Juried "How Simple Can You Get?" show opens Friday at Creative Arts Workshop

Creative Arts Workshop Hilles Gallery
80 Audubon St., New Haven, (203) 562-4927
How Simple Can You Get: Hillary Charnas, Rebecca Murtaugh
Mar. 7—Apr. 3, 2014.
Opening reception: Fri., Mar. 7, 5—7 p.m.

Press release from Creative Arts Workshop

Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) presents new work by Hillary Charnas (Glastonbury, CT) and Rebecca Murtaugh (Brooklyn, NY), prizewinners of the 2013 juried exhibition How Simple Can You Get? Robert Storr, Professor of Painting and Dean of the School of Art at Yale University, served as juror. The Prizewinners show will be on view in CAW’s Hilles Gallery from Mar.7 to Apr. 3, 2014. An opening reception is scheduled for Fri., Mar. 7 from 5—7 pm. The public is invited to attend.

The juror’s intent for the exhibition from which he chose Charnas and Murtaugh, was to assemble a collection of artwork in which "complexity has been reduced to its most essential and visually arresting expression." Open to any visual media, the juried show ultimately included pieces that ranged from minimalist forms to intricate constructions.

Multimedia artist Hillary Charnas presents a selection of work from her series In A New Light, a collection of photographs that feature found objects reimagined and resurrected into two-dimensional abstract forms. It appears to the viewer that the artist has discovered and examined overlooked and neglected items that might once have occupied a place of belonging. By depicting the objects as specimens, Charnas has stripped away the ephemeral nature of familiarity, leaving the audience with images to decipher as they will.

Hillary Charnas: "Stanton Twins"

Rebecca Murtaugh will exhibit a collection of sculptures from her project entitled Alluring Repulsions. The three-dimensional abstract forms are created using a variety of materials and techniques that draw from both painting and sculpture. Murtaugh describes her interest "in alchemy and the history of objects and materials for their transformative potential… improvisation and intuition drive my actions along with a strong desire and consideration of beauty, form and color." Similar to themes in Charnas' work, Murtaugh gives discarded materials a new life. With titles like "Aequalis: Sunburst and Russian Violet" and "Stand: Regatta and Reflecting Pool," the artist’s non-representational sculptures offer particular references from which the viewer can engage on an aesthetic and intellectual level.

Rebecca Murtaugh: "Aperture: Rain and Cool Lava"

Concurrent with Prizewinners: Hillary Charnas | Rebecca Murtaugh, the Creative Works Gallery will feature two exhibitions. Detroit Dalliance is a collection of photographs by Bart Connors Szczarba, on display from Mar. 7 through 21. An opening reception will be held on Mar. 7 from 5 to 7 pm. Following will be an exhibition sponsored by Susan Foshauer, featuring the work of multiple artists working across a variety of mediums. This group show will be on display from Mar. 28 through Apr. 11. The opening reception will take place on Mar. 28 from 5—7 pm.

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.

Opening tonight: "Constructed Ecology" at Seton Gallery at UNH

Seton Art Gallery at the University of New Haven
Doods Hall, University of New Haven, 300 Boston Post Rd., West Haven, (203) 931-6065
Constructed Ecology
Sept. 19—Oct. 26, 2013.
Reception: Thurs., Sept. 19, 5—9 p.m.

Press release from Seton Art Gallery

Constructed Ecology aims to enhance the viewer's spatial perception using light, sound, video and texture. When entering the gallery space, one is confronted with two luminescent cubes in a field of grass. These architectural vessels create tension between themselves and the triple L-shaped gallery. This spatial narrative is akin to the first day of spring, recalling the feeling of grass beneath one's feet as one takes in a deep breath of fresh air.

The exhibit will be on view through Oct. 26. An opening reception is scheduled for Thurs., Sept. 19, from 5—9 p.m.

This exhibition blurs the lines of the natural and the engineered. Subsequently, the notion of "viewing" space and "passage" through space is inhibited, forcing the viewer to slow down and interact with the work. The installation encourages one to challenge their perception of curated and regulated spaces from that of nature and the wilderness.

Seton has become more experiential as two artists, Michael Galvin and Kyle Skar, work for one month as artists-in-residence. They have customized the gallery and used it as an incubator for a large-scale project. This discovery aims to challenge the traditional views of exhibition space through an interaction with the existing architectural space. Galvin and Skar have invited two local video collaborators Lisa Amadeo and Nicki Chavoya to develop and project video content within one of the architectural vessels. Gary Velush will customize an auditory piece in the second space. Within this interdisciplinary exhibition, a variety of sensory experiences will be produced.

Constructed Ecology raises questions and draws awareness to the built environment, encouraging viewers to seek out natural spaces. This interdisciplinary project combines architecture, sculpture, digital media and natural forms resulting in conversations about manufactured experiences and the air we breathe. This discourse is relevant to the development of the Seton Gallery as a cultural center for both the University and the New Haven community.

