City Gallery's annual "Give Art" show opens Saturday

City Gallery
994 State St., New Haven, (203) 782-2489
Give Art
Nov. 19—Dec. 20, 2009.
Opening reception, Sat., Nov. 21, 2—5 p.m.

Press release

City Gallery is presenting its traditional holiday GIVE ART exhibition. All works of art by gallery artist-members will be for sale at only $100 each. This is an excellent opportunity to shop for a friend or add to a collection.

Paintings, prints, sculpture, mixed media, photography by: Amy Arledge, Judy Atlas, Meg Bloom, Phyllis Crowley, Jennifer Davies, Nancy Eisenfeld, Freddi Elton, Barbara Harder, Jane Harris, Sheila Kaczmarek, Mary Lesser, Tom Peterson, Paulette Rosen.

The exhibit runs from Nov. 19 to Dec. 20. The Opening Reception is Sat., Nov. 21, from 2—5 p.m. The gallery is open Thursdays through Sundays, noon—4 p.m. Free.

TS Rogers illustration show opens at Channel 1 skate shop Thursday evening

Channel 1
220 State St., New Haven, 1-888-SHOP-CH1
Teaessare Can Read: An Exhibit by TS Rogers
Nov. 20—Jan. 31, 2010
Opening reception: Thurs., Nov. 20, 6—10 p.m.

Press release

Channel 1, a lifestyle gallery featuring artwork and products from all genres of independent artists, will premiere Teaessare Can Read, a solo exhibit by TS Rogers. This exhibit is the second of a three part series featuring the solo works of local Connecticut artists who have found success in the commercial art world. Free and open to the public, Teaessare Can Read will open Nov. 20, 2009 and run through Jan 31, 2010.

Although TS Rogers' illustrations and graphic works have been fairly ubiquitous in the independent music scene for well over a decade, an exhibit of this distinction and exposure for this otherwise reclusive artist has never before been undertaken. Teaessare Can Read showcases illustrated moments from classic and contemporary literature from Steinbeck to Sedaris. "Teaessare" is a phonetic spelling of the artist's initials.

TS Rogers is primarily recognized for obsessively balanced illustration encompassing clean line work, color interpretation influenced by a background in studio art, and lighting influenced by many years of comic book consumption. TS Rogers' spotless visual style has been further defined by the content of his work which commonly deconstructs pop culture or folklore to be reassembled with a meticulous and often surreal hand. Teaessare Can Read is a natural extension of this noted style and challenges readers to examine and revisit their own interpretations of written word.

There will be an opening reception for this show this Thursday evening at Channel 1 from 6—10 p.m.

Artists' reception Thursday night at Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery

Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery
70 Audubon St., 2nd floor, New Haven, (203) 772-2788
Visions in Light: Woodbridge Senior Center Group Show
Nov. 20, 2009—Jan. 15, 2010
Artists' reception: Thurs., Nov. 19, 5—7 p.m.

Press release

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven presents Visions in Light: Woodbridge Senior Center Group Show, in the Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery, 70 Audubon St., 2nd floor, New Haven. Coordinated by Lenny Moskowitz, this exhibition will be on display from Friday, November 20, 2009 through Friday, January 15, 2010. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. An artists' reception is scheduled for Thursday, November 19, from 5—7 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

The Arts Council is committed to engaging artists and audiences of all generations, and is pleased to present the work of seniors from the Woodbridge community (image of painting by Ken Johnson).

Landscape painter Lenny Moskowitz earned his BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art (now the College of Art and Design at The University of the Arts) and his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (Michigan). A New Haven resident, Mr. Moskowitz teaches at Quinnipiac University and leads classes and workshops at several area community centers.

Thursday opening at the Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University
238 Washington Ter., Middletown, (860) 685-3355
Eiko & Koma: Time is not Even, Space is not Empty
Nov. 20—Dec. 20, 2009
Opening reception: Thurs., Nov. 19, 5—7 p.m.
Artist talk at 5:30 p.m.

Press release

Time is not Even, Space is not Empty at Wesleyan University's Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery is the first event of Eiko & Koma's multi-year Retrospective Project. For this groundbreaking project, Eiko & Koma place themselves in the unusual role of self-curating a series of visual and performance exhibitions that explore their own legacy. Long familiar to the Wesleyan community as performers and teachers, Eiko & Koma are innovative artists originally from Japan. Based in New York since 1976, they have since presented their works worldwide and are the recipients of numerous honors, including the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and the American Dance Festival's Scripps Award.

