Vincent Calenzo
Bike.
The boy in Vincent Calenzo’s Bike wears an expression of wariness and awe. Before him stands a masterpiece — of engineering, sound, and speed. Not everyone is into motorcycles; most of us don’t know enough about them to appreciate them. But the way Calenzo, through his technique, renders the bike, we get to see it through his and the boy’s eyes. We get to feel some of its power.
In this way, Calenzo shows how, even in the age of easily manipulated digital photography, painting still has a lot to say, and let us see the present day in new ways.
That’s one of the takeaways from the 120th annual exhibition of the New Haven Paint and Clay Club. As the organization’s mission statement reads, the club “actively supports, encourages, and promotes exploration of and involvement with the visual arts in the Greater New Haven area and beyond. The club further engages local communities by sharing loaned artworks from its permanent collection, offering merit awards, scholarships, free programs and lectures, and other art related activities.” Founded in 1900, it saw strong community support from its early years onward and now boasts about 200 members.
The juried exhibition was an opportunity for the club to hand out prizes to 14 of its members and purchase three paintings for its permanent collection. It also let the club offer memorials to three of its members who died in the past year: Emily Bett, Eleanor (Sunni) Cretella, and Joseph Saccio. But mostly, it was a chance to celebrate painting and sculpting, and the ways that both media can get us to look closer, and see with different perspectives.
Ashley Stringer
Triple Leap.
Ashley Stringer’s Triple Leap has the crispness of a photograph, from the children suspended in the air to the splash frozen in time. But its treatment of color makes it feel more like a memory than a document; emotions swirl around the figures in ways a photograph might not ever capture.
Eileen Carey
Good Bye to the 4th of July.
Similarly, the bleached-out colors in Eileen Carey’s painting let us feel the heat of the beach, as the seated figure is very nearly melting into the sand behind him.
Samantha Hayslett
Sweet Spoons.
Samantha Hayslett’s treatment of the droplet of liquid dangling from the bottom of the spoon is exacting but also lets us see the simpler shapes the light is producing, almost creating something like a small smile.
Alfonsina Betancourt
When she blossoms, she is fire.
Alfonsa Betancourt’s portrait is so vibrant that it seems to partake of the fantastical.
Nan Tussing
In the Wind.
The exhibition has its share of more abstract painters as well. Nan Tussing eschews photorealistic details to concentrate instead on form and color, with striking and desolate results.
Cynthia Cooper
A Three-Poem Day.
Cynthia Cooper’s piece is an exploration of form and color that produces a clear feeling of warmth and cheer.
Victoria Sivigny
If Walls Could Talk, No. 7.
Victoria Sivigny’s piece, meanwhile, exercises texture to get its effects.
Mary Burk Smith (l.) Gary O’Neil (r.)
Warrior IX (l.) and Raku Basket with Reed Handle (r.).
The sculptural side of the club is represented in the exhibition as well, beginning with traditional and playful pieces rendered with great craft and care.
Lianne Audette
Great Blue.
Meanwhile, on the second floor, Lianne Audette’s Great Blue has the ability to startle a person who enters the room; her heron is imbued with a not entirely readable expression that — as with real herons in nature — is unfriendly enough to put viewers on their guard.
Frank Bruckmann
The Collector.
Notably muted in this year’s exhibition is any serious appearance of the Covid-19 pandemic. Frank Bruckmann’s painting may come close, but even then there’s a chance that we are, in fact, not seeing a painting of someone working from home, but just of someone using their laptop.
Elayne Marholin
Still Motion.
In a year that the pandemic dominated our lives, both in the very real way that it forced us to live differently and in the way it flooded the news cycle, our conversations, and our thoughts, its absence is refreshing — a reminder that the life that preceded it was, in the grand scheme of things, not that long ago, and the pleasures that await us, such as being able to gather in greater numbers, are perhaps not far off.
New Haven Paint & Clay Club’s 120th Annual Juried Exhibition runs at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, 51 Trumbull St., through May 30. Visit the center’s website for hours and more information.
