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Brian Slattery |
Apr 22, 2024 11:13 am
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Amartya De
Sequoia.
The photograph is from northern California, and photographer Amartya De said it was his roommate’s favorite of his pictures at the time because “it shows the landscape.” It was a city, but not really a city; it was a place close to the redwoods. De was there from Calcutta, learning how to become an artist, and learning that the practice of making art and the practice of surviving weren’t all that different.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 12, 2024 9:33 am
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Joy Bush photo
Bethlehem.
It’s the shape of an ancient Middle Eastern cityscape, verandahs and towers, arched doorways and windows like peeping eyes. But it’s not anywhere near the Middle East; it’s on a rock hilltop in Waterbury, and it’s part of Holy Land USA — to some, a roadside attraction, to others, a place of serious pilgrimage, and for Joy Bush, the subject of an almost 40-year-long series of photographs.
Some of those photos are up now at City Gallery in a show called “Ruins of a Holy Land,” running through April 28, with a reception on April 13.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 2, 2024 8:45 am
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Susan Hoffman Fishman
The Earth Is Breaking Beautifully.
Susan Hoffman Fishman’s painting seems at first to be an abstract, full of brilliant colors and bold lines. Soon, though, one can see how it’s derived from natural forms — but at what scale? It could be a cross-section of a tree or a landscape viewed from space. It turns out that it’s more the latter.
“As a result of climate change, the extraction of minerals and the damming of the Jordan River, which once provided a source of new water to the Dead Sea, over 8,000 sinkholes have developed along its shores. Seen from above via satellites and drones, the sinkholes are brilliant cobalt blue, lime green, white, yellow ochre and rust red,” the artist writes. “The Earth is Breaking Beautifully emphasizes the contrast between the horrifying destruction around the Dead Sea and the beauty of that destruction.”
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 27, 2024 9:59 am
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Mark K. St. Mary
Study #1108.
Mark K. St. Mary’s Study #1108 looks almost like it could be a double exposure, an image of light and shadow laid over a photograph of a hallway. Viewed another way, it can feel almost intrusive, a view from inside a house at night when the lights are off. Should we, the viewers, be there? What is going on?
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 22, 2024 11:08 am
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Madonna.
The Yale University Art Gallery’s show “Munch and Kirchner: Anxiety and Expression” — running now through June 23 on the gallery’s fourth floor at 1111 Chapel St. — begins with a moment at an art gallery over 100 years ago that feels like it could happen today, or any time. In 1912, the text relates, there was a “monumental exhibition of modern art” in Cologne, Germany that “aimed to illustrate how the most cutting-edge groups of the day drew inspiration from the work of a slightly older generation.” That big-tent approach, however, turned out to be fraught.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 21, 2024 11:44 am
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Portrait of a Lady — Spilling the Tea; La Artillería De La Reina — Gimme My Flowers Now; Nefertiti of House Nubia — Bamboo Earring Only 1 Pair.
Sandy Clafford’s trio of paintings take over the space near the window of the Institute Library’s upstairs gallery for the show “Look Book” — running now through May 23 in the Chapel Street library, with an opening reception tonight. They make a bold fashion statement, though not one that follows easy rules.
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 19, 2024 10:18 am
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John McDonald Photo
Ball & Socket Arts front view.
When asked to name the cultural hubs of the Northeast, most people would not consider Cheshire, Connecticut a part of that list. A group of enthusiastic artists and supporters of the arts are hoping to change that over the next few years, as Ball & Socket Arts, a complex located on West Main Street right along the Farmington Canal Linear Path, continues its efforts to create a central location aimed at encouraging ongoing creativity and attracting New Haven County residents and beyond to its galleries, performance venue, art education center, and more.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 14, 2024 9:24 am
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Esthea Kim
White Field 2.
Esthea Kim’s painting White Field 2, at first glance, could be a photograph of clouds or smoke, but its complex surface asks the viewer to take more than just one glance, to be drawn in. The more you look, the more you see: variations in colors and textures, bordering on movement. The sense of space and depth within the painting suggests something huge could be obscured by the smoky veil. What’s behind there? Threat or serenity? Or are the clouds all there is?
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 12, 2024 9:54 am
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Oluseye
Good Luck Totem.