Time is not Even, Space is not Empty will use video, textiles, smells, and other objects to create a textured landscape, illuminating how the intersection of space and time is dense with memories and possibilities. Both old and new performance works of Eiko & Koma are source material for this exhibition: Fission (1980), Wind (1993), Breath (1998) and Raven (2009). Together they serve to promote deeper understanding of Eiko & Koma's artistic trajectory. Furthermore, during the Zilkha show, Eiko & Koma will often be seen working and rehearsing in the space to further develop their retrospective project.

The larger Retrospective Project is comprised of new commissions, restagings of old work, the publication of a catalog, video compilations, panels, and workshops and will allow Eiko & Koma to explore the past and present of their 38-year collaboration. In the next three years, different phases of the project will be presented in New York City and other cities across the US, including a "living" installation at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2010.

The public is invited to attend the opening reception for Time is not Even, Space is not Empty on Thurs., Nov. 19 from 5—7 p.m. Starting at 5:30 p.m., Eiko & Koma will begin a performance in various parts of the gallery space. The performance will be recorded and will subsequently be shown as a part of the installation during the remainder of the exhibition. The exhibition will run from November 20 through December 20. Gallery Hours: Tuesday—Sunday, noon—4 p.m.; Friday noon—8 p.m.

Tuesday evening opening at Gallery 195

Gallery 195
195 Church St., 4th floor (NewAlliance Bank), New Haven, (203) 772-2788
Barbara Marks & Vanilia Majoros
Nov. 17, 2009—Feb. 19, 2010
Artists' reception: Tues., Nov. 17, 5—7 p.m.

Press release

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven presents an exhibition of works by Connecticut artists Barbara Marks and Vanilia Majoros at Gallery 195 at NewAlliance Bank, 195 Church St., 4th floor, New Haven. The exhibition will be on display during bank hours from Nov. 17, 2009 through Feb. 19, 2010. An artists' reception is scheduled for Tuesday, November 17, from 5—7 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

This exhibition showcases lyrical paintings and prints by Connecticut artists Barbara Marks and Vanilia Majoros.

Painter Barbara Marks earned her BFA in 2005 from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts (Old Lyme) and her MFA in 2008 from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Marks' work has been exhibited in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, and at the Galleria Giotto in Italy 's Umbria region, where she studied at the International School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture. She is a member of Artspace's (New Haven) Board of Directors.

Art historian Vanilia Majoros earned her Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She has written six monographs about European modernists and had more than 100 scholarly articles published in Canada, France, Germany, Hungary and the United States. Her work has been shown in New Haven and Hungary and is included in private collections around the world. Majoros was a participating artist in the Arts Council's recent gala fundraising event Somewhat Off the Wall and is on the faculty of Creative Arts Workshop.

India influence

Widner Gallery
Austin Art Center
Trinity College
Hartford
un/commonsigns: Charlotte Cain, Julie Evans and Kathryn Myers
Through December 15.
Kathryn Myers will give an artist's talk, Western Artists and India; Influence and Appropriation, on Nov. 18 at 4:30 p.m. in McCook Auditorium.

 Charlotte Cain

Julie Evans

Kathryn Myers

Widner Gallery presents three American artists whose diverse painting languages share common influences and themes grounded in Indian art, culture, and the rituals of daily life. Funded by Fulbright Fellowships, Charlotte Cain, Julie Evans, and Kathryn Myers have each been inspired by the significant time they've spent in India. Through silence, excess, recognition or time, their works evoke a sense of reverent observance and invite us to participate, as they offer windows into painting processes that are themselves kinds of private, devotional practices.

Saturday opening at Hello My Name is Gallery

Hello My Name Is Gallery
838 Whalley Ave., Apt. 4, New Haven
Brad Amorosino: Demon and the Dirt Bell
Jemma Williams & John Bent: Beach Front Property
Nov. 14—22, 2009.
Opening reception: Sat., Nov. 14, 7—10 p.m.

Press release

Hello My Name is Gallery is proud to present two new exhibitions opening on Nov. 14th, 2009.

