Nature underfoot at Seton Gallery

Seton Art Gallery at the University of New Haven
Dodds Hall, University of New Haven, 300 Boston Post Rd., West Haven, (203) 931-6065
Constructed Ecology

The first thing I notice when entering the Seton Gallery to check out Constructed Ecology is the smell of grass (the lawn type). The floor is covered with sod and the gallery space is sectioned off, creating two cubicles. The juxtaposition of structure and a signifier of the natural environment—living grass—challenge visitors to contemplate our relationship to nature. The exhibit is the joint effort of summer artists-in-residence Michael Galvin and Kyle Skar with the multimedia interventions of Lisa Amadeo, Nicki Chavoya and Gary Velush.

While the grass is in one sense a signifier of nature it is also an archetypal example of the domestication of nature, the human urge to dominate and control nature. The sod is laid down in rectangular segments, like a living living room carpet. The visitor's experience as one walks through the gallery is symbolic of the human impact on nature—taking it for granted, trampling it underfoot.

According to gallery director Laura Marsh, the grass is watered twice a day. Still, much of it just clinging to life, brown and dispirited. But in corners and hugging the walls along the well-trod paths, green tangles endure.

Photo from the "Constructed Ecology" opening courtesy of Seton Gallery

The architectural structures function on two levels, serving both to break up the space into geometric pathways and to create rooms housing the multimedia responses of Amadeo, Chavoya and Velush. The first "room" I enter features the looping video piece "Digital Window" by Nicki Chavoya and Lisa Amadeo. The video is a succession of scenes overlaid with found sounds, bits of banal everyday conversation and static. The video, filmed throughout New England, features scenes of bucolic woods, views of suburbia, piles of freshly cut wood in a forest clearing, cats feeding at their bowls, big box retail stores. The accumulation of imagery suggests a deep undercurrent of alienation and even looming threat. The serenity of one suburban scene is belied by the fact that Amadeo and Chavoya have filmed a cul-de-sac, the dead end of the growth imperative. In another short clip—in what I have to believe was a highly fortuitous circumstance—they captured a big truck for "Global Environmental Services" turning a suburban corner like something out of a Don DeLillo novel. All is not well in paradise.

"Digital Window": Video by Lisa Amadeo and Nicki Chavoya

In the other cubicle, Gary Velush set up a sound installation incorporating readings of the work of James Joyce, natural and mechanical sounds, strange rumblings. This cubicle is more enclosed, claustrophobic. The plywood walls are painted black with the exception of numerous unpainted areas in which the wood grain looks like ghostly figures with the knots for eyes. Cut into the walls are six portals, which are painted gold. Within each portal, Michael Galvin has placed a couple of plaster casts of mushrooms daubed with gold paint. The environment references altered states, heightened sensory awareness, magic and the spiritual quality of nature.

Constructed Ecology, which is open through Oct. 26, prompts contemplation of our relationship to nature. In thinking about that I return to the sensory image at the start of this post, that of the smell of grass when I entered the gallery. Gallery director Laura Marsh sent me photos from the opening and one of the striking things is how green and fresh the ersatz lawn looked. In its decay, this aspect of the installation speaks volumes. We were given paradise and have put up a parking lot.

Head to Institute Library for opening of "Head" Sat., Sept. 7

The Institute Library
847 Chapel St., New Haven, (203) 562-5045
Head
Sept. 7—28, 2013.
Reception: Sat., Sept. 7, Noon—2 p.m.

Press release from Stephen Vincent Kobasa

Curated by Jeff Ostergren, Head explores the manifold meanings and multiple possibilities of the word "head"—figurative, psychological, metaphoric, sexual, structural, mechanical, geographic are to be put forth and explored in a space which itself has a curious formal resemblance to a head. In a library, no less, the content of which all derives from a head and goes into other heads. Heads produce things. Ideas, products, experiences, moments, emotions. Heads are where things come from.

Joe Brittain: "Tantalus"

The exhibit features works by Lani Asuncion, Joe Brittain, Cal Crawford, Georgia Dickie, Cheryl Donegan, Stacie Johnson, Roy Lichtenstein, David Livingston, Laura Marsh and Christopher Michlig.

