City Gallery Becomes Part Of The Process

Photographer Joy Bush’s piece, Suspended Disbelief, leans into the surrealism and humor of taking two images and combining them into one. On one level, the match is incongruous; one of them, it takes a second to notice, is upside-down. On another level, though, it works as a cohesive whole, inviting the brain to make sense of what it’s seeing. One plant could be the roots of the other, drawing nutrition from the sky below. In a way, that improbable idea works as an introduction to the larger effort at hand. ​“Process,” the show Suspended Disbelief is a part of, is itself a part of a larger effort among New Haven’s visual artists to bring back City-Wide Open Studios, happening this month all across town.

“For artists, process is how they turn paper and graphite into a drawing, clay into a sculpture, light and pixels into a photograph,” an accompanying statement explains. ​“Everyone’s process is as unique as a fingerprint: their peculiar way of breathing life into inert materials. Nature too has its processes, its metamorphoses and transformations. From a school of fish turning as one to the relentless progress of dreams, everything is in flux. The two kinds of processes weave together.” The exhibition ​“shows how artists use their processes like spells to capture some wisp of our changing world.”

For three weekend afternoons, City Gallery scheduled three different groups of artists to talk about their artistic processes (hence the name of the show), running the gamut from photography to painting to fiber work to wax encaustic. This past Saturday, Oct. 7, Phyllis Crowley (photography) and Barbara Harder (printmaking) were featured. This upcoming Saturday, Oct. 14, will feature Jennifer Davies (fiber art, monotype), and Roberta Friedman (painting and collage) and Sheila Kaczmarek (sculpture and mixed media) will close out the series on Sunday, Oct. 29.

As City Gallery itself points out, the show is geared to be part of the rejuvenated, now artist-organized City-Wide Open Studios, spearheaded by artists in Erector Square. It’s intended to run parallel to the Amplify the Arts Festival at the Eli Whitney Museum Barn (this weekend, Oct. 14 and 15), Erector Square and Marlin Works Open Studios (next weekend, Oct. 21 and 22), the 6th Dimension Afrofuturist arts festival (running through Oct. 28), the Artspace shows running at Creative Arts Workshop, and Westville’s ArtWalk, happening Oct. 28 and 29. (See Erector Square’s website for full listings of events.)

The City Gallery artist members are excited to be a part of the new City-Wide Open Studios, said Bush. While City Gallery shows usually feature one or two artists, for this show, 14 artists contributed pieces. To the City Gallery artists, the people who organized CWOS this year ​“really was a community of artists that decided ​‘we’ve got to do this.’ ”

“It was fun to put the whole thing together,” Bush said of laying out the show. ​“It felt like a community kind of thing, which was really nice.”

Noting Artspace’s ​“falling apart” — the gallery, which had organized CWOS in the past, closed in June — she added, ​“maybe you needed to do that to have something grow out of it. It will be interesting to see what emerges. And maybe that’s what art should be, that it keeps growing and morphing and changing. It can get you out of your comfort zone, too.”

Though Bush also catches a glimpse of the familiar in the new effort. ​“This feels like, ​‘oh, it’s back!’ ” she said.

The ideas of development, transformation, and even rebirth run through the show, visible even if the viewer didn’t know those were among its explicit themes. Sheila Kaczmarek’s sculptures take their inspiration directly from natural forms, capturing their energy in a way that it’s possible to believe they would grow and change on their own, looking different if you came back later.

Tom Peterson’s Nowhere Home transforms an ordinary suburban scene just by changing the color scheme, lending it an air of menace leavened with a little playfulness. In what horror movie would the window frames be all the colors of the rainbow?

Meg Bloom’s Aporia, meanwhile, puts transformation forward. It starts with the materials, which include sycamore bark, here put to another end, but one that doesn’t disguise where it came from. Bloom’s piece seems in conversation with the unruly shapes of its material. It’s a collaboration that creates something neither the artist nor the plants would have made on their own. The results are enough to make the shadows on the walls part of the work.

“Process” runs at City Gallery, 994 State St., through Oct. 29. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information. Visit the Erector Square website for a full listing of City-Wide Open Studio events.