Beauty that Bites by Sophie Groenstein (2025)
Dream Murals: Public Art with Hartford Art School Alumni
Donald and Linda Slipe Gallery
University of Hartford
West Hartford
April 10, 2025
Dream Murals took a unique approach to the typical art exhibit by opening with incomplete artworks. Alumni of the Hartford Art School were invited to work with a student mentee to create their “dream” mural.
The creation of the murals on display began on March 3. Tthe public was invited to visit the gallery to follow the progress of the murals during the month.
The gallery shows how interconnected the local Greater Hartford arts scene is. The exhibit is also a tribute to Tao LaBossiere, whom I wrote about in a piece last month. LaBossiere was a former student of the Hartford Art School, and was well known in the city as a muralist.
Make Stuff Have Fun by Chris Piascik
The mural by Chris Piascik is a study in contrasts. The bright colors and cartoonish style belie what are actually garish, and in some cases gruesome images of violence and decay. The most striking image in the mural is the skull on the far right side. An arm juts out of one of the eye sockets, covered in tattoos and with its fingers crossed as the skull spits out in blood “Good Luck”. An apparition at the bottom of the mural spits fire, a toilet emits a sickly rainbow and a smiling cloud, while its counterpart above the skull shares the same rainbow but an angry face as it hurls lightning bolts.
Beyond the images though, the mural is a mishmash of conflicting messages in written form. The largest message, placed at the center of the mural, exhorts the viewer to “Make stuff have fun.” However, negative messages surround the positivity. “Nobody cares”, “Stay Angry”, “Destroy it All” and “Ded” ring the central message.
Perhaps the point in the juxtapositions can be found in the message next to a pensive moon in the upper lefthand corner: “Artists are here to disturb the peace.” The initial cartoonishness of the imagery can get viewers to let their guard down so that the true subversive nature of the mural reaches the audience. Art is presented as fun, but it has a responsibility to critique and deconstruct as well.
Deh Bout 99 by Vaughn Fender
Where Piascik’s mural is in your face, I was pleasantly surprised by the subtlety of Vaughn Fender’s mural. The piece seems straightforward at first, featuring a Black woman looking off into the distance and televisions in the upper right and lower left corners. The color scheme is evocative of much of the art of the African diaspora, although it noticeably omits red in favor of yellow and orange, which gives the artwork a calming feeling that seems more like a yearning for home than a statement about the violence of the diaspora, which so much art tends to focus on.
In fact, that calming sense almost makes it easy to miss the actual use of some violent imagery, hidden masterfully in the headwrap of the central figure. I admit that I looked at this piece several times before I noticed the home drawn in black in the headwrap, or the fires burning directly above it. The words in the mural seem to be a hint at a larger meaning that unfortunately I couldn’t decode. The televisions are throwbacks to an era of technology that even I barely remember, when knobs and dials adorned the faces of technology instead of the smooth, sleek and impersonal take on modern electronics of today. Fender’s piece feels much more introspective and interpretive, a look back that simultaneously creates a path forward, an afrofuturist take on the public arts mural.
Murals have the dual duty of serving as public art to be consumed quickly by masses who are on their way hurriedly to one place or another, yet they must also serve the artist’s function, to challenge and illuminate. The murals on display at the University of Hartford accomplish both of these functions, and have done so in a unique and entertaining way.
I wasn’t done with art at the University of Hartford just yet though.
NEXT
Jamil is invited to check out another exhibit at the University. Let’s go!