Simkins Steam, Redux

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by Allan Appel | Feb 16, 2010 12:12 pm

(1) Comment | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Arts

David Ottenstein Photo Aficionados of industrial history in New Haven, here’s a show for you. Well, maybe just a part of a show.

If you miss seeing the steam rising from the old Simkins factory on East Street, you can check out David Ottenstein’s fine black and white photo of same in a new show at Hull’s Gallery at One Whitney.

The Simkins paper board plant was shut down in 2006 after more than 100 years of operation. Its headquarters was purchased by the Water Pollution Control Authority. The factory itself is slated for demolition.

Although being a documentarian of the built environment just before it radically changes or disappears is not this photographer’s aim, it is certainly one of the corollary benefits for viewers.

Ottenstein’s 10 photographs are featured in “A New Haven Review” that includes solo or two works by another dozen artists, who are the crème de la crème pick of Hull’s curator Barbara Hawes from last year’s Open Studios.

“Let’s support the arts in New Haven by supporting the artists,” said Hawes. The current show, which opened Thursday night, is the 17th in a whirlwind two-and-a-half-year run thus far as the city’s last standing for-profit gallery.

Ottenstein said he was initially drawn to taking photos of the Hyperion Theater, which stood behind the Union League restaurant, just before it was demolished in 1998. That launched him on a more than 10-year effort at photographing what he calls “aging, decrepit, industrial works.”

Ottenstein, an American studies graduate of Yale,certainly has a sense of evanescence. But what grabs him primarily is not history, but textures.

“I’m fascinated by the textures and structures and how they are translated in black and white,” he said, speaking of the Simkins photo and several others in the exhibition of Iowa grain elevators and family farm structures now also rapidly vanishing.

He works with an old-fashioned four-by-five view camera, complete with hood to be thrown over his head. The preparation for each shot is laborious. But such 19th century methods have a purpose.

Before shooting he spends a lot more time thinking about his subject. That differs from working with hand-held digital cameras (although he includes some digital prints in his show).

The result is that viewer feels that the steam is hot. As to the factory wall, “You cannot just see the brick, but understand it,” Ottenstein said.

The show also includes several large paintings full of energetic color by Steve DiGiovanni, and a delicate sculpture in the window by Aicha Woods.

Allan Appel Photo Although all the artists are New Haven-based, apart from Simkins and a view or two of the Tomlinson Avenue Bridge by Ottenstein from 2009, the only other iconic view of New Haven is this charming small oil on canvas by Michael Angelis (with Hawes admiring nearby).

It’s the Temple Garage done in a sprightly and inviting manner that captures the undulations of Paul Rudolph’s façade trying to be an aqueduct. The painting pays homage to the work of John Sloan and others of the Ashcan School painters of turn-of-the century urban scenes. As soon as Gateway Community College rises on the site before it, Angelis’s work, in addition to painting, will also be a document.

“A New Haven Review” runs at Hulls on Whitney during business hours through March 6.

Comment

posted by: observer on February 16, 2010 4:44pm

>>“As soon as Gateway Community College rises on the site before it, Angelis�s work, in addition to painting, will also be a document.”

Isn’t it a document already? As soon as pen is laid to paper or oil put to canvas, the subject becomes artifact and piece, document.

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