Soon to be a memory: "Multi-focus Memoryscapes" at Seton Art Gallery

Seton Art Gallery at the University of New Haven
Doods Hall, University of New Haven, 300 Boston Post Rd., West Haven, (203) 931-6065
Multi-focus Memoryscapes
Through Mar. 28, 2013.

Multi-focus Memoryscapes, which closes tomorrow, is a three-artist show—painter William McCarthy, painter/mixed media artist Graham D. Honaker II and photographer Hank Paper (objectivity alert: this writer's employer)—hung to exploit the complementarity of the varying imagery. And the variations are substantial—comprising Paper's perceptive and witty street photography, McCarthy's austere and spiritual landscapes and Honaker's unique mélange of collage, painting and assemblage.

One wall serves as a perfect example of how slyly this show was put together by curator Laura Marsh. Facing the entrance, the wall displays, left to right, a McCarthy painting ("These Dreams"), a Honaker mixed media work ("The stewardess") and Paper's photograph "Terminal."

Multi-focus Memoryscapes: from left to right, "These Dreams" by William McCarthy, "The Stewardess" by Graham D. Honaker II and "Terminal" by Hank Paper

The three works could barely be more different. But—Honaker's "The Stewardess" acts as the fulcrum, the hinge connecting the three works. Like all Honaker's pieces, "The Stewardess" is dense with imagery—old magazine photos, advertisements and product packaging are layered in a clear epoxy resin with abstract drips and smears of paint and his hand-cut repeated stencil image of a stewardess. As a composition—despite the fact that it employs representational imagery—it is an abstraction, defying the viewer to create narrative meaning out of the panoply of juxtapositions. It contains multitudes. Do its disparate images relate to each other in a coherent way? At least formally, they do. It is exciting to look at.

Compared to Honaker's "The Stewardess," McCarthy's "These Dreams" and Paper's "Terminal" are quiet. But there is a subliminal sense to their side-by-side display. Splashes of teal and orange paint in "The Stewardess" are answered by the presence of similar pigments in McCarthy's misty, mysterious landscape. That teal is also hinted at in the shadow in the corner of a wall abutting a window in "Terminal." And, of course, a stewardess—or flight attendant, in contemporary parlance—could be found prowling the corridors of an airport terminal.

Each of these works in their own way shows off the strengths of the individual artists. McCarthy's paintings are works of imagination rather than depictions of specific locations. They appear to be as much about the pleasures of working with paint and color as they an idealization of nature. Detail is as important to McCarthy as it is to Honaker. But for McCarthy, that attention to detail manifests itself in a completely different way—in layering colors, in the textures afforded by varying brush strokes.

Paper is a street photographer of uncanny perception, his antennae always up to serendipitous moments, some wry, some poignant. In "Terminal," the viewer see five jets in formation, presumably part of an air show, zooming past the floor-to-ceiling windows. But this evocation of unfettered motion and speed is counterbalanced by the appearance on the right of the frame of a wheelchair with its occupant's legs and clasped hands visible. Another photograph, "Where Are You?", was shot in a restaurant. A chic young blonde woman, sitting alone at a table for two, clasps her pink cell phone to her ear. On the wall behind her is a print of a Roy Lichtenstein comic strip-inspired painting of a similar blonde woman on the phone, the word balloon reading, "I don't know what to say." Paper has apparently never meta set-up he didn't recognize, camera in hand. Then there is the subtle social critique of the diorama scene in "Miss America Museum." A cutout of a young African-American girl in a red turtleneck and blue overalls clasps her hands together in delight as she surveys an array of Miss America dolls, games and photos while a crown is placed on her head. But all the images of Miss America are white.

Memory being the thematic hook of this show, it's notable that the concept is applicable to each artist's work in different ways. McCarthy's landscapes are works of memory and imagination, conjuring a sense of place out of his recollection of light, scenery and paint. Paper's photograph's capture moments in memory but do so in a way that invites deeper consideration and contemplation. The imagery in Honaker's works is treated much the same way memories are in dreams—as material to be reshuffled and re-contextualized, to be made strange and fantastic. Perhaps, like memories in dreams, these three artists' works shouldn't fit together. But they do.