Two shows open Thursday during Creative Cocktail Hour at Real Art Ways

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Tadashi Moriyama: Planetalgia
William Villalongo: Fierce!
Apr. 18—Jul. 4, 2013.
Opening reception during Creative Cocktail Hour: Thurs., Apr. 18, 6—8 p.m. Admission is $10/$5 Real Art Ways members.

Press release from Real Art Ways

The galleries at Real Art Ways will hold entirely new art for the next Creative Cocktail Hour on Thurs., Apr. 18, from 6-10 p.m. Opening receptions for Planetalgia by StepUp 2012 selectee Tadashi Moriyama and Fierce! by William Villalongo are the same night from 6—8 p.m. Admission is $10/$5 for Real Art Ways members.

Moriyama's Planetalgia is an accumulation of paintings, sculptures, performance, and animation, inspired by concepts from the book Lunartix by Seigou Matsuoka. Matsuoka coins the term "Planetary Nostalgia" as a sweet and bitter sentiment. Loosely translated, he writes, "Since we cannot escape from the earth, we feel despair for our fate and leave our destination on the unreachable but intimate moon, and yearn for it endlessly." This notion shapes the visual and conceptual language of the exhibition.

Tadashi Moriyama: "Planetalgia"

Tadashi Moriyama was born and raised in Japan, moving to the United States in 2001 at the age of 21. He received his BA in 2003 from the Tyler School of Art and his MFA in 2006 from the University of Pennsylvania. Moriyama's work has exhibited internationally and across the United States. Recent solo and group shows include Johansson Projects, San Francisco; Jonathan Ferrara, NewOrleans; Artiscope, Belgium; Artprojx cinema Volta art fair, New York.

Moriyama lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, using a variety of media, miniature drawing, sculpture and animation to create a form of unique narrative. He draws extensively on his own experience as a metropolitan resident, a Tokyo-raised New Yorker.

The term "Fierce!" in American vernacular language has a double meaning, which speaks to feminine beauty as a representation of strength and authority. Beauty and power are fused together to express an attitude that is antithetical to the common notions of both ideas. This exhibition brings together a selection of Villalongo's recent works subverting themes found in Primitivism, a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples. Through Villalongo's velvety, looking-glass paintings and drawings, the artist questions an exotic gaze directed toward "otherness" by inverting the genre of Modern Abstract painting. A clan of lake dwelling maidens pull models of Western art radically out of context, reconsidering standards of Western beauty and the possible intersections of art and survival.

William Villalongo: "Fierce!"

William Villalongo lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He was born in 1975 in Hollywood, FL and raised in the town of Bridgeton, NJ. Villalongo is the recipient of the prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptor's Grant. His work is included in several notable collections including the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Princeton University Art Museum. His work has been reviewed in Art In America, The New Yorker and The New York Times. Villalongo is currently represented by the Susan Inglett Gallery in New York, and PEVETO Fine Art in Houston.

Saturday evening opening at CaRo Gallery in Meriden

CaRo Art Studio and Gallery
290 Pratt St., Meriden, (203) 886-6809
Landon R. Wilson: American—The Fabric of of Lives
May 12—June 3, 2011.
Opening reception, Sat., May 12, 6—10 p.m.

Press release

Ledyard, CT artist Landon R. Wilson presents American: The Fabric of Our Lives. As the winner of CaRo Art Gallery's America Pros and Cons Juried Show in 2011, Wilson has expanded his multimedia art into a politically fueled solo exhibit.

See and hear more about Landon's art, which will surely become thought provoking to the viewer. Politically based, this exhibit will challenge the viewer to take a step back to understand what is really being said.

Join us May 12, 2012 from 6—10 p.m. to the opening of America: The Fabric of Our Lives.

Artist statement:

My choice of subject matter comes at a time in America’s history where many feel that we are at a critical masse. America is no longer the invincible super hero ready to do battle with all of the world’s evils. Our military is stretched thin. Millions are unemployed, infrastructure and education are on the backburner and money continues to be the deciding factor in America’s politics. The sides are drawn, whose side are you on? We are in a tug of war and the center is being ripped apart. Soon it will be shredded completely and America will be left in pieces.

I have chosen to paint subjects who have all risen to power, some more powerful than others, and used the American flag, shredded and torn, as a backdrop. Some are heroes, some are villains; all have shaped our lives in one way or another.

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.

Opening reception Saturday at Gallery at Still River Editions

The Gallery at Still River Editions
128 East Liberty St., Danbury, (203) 791-1474
Gene Gort: Intellectual Property
Through June 29, 2012.
Opening Reception: Sat., Apr. 21, 4—6 p.m.

Press release

The exhibition Intellectual Property at the Gallery at Still River Editions features archival digital print editions of new work by multi-disciplinary artist Gene Gort. His new series reveals a hidden beauty that emerges from his interaction with the technology meant to keep people from illegally copying movies. Some of the prints have elements that look familiar, while others are pure geometric abstracts.

