Fred White by a work in progress that started from a 12-foot piece of deadwood.
So: You’re a tree in New Haven. You weather storms, bugs, and disease. After a long life, your time has come to an end.
As you lay rotting by the side of the road, a miracle finds you. Not only are you destined for an afterlife of getting buffed and polished. But you start the whole journey with something you’ve probably never had: a bath.
The bath comes courtesy of Fred White, a retired tool-and-die maker and Button King (so named for an invention of his), who has turned his craftsman’s eye to the art of deadwood sculptures for the last decade.
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Jamil Ragland |
Jul 7, 2025 7:58 am
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Blowin' In the Wind by Christine McNulty
Out of Many – A Caribbean Themed Art Exhibit Galleries @ WORK_SPACE Manchester July 3, 2025
Art cannot be separated from the political and social climate it exists in. So I want to use the occasion of my visit to Work_Space in Manchester to view the work of immigrant artists and their descendants to talk about what it is that we are facing right now.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 26, 2025 10:34 am
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Nickolas E. Santaella
Untitled.
The blossoms on the tree in the background portend spring, but the photographer is interested in more than capturing a nice day. The two young women are rendered in crisp, black and white detail, enough perhaps to appreciate that they’re siblings. They are, in fact, twins. But the lens is focused enough on them that we’re allowed to look past their similarities to their differences. Some are choices, in clothing and hairstyle. Some are in subtle differences in their faces. Twins though they may be, they’re also individual humans, and the photographer lets us see all of it: the things that bring them together and the things that make them individually who they are.
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Alina Rose Chen |
Jun 19, 2025 12:11 pm
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Alina Rose Chen Photos
Softwalls, a solo project of Allie Tracz, opens "It's Right to Rebel" fundraiser event.
Huellas by Andrés Madariaga.
A golden heart, holding ground amongst chaos: the startling center of Andrés Madariaga’s Huellas—“footprints” — shimmered against a backdrop of fragmented figures, blown-out footsteps, and distorted figures that appeared to be straining at the confines of the canvas.
Rendered in the flag colors of Madariaga’s native Colombia and incorporating the additional black and green of Palestine, the painting’s fluid, surrealist style captured a sense of displacement and the panic of assimilation in a world where borders are more than just lines on a map.
Huellas was one of several pieces on view at Wednesday night’s “It’s Right to Rebel” fundraiser at Café Nine, a celebration of visual art and live music that raised over $1,000 for families impacted by deportation. The event featured performances by Softwalls, Sickpay, and Missed Cues, alongside work by Madariaga, Drew Keefer, Eduardo Alvarez, Alexandra Shaheen, Brian Timko, and Alex Schwindt.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 17, 2025 10:53 am
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David Goldblatt
Children on the border between Fietas and Mayfair, Johannesburg.
David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive Yale University Art Gallery New Haven Through June 22
It’s a portrait of action and fun, as if the kids were already laughing in the street and the photographer told them to look up for just a second. It’s also startling in its intimacy. The camera is so close, the kids so unaffected even as they’re posing. Look closer, too, and it’s not all joy. The kid on the ground isn’t smiling. Why is one of the other kids holding up a ball?
And yes, though it’s Black and White kids in the same picture, and everyone seems fine being there, they’re not exactly playing together.
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Maya McFadden |
Jun 12, 2025 2:24 pm
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MAYA MCFADDEN Photos
Adult Ed's Milane Williams, Lamar Lawrence, Christina Arnold, and Mark Landow at Wednesday's Vision 2034 art exhibit.
Art by Paul Linton: "My picture shows challenges like poverty and crime. The overall picture shows the downtown area where people from different backgrounds come together to enjoy the city's offerings and build a strong community."
Too many potholes. Too much gun violence. Not enough affordable housing.
Adult Education students identified those problems in a new art exhibit now up at City Hall as they thought through, and interviewed fellow New Haveners about, how to improve the city over the next decade.
The following write-up was submitted by Site Projects.
In the center of Fair Haven, a patient audience sits on the ground in the shade of a tree watching the artists — three of them — work paints and brushes, sometimes from ladders, sometimes sitting on the sidewalk. A mash-up of black scribbles covering parts of the wall is being transformed into recognizable figures: the legs of a horse, perhaps the front end of a trolley.
