Haley Grunloh’s rendition of dragonflies shows off, first, her technical skill as an artist, as the insects are depicted with all the attention to their form a viewer could want. But she has also chosen to depict them mating, one of the most fascinating and also slightly awkward moments in a dragonfly’s life cycle, as it’s one of the few moments when they’re not capable of the aeronautics we usually associate with them. It’s a hint at Grunloh’s attraction to the unusual, and a doorway into her artwork — assembled as a show running at Never Ending Books on State Street.
Grunloh describes herself in an accompanying statement as “a local New Haven artist. Most of the time she works at the New Haven Free Public Library, and the rest of the time she draws. She works mainly in watercolor, colored pencil, and bic pen. She enjoys looking closely at pretty things.” She’s a library technical assistant at the New Haven Free Public Library, where she also organizes the library’s Animation Celebration, a monthly online gathering discussing animated film classics from around the world. Her formal training in visual art encompasses digital art and animation and she “loves reading about zoology, kayaking in the Long Island Sound, and playing with her large excitable cat” — all of which come to bear in this lively exhibition.
Many of Grunloh’s illustrations gravitate toward fairy tale-like imagery, full of children, anthropomorphic creatures, and other playful oddities. But — as the above dragonfly illustration shows — she also excels at drawing from nature. Her landscapes are often recognizable as being of places nearby along the shoreline, particularly her illustrations of marshes and osprey nests hovering over tall grasses. In those pictures, her eye is attuned toward some of the gnarled weirdness at the edges of those places, as the way the roots of plants and multitudes of crabs and other animals are revealed at low tide.
Even in her straightforward nature drawings, humor isn’t far behind. A lovingly detailed illustration of a leech is accompanied by a cartoon entitled “How to Draw Leeches.” Done in the style of an instructional art book for children, it begins with two simple steps: “1. Start with a line of action, suggesting graceful motion. 2. Sketch the overall form. Majestic.” Watercolors are encouraged to “capture beautiful subtle coloring.” The illustrations are indeed quite beautiful, but the jokes are brought home by two cartoon children at the bottom. The boy is freaking out; he has a leech attached to his arm. The girl, smiling with notebook in hand, offers guidance for avoiding infection by staying calm when a leech is feeding.
“Use this time to observe and appreciate the leech,” the girl concludes.
“OK but what if I would rather die?” the boy responds.
Never Ending Books is an ideal place to appreciate Grunloh’s art. Thematically, the artwork and many of the books on the shelves share a sensibility of paying attention to the margins of things. The match of place to art continues with the details. Grunloh’s art is, obviously, enough on its own, but it’s enhanced by the decor of holiday lights reflected off the glass framing. Some of the pieces are placed high up on the wall, where they are at first hard to see. Perhaps that’s intentional; by the time the viewer has already seen the landscapes and the nature art, the slugs and leeches, the imaginary animals, this illustration of mermaids playing saxophones — giving off the vibe of being excerpted from a children’s fantasy novel we might wish existed — seems perfectly reasonable. It’s a pleasure to spend time seeing the world through Grunloh’s eyes.
For more information, visit Grunloh’s website and Never Ending Books’s website.