Gort says of the project in his artist's statement:

Intellectual Property focuses on the visual noise generated from attempting to extract video from copyright encrypted commercial DVD's. As an educator who uses video clips as a mainstay of my classroom practice, I am always showing samples from various sources.

Recently, while attempting to extract sequences from mainstream movies, I was struck by the endless variation of intentional visual noise this process generates in order to keep me and everyone else from illegally copying movies. Through various encoding and decoding software, I found that the variability and randomness of the encryption algorithms produced remarkably unpredictable distortions and abstractions of the images. So much so that it was nearly impossible to get the same results twice.

The images in this series are screen-grabs from this process; a kind of performance that I do responding to the real-time events I am watching on screen. The titles are an ironic pairing of 'intellectual property' and the film title, like 'Stolen', 'Catch Me If You Can', 'Precious', 'Babel' or 'Gone with the Wind'. The work has nothing to do with plot or characters depicted in the movies nor do they mimic any of the imagery or scenes.

Gene Gort is a visual artist whose artistic practice is concerned with making the ordinary significant. He is keenly aware of the role of whatever medium he uses in this process be it video production, installation, digital printmaking or multi-media performance.


The exhibition will be on display through June 29. There will be an artist's reception on Sat., Apr. 21, from 4—6 p.m.

Multimedia happening at new NEST Art Center in Bridgeport this Saturday night

NEST Art Center
1720 Fairfield Ave., Bridgeport, CT
Cinematic Multiplex 4 the Senses
Sat., Jan. 7, 2012, 6:30 p.m. til "late."
$5 cover includes refreshments. BYO wine.

Press release

It's a happening, baby! At the new NEST (North East Space/Time) Art Center (directions) in Bridgeport this Saturday, Liquid Nitrate Films and A/V Xperiment present a Film and Video Experiment Multi-Media Festival—Cinematic Multiplex 4 the Senses. There will be a $5 cover, which includes refreshments. Attendees are encouraged to BYO wine.

Original Films by original local filmmakers in a huge warehouse filled with people and Buttered Popcorn. View these films on our huge panoramic professional movie screen 20 x 40 ft. Six screens to show their films on. Invite your friends and family.

6:30—9 p.m.: Peter Konsterlie Art Works & Productions—Tec color tidal scope squidialous films:

1 • The Beatles hold their breath with excerpts from “Yellow Submarine” (Blue Meanies optional)
2 • French surrealist Jean Painleve featuring the sounds of Yo La Tengo “The Sea Horse”
3 • “CULTOONS” rare and lost, and zany cartoons from the great beyond
4 • Crowd-pleasing “The Way Things Go” a Duchampian extravaganza, and a mousetrap of a movie!
5 • Stan Brakhage’s landmark film “Moth Light” and much, much more!
6 • Bjork “Hidden Place”

9—12 pm: Live video art, project Internet, video games, compter art, animations, open mic poetry reading.

VIDEO PRODUCTIONS:
Kelly Bigelow Becerra
Sean Corvino
Greg Catalano
Dustin DeMillo
Rob Greenberg
Tony Juliano
Mary Jo Lombardo
Rob Parkman
Doug Poger
Lisa Seidenberg

Lisa Spetrini and friends, Hula Hoops
This is a Hula-Hoop Friendly Event !

OPEN CALL—BYO DVD!

Opening reception for "Slipstreams" at Franklin Street Works in Stamford tonight

Franklin Street Works
41 Franklin St., Stamford, 06901, (203) 253-0404
Slipstreams: Contemporary Artistic Practice and the Shaping of Time
Dec. 1, 2011—Jan. 21, 2012.
Opening Reception: Thurs., Dec. 1 5—8 p.m.
Other events:
Fri., Dec. 2, 12—5 p.m., Anna Lundh Interactive Art Project
Sat., Dec. 3, 12—3 p.m., Anna Lundh Interactive Art Project
Sat., Dec. 3, 4 p.m., Anna Lundh performance

Press release

The perception, measurement, and manipulation of time in our everyday lives is a performance, both personal and shared. We agree on the indications of clocks and calendars, yet often disagree on the length of collective experiences, such as prayer or a television program. Language also influences how we “feel” a moment’s passage. Phrases such as “running out of time,” “wasting time,” and “on time,” cause us to feel hurried or relaxed, even responsible or irresponsible. Rituals, both societal and self-made, do the same.

Exploring these ideas through contemporary artworks made between 1964 and today, Franklin Street Works presents Slipstreams: Contemporary Artistic Practice and the Shaping of Time, curated by Terri C. Smith and Joseph Whitt. This group exhibition features artists who consider how time is shaped and made visible through performed acts, unique measuring systems, and other uncommon means. Artists include: Pierre Bismuth, Tehching Hsieh, Tara Kelton, Anna Lundh, Samuel Rousseau, Stephen Sollins, Conrad Ventur and Andy Warhol. The exhibition is on view from Dec. 1—Jan. 21, with an opening reception on Thurs., Dec. 1 from 5—8 p.m.