Three shows open Thursday evening at Real Art Ways

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Johannes DeYoung: Ego Loser
Steffani Jemison: Such is Your Luck
Phil Lique and Laura Marsh: Half Off
Ego Loser and Such Is Your Luck on view Apr.19—Jun. 17, 2012; Half Off on view Apr. 19—Jul. 8, 2012.
Opening reception during Creative Cocktail Hour: Thurs., Apr. 19, 6—8 p.m. Admission is $10/$5 Real Art Ways members.

Press release

Real Art Ways opens three exhibitions Thurs., Apr. 19, during Creative Cocktail Hour.

• Ego Loser, by Johannes DeYoung, explores shifting identities in a series of short videos.

• Such is Your Luck, by Steffani Jemison, investigates how luck, faith and accidents impact moments that matter and make up a person's life.

• Half Off, an exhibition curated by John O'Donnell of work by Phil Lique and Laura Marsh. Half Off examines experiences and products of American consumer culture through sculpture, works on paper, video and documented performance.


Johannes DeYoung's videos are essentially portraits. The characters in his videos occupy dream spaces that reflect, distort and magnify reality. Ego Loser features composite animations of talking heads that spout affirmations, esoteric advice, spam, and legalese from online sources. Humor is an entry point in the work: absurd narratives expand to confront failure and mortality. The final results are images and sounds that teeter between humorous and grotesque.

Steffani Jemison's Such Is Your Luck is concerned with the ways that we make sense of the matter of our lives——the values and the raw materials; the episodes, the contingencies, and the accidents.


Several pieces in Such Is Your Luck are part of a larger body of work that uses an inspirational text, "If I Could," as the starting point for interventions. This body of work began, in 2009, when Jemison read an article in the Chicago Sun Times about the brutal beating and murder of Derrion Albert. The family struggled to understand how their honor roll student's life could have ended in such violence. His grandfather said Derrion spent most of his evenings studying. He had copied a poem called "Affirmations for Living" and posted it where he could view it while doing homework. Each phrase begins, "If I could…," and the final line triumphantly concludes, "If I could…and I can…so I WILL!" The Chicago Sun Times reported that he was a victim of random violence; he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Laura Marsh and Phil Lique share a similar focus: to critique misguided American inclinations. Half Off treads the line between patriotic nostalgia and dissonance. The artists overtly employ icons such as sneakers, twenty-dollar bills, the American flag and decorative patterns to reference consumer illusions and product promises. A blind celebration of the American way informs their work as notions of discounts and deals are positioned in relation to ideals and identity.


"When looking at Laura and Phil's work I was immediately struck by the perfect balance of profundity and superficiality. Subtlety is not the aim; dissonance is rarely subtle," comments John O'Donnell, Visual Art Manager at Real Art Ways.


An opening reception will be held on Thurs., April 19, from 6—8 p.m. as part of Creative Cocktail Hour, Real Art Ways' monthly third Thursday gathering. Creative Cocktail Hour is from 6—10 p.m.; admission is $10/$5 Real Art Ways members.

Ego Loser, by Johannes DeYoung and Such is Your Luck, by Steffani Jemison, will be on view through Sunday, June 17, 2012. Half Off, by Phil Lique and Laura Marsh will be on view through Sunday, July 8, 2012.

Elegy for Nature

The Institute Library
847 Chapel St., New Haven, (203) 562-5045
Out of Nature: An Exhibition of Alternatives
Through Jan. 14, 2012, 2011.

Who could blame nature for fighting back? The human species has been delivering blow after blow against the natural world for centuries.

Out of Nature, an art show in the wonderful little Institute Library space, isn't really about Mother Nature going on the offensive. Still, Michael Oatman's deadpan collage "Study for the Birds I" depicts a platoon of our feathered brethren and sistren packing some heavy heat. This collection of prints, collages, paintings and sculptures with (mostly) representational and figurative depictions of natural subjects does bring to mind our alienation from nature and the blowbacks that increasingly portends.