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Jamil Ragland |
Jun 11, 2025 7:50 am
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Jamil Ragland Photo
A painting by Bonni McKenney
Mini Canvas Painting Hartford Public Library Albany Avenue Branch Hartford June 10, 2025
Most of my experiences with public painting have been evening paint-and-sips, so I was intrigued by a daytime painting event offered by the Albany Avenue branch of the Hartford Public Library Tuesday morning.
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Jamil Ragland |
May 30, 2025 9:30 am
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To All Our Relations, 2022
Art as a Practice of Sacred Resistance, Collective Healing and Deepening Belonging Charter Oak Cultural Center Hartford May 29. 2025
The Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford hosted a unique virtual event Thursday night, where participants were invited to explore art as resistance and healing. It became a transformative experience for me.
Howard Fussiner Mini-Retrospective BACA Gallery 360 State St. New Haven Through Aug. 31
In 2003, famed Connecticut painter Howard Fussiner created Flye Point I, an oil painting of sand, water, clouds, and an array of small rocks, all forming satisfying orb-like shapes. Over 20 years later, on Thursday afternoon, 18-month-old Musa toddled through the halls of 360 State in New Haven, chasing after the Flye Point I’s curves and colors.
Fussiner passed in New Haven in 2006, but his work lives on to guide new generations in a mini-retrospective at the downtown apartment building’s lobby, which doubles as an art gallery for the Branford Arts and Cultural Alliance (BACA).
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Brian Slattery |
May 20, 2025 12:10 pm
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Merik Goma
Your Absence Is My Monument Untitled 1.
In Our Hands Curated by nico w. okoro Orchid Gallery/ ConnCORP 496 Newhall St. Through July 3
The shot in Merik Goma’s photograph is cinematic, a bright light in a darkened room. You can’t see either of the people’s faces, but you don’t have to. The postures of their bodies, their heads close together, convey much of the emotion, as do the arms, interlocked.
The hands seal the deal, their gentle, firm grip, offering comfort, support. In the hands, you can see the weight of the moment, and the strength that helps both people to get through it.
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Brian Slattery |
May 13, 2025 11:45 am
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Maria Citarella
Living Magic.
Nosegay Institute Library 847 Chapel St. Through June 23
Living Magic, by Maria Citarella, is mounted unobtrusively on the front wall of the gallery, looking — at first glance, from a distance — like an orderly triptych, a study in greens. But as you approach, the lines in the piece grow more complex, and the three panels take on dimension, until you can see that the panels aren’t of paint, but of mosses and lichens. The piece comes to life, nudging over its own borders. It’s easy to imagine that if you came back in a month, the mosses would be bigger still, creeping onto the wall. A year later, maybe they’d take over the wall. In a century, maybe the entire gallery.
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Jamil Ragland |
May 12, 2025 7:42 am
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Iris after Van Gogh by Adrianna Young
Spring Into Summer 2025 Manchester Town Hall Gallery Manchester May 9, 2025
With the near-constant rain this past week, the last thing I’ve been thinking about is summertime. But I’m looking forward to the sultry season thanks to a brand new exhibit at Manchester Town Hall, cleverly named Spring Into Summer 2025. The artwork belongs to members of the Manchester Art Association.
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David Sepulveda |
May 9, 2025 11:35 am
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David Sepulveda Photo
The artist at BEKI artist talk.
As if on cue, melodic sounds of spring-time songbirds drifted through the windows during a talk by artist Judy Sirota Rosenthal for her presentation of “Art As Prayer, Prayer As Art” at Westville’s Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel.
Judge Steven D. Jacobs' "The Joy of Flight"; Jacqueline S. Cushing's "Boyhood."
Twenty lawyers, judges and legal aides presented exhibits before a downtown crowd serving as witnesses (and jury?) to what happens when legal actors drop their arguments and written rulings for forays in favor of nonverbal expression.
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Jamil Ragland |
May 1, 2025 10:42 am
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Artwork by William Foster.
Letters from Prison: Continuing the Conversation Clare Gallery St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church Hartford April 30, 2025
About six months ago, I wrote about how an exhibition of inmate’s art at Manchester Community College made me begin to ask questions about my own experience with my father’s incarceration. What I did then is what I always do: I intellectualized the experience, turning it into questions to answer instead of emotions to work through. Visiting the Clare Gallery and seeing the current exhibit Letters from Prison hit me on a much deeper level than I was anticipating. I began to feel very uncomfortable.