With support by iaspis, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual Artists, an interactive art project and performance by Anna Lundh will also be part of the exhibition’s opening weekend. From 12—5 p.m. on Fri., Dec. 2 and from 12—3 p.m. on Sat., Dec. 3, Lundh will reside in the gallery and ask visitors about how they visualize time as part of her ongoing artwork "The Year is a Python that swallowed an Elephant." She will give a subtly humorous, 40-minute performance that is informed by that ongoing project on Sat., Dec. 3 at 4 p.m. in the Franklin Street Works downstairs gallery. The exhibition, interactive activities with Lundh, and performance are all free and open to the public.

In Slipstreams, a myriad of approaches to time weave throughout Franklin Street Works’ three galleries. Performances and documentation address controlled, chronological actions in Tehching Hsieh’s "Time Piece" and Anna Lundh’s "The Year is a Python that swallowed an Elephant." Hsieh’s work exhibits a brutal attention to discipline and endurance as a way of expressing the isolation of his early years as an “alien immigrant”. Curious about how others visualize time, Lundh mimics the systems and appearances of scientific research in her project, which has included more than 150 test subjects so far. Conrad Ventur and Pierre Bismuth (see image) mine pop culture’s recent past, including music and film, for source material. Ventur often collapses his images into immersive, hypnotic video installations, while Bismuth juxtaposes scenes from vintage cinema with the drawn line in his "Following the Right Hand of..." series.

The exhibition also includes works that focus on familiar objects, both everyday and iconic. Stephen Sollins alters daily newspaper TV guides with Liquid Paper and permanent markers in his "Static" series so that text is obscured and only the schedule’s grid is visible. Samuel Rousseau’s minimalist video installation, "Un peu d'éternité (a little eternity)," uses a candle and endless projection of a flame to convey an endlessness that our minds can grasp only speculatively; while Andy Warhol takes a characteristically deadpan approach with his film "Empire," placing a camera in front of the Empire State Building and shooting it for 24 hours. Tara Kelton’s "Time Travel" also relies on a stationary camera, pairing it with her laptop's lens to see a split second into the future. Slipstreams aims to allow its audience a unique exploration of multiple ways in which time can be visualized and reconfigured, prompting questions about how we perceive and maintain our inner imaginings of time.

Franklin Street Works is a new, not-for-profit contemporary art space, café, and social gathering place in Stamford, Connecticut. It produces original on-site and off-site exhibitions, artist projects, and related programming. Located in renovated row houses on Franklin Street, the two- story space includes three galleries and a café. Franklin Street Works embraces innovative art and exhibition practices, a DIY attitude, and a workshop approach to its programming, audiences, and organizational structure. The activities and attitudes of the café reflect and expand on the organization’s mission as a contemporary art venue.

Terri C. Smith is the Creative Director of Franklin Street Works. With approximately fifteen years of curatorial experience, she has created exhibitions and related programming for museums and other not-for-profit art institutions, including award-winning contemporary art programs for Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee. After more than ten years at the Museum, she returned to school, earning an MA from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies in 2008. Smith has curated exhibitions for venues in Connecticut, Florida, New York, Oregon, and Tennessee. Other projects have included commissioned catalog essays and journalistic projects for print and radio.

Joseph Whitt is the Assistant Curator at Franklin Street Works and a frequent guest curator at several art venues in New York City. As former Assistant Curator at Vanderbilt University’s Fine Arts Gallery in Nashville, he was responsible for solo exhibitions by Harmony Korine and Jules de Balincourt, as well as a group exhibition pairing the Polaroids of Andy Warhol with the works of emerging artists Grant Worth and David Horvitz. His most recent curatorial project, "Magic For Beginners," at P.P.O.W. Gallery (NYC), was a critic’s pick in Time Out New York and garnered a prominent review in The New York Times.

Artists' reception Saturday at UConn Stamford for two-person show

The UConn Stamford Art Gallery
One University Pl., Stamford, (203) 251-8400
Color and Line: On and Off the Wall: Sam Wiener and Lori Glavin
Oct. 21—Nov. 23, 2011.
Artists' reception: Sat., Oct. 22, 2—4:30 p.m.

Press release

Color and Line: On and Off the Wall includes recent works by sculptor Sam Wiener and multimedia artist Lori Glavin. Wiener exhibits sculptures and collages united by vibrant color and a feeling of whimsy. Glavin's works include new polystyrene constructions and related color studies in oil. Bright color, strong line, and energetic patterns complement Wiener's sculptural works; the result is a complex interplay of color and line.


There will be an artists' reception for this show this Sat., Oct. 22, from 2—4:30 p.m.