Curated by Stephen Vincent Kobasa, Out of Nature offers a menagerie both playful and prosaic. On the prosaic end of the spectrum we find Amy Arledge's (Web) taut, naturalistic copper plate etchings—a crow, horseshoe crabs and the grim "Honey Bees: Colony Collapse Disorder."


Over at the whimsical pole are the wall sculptures of Kim Mikenis (Web)—colorful animal characters like something out of children's literature. The goat-like "Marbles Dunleavy," crafted out of paper and colored with acrylic paint, has its big yap open as though it's haranguing its fellow barnyard inhabitants. Occupying pride of place on the floor is Laura Marsh's large Frankensteinian soft sculpture with hard internal armature. "Squawk" is an imposing hybrid turkey and peacock.


While all the works in the show evidence the technical skills of the respective artists, Joseph Smolinski's "Narwhal" (image courtesy of the artist and Mixed Greens, New York) particularly moved me. Smolinski regularly juxtaposes nature to its technological simulacra—trees and cell phone towers being his most common motif. This trope is manifest in "Narwhal," a simple composition of the unicorn-like marine mammal breaking the surface of the arctic seas. In the misty distance we can see what might be an offshore oil platform. Beneath the waters a plant akin to a palm tree hides cell transmitters amid its fronds.


If "Narwhal" were just a graphite drawing—a favored medium of Smolinski's—it would still be evocative. But his color work is so strong that the image rises to another level. One senses both the arctic chill and the ebbing of the arctic chill in the wake of climate change. Climate change's victim—the narwhal—is foregrounded, its proximate cause—the oil rig—is there in the background.

It is elegiac, suffused with loss.

Institute Library show opening and greeting of the artists this Saturday

The Institute Library
847 Chapel St., New Haven, (203) 562-5045
Out of Nature: An Exhibition of Alternatives
Dec. 17, 2011—Jan. 14, 2012, 2011.
Greeting of the Artists: Sat., Dec. 17, Noon—2 p.m.

Press release

W.B. Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium":

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing...

Curated by Stephen Vincent Kobasa, Out of Nature: An Exhibition of Alternatives will feature works in various media by Amy Arledge (Web), Mia Brownell (Web), Paul Daukas (Web), Brian Huff (Web), Barbara Marks (Web), Laura Marsh (Web), Kim Mikenis (Web), Michael Oatman, Amy Jean Porter (Web, see image) and Joseph Smolinski (Web).


The exhibition will be on display through Jan. 14, 2012. A greeting of the artists will take place this Saturday, Dec. 17, from noon to 2 p.m.

Greeting of the Artists at A-Space Gallery this Friday, Nov. 18

A-Space at West Cove Studios
30 Elm St., West Haven, (203) 627-8030
Two for One: Recent Work by Laura Marsh and Phil Lique
Nov. 17—Dec. 10, 2011
Greeting of the Artists: Fri., Nov. 18, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

A two-person show featuring recent work by Laura Marsh and Phil Lique opens this Friday (tomorrow) at A-Space Gallery at West Cove Studios in West Haven. They don’t have “receptions” at A-Space but they do have “Greetings of the Artists” and if you go to that, you may find yourself thinking you are at an opening reception. But you aren’t.

Artists' and scientists' reception Thursday evening at Haskins Laboratories

Haskins Laboratories
300 George St. 9th Floor, New Haven, (203) 772-2788
Mind Sets
Through Jan. 28, 2011, 2009.
Artists' and scientists’ reception: Thurs., Nov. 4, 5—7 p.m. (with a panel discussion at 5 p.m.)

Press release

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven, in collaboration with Haskins Laboratories, presents Mind Sets at Haskins Laboratories, 300 George St., 9th floor, New Haven. This exhibition will be on display now through Jan. 28, 2011. Regular viewing hours are Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. An artists’ and scientists’ reception is scheduled for Thurs., Nov. 4, from 5—7 pm, with a panel discussion at 5 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

Curated by Cat Balco and Debbie Hesse with Curatorial Assistant Steven Olsen, Mind Sets explores the potential of collaboration between artists and scientists. New initiatives and ideas result from conversations between artists and scientists, offering new ways of approaching concepts through interdisciplinary communication.