Demon and the Dirt Bell, a new illustrated fairy tale by Brad Amorosino, follows the aimless quest of two disconnected lovers as they search a dark planet for a mystic bell. Legend says the toll of the bell gives boundless power but the bell is guarded by a giant sleeping demon.

Brad will be debuting the book at Hello with a release party. In addition to copies of the book, which will be on sale at the gallery, Brad will also be showing new drawings related to and inspired by the images in Demon and the Dirt Bell.

Alongside Brad's book and drawings Hello founders and proprietors Jemma Williams and John Bent will debut a large-scale sculptural collaboration. Beach Front Property takes the form of beached whale repurposed into a modest vacation home. A cross between Jemma's Jemmanimals line of plush/soft sculptures and John's paintings and illustration, Beach Front Property allows the audience to enter into a space that is both domestic and feral; at once a home and an improvised habitat.

Demon and the Dirt Bell and Beach Front Property will be on display from Nov. 14-Nov. 22. Hello will be open on Sat., Nov. 14 from 7—10 p.m., and on Sun., Nov. 15 and Nov. 22 from 11 a.m.—2 p.m.

Open studios in renovated loft building in Bridgeport Saturday

AmFab Art + Design Center
1069 Connecticut Ave., Bridgeport
AmFab Art + Design Center Presents Open Studios
Open Studios: Sat., Nov. 14, 10 a.m.—5 p.m.

Press release

There has been a lot of activity surrounding an old industrial site in East Bridgeport. One building has been torn down, pavement has been torn up; but one building remains. Who works there? Artists and "artrepreneurs" from the surrounding communities all work under one roof in the newly renovated industrial complex, which once housed the American Fabrics Company. Painters, photographers, sculptors, ceramicists, print makers, quilters, textile and jewelry designers, handbag manufacturers, clothing designers, an interior designer and even a yoga studio are busy creating and contributing to the latest cooperative association to hit the Bridgeport art scene. We invite you to come see what's happening!

The new AmFab Art + Design Center artists are opening their studios to the public on Saturday, November 14., from 10 a.m.—5 p.m. Admission and ample on site parking are free. For directions and more information please visit AmFab Art + Design Fan Page on Facebook.com, or call (203) 451-5011.

Allowing a unique opportunity for art lovers, the curious, and the young and old alike, to meet the artists in their studios, each studio reflects the artist's personal style and is where the creative process happens. The event has been held at 1069 Connecticut Ave. in the old American Fabrics Co. factory building for the last three years, but this year promises to be the most well attended, fun filled event! Now, with more than 20 artist tenants, the occupancy has quadrupled since Westrock Development LLC began renovating the complex earlier this year.

The American Fabrics factory was built sometime in the 1920's, and was once a hub of the textile industry, specializing in the manufacture of linen, lace and knits. Factories back then were built with large windows to provide light and fresh air during the summer months, which is a perfect architectural feature for an artist loft building. Activity at the factory began to decrease in the 1960's and by the 1970's the entire industrial complex was abandoned.

Also happening will be a number of studio sales by tenant artists. Denyse Schmidt Quilts is holding its annual Sample Sale; Jocelyn Braxton Armstrong Ceramics; The Cotton Press, organic children's clothing; Artbags; Laura Appleman Jewelry; and Ulla Surland Essential Design is having its annual Small Works Show, offering art work for $111, a show she began when she had her store in Fairfield. Many other artists will also be offering their work for sale.

Participating artists by town:

Bridgeport: Denyse Schmidt, Gus Moran, Richard Killeaney, Emily Larned, Steven Steele Cawman

Easton: Paul Kaiser, Laura Appleman

Fairfield: Billie Jean Sullivan, Janine Brown, Ulla Surland, Thomas Mezzanotte (in photograph), Dylan and Laura Cotton, Elizabeth Bullis-Weise

Milford: Brechin Morgan, Kvon Photography

Ridgefield: Debora Crichton

Stratford: Bruce Shekinah, Caroline Valites

Trumbull: Judy Corrigan

Westport: Jocelyn Braxton Armstrong, Jessie Levin

Contemporary West Indies art show opens Saturday at Real Art Ways

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Rockstone and Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art
Nov. 14, 2009—March 14, 2010.
Opening reception: Sat., Nov. 14, 3—6 p.m.

