Artspace Holiday Open House this Tuesday

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Let Me Down Easy
Dec. 11, 2007—Jan. 19, 2007
Gallery Open House: Tues., Dec. 18, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Using Long Wharf Theatre's world premiere production of Let Me Down Easy as inspiration, a group of local artists are crafting their own unique takes on the play's exploration of issues surrounding the human body.

Let Me Down Easy, written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith, directed by Stephen Wadsworth, will be performed on Long Wharf Theatre Mainstage from Jan. 9—Feb. 3, 2008. Artspace gallery, located at 50 Orange Street, New Haven, is hosting an exhibition based on the play from December 11 through January 19. There will be an open house at the gallery Tuesday, Dec. 18 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Known to Long Wharf Theatre audiences as the creator of Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, Anna Deavere Smith's newest one-woman show—inspired by interviews conducted as a visiting professor at the Yale University School of Medicine—explores the resiliency and vulnerability of the human body.

"The exhibit features four outstanding New Haven area artists who strive to transform and recontextualize experiences relating to physical, emotional, and psychological struggle. Each artist's work explores the resilience and fragility of the human body," said Laurel Coniglio, program director and Public Allies Fellow at Artspace.

Two of the paintings, "Geologics of Life #1" and "Body of Water" will be on display at Long Wharf Theatre through the run of the play. Artist Anne Doris-Eisner, the creator of those two works, explores how transformation and regeneration occur in nature, serving as a metaphor for human experience.

With acute awareness of the inner processes of the earth, her forceful mark-making depicts the irreversible changes wrought traveling through life. Using unique geological formations and forms in nature, Doris-Eisner draw parallels between the human experience and the natural world. Resilience, defiance, reverence are all symbolically represented in her work, Coniglio said.

"For five years now I have sought through my art to express the divine power and mysterious force of life. That which should have been destroyed instead is able to transform and rebuild, albeit into something new," Doris-Eisner said. "Having faced the death of my child, I liken my survival to that of a tree struck by lightening which still puts out new branches. The water which cuts through mountains and finds its way to continue moving forward. I, too, continue to find a way to live on, though irreversibly changed."

The other artists featured in the exhibit are Tracy Walter Ferry, Evie Lindemann and David Taylor.

In support of the exhibit, there will be an artist talk at Artspace at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008. Artspace will be closed Dec. 23—Jan. 1. Gallery Hours for Let Me Down Easy, as well as Artspace's concurrent exhibitions, are as follows: Tuesday 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday, 12 p.m. -8 p.m., with special late night Thursday hours on December 6, 13, and 20, when the gallery will be open until 9 p.m.