily Feeley and Jeremy Wolin.