Press release

Real Art Ways presents some of the most challenging, recent work by artists from the Anglophone Caribbean and the diaspora in Rockstone and Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art, curated by Kristina Newman-Scott and Yona Backer. The exhibition, featuring the works of 39 artists, evokes the feeling of a high-energy "mash up." The works are juxtaposed in conversation with each other to reveal complex, fragmented stories about contemporary Anglophone Caribbean culture, challenging common assumptions about West Indian artistic expression.

Rockstone and Bootheel opens on Sat., Nov. 14 and runs through Sun., March 14, 2010. The opening reception is on Sat., Nov. 14, 3—6 p.m. Performances at the reception include Christopher Cozier's temporary sound installation, Sound System, and a performance by Zachary Fabri.

Public programs slated to take place during the run of the show include film screenings, readings, performances, live music, artist talks, lectures, and community based activities. An event schedule will be available online closer to the exhibition's opening date.

About Rockstone and Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art:

The exhibition's name comes from a Jamaican dub-metal song, "Rockstone and Bootheel," by Gibby. It's a colloquial phrase that means "taking a journey." Rockstone and Bootheel is, in fact, an exhibition composed of many journeys, sometimes conflicting, all influenced by the social, political, and economic conditions of life in the West Indies and the diaspora. "West Indies" refers to a group of islands in the Caribbean formerly under British control.

The exhibition focuses on artists from the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago, all former British colonies, each with a distinct artistic presence.

Rockstone and Bootheel offers a snapshot of recent works that draw from the region's popular culture and history. Rather than make the case for a particular West Indian aesthetic, the exhibition offers a lively glimpse into contemporary Anglophone Caribbean visual practice - an energetic "mash up" of art that lies at the intersection of popular and urban culture.

Music and dance are pervasive in West Indian culture. Many of the works in Rockstone and Bootheel incorporate sound and performative elements, drawing from Carnival, Jamaican Dancehall, and other dominant subcultures.

The works also tell stories of the region's complicated history, a history filled with conflict, transformation, and cross-cultural exchange. Through their work, the artists address issues including gender, race, sexuality and homophobia, and the rampant crime and violence plaguing many of the islands' inner cities.

The exhibition features large-scale installations, new media and multi-disciplinary works, digital projections, music videos and large-format photographs. Also featured are assemblage sculptures, paintings, and live performances.

An offsite public art project by Karyn Olivier will be installed at a West Indian grocery store in Hartford. Hartford, Connecticut has the third largest West Indian population in the United States, after New York and Miami.

The exhibition's 39 participating artists are Akuzuru, Ewan Atkinson, Lawrence Graham-Brown, Renee Cox, Christopher Cozier, Blue Curry, Sonya Clark, Makandal Dada, Annalee Davis, Khalil Deane, Zachary Fabri, Joscelyn Gardner, Marlon Griffith, Satch Hoyt, Christopher Irons, Leasho Johnson, Ras Kassa, Jayson Keeling, O'Neil Lawrence, Christina Leslie, Simone Leigh, Jaime Lee Loy, Dave McKenzie, Wendell McShine, Petrona Morrison, Karyn Olivier, Zak Ové, Ebony G. Patterson, Omari Ra, Peter Dean Rickards, Nadine Robinson, Sheena Rose, Oneika Russell, Heino Schmid, Phillip Thomas, Adele Todd, Nari Ward, Jay Will and Dave Williams.

Richard Rawlins will create an interactive website and catalog for the exhibition's international audience. Rawlins is artistic director for CMB Creative and the founder of the online magazine Draconian Switch. Like Draconian Switch, the catalog will also feature creative work by designers working in advertising. Contributing writers to the catalog include Garnette Cadogan; Nicholas Laughlin (editor of the Caribbean Review of Books); writers and critics Annie Paul and Melanie Archer; Donna P. Hope, a professor of Dancehall Culture and Reggae Studies; and poet/activist Muhammad Muwakil.

The Curators:

Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Real Art Ways' Director of Visual Arts Kristina Newman-Scott is a practicing artist. Newman-Scott has organized and curated exhibitions with a particular focus on presenting emerging artists in innovative ways. Her previous curatorial projects include Shadow Show, Archaeology of Wonder and Real Public.

