Degrees Of Separation Overcome

More than a dozen years ago the abstract nature photographer Hayward Gatling had not shown any of his work. Many of his friends didn’t even know he was a photographer.

Until his then-girlfriend threw a surprise party for him, in which his works were to be displayed. He tried to resist even that, but ​“I couldn’t back out or I’d be a total ass,” he said.

Many of the compositions, however, sold, and Gatling’s artistic life changed forever.

Gatling, who shows his often-large scale images of water around the state, is now able to return the favor to other artists.

He is the curator of ​“Degrees of Separation,” the new show at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery on Audubon Street, which features the work of 23 artists, at least half a dozen of whom have shown in public very little.

For some of the artists, like Chris Mines and Michael Miglietto, the exhibition, which runs through Oct. 28, is their first show ever.

Gatling was in his forties when he made his debut, so he is well-versed in the complicated emotions of humility, shyness, and outright fear of not being good enough that accompany that moment of taking the public step in an artist’s life.

“I know a lot of artists who have never shown anything,” he said in a phone interview recently.

To induce fledgling artists to show, Gatling said he included a number of established local artists, including Katro Storm, Dee S Seven, and Krikko Obbott, to show their work.

In some instances, Gatling said the tactic backfired. When one of the un-exhibited artists saw the names of those local stalwarts in the show, that person backed out. (Two other artists whose names are printed in the exhibition’s materials also dropped out.)

This is Gatling’s second go-round as an artist/curator. Back in 2013, in his rookie curatorial offering at the Arts Council, he invited his artist friends to take a page from British provocateur Banksy’s book and shake things up in ​“Distrubing the Comfortable,” a jaunty show that was both fun and political.

“Degrees of Separation,” which features photographs, mixed media, water colors, paintings, and even — a first time ever for the Arts Council — a sword by Guilford bladesmith Mace Vitale, feels more uneven, though there is plenty of in-your-face energy in the many large compositions by the vets in the show.

These include profound stares from Bruce Lee in Dee S Seven’s captured martial arts moment. In David Sepulveda’s ​“Picasso on the Carlisle,” the artist has placed a three-quarter acrylic portrait of the great one enigmatically on a rubberized panel, so that his face seems to come at you with hundreds of square nipples of painted color.

Chris Mines’s ​“The Evolution of David” is a mixed-media riff on Michelangelo’s David and, while smaller than either of these, still packs a punch: What is the future King of Israel doing with that rocket launcher?

Around the corner from the rocket launcher is Syrian-American artist Mohamad Hafez’s disturbing ​“Tomorrow, When Things Have Calmed Down,” an ironically titled work, to be sure. In grey-painted mixed media, he offers a diorama of a section of a street after armed forces have turned it into rubble.

Shortly after the show was hung, first-time exhibitor Michael Miglietto told Gatling that out in Denver, where he was at the time, there was a lack of ​“collaborative artistic endeavors.” For Miglietto, at first that situation — the popular image, not always wrong, that artists’ careers happen or don’t happen in a kind of sustained solitude — also obtained a bit here.

However, with Gatling’s ​“Degrees of Separation,” Miglietto said, ​“man, am I glad you crushed that popular theory,” Gatling reported.

“That statement alone made this all worth it,” Gatling added.

Other artists’ work showing for the first time include Edward Sipes’ oil-on-canvas ​“Red Eyed Tree Frog”; Lauren Caldwell’s mixed media/gouache compositions; and Kat Hosfelt and Lizzettee Flores, both showing small-scale photographs.