Artists' & Scientists' reception Thursday evening at Haskins Laboratories

Haskins Laboratories
300 George St. 9th Floor, New Haven, (203) 772-2788
Rules of Conversion: Artists Explore Encoded and Embedded Language
Sept. 22, 2011—Jan. 25, 2012.
Artists' and Scientists' reception: Thurs., Sept. 22, 5-7 p.m.

Press release

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven, in collaboration with Haskins Laboratories, presents Rules of Conversions: Artists Explore Encoded and Embedded Language at Haskins Laboratories, 300 George St., 9th floor, New Haven. This exhibition will be on display September 22 through January 25, 2012. Regular viewing hours are Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. An artists’ and scientists’ reception is scheduled for Thurs., Sept. 22, from 5—7 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

Curated by Carol Padberg (Web) and Debbie Hesse (Web) with Curatorial Assistant Steven Olsen, Rules of Conversion explores encoded and embedded language. Increasingly, artists find methods to manipulate, find meaning in, and apply the structures of language as they conceptualize and create new work. In Rules of Conversion, each individual piece will provide context, with Haskins Laboratories providing a larger context for the collection as a whole. Where Haskins Laboratories studies the mechanisms that allow ideas and information to be shared, Rules of Conversion examines the myriad methods of delivery.

Some featured artists include Amaranth Borsuk (Web), Qian Lin, Karen Shaw (Web), Jeanne Criscola (Web), and Laurie Frick (Web, see image below). A full artist list will be available closer to the opening day of the exhibition.


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.

Saturday evening openings at Real Art Ways

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Olu Oguibe
Saya Woolfalk: Institute of Empathy
Oct. 23, 2010—Mar. 20, 2011
Opening reception: Sat., Oct. 23, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Conceptual artist Olu Oguibe brings a 40-foot New England stonewall into the Real Art Ways gallery to examine its role as an iconic amalgamation of geology, history, craft and metaphor. Working together with local masons and using area field stones, Oguibe has created a stonewall as a neo-minimalist gesture where the natural and cultural histories of New England take form and become art.

There will be a free opening reception Sat., Oct. 23 from 6—8 p.m. Real Art Ways is located at 56 Arbor Street in Hartford's Parkville neighborhood.

Oguibe describes the New England stonewall as both a line and a limn, an illuminated space where the natural and cultural histories of New England take form and become art. By moving the stonewall into the gallery space, and making it part of the vocabulary of conceptual art, Oguibe hopes to generate a new, inclusive discourse that draws no line between aesthetic or formal concerns, on one hand, and environmental, cultural, or social discourses, on the other. Oguibe, an international artist whose work often deals with place, says, "I believe that it is time that New England artists rebuild the bridge between art and the museum public. By returning to the peculiar natural elements and forms that define the region and its environment, I hope this exhibition helps renew the public's interest in the beauty and uniqueness of the region."

Olu Oguibe is a conceptual artist whose work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, including the biennials of Venice, Havana, Busan Korea, and Johannesburg, South Africa as well as the Whitney Museum; PS1-MoMa; the Smithsonian; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Migros Museum, Zurich; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastrich; Whitechapel Gallery; Royal Festival Hall; the United Nations Headquarters; and many others. He has also served as curator or co-curator for many international exhibitions including shows at the Tate Modern in London and the Venice Biennial. Oguibe is a Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut.

Using craft based installation, video, photography, drawing and live performance, artist Saya Woolfalk invites Real Art Ways visitors to re-imagine the world through her fictional creation, Institute of Empathy. The piece is an installment in Woolfalk's ongoing creation of another universe in which boundaries between man-woman, plant-animal, machine-human are blurred.

There will be a free opening reception Sat., Oct. 23 from 6—8 p.m. Real Art Ways is located at 56 Arbor Street in Hartford's Parkville neighborhood. Institute of Empathy will come alive with a dance performance from Scapegoat Garden's Deborah Goffee at the opening reception and from University of Hartford dancers under the direction of Stephen Pier and Bonita Weisman during upcoming Creative Cocktail Hours.

Woolfalk has used conversations with Hartford area doctors, political activists, dancers and others as a springboard for Institute of Empathy's subject matter: a group of "Empathics" who seek to understand truth through reason and mysticism, and to change themselves and their world. By blending fact and fiction, Woolfalk constructs playful narratives that immerse us in the logic of another place, ultimately exploring how ideas evolve in our own culture.

Woolfalk says, "Culture is not static. It is an ever-emerging phenomenon and I try to mirror this process in this body of work."

Artist Saya Woolfalk re-imagines the world in multiple dimensions (sculpture, installation, and painting to performance and video). She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, completed the Whitney Independent Study Program in Studio, and holds an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Brown University. She has exhibited at PS1/MoMA; Deitch Projects; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Momenta Art; Performa09; and many others. She has received an Art Matters grant to Japan, a NYFA grant, a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA grant.