Yona Backer is a co-founder of Third Streaming, a project where popular culture, contemporary art, film, fashion and design intersect. Previously, she served as the Director of Visual Arts at the Americas Society in New York and most recently as the Senior Program Officer at the Andy Warhol Foundation. Yona Backer was born in Kingston, Jamaica and raised in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Lamson exhibit opens at Artspace Thursday

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
William Lamson: Time Is Like the East River
Nov. 12—Dec. 19, 2009
Public Opening: Thurs., Nov. 12, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Artspace is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Brooklyn artist William Lamson. Frequently engaging with elemental forces such as gravity, wind, and tides, Lamson uses the time-bound mediums of performance and video to explore the limitations of human control and the material nature of time. This show marks the first occasion that Artspace has turned over the entirety of the gallery space to an individual artist.

In his new video, Time is Like the East River, Lamson takes New York's East River as his subject matter, addressing the transitions that occur with the crossing of thresholds and boundaries. The video opens with Lamson and a friend paddling two small boats toward each other from opposite sides of a broad body of water. Upon meeting in the middle, the boats link together, revealing that each boat was in fact half of a seventeen-foot canoe. As the two paddle into the distance, the camera (located on the Manhattan Bridge) slowly zooms out, revealing a radiant Manhattan skyline. Shot at slack tide, the moments between the change in direction of tidal currents, the normally turbulent river appears as calm a lake. Only in this transitional state, when the river changes directions and time is seemingly arrested, is Lamson's passage possible. The artist's homemade props and artifacts from the performance will also be on view in the gallery.

In conjunction with this video, the exhibition features two new site-specific works including a 40-foot wall drawing that evokes a theoretical timeline. The drawing is made from fuses and firecrackers, materials that both signify singular moments and lengths of time. Lamson subverts the traditional timeline progression, creating the drawing by lighting the fuse from both ends. In the adjacent room, a similar record of an event remains in the form of a series of lines of video tape stretched tight between arrows shot into opposing walls. At the end of the room, a sculpture consisting of two bows mounted in opposite directions hint at the unseen performance behind the installation. Experimental in nature, these performative works address the measurement of time and make manifest the liminal space between opposing forces.

William Lamson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He has exhibited nationally and internationally; his work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art, among numerous private collections.

Show opening at Kehler Liddell on Sunday

Kehler Liddell Gallery
873 Whalley Ave., New Haven, (203) 389-9555
Overtones Undertones: Blinn Jacobs & Marjorie Wolfe
Through Dec. 6, 2009
Artists' Reception: Sun., Nov. 8, 3—6 p.m.
Artists' Talk: Sun., Nov. 15, 2:30 p.m.

Press release

Tone, transparency, texture, color, geometry—these are apparent elements in the paintings of Blinn Jacobs and photographs of Marjorie Wolfe.

Blinn Jacobs' monochromatic surfaces are overtones of color that give way to undertones of barely visible incised lines. Whether a single work or presented in series, the colors and lines reverberate. There is both depth and delicacy to this tension of color and line. This exhibit features a new square painting series that builds off earlier honeycomb cardboard "drawings." In the cardboard works, the surface reveals the properties inherent in the material, while in her paintings the linear structure is wholly created.

Jacob's began this series during a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in the spring of 2009, her 5th residency, and notes she has gone each time with a concept in mind yet is always influenced by the surrounding seasonal landscape.

Marjorie Wolfe presents several groupings of photographs. Prominent are her greenhouses, a subject Wolfe has been working with for over 15 years. The newest compositions in this series include multiple images within a frame, a reconfiguration of many sites. Overtones of mystery and curiosity permeate as the greenhouse materials become an unrecognizable, abstract subject.

Other groupings continue to play off multiples and comprise a variety of objects with an emphasis on similarity of shapes, colors and subjects such as manhole covers, trees, or built structures.

Wolfe's photographs share a formalistic compositional coherence. It is evidence of her studied and deliberate—yet slightly skewed—view of the world. Overtones and undertones happen simultaneously as her photographs move near and far, sharp then out of focus, abstract to the familiar.

The resulting Overtones Undertones exhibition is a quietly intellectual and vividly visual continuum from both artists, expressing their specific and unique interests in repetition, abstraction, and inspiration.

There will be an artists' reception this Sun., Nov. 8, from 3—6 p.m. and an artists' talk the following Sun., Nov. 15, at 2:30 p.m.

