Art opening and music Saturday at new Westville venue

Hello My Name Is Gallery
838 Whalley Ave., Apt. 4, New Haven
You'll Shoot Your Eye Out
Dec. 8, 2007—Jan. 1, 2008.
Opening reception: Sat., Dec. 8, 6:30 p.m.

Press release

Hello My Name Is Gallery, in conjunction with Music @ ArLoW, is pleased to announce You'll Shoot Your Eye Out, opening on Dec. 8 at 6:30 p.m. This event combines the opening reception of Hello My Name Is Gallery's second exhibition, featuring the work of visual artists Megan Bent and Mark Williams, with the latest installment of Music @ ArLoW's live music series, featuring the groups JuJu and Buru Style. Both the Hello My Name is Gallery and Music @ ArLoW are located at 838 Whalley Ave, New Haven CT in Westville's new ArLoW 2, Artist Lofts of Westville.

Upstairs at the Hello Gallery, Megan Bent and Mark Williams present a two-person exhibition that plays with and critiques the mixed messages and excesses of holiday lawn decoration.

Inside the gallery, Arizona based artist (and CT native) Megan Bent presents a series of photographs that depict the strange and often ironic combination of secular and religious icons present on the lawns of New York and New England. Taken in and around the fringes of Brooklyn and Queens, and the suburbs of New York and Connecticut, these photographs depict the increasingly muddled distinction between spiritual belief and consumer spectacle.

Outside the gallery, on the facade of the building, New Haven based artist Mark Williams presents the latest in an on-going series of Christmas light drawings. These drawings, made from ordinary Christmas lights, take the familiar icon of the toy soldier (ever present in Williams' paintings and drawings) into the sphere of public art. Williams' work, which depicts toy soldiers mired in and consumed by Play-Doh figurines, critiques the marketing and presentation of war by the American media. Williams' light drawings will be on display everyday for the length of the exhibition from 6 to 10pm.

Downstairs, in the storefront performance space, Adam Kubota curates another in his series of Music @ ArLoW live music events. The groups performing, JuJu and Buru Style, will present a range and amalgamation of musical styles; from jazz fusion and breakbeat, to dub style reggae. These groups will only be performing on the evening of Dec. 8 and are not to be missed.

Buru Style is a half-Connecticut/half-Boston Live Dub group that drops ultra-ethereal rhythms from the catalogues of Jamaican Nyabingi artists such as Count Ossie and Cedric IM Brooks, mixes in newer tracks from the likes of Jah Cure and Richie Spice and plays a whole heap of original music as well.

JuJu is the new project by some of Hartford and New Haven's brightest young improvising musicians. The ensemble brings their strong credentials in the field of jazz to the setting of breakbeat and hip-hop. This group is rooted in the legacies of Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Herbie Hancock yet looks to the future in the sounds of DJ Shadow, Squarepusher, and Soullive.