Three new shows open tonight at Real Art Ways' Creative Cocktail Hour

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Wade Aaron: A Work in Progress
Robin Mandel: Present
LoVid: Rural Electrification
July 15—Sept. 12, 2010.
Opening reception: Thurs., July 15, 6—8 p.m. during Creative Cocktail Hour (Admission: $10/$5 for members)

Press release

Real Art Ways presents three solo exhibitions by Wade Aaron, Robin Mandel, and LoVid, opening on Thurs., July 15, 2010. The exhibitions each encourage viewer interaction with everyday experiences and objects in order to provoke reconsideration of the elements that frame our lives. The opening reception is on Thurs., July 15, 6—8 p.m., during Creative Cocktail Hour. Admission to the opening is $10/$5 for Real Art Ways members. After July 15, admission to the gallery is free for members and cinema patrons, and is otherwise a $3 suggested donation. The three exhibitions run through Sun., Sept. 12.

Aaron, Mandel, and LoVid are selectees from our annual open call for emerging artists, Step Up.

Wade Aaron's work encourages contemplation of the shifting relationship between experience and belief by projecting shadows of figures at work. As the figures build their own object their shadows are frozen, creating a work of overlapping form and function. The artist says, "In all of my work the largest part of my practice is composed of entirely of thinking: Thinking that catalyzes making. Fabrication that catalyzes further thinking."


Robin Mandel will install intricate mechanisms made from household objects to examine how such objects can embody our domestic yearnings. By simply flicking a switch, viewers can make common objects perform for them in ways that will appear to be, at the same time, both ordinary and extraordinary, calling to mind the comfortable absurdity of the domestic experience. Mandel received his Master's Degree in Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005. Recent work includes an exhibition in progress at the FAWC Fellows Exhibition and Relative Strangers at the Freedman Gallery at Albright College.

LoVid's Rural Electrification will combine audience interaction with exposed electronics, conductive wires and live audiovisual feed to create a narrative of a retro-futuristic coexistence between biological and technological systems. Tactile audience participation will enable individuals to experience otherwise imperceptible connections in extreme collisions of the organic and artificial.


Step Up 2009 was made possible through the support of our members, the Alexander A. Goldfarb Memorial Trust, Howard and Sandy Fromson, Greater Hartford Arts' Council United Arts Campaign, Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Travelers Foundation, Robinson and Nancy Grover, Gary E. West, National Endowment for the Arts, Lincoln Financial Group, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Nimoy Foundation, and the Ensworth Charitable Foundation.

Orchard Street Shul Project opens Sunday at John Slade Ely House, Saturday night jazz jam session at Joseph Slifka Center

John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art
51 Trumbull Street, New Haven, (203) 624-8055
Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project
Dec. 6, 2009—Jan. 31, 2010.
Opening reception: Sun., Dec. 6, Noon—5 p.m.

Press release

During the months of December 2009 and January 2010, the John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut will come alive with memories, recollections, and recreations of an important community heritage site, in an innovative group installation designed to both stimulate reflection on the legacies of past generations and engage the public in dreams for the future.

The Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project is an art exhibition, a history lesson, a point of cultural exchange, and meeting place for dreamers, both nostalgic and visionary. Artists, researchers, and scholars have joined together to celebrate an important historic New Haven landmark, which was once central to the life of a large Jewish immigrant population in the Oak Street neighborhood.

Contributions to the installation offer a range of approaches. Some artists researched the history of the Orchard Street Shul and its neighborhood, uncovering multiple stories of this community: stories of women working together to aid refugees, stories of hard-working fathers and mothers who dedicated themselves to making a better life for their children, and stories of teenagers who giggled and mingled on the steps of the Shul. Others built on their own experiences, reaching into their hearts to create depictions of the Shul that are evocative of deeper connections with history and community. Still others focused on the issues of urban renewal, making real the shifts in our urban landscape that are difficult to imagine as we visit the site today.

Included in the Project are presentations by researchers from Yale University who developed innovative ways to document the building, including virtual reconstructions exploring new digital methods, ground-breaking research by computer scientists that promises to change the ways that cultural heritage sites will be documented in the future. Some contributing artists used this digital data in their creative work.

The Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Project is organized by Cynthia Beth Rubin, a New Haven based artist, in collaboration with participating artists and researchers: Nancy Austin, Meg Bloom, Donnamarie Bruton & Tim Coutis, Jeanne Criscola, Roz Croog, Linda Drazen, Paul Duda, Gonzalo Escobar, Maya Escobar, Alan Falk, Greg Garvey, Shalom Gorewitz, Jaime Kriksciun, Leslie J. Klein, Beth Krensky, Seth Lamberton, Mary Lesser, Lisa Link, David Ottenstein, Bruce Oren, Robert Rattner, Cynthia Beth Rubin, Holly Rushmeier, Janet Shafner, Frank Shifreen, Suzan Shutan, Sharon Siskin, Christina Spiesel, Yona Verwer, Julian Voloj, Laurie Wohl, Chen Xu, and Howard el-Yasin. The group includes artists from California, Florida, Utah, Missouri, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York, who traveled to New Haven to contribute to the project alongside artists from the region.