Featured artists include Fritz Horstman, Zachary Keeting, Lucy Kim, Eva Lee, Martha Lewis, Laura Marsh, Kim Mikenis, Carol Padberg, Dushko Petrovich, Cuyler Remick, Matt Sargent, Bill Solomon, Susan Classen-Sullivan and Paul Theriault. Students of Natacha Poggio, a multidisciplinary designer on faculty at Hartford Art School and Director of the Design Global Change initiative, have collaboratively produced a catalogue and graphic images for the exhibit.

Haskins Laboratories is an independent, international, multidisciplinary community of researchers conducting basic research on spoken and written language. Exchanging ideas, fostering collaborations, and forging partnerships across the sciences, it produces groundbreaking research that enhances our understanding of—and reveals ways to improve or remediate—speech perception and production, reading and reading disabilities, and human communication.

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven is a regional nonprofit arts organization that provides leadership to, and advocates for, member artists and institutions throughout the Greater New Haven area. Visit the Arts Council at www.newhavenarts.org and follow the organization on Facebook (www.facebook.com/artscouncilofgreaternewhaven) and Twitter (NewHavenArts).

Two events Saturday at Artspace

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Grant Writing Workshop: We Are Pleased To Inform You
Artspace Underground
Sat., Apr. 17, 2010. The workshop will be held 12—3 p.m.; Artspace Underground from 8—11 p.m.

Press release

Two events this Saturday at Artspace in New Haven:

We Are Pleased to Inform You

We Are Pleased To Inform You is a Saturday grant writing workshop from 12—3 p.m. The workshop will be led by guest artist, Brainard Carey. Carey has exhibited in the Whitney Biennial and numerous solo museum shows and is the co-founder of the art collective known as Praxis, which he created with his wife Delia Bajo.

Praxis is an internationally acclaimed art collaborative whose works have been featured in the Whitney Biennial, MOMA, PS 1, The Reina Sofia, and most recently in a solo show at The Whitney Museum. Currently Praxis has several traveling shows in progress. Carey also works as a career coach and mentor to artists.

Artspace is pleased to invite Carey to speak about his professional practice, his extensive research in the grant-writing field, current trends in the art market, and his own artist consultation business. The three-hour workshop will reveal the diverse approaches to guide artists in their own pursuits and refine their written materials. The workshop will cover a broad spectrum of topics from how to understand arts organizations and their staff to customizing application packages to submit to galleries, museums, and foundations.

For additional information, please contact Laura Marsh, Communications and Program Director: lauralmarsh [AT] artspacenh.org. This Artspace workshop is $30; the proceeds of your order will help to fund a workshop series in 2011. Please reserve your seat today: https://artspacenh.org/events.asp



Just got out of a Bad Romance? Can't get off the Telephone? Well, put on your Poker Face, play the Love Game, and Just Dance at Artspace Underground on Saturday, Apr. 17, 2010, from 8—11 p.m.! Think you can wear those McQueen platforms better than the Lady, herself? Then walk, walk, fashion baby because the most inspired Gaga look will win a gift certificate from 116 Crown! Try your best, but dress to impress.

Or, if Gaga isn't your thing, no big, we've got two bands and a multi-media puppet show performance right up your alley. SHARK, a three-piece ethereal rock band from both New Haven and Boston, are, according to The New Haven Advocate, great candidates "for listening in the car late at night or putting on the headphones and drifting off to wherever you want to go." Drift over to Artspace for Saint Bernadette, a five-piece erotically-charged aural accord that meshes a disparate template of psychadelic-meets-arena rock with a peppering of jazz and candy-coated sing-along choruses. Kamikaze puppeteer Kim Mikenis promises to tickle your senses with her unique and always original live performance pieces.

So there you have it, SHARK and Saint Bernadette will get you woozy, Kim Mikenis will perform a doozy, and DJ Sofia Cavallo will keep you schmoozy. If you arrive between 8 and 9 pm, get in for $2 with your school I.D. After 9 pm, $5 admission includes free spiked-punch until it's gone. $6 drinks from 116 Crown. Be there or be square. For more information about Artspace Underground or to find out how you can get involved, please contact Madison Moore: madison.moore [AT] yale.edu