Painting & collage show opens Saturday in New Haven

New Haven Free Public Library Art Gallery
133 Elm St., New Haven
How I Got Here: Paintings & Collages by Dr. Felix Bronner
Through Dec. 11, 2009
Artist's reception: Sat., Nov. 7, 2:30—4:30 p.m.

Press release

Felix Bronner is an award-winning Geometric-Abstract painter, inspired by artists such as Adolph Gottlieb, William Baziotes, and Mark Rothko. He studied with William Cowing, Cary Smith, and Zbigniew Grzyb.

Dr. Bronner is professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, a physiologist with primary interest in bone biology. It is Bronner's interest in the mysteries of nature that has led him to his art.

Layers of transparent shapes, over expanses of softened colors, interact with opaque geometric forms dominating the canvas. The artist builds shapes into a vague architecture, connecting geometric forms with thin lines, like girders in an unfinished building.

"In my painting, I wish to appeal to humankind's positive potential to capture the complexity of nature," writes Bronner. "This appeal is reflected in the interplay of shape and color, responding to the mystery that surrounds us, on the large scale in which we move, and on the microscale that underlies all matter."

Felix Bronner has exhibited widely in the Northeast, including galleries in Boston, New York, and Hartford. His works are in the collection of the University of Connecticut Health Center (Farmington), Homer Babbidge Library (Storrs), Alexey von Schlippe Gallery (Groton), and the Mandell Jewish Community Center (Hartford).

There will be an artist's reception for this show on Sat., Nov. 7, from 2:30—4:30 p.m.

Cartographers of memory and experience

The Akus Gallery
Shafer Hall
Eastern Connecticut State University
83 Windham Street
Willimantic, CT
860-465-4659
Wayfinding
Tuesdays and Wednesdays: 11am-5pm
Thursday: 1-7pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 2-5pm

Yvonne Jacquette, Metropolitan Triptych, 2006, pastel on black paper.

Press Release:

"These seven artists explore where we are in the world physically, politically, culturally or spiritually, and then map or chart their experience visually," said Gallery Director Elizabeth Peterson. "They use disparate methods and materials - some ancient such as the hand ground and tinted marble dust sand paintings of Tenzin Wangchuk, and some contemporary techniques such as topographical map-like plywood and cardboard constructs of Itamar Jobani.  All act as 'cartographers' of memory and experience," said Peterson.

Artists include:Janice Caswell, Itamar Jobani, Tenzin Wangchuk, Yvonne Jacquette, Nina Katchadourian, Joyce Kozloff and Sandy Litchfield.

Cultural constructs of masculinity

Jorgenson Center for the Perfoming Arts
University of Connecticut, Storrs.
Brad Guarino: Man to Man
Through Dec. 11 2009.

An Imprecise Center of Gravity, oil on canvas(diptych), 48x90" (122x228cm)

Press release

Brad Guarino’s paintings and drawings confront issues of masculinity. They are narratives aimed at exploring the struggles that men face when trying to understand their own maleness and while attempting to connect with one another. Guarino is interested in the ways in which our cultural constructs of masculinity operate to both enhance and thwart bonds between men. His visual narratives employ humor and an implied sense of threat to emphasize the sometimes absurd preconceptions and behaviors that influence relationships between men. As an accomplished artist, Guarino has received many awards including: a Fulbright Fellowship, two Griffis and Orpheus Foundation fellowships and an Artist Fellowship program grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. He has also won awards from the Society of American Graphic Artists and at Connecticut State Artist’s Exhibitions. Guarino holds an MFA from the University of Connecticut and a BFA from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. Guarino teaches painting and drawing at Eastern Connecticut State University and the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He lives and works in New London, Connecticut.

Graffiti round table Thursday night in Bridgeport

The Gallery at Black Rock
2861 Fairfield Ave., Bridgeport, (203) 814-6856
Off the Grid
Through Nov. 19, 2009
Roundtable & live art: Thurs., Nov. 5, 6:30—9 p.m.

Press release

This Thurs., Nov. 5, from 6:30—9 p.m., there will be a discussion with artist from the Gallery at Black Rock's current show Off the Grid. The Artists will discuss graffiti culture, graffiti code and techniques.

Following the discussion the artists will be available to customize your t-shirt or any article of clothing you bring. Some t-shirts will be available for sale at the Gallery.

The Artists will also do your name or sentiment graffiti-style. Suitable for framing. This will make unique and beautiful gifts. Custom work $25.