A Project Book is being published in conjunction with the exhibition, including essays by Hasia Diner, the eminent scholar of Jewish immigration history, Walter Cahn, renowned historian of art and and architecture, and Hana Iverson, known for her remarkable multi-media installation "View from the Balcony", that was instrumental in helping attract attention to the renovation project of the Eldridge Street Shul. The book will also feature photographs of the works in the exhibition and memories of the Orchard Street Shul, with commentary by Karen Schiff. The innovative book design is by Criscola Design.

The Public is Invited to the Opening Reception for the Participating Artists, on Sunday, Dec. 6, from Noon—5 p.m. To set the mood for the launch of The Orchard Street Shul Artists Cultural Heritage Project, the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale for Jewish Life at Yale will host a Jazz jam session on Dec. 5 at 7:30 p.m., celebrating the swing dance music of 1924 and beyond, when the cornerstone of this Synagogue was put in place in a ceremony attended by Mayor Fitzgerald and much of the entire New Haven community.

For group visits outside of regular hours, send an email to: arts [AT] orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org

An exciting series of public events includes:

Sat., Dec. 5, 7:30 p.m.
Music from the 1920s—1930s jam session
Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale

Sun., Dec. 6, noon—5 p.m.
Opening Reception with the Artists
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Wed., Dec. 9, noon
Lunch and Learn, in Partnership with the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sun., Dec. 20, 2 p.m.
Panel Discussion: Memoirs and Remembrances
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sun., Jan. 10, 2 p.m.
Panel Discussion: Documentations: Photography, Recordings and Recreations
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sun., Jan. 17, 2 p.m.
Informal Community Conversations
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Thurs., Jan. 21, 4 p.m.
Presentation by Yale Computer Science Graphics Group on The Orchard Street Shul: Case Study in Three - Dimensional Digital Representations of Culture Heritage Sites.
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sun., Jan. 24, 2 p.m.
Panel Discussion: Art and the Echoes of Spirituality
The John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

Sun., Jan. 31, 2010
Open Forum: Artists Reflect on Cultural Heritage Project as Process
Closing Party

Kaczmarek installation opens Thursday at Real Art Ways

Real Art Ways
56 Arbor St., Hartford, (860) 232-1006
Chris Kaczmarek
July 16—Sept. 13, 2009.
Opening Thurs., July 16, 6—8 p.m. during Creative Cocktail Hour

Press release

Real Art Ways opens an installation by Chris Kaczmarek. Kaczmarek juxtaposes the separate worlds of war and everyday life in America using images from security cameras installed throughout Real Art Ways. The exhibition's opening reception is on Thurs., July 16, 6—8 p.m., during Creative Cocktail Hour. Admission to the opening is $10/$5 for Real Art Ways' members. After July 16, admission to the gallery is free for members and cinema patrons, and is otherwise a $3 suggested donation.

Kaczmarek's installation will juxtapose live images of people and spaces in Real Art Ways with images from cameras taping military figurines placed discreetly throughout the space. The installation explores themes of surveillance and media representation while encouraging a heightened awareness of the viewer's environment, both immediate and globally. Ten television sets perched above the Real Art Ways cinema entrance will display the camera feeds.

Chris Kaczmarek explains his intent:

We are experiencing a mediated war right now (we see our soldiers on TV) that is not being fought in our country...by placing the icon of the soldier in the mediated view of the viewer, I am juxtaposing the separate worlds, and then by also introducing the solider figure itself into the space itself so that they're not easily noticed, I am paralleling the reality that exists for most of those without family members in the military.

Chris Kaczmarek's work incorporates both traditional and experimental practices using a broad variety of media. He creates interactive, site-specific installations that are designed to guide the viewer towards a deeper contemplation about the environment they inhabit. Other works include performance, sound scores for the stage, multi-channel video and handmade electronic instruments.

Face of a new century

Guilford Art Center
411 Church St., Guilford, (203) 453-5947
About Face: The Relevance of Portraiture in the 21st Century
Mar. 14—Apr. 25, 2008

About Face: The Relevance of Portraiture in the 21st Century might be described as a postmodern take on the genre of portraiture. Of course, portraiture is a perennial subject. We have an enduring fascination for images of the human face. But, as in all contemporary art, the act of portraiture is increasingly inflected with self-consciousness and historical consciousness. As curator Samantha Pinckney writes in her introduction to this show, "One of the tendencies of contemporary art is the desire to engage in original ways with the art of the past, another is to challenge the conventions of representation in art." These approaches are reflected in the quite disparate work in this show.