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Jisu Sheen |
Apr 28, 2025 10:54 am
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Jisu Sheen photos
Santana, Amayah, and Neváe of the S.A.N. girls.
Rich reading a zine from Ty's table.
In another era, artist Mahogany Rich went on a first date with her now-ex at Roller Magic in Waterbury. The couple earned a bag full of tickets at the arcade and spent it all on Flippy Frog toys.
“Then we broke up, and now it’s art.”
On Sunday afternoon, those same Flippy Frogs dangled from beaded chains at Rich’s vendor table at New Haven cultural org Kulturally Lit’s graphic novel and comic conference DiasporaCon, where they faced a brighter, or at the very least weirder, future.
Quick as lightning, he pulled out two bright orange cap guns from holsters around his waist, striking a picture-perfect pose as a New Haven cowboy, lost in the city but somehow right where he needed to be. This ranger wasn’t exactly lone. Behind him, staring out from the second dimension, was another cowboy. This one had leather chaps, a star-adorned ranger shirt, and those same candy-orange cap guns.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 22, 2025 2:57 pm
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Tracey Emin
You kept it coming.
“Tracey Emin: I Loved You Until the Morning” Yale Center for British Art Through Aug. 10.
The visceral style conveys everything, in all its contradictions and complexities. The figure is a woman on all fours, hair bedraggled, back arched. She’s in a position of extremity, but which extremity? It could be an excoriating portrait of the subjugation of women, or a portrait of exhaustion. It could also be a depiction of a woman in the throes of intense sexual pleasure. Which is it?
The title — You kept it coming — doesn’t help clear up the ambiguity. What does the “it” in the title really refer to?
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 17, 2025 11:00 am
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Alexander Bushnik
Rhino with Teacups.
Alexander Bushnik’s Rhino with Teacups is whimsical enough that it’s easy to overlook the skill it must have taken to create it. But look again: How exactly does it stay together? Why doesn’t it tip right off the wall?
The balancing act on display in the piece is mirrored in the walls around it, displaying portraits, landscapes, and abstract canvases that in some ways couldn’t be farther apart in style, but are brought together and made into a cohesive whole.
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Jamil Ragland |
Apr 14, 2025 8:00 am
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The exhibit How Can the Grid Deal with a Messy World? by Silas Munro
How Can the Grid Deal with a Messy World? Joseloff Gallery University of Hartford West Hartford April 10, 2025
Heading back to the University of Hartford felt like a homecoming after many years. I spent alot of time there in high school, both due to various events I participated in, and because a close friend’s father was a professor there. While I visited initially to see the Dream Murals exhibit (read that review here), I was also invited to view the work of designer and multidisciplinary artist Silas Munro in the Joseloff Gallery on campus. Titled How Can the Grid Deal with a Messy World?, the exhibit was a fascinating juxtaposition of the very public art in Dream Murals, with the personal and intimate work that Munro had on display.
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Jamil Ragland |
Apr 11, 2025 9:36 am
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Beauty that Bites by Sophie Groenstein (2025)
Dream Murals: Public Art with Hartford Art School Alumni Donald and Linda Slipe Gallery University of Hartford West Hartford April 10, 2025
Dream Murals took a unique approach to the typical art exhibit by opening with incomplete artworks. Alumni of the Hartford Art School were invited to work with a student mentee to create their “dream” mural.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 10, 2025 3:03 pm
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Christina Hunt Wood
Human Nature.
We see crushed cans in the natural urban habitat all the time, but artist Christina Hunt Wood makes us look at them again. There they are, on the road, on the sidewalk, in a layer of scattered leaves. But by turning them to gold, one solid color that connotes value, Wood lets us appreciate the shapes they make, and how varied they can be. Sometimes art is just about a change in perspective, a way to see that we’re making art all the time, even if it’s just because we smashed a can of Coke under the front wheel of our car.
Spirals Multi-genre arts event 770 Chapel St. March 30, 2025
What is protest art? What is political art?
Since the dawn of state-regulated “artivism,” artists have felt the pressures of society to either opt in to the whole label — use the right keywords on applications, categorize themselves neatly for gatekeepers and audience members, and perhaps be taken less seriously by those who espouse the ideals of “pure art” — or attempt to stay out of politics, an impossible task for someone whose existence is inherently political.
On Sunday afternoon at 770 Chapel St., artists and art-lovers alike simply chose a secret third approach.