An antiquated candy vending machine sits atop a wooden stand in the lobby of NXTHVN, its faded signage and weathered hardware still beckoning the visitor to give it a coin. But it doesn’t work, and what’s inside it isn’t candy, but a multitude of cowrie shells, from sea snails found in tropical oceans. They’ve been used as money, as jewelry, and as rattles for instruments. But here, they can’t be used at all — not for any price.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 5, 2024 9:45 am
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Students Monday outside the parked cARTie bus.
cARTie museum educator Nicole Pappo reads to students outdoors.
When asked “does art matter?” second graders Mercedes, Mason, and Elia agreed “yes.” Then they showed some of the reasons: Mason drew a sign reading “art = peace.” Elia drew a self-portrait. And Mercedes drew a rainbow, reading “I love art.”
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 5, 2024 9:14 am
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T!lt.
“Castes,” the lead single from the New Haven-based T!lt’s new album, Death Do Us Part, starts with guitars weaving around each other, while drums and bass drop in to give the song a steady pulse. Mike Scialla’s plaintive vocal unspools a gentle song about heartbreak. “Was it something stuck inside my head?” he sings. “Was it something left unsaid?” Slide guitars swoop above and below like seagulls. It’s heartfelt and country-inflected, without entirely landing straight into country music.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 28, 2024 9:34 am
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niko w. okoro and Erik Clemons.
A new art gallery is coming to the Lab at ConnCORP, on Newhall. The Orchid Gallery, organized by niko w. okoro of the bldg fund, is born out of conversations with area artists, with the goals of making a space for Black and Brown artists in the community to be seen and heard, supporting them in their professional development, and making a place where artists can come together.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 22, 2024 9:41 am
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A giant squid seems to erupt from the floor of the gallery. Not far away, another wooden figure, more abstract, takes on a shape that could be leaning into the wood’s natural form and could have deviated far from it; from the finished product, it’s hard to say. Close by, there’s an abstract canvas with the contours of a cityscape, the hulking buildings rising from streetlights into darkness, all of it reflected in water. Unifying these works — by William Kent and Leo Jensen — are both the aesthetic sense of the era in which they were created and a more universal spirit of exploration. They’re what happened when the artists making them tried new things.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 21, 2024 9:34 am
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Roy Money
Emeishan View 2.
The view of a mountain in Sichuan, China is breathtaking, though not for the usual reasons. Photographer Roy Money doesn’t train his camera on the usual kind of tourist pictures — the highest peak, the widest vista, the prettiest temple. Instead, he has an eye for the beauty in the details, the shape of the land, a mat of vegetation, curls of fog. Pictures of famous vistas might make us want to go there. Pictures like Money’s might give us more of a sense of what it’s like to already be there.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 16, 2024 9:28 am
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Brian Slattery Photo
Shaunda Holloway’s Nature’s Children greets viewers as soon as they enter the second floor of the gallery at Creative Arts Workshop. Over the shoulder of that piece, Aisha Nailah’s HERstands ready, like an ally. From the doorway, it’s easy to see that the pieces in the show, by multiple artists, share affinities in form and color, as well as subject matter. The diversity of the voices is vast. But they’re all in the same cause together.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 14, 2024 9:23 am
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Brian Slattery Photo
New Haven artist Sarahi Zacatelco.
On the walls of Atticus on Chapel Street, just above diners’ heads, is a row of mixed-media artworks that brighten and enrich the space, making it feel both more vibrant and more homey. But a closer look suggests complication, symbolism, layers of meaning.
As accompanying labels explain, the pieces are loaded with significance. The first encapsulates a prayer from the culture of the Huichol in Mexico for health, home, and a long life. In the second piece, the flower — associated with the Aztec deity Huitzilopochtli — was used to remedy fever and burns. The third represents the Aztec and Mayan god Quetzalcoatl and his abilities as a seer. It only gets richer from there.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 13, 2024 9:14 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
It’s not just the large paintings covering the walls that suffuse the gallery with color, though they go a long way toward transforming the space around them by themselves. The balloons making their way around the gallery floor help out a lot, too. Even if the gallery is quiet — has a party just finished, or is one about to start? — they encourage a different way of engaging with the art, a little less formal, a little more festive. Maybe, in another sense, they help us let our guard down, and be more open to what the art has to say.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 6, 2024 10:00 am
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William Frucht
From the series Coney Island.
