Inside the Sandbox — a new space for art events at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven on Audubon Street — there’s a small garden growing, made not of plants, but fiber. There are ropes of vines fashioned from T‑shirts, leaves of pressed polyethylene, mossy mats of yarn. The project, titled “Unclassified,” is the work of artist Yolanda Davis, who, as the Arts Council’s artist in residence, started it in the fall. It now hangs in the Sandbox space like an enormous divider, a waterfall of foliage. Soon it will be taken down. And to Davis, it still isn’t really complete.
Davis learned about the artist in residence program through artistic partner Ileana Garcia. “I had no idea there was a space inside the Arts Council,” Davis said, but Garcia had learned through an open call by the committee created to curate the Sandbox that “they were looking to showcase a space for art.” Davis and Garcia applied as a team and were selected to be artists in residence. And they were shown the airy second-floor space that they were permitted to fill with art.
“As soon as we saw this space, we thought instantly of a garden,” Davis said. “Then we tried to use the space as well as we could.” “As we started working” in the late fall, “it turned into more of a terrarium feel.”
Garcia ultimately had to leave the project due to unforseen circumstances, and Davis continued the work herself. “I could work on this for another six months, just adding things on top of adding things. I want it to be as lush as possible,” she said of the textile piece.
In keeping with the theme of drawing inspiration from the natural world, Davis has made sure the materials are all recycled, with many of them donated. Relying on recycled materials also meant that Davis had to work with what she could get or find.
“There’s a limit on the type of materials you can use,” she said. She started with a large chicken-wire frame that ran from floor to nearly ceiling and began growing the piece from the ground up. She had “an endless amount of T‑shirt vines” that she dyed in vibrant colors, but then thought, having worked the piece to just a foot or so off the ground, that perhaps that idea had “run its course.”
She moved on to thick yarn, woven higher up into the structure of the chicken wire. In another case, she used a polypropylene fabric that she ironed to a high sheen to make leaves. She’d come across that material in her job as a framer at Hull’s Art Supply and Framing on Chapel Street. It’s a component in doing frame jobs, but creates scraps.
“I’m a fiber artist,” she said, and thought “I have to do something with these. It worked out really well.” She doesn’t practice traditional fiber arts (say, knitting or crocheting) but found herself doing similar acts of repetition as she built the piece. “It takes a lot of mental energy to sit here and do this.”
She also knew that, true to the plant life she was emulating, her project would grow and change as she worked on it. “What’s in your head is always going to end up different that what’s in reality,” she said.
Even now, with her piece filling the Sandbox space with lush depth, she doesn’t think of it as complete; in her eyes, the piece has just begun. “I don’t have a car, so I’m constantly walking, and I see these plants in these gardens — there’s always an undertone, a background of darkness.” That’s the part that feels done. But “I imagine this to have a lot more flowers, as full as possible.”
“It’s already a monster, but it could be a behemoth,” she added.
When she takes down the piece at the end of the week, though, she plans to cut it into smaller pieces. “I’m looking forward to that, actually,” she said. “You have to not be afraid to do it over again. I could absolutely break this entire thing down and start over.”
She has other ideas for where her art can take her as well. “Since I started this project I’ve been looking into floral arranging. It’s masterful, some of those arrangements. It’s amazing how they can put those colors together,” she said.
At a reception for the piece held Wednesday evening, several fellow artists arrived to view the work, and to learn more about both the artist in residence program and the Sandbox.
“I am going to keep the creative in residence going,” said Arts Council Development Director Megan Manton, as donors continue to support it and the Sandbox, which, before it was renovated, was the New Haven radio studio for WNPR. (That studio relocated to Gateway Community College.)
Program Director Rebekah Moore said the Sandbox was created in the first place to meet a specific need: When the Arts Council convened a committee of artists to ask how the Arts Council might support artists’ work, the committee pointed out that many artists simply needed a space.
“We heard the need and we made it happen. The space is 35 feet by 18 feet and it’s free to Arts Council members, and membership is free,” Moore said. Interested artists can visit the Sandbox page on the Arts Council’s website to submit a request to use the space and learn about the equipment available in the Sandbox. “After you submit your inquiry and take a tour, we can start booking dates,” Moore said.
Since the Sandbox officially opened at the beginning of April, she added, “we’ve had about 58 reservations so far.” These range from a drummer looking for rehearsal space to an artist working on showing a mural. Appointments can be made to use the space for events for two, four, or six hours; exhibitions can book the space for a weekend. Artists can also use the space to teach classes and workshops. Every Wednesday will feature time for artists to network with one another, and “we’re going to start doing First Fridays at the Sandbox, highlighting artists,” Moore said.
“There is no art off-limits in the space, and we want more young people in the community to know that it’s here,” Moore continued. To that end, the Arts Council will have tables set up at the New Haven Night Market on Friday and at Q House imminently.
“It’s something that I wish I’d had when I was a kid,” Moore said. “The culture of Audubon — some people are born and raised in New Haven and never been to Audubon Street, ever. I was born and raised in New Haven and didn’t even know what the Arts Council was.” She credits former executive director Daniel Fitzmaurice for cultivating greater connections to the New Haven community, and looks forward to expanding both the Sandbox programming and possibly the physical space.
In that sense the Sandbox has something in common with Davis’s piece. “Hopefully it can grow,” Moore said.