Artists Help Connect To Memory At Mary Wade Home

On Saturday afternoon, residents, families, and neighborhood dignitaries streamed in and out of Chatman Place at Mary Wade on Clinton Avenue in Fair Haven. They were there to check out an art show — and along the way, learned how art can create concrete connections to place and wellbeing.

Chatham Place is a relatively new addition to the long-running Mary Wade campus, an assisted living and memory care center for seniors with a host of amenities, including a library, a hair salon, and a panoply of scheduled activities. For David V. Hunter, Mary Wade’s president and CEO, the art opening was a natural extension of the organization’s commitment to including the arts in its overall efforts to promote happiness and general wellbeing. 

“We’re firm believers in many forms of art, as good for the soul and good for people,” he said. ​“To bring art into our community embellishing the environment for the people who live here.” Also, ​“art always brings generations together,” he said. ​“We want to promote Fair Haven … it is a community that is really a gem.” He added that within the resident halls are over 100 pieces on loan from the New Haven Paint and Clay Club. ​“It’s always been part of our ethos to have it. New Haven is so rich in the arts that it would be a shame not to take advantage.” 

He mentioned seeing the effect of the art firsthand, sitting in the lounge with a family. The kids started talking about what they saw in art depicting a local scene, and ​“there was a sharing between the grandparents and the grandkids, with the grandparents saying ​‘I remember when that happened. I could tell you about the way that building was designed.’ ” He also shared anecdotes about the art helping staff and residents communicate. ​“It allows for more exchange.”

Mary Wade’s commitment to the arts started with the design of the space itself, according to Rosalyn Cama, president of Cama, the New Haven-based interior design company in charge of remodeling Mary Wade’s common areas during its most recent renovation, at the beginning of the pandemic. 

“Mary Wade’s been a fixture of Fair Haven for a century-plus,” Cama said, ​“so in developing this independent assisted-living facility, we plugged into this idea of place, that being part of Fair Haven should be exemplified … in how people experience it.” Cama took her cues from Fair Haven’s proximity to the Quinnipiac River and to parks. ​“Those places are reflected in the color schemes of the interiors and the textures of fabrics in furniture.” 

Cama, which has become nationally recognized for designing healthcare facilities, uses an approach called evidence-based healthcare design in its projects, developed from research into how people respond to interior spaces and how design can help ​“create wellbeing,” Cama said. Physical safety was, of course, the primary goal, from minimizing fall risks to making sure the area could be easily and thoroughly cleaned and maintained, from walls and floors to furniture and finishings.

At the same time, Cama made sure it ​“shouldn’t look institutional,” and that the common areas reflected the idea of joining a community and spending time with family. ​“Hopefully it feels like home — maybe even better than home,” she said with a laugh. Giving common spaces the sense of a living room was in keeping with Cama’s own childhood growing up in Fair Haven, where she met people hanging out on their front porches when she walked down the street. ​“Next thing you know, you’re friends,” she said.

Cama also wanted to ensure that the full spectrum of color was represented in the space, and the art is part of that. The focus on recognizable places can help ​“elicit a memory of place, of nature,” Cama said, for the residents. In addition, research has shown that landscapes — long views of places, as depicted in much of the artwork — tend to make people feel safe. ​“We are pre-dispositioned as human beings to take advantage of that safety,” she said.

The effect of Mary Wade’s attention to the arts was on ample display through the show. Woodcarver Stephen J. Balkun was on hand, offering an assortment of kitchen utensils and wood sculptures. A sculptor who has done numerous large pieces for churches in the state, Balkun got connected to Mary Wade when the organization hired him to carve the sign for the dining hall, the Oyster Grill. He had also had older relatives who had been Mary Wade residents. 

Balkun has been a sculptor for 30 years, and gravitates toward original pieces. ​“There are times when people ask me to copy something. That’s not as much fun for me. I like to do something original — instead of just doing a bowl, I like doing bowls that have shapes to them.” Many of his pieces take on the outlines of objects from nature, like tear drops or leaves. But ​“if you ask me what my favorite thing is, there are certain woods I just love working with.” Butternut ranks the highest, but ​“you can’t get it too much any more,” he said, ​“but when I come across it I scoop it up, because it’s nice to work with and it’s beautiful afterward. It’s got a grain that you don’t see in other woods.”

Among his original pieces, one of his spoons ended up with a ladle on each end. ​“Every once in a while I have a plan going in, but most times I just start and see where it takes me,” Balkun said. ​“I just started carving” that particular piece of wood, ​“and thought, ​‘you know what? Maybe someone would like a small one and a big one. So I measured” — a tablespoon and a half a cup.