WIlliam Frucht’s photograph from Coney Island combines rigor and humor to make for an engrossing image. On the rigorous side, there’s the strict geometry of the workout equipment, the thin band of ocean separating tan sand from slate sky. On the humorous side, there’s something entertaining about the poses; they’re exercising, but they’re also like kids on playground equipment. More generally, there’s the juxtaposition of the handful of people working out with the multitudes in the background lounging in the sun. For every person working to get their heart rate up, there are 10 more who maybe think they’re trying too hard.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 2, 2024 9:17 am
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Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (from the series Beneath the Roses).
Gregory Crewdson’s arresting photograph is nearly five feet tall and eight feet across, large enough for a viewer to get completely engrossed in the details. The scene at its most basic is simple enough: A man standing by a river bank, shirtless; a makeshift shack behind him, lit from the inside; beyond a stand of trees, a row of houses.
But the mood, the lighting, and the details all set the wheels for any number of stories in motion. Does the man live in the shack? Or does someone else? Or does anyone? Do the people who live in the houses know someone’s down there by the river, or is the man truly isolated? And what has brought him to the water’s edge at night? Is he lost in contemplation? Is he waiting for someone else to arrive? Or, perhaps, is he watching intently as something’s happening, maybe on the opposite shore, maybe in the water itself? Maybe this is actually a scene of ferocious action, only just out of frame.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 24, 2024 9:15 am
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Howard El-Yasin
Blue Velvet Suitcase.
Blue Velvet Suitcase is simple: a wooden chair, a small suitcase, a shirt from a uniform, neatly folded. It’s unassuming enough that it almost — almost — invites the viewer to sit in the chair. But the text printed on the facing wall tells us we’re looking at so much more.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 12, 2024 8:30 am
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Hank Paper
Another Brand New Day.
Hank Paper may have given his photograph the perfect title. Another Brand New Day is on one level just a normal street scene in Italy, but its vivid colors and warm light are almost supernaturally delicious. Paper finds the ecstasy in the everyday, and with it, a palpable sense of hope.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 11, 2024 10:03 am
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Judy Atlas
Blue Flux.
Judy Atlas’s Blue Flux can evoke dozens of things if you let it: a cityscape in the rain, a snow field, the inside of an ice crystal, with just a little sun streaming through. But that’s not the game the painting asks you to play. It can also just be taken on its own terms, as color and texture, a composition that is satisfying because its elements are well balanced, without having to mean anything in particular. Or maybe put another way, it can evoke a few meanings at once, without ever needing to land on a single one; it’s the impression it leaves on the viewer that matters.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 10, 2024 8:59 am
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It’s a plush duck butt, hanging from the wall. Is it a piece of cartoon taxidermy? Is the bird crawling through a hole? Or is there something more oddly magical going on?
The only way this reporter knows for certain that the bird in question is, in fact, a duck, is because elsewhere in “Outdoors at Paul’s” — a show of art by Douglas Degges and Noe Jimenez running now through the week at iiiiotae in Cedar Hill — the duck’s head and torso are emerging from the wall, with the kind of blank stuffed-animal expression into which one can read just about any emotion.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 19, 2023 9:45 am
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Harder with J Topog Rivulets 231.
After decades of printmaking, Barbara Harder revels in embracing the accidents. “I’m trying to make things the way I’m making them,” she said, but “sometimes I almost like tripping up,” because sometimes she likes the images she creates better. “You don’t have to beat yourself up more than you need to,” she continued. “It’s really nice to have the space as an artist to do that exploration, and wrestle with yourself, and the paper, and the ink.… It’s the hope that at times in the studio, I can have this spark… whether it’s done, or whether it’s perfect, or whatever it is, it just makes me happy. It’s something to keep after.”
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 18, 2023 8:55 am
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The show of artist Amira Brown’s work, up now at the Mitchell Branch Library in Westville through the end of the month, doesn’t have a title, nor do any of the individual pieces. That gesture alone seems to be part of the point, as is the elliptical, border-melting nature of the work itself. It’s a show to find your way into; one possible starting point is a piece that shows, in outline, a person in a classic pose of pondering, but the pondering itself is dissolving the person. The person contains other people. The person contains stars. But Brown’s sly humor is on full display as well. “Meh,” is one complete thought. “Shrug,” another. And then: “rodeo.” The rodeo of making art? Of showing it? Something bigger? Whatever the case, it isn’t Brown’s first.
