Karen Ponzio Photos
Painting by Ben Cannan.
Sunday morning may have been gray and rainy outside, but inside Never Ending Books a group of artists was bringing color and shape to the State Street space with pencils, pens, clay, watercolors, and acrylics. Arts Meet Up, a twice monthly event, provides an open area for creatives of all kinds and all levels. According to Ryan Licwinko, a member of the Volume Two collective that runs the space, the event has been going strong since June of last year with a simple and straightforward goal: to give artists a space to create.
“Artists can bring in whatever they are working on here and complete it alongside other artists,” he said.
For visual artist Tess Schober, who has been coming to the event regularly for the past three months, it has been both a revelation and an invitation to all that the bookstore-venue-gathering place has to offer.
“The first time I came for Arts Meet Up I’m like, ‘oh my God, this is a space for everything,’” she said. “Music, art, poetry — even theater. I saw someone perform part of Waiting for Godot here. It’s the best space for creatives.”
On this day Schober brought in a fox painting she was working on but said she brings in “all different things … finished works, sketch books, anything I feel like working on.” She noted that she loves getting critiques as well as inspiration from others there.
Schober working on her fox painting.
“The best thing is you can get ideas from every neck of the woods,” she said, also mentioning how all the shows at Never Ending Books have inspired her.
“Any kind of art influences other art,” she added.
Licwinko has also found a space to try new things, on this day sketching but also dabbling in collage on other occasions.
“For me, this is the most of my artistic expression,” he said. “Like going to the gym, I’m staying creative.”
He told a story about how, at one meet up, he knocked over the coffee stirrers (coffee is an important part of the event) and did not want to throw them out, so he wove them together into a sculpture.
Licwinko sketching.
Licwinko is the “Wednesday guy” for Volume Two and runs a couple of monthly programs when he is here: Game Night, which happens every second Wednesday, and an event called Up for Adaption, which happens every fourth Wednesday. The themes for Game Night have varied, but recently the game of choice has been Super Smash Brothers. Up for Adaption finds Licwinko choosing a short story that attendees are asked to read before the event, and then a selection of short films based upon the story are screened and discussed. As a yearly participant in New Haven’s 48-Hour Film Project, Licwinko finds the discussion of the films themselves most interesting.
“The ultimate idea is what makes a successful adaptation,” he said. “Are any of these successful? It’s a discussion about what makes a successful film.” He noted that they regularly get about five or six attendees and the discussion is “pretty freewheeling.”
This meet up also has its regular attendees, and two of them — Loren Wilson and Ben Cannan — have been coming since the first one. Wilson, who was working with clay, said they were “very much an amateur” who also sometimes sketches but added “it’s more about hanging out with everybody.”
Cannan not only comes to the meet up, but also attends many of the shows at Never Ending Books, where he draws pictures of the performers, noting that he is “biased towards free jazz and drone stuff.” (Cannan is the artist responsible for the watercolor painting on the flyer for the meet up as well as the painting of the storefront that is being used on a postcard to thank anyone who donates to the Great Give for Volume Two this year.)
Flyer for the Art Meet Up painted by Cannan.
On this day Cannan said he was thinking he might paint from the point of view of behind the desk, noting that sometimes he chooses what to paint based on “just trying to relax.” He showed me some of what he had in his sketchbook, including a few from this past Thursday night’s figure drawing event, which he said he loved and “was something he had always wished for” in New Haven that had not popped up again post-shutdown until he saw it here.
Cannan's POV in progress.
The figure drawing is yet another monthly event that invites artists of any and all skill levels to participate, this time to sketch a live model under the guidance of artist Jeff Gangwisch. Licwinko, who shared his own sketches from this past Thursday’s event, noted that it starts with one-minute poses, with the time of the poses getting progressively longer as the night goes on, eventually going up to 20 minutes.
Another artist in attendance on this day was Myles Vincent, who was working on a flyer for a show, sketching the names of the acts that would eventually be part of a multimedia collage. They had come to earlier meet ups, then took a break and started coming again the past two months.
“It’s a good place to hang out,” they said, noting that they had been at the space the past two nights for shows — the monthly Fifac’s House on Friday night and Saturday’s F.I.M. Improvisation series. Vincent also noted that they are a drummer who has also participated in the past two New Haven Improvisers Collective gatherings, which occur at the space the last Monday of each month.
Portrait of the artists meeting up.
After the first hour of the meeting sketchbooks had been shared, Cannan had completed a portion of his point of view painting, two more artists had arrived, and multiple cups of coffee had been poured. Conversations were going on about the Great Give Happy Hour show being held for Volume Two at Three Sheets this Thursday, the latest monthly art show to be hung in the space this week by artist and musician Michael Larocca happening in conjunction with three days of musical events on May 3, 4, and 5, and the general wealth of art, poetry, and music shows and meetings happening daily.
“If you can dream it, it can happen at Never Ending Books,” said Schober.
Volume Two: A Never Ending Books Collective’s monthly calendar of events can be found on its website where you can also sign up for a monthly newsletter. Information can also be found on its Facebook and Instagram pages.