“In our kitchen it’s all wooden spoons and utensils. I make it so that people can use this stuff,” he said. He makes cutting boards that seal themselves back up. ​“I like the way they look and the way they feel” when they take wear and tear, acquire stains from food. ​“That’s what it’s for. You’re supposed to use them.”

“Mary Wade is a great community asset,” said photographer Chris Randall, whose photographs have been reproduced at a large scale and installed in a few of the hallways of the Mary Wade building. ​“They have supported me for over 10 years,” he said, as the organization has hired him to photograph events and taken head shots. A few of his prints hang in offices as well. ​“They promoted us artists really well … they’re great neighbors and friends to New Haven artists like me.”

He expressed humility at the way he has heard people react to his photographs at Mary Wade. ​“Employees say how integral of a focal point it is, where residents and guests and visitors will connect, and point out where they used to live, and just other neighborhood memories that they see in there. That means a lot to me as an artist, that it’s fulfilling people in that way,” he said. ​“It’s an anchor to inspire good memories. To be a small piece of that puzzle is humbling to me as an artist. I get chills thinking about it.”

PEZ dispenser collector David Weinreb lives two blocks away from Mary Wade and knows it ​“as a part of the neighborhood. It employs people here and wants to engage in community events, and cares about sustainable development,” he said. As a 5th-grade teacher at Fair Haven School, he brought students to Mary Wade to practice English with residents. He has a collection of 1,400 PEZ dispensers, which he started when he was 11; it grew quickly from there through middle and high school, from eBay to antique stores to eventually attending PEZ conferences in Stamford. ​“I amassed a lot and learned a lot,” he said — for example, that it was originally created as an adult product in Austria in the 1950s. The word PEZ is an abbreviation of the German word for peppermint, and the dispenser was intended to help people quit smoking. ​“The mechanism is like a lighter,” Weinreb pointed out, and ​“instead of a lighter, you could carry one of these.”

He approached Mary Wade to see if the organization was interested in displaying some of them there, and Mary Wade was interested. He heard from people from work in the rooms near the installation that ​“people stop and look and say, ​‘I had that one!’ or ​‘I remember that TV show!’ or ​‘my grandchild really likes this thing.’ All that stuff comes up, and that’s to me the most valuable piece of it. I’m not a promoter of candy or plastic, or commercialism. Those aren’t the things that resonate for me. What I do love is that there’s lots of opportunities for nostalgia and connection.” He used to think his collection might belong in a pediatric center, but in hindsight, ​“I think this makes the most sense. You want to connect to people’s experiences, connect to memory.”

Photographer Ian Christmann, who also lives in Fair Haven, agreed. ​“I’ve lived here for 20 years and am very familiar with what they have going on here,” he said of Mary Wade, which contacted him for a mural-size photograph for the cafe. ​“They wanted to represent the community, showcase Fair Haven and the views, and that’s something I’ve spent a lot of time photographing.” The designers gave him the dimensions of the space they intended to cover, and Christmann took 10 photos to make a composite of the upstream view of the Quinnipiac River and Grand Avenue Bridge from the Ferry Street bridge to the south.

“It’s a view that I find beautiful and I don’t know if too many people know about it,” Christmann said. His own house, in fact, appears in the photo. ​“I think one of the reasons they wanted this view is because they wanted to create a view that felt like you’re sitting in a park and looking at a scene,” with enough detail to reward prolonged scrutiny.

“A good part of the population here is local,” Christmann continued, so ​“I’m sure a lot of memories are associated with this view.” People may be able to spot where they lived — and take a trip through history. Christmann pointed out that the Quinnipiac River waterfront has changed dramatically over the decades. Once the river was lined with houses and oyster shacks. There used to be shipbuilders. Then it became a scrap metal yard. Finally, it was turned into parkland. ​“There are residents who are of the age where they would remember all of that,” he said.

Christmann’s image now documents a moment in that ongoing evolution. ​“This is just a snapshot of what it looked like in 2022,” he said. ​“Fifty years from now, it could look really different.” But the boat heading southward in the photograph, he said, is a connection to the past — it’s an oyster boat, still plying that trade. ​“They’re still in operation,” he said. ​“It’s a nod to them, showing their operation and honoring it. They come in and out of the river every day, which I think is an incredible New Haven treasure that is so unique … and not necessarily realized enough.”