Artists Fritz Drury and Marie Cosindas most directly engage with the tropes of formal portraiture. Drury's oil paintings of his (in these cases) female subjects are subtly crafted through the prism of art historical approaches to portraiture. His influences—or references, if that is more accurate—include artists ranging from Caravaggio to John Singer Sargent to Picasso. The result is that the works, painted in four different decades (the oldest is from 1975), look like they could have come from the hand of four different-but all talented-artists.

Cosindas is a photographer, specializing in large-format Polaroid color film. She is represented here with two large Polacolor prints of celebrities, Candice Bergen and Robert Redford, formally posed. Bergen is captured with her mixture of handsome beauty, grace and intellectual confidence. Redford, clutching a bouquet of roses and photographed in his character for The Sting, is propped against a bar. With his head tilted to the side, he projects an ingratiating insouciance.

The large-format photographic portrait of "Jerrod" by Dawoud Bey is part of an ongoing series of portraits of teenagers. Seated outside at a wooden picnic table and dressed in a zip-up blue jacket, the chubby crew-cutted boy directly engages the viewer. His expression is serious and I notice that his forearms and hands appear scarred and raw. There are the hints of bags and darkness under his eyes. According to the photo's title card, many of Bey's recent portraits include text by his young subjects. Unfortunately, there is no text associated with "Jerrod." From the image, one might speculate that his life has not been a bed of roses. But it is in the nature of photography to sever the moment from the stream of time. This image is a photographic choice. There is no way of really knowing from looking at this picture the true facts of Jerrod's life. Perhaps he spent the photo session mostly laughing and cutting up and this image captured his one serious moment.

Text is an integral part of Daniel Heyman's "Amman Drypoint series." Heyman sketched Iraqi men as they related the stories of their confinement and torture by Americans in the Abu Ghraib prison to human rights lawyers. From the likenesses he had sketched on paper, he made drypoint etchings on copper plates. The men are depicted solemn and dignified as they testify to what was done to them—they were all released without charges—and not in the humiliating poses that have become iconic. Elements of their testimony were scratched in reverse into the copper plates (so they read correctly after printing), filling the space around their images, symbolic of the way in which the trauma continues to color their lives. The text tells of disgraceful treatment: beatings, sexual abuse, emotional assault. In the case of one man, the only individual depicted in a full body portrait ("Disco Mosul"), his captors deliberately and continuously exposed a wound on his right leg. Ultimately, the wound became infected and he had to have the leg amputated. Heyman's pictorial style reminded me of the work of German Expressionist George Grosz, whose drawings captured the dysfunction in the German soul that would lead to Nazism. This is portraiture as witness to a crime in which we as Americans are complicit.

With a background in commercial art, June Bisantz-Evans takes a notably contemporary multi-media approach to self-portraiture. She examines the media-reinforced roles for women that were ubiquitous in fashion and women's magazines when Bisantz-Evans was growing up in the 1950's. She collaged her own face onto archetypal magazine images of housewives—ironing, marveling over a sparkling clean wine glass from a dishwasher, grimacing while straightening the hem of her tight dress. The collaged images were printed as life-size cardboard cutouts. The cutouts are displayed before large sheets of paper printed with advice culled from an article, "How To Be a Good Wife," in a 1955 issue of Housekeeping Monthly: "Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes." "A good wife knows her place." "Listen to him. Remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours." There is certainly an element of parody and humor here, evident in Bisantz-Evans' histrionic facial expressions superimposed over those of the 1950's models. But, encountering her installation after reading the testimonies of the tortured Iraqi men in Heyman's etchings, is to realize that oppression exists along a continuum from the flagrantly brutal to the ideologically insidious. The extent to which the subordination of women was normalized by a mass media narrative is striking.

Linda Abadjian's self-portraits are fruits of her 2005 return visit to Lebanon, 20 years after she fled the country's civil war for the United States. As in her works shown last October at the No•Mad II show in Hartford, these works on paper were drawn using Sharpie markers and acrylic paints. Abadjian layered images of herself with interiors and exteriors of places in her former hometown. Only in "and My Heart's War" does the image of her face dominate the foreground. In the other works, her face and hands are effaced by the environments she is portraying, often intermingled with fragments of either English or Arabic text. These are portraits of a person as part of a place, and vice versa. Her presence has been left behind in the rooms and hallways, in the dusty streets. And, conversely, the place has left its mark on her, inseparable from her being.

Margaret Zox Brown's three paintings eschew concentration on the face for a portraiture of figurative form and gesture: the individual at play, rest or meditation. Her brushwork is raw, rough and broad, fitting for work that endeavors to capture not so much individual likeness as the contours of mood and moment. Beverly Strom Bluth's eight portraits are based on photographs she took of people she met while visiting Wexford, Ireland four years ago. Their likenesses are situated within symbolic compositions reflective of their professions. Bluth has an affecting way with color—she notes in her artist statement that "The occasional surprise of sun-drenched yellow ochre walls on Wexford's building exteriors influenced color choices"—and skill at rendering the nuance of faces.