Local Artists Stack The Deck

Barbara Marks painted a cake — and ended up seeing it decorating the seven of diamonds.

Marks’ piece was one of 52 images by 52 Connecticut artists reproduced in a ​“Handful of Art” deck of playing cards.

An exhibit — of both the playing cards; and the paintings, prints and sculptures on which they were based — debuted at the John Slade Ely House on Sunday afternoon. The exhibition runs through July 21. (Click here for the full list of artists and visiting hours.)

The project is the brainchild of local arts promoter Cheever Tyler. He said that when he visited Portland,Oregon, several years ago and noticed a deck of cards with area retailers, the project to market local artists clicked for him. Barbara Hawes, an independent curator, coordinated the project.

Tyler’s previous work includes a book Artists Next Door, and Hawes most recently ran the Hulls Gallery One on Whitney.

After screening by an anonymous jury, Hawes picked the winners for the playing-cards project from hundreds of submissions.

Profits from the sales of the limited edition of 1,000 decks, at $20 each, go to Partnership for Connecticut Cities, an entity set up by Tyler, from which he will distribute funds to area arts organizations.

The exhibition was not initially planned, just the deck,. Hawes said she was delighted when she discovered the availability of the Ely House.

Some artists were at first reluctant to do the cropping or other manipulation of their work necessary to fit the format of a playing card. Others deemed the project not sufficiently serious. But in general, Hawes said, the artists ​“are over the moon” about the results.

Each boxed deck contains the card-borne images of 52 art works as well as a separate card listing the email or website contact of each artist.

Stony Creek-based Barbara Marks is the seven of diamonds with her 2009 work, oil on linen ​“Cakes No. 13 (Villanelle.)”

She said she liked the idea but was not sure how practical the cards would turn out to be. She intends to keep one set — each artist was presented two free — and give the other to her parents.

“My 90-year-old parents play cards a lot. I’m curious if they’ll enjoy or find it [the deck] unreadable,” she said.

Three Of A Kind
David Sepulveda photographed three artists and interviewed them about their works included in the deck:

The idea for North Haven artist Adam Niklewicz’s ​“Calle Lunga,” sculpture was hatched on the streets of Venice, Italy while Niklewicz was visiting the Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition two years ago. A vertically standing fork with gravity defying strands of spaghetti trailing behind like bicycle handlebar streamers is first and foremost about humor said the artist. Niklewicz said it took around a year to resolve the technical issues of his dried pasta and fork sculpture.

At only six inches large originally, Linda Lindroth’s digitally magnified photograph fools the eye. Lindroth described the process of flattening out boxes and going to great lengths to arrange portions so as to not reveal and any printed advertising or technical information. In ​“Dresden” (pictured), blue and white colors reference the porcelain and china created in the numerous potteries for which Dresden, Germany became famous.

Also on her mind was Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and his novels, like Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut was a P.O.W. in Dresden and parts of Lindroth’s photograph suggest the flattening destruction visited upon the city after relentless Allied bombings during World War Two. 

Michael Angelis is familiar to some for his lively plein air paintings of urban New Haven. Usually his paintings are done on location, and take six to eight hours to complete. In creating ​“Gateway College Construction Site,” 2011, the artist said, he enjoyed a unique vantage from his studio and was able to spend around 18 months documenting and observing the construction site of the new college. With the Temple Street Garage looming above, Angelis said his painting is a composite capturing various stages of the building’s construction. Noting the unique perspective from his studio, Angelis said his painting is a historical record of a view that few have seen and will never see again.