Saturday night opening at the Hygienic

Hygienic Art
83 Bank St., P.O. Box 417, New London, (860) 443-8001
Poliz: Pola Ester & Susan Madacsi
July 4—Aug. 1, 2009
Opening reception: Sat., July 4, 7—10 p.m.

Press release

Poliz is a Polish word that loosely translates as something to try or to sample for the first time. The show features local New London photographer Pola Ester and Hygienic resident artist Susan Madacsi. Ester immigrated to the US from Poland where she had an interest in the theater arts. Since moving to the states she has focused on documentary and fashion photography. Ester will be showing a series of new photographs that feature a number of New London characters and artists who volunteered their time to model. Her photos are inspired by her interests in fashion and theater. The images are modern, provocative and edgy with an emphasis on color and composition. Madacsi will be showing non-functional sculptural objects forged in steel along with water based paintings and drawings. Her work also focuses on color and composition.

Susan Madacsi:

I work with steel in the traditional forging manor of a blacksmith. When steel is heated to forging temperatures around 2200 degrees it can be manipulated in the same ways as clay. In this new body of work, I have been exploring and pushing the plasticity of the material. Large thick bars are forged and cut into many smaller manageable pieces and re-assembled into forms. The vessels' surfaces are then treated as if a palette. I apply enamel paint and use a variety of techniques to distress the surface. The result is an interpretation of a contemporary form that suggests architecture, stone, and an attempt to capture entropy. By using pigment I have found that I am able to emphasize the many textures that evolve from forging. Although steel is usually first thought of as an industrial material, I like to draw attention to our connection with it on a human level, by creating objects that reveal organic forms.

There will be an opening reception for this show on Sat. evening, July 4, from 7—10 p.m.

Opening this evening at eo art lab in Chester

eo art lab
69 Main Street, Chester, (860) 526-4833
Janet Lage: Hose Me
July 1—Aug. 2, 2009
Opening reception: Fri., July 3, 6—9 p.m.

Press release

Janet Lage’s work takes its form as she experiences the world within the gap between seeing and knowing. Lage has developed a vocabulary of marks, materials, textures, and colors that are symbolic expressions of the residue of life. She sees the paint as a living thing with inclinations of its own and she opens herself up to collaborate with it. Calligraphic lines and irregular edges are born from the rawness of nature and contemporary culture. Drawing inspiration from life’s curious daily events and scenes, she synchronizes the intertwined existence of order and disorder. Her work positions itself loosely between representation and abstraction in search of this expression.

Lage absorbs her surroundings and takes nothing for granted. She finds worth and meaning in the mundane as well as the exotic. Her work expresses the parallel realities of life’s scenes and events. In this way, her work is affirming and positive, giving weight to the seemingly insignificant as well as the momentous, providing a model for our travels.

Hose Me, an exhibition of Lage's paintings, will open this evening at eo art lab from 6—9 p.m.

Reunion show rocks Hull's Gallery One Whitney

Hull's Gallery One Whitney
1 Whitney Ave., New Haven, (203) 907-0320
3 After 30: Roberta Friedman, Natalie Melbardis, David Millen with guest Maishe Dickman
Through July 9, 2009.

As Part I of the Hull's Gallery One Whitney "Summer Salon," the venue is hosting 3 After 30. It is a reunion show of sorts, featuring three artists—Roberta Friedman, Natalie Melbardis and David Millen—who exhibited together 30 years ago at a Whitney Avenue gallery. There is also an installation piece and several vessels by guest artist and master potter Maishe Dickman.

Friedman is represented by a number of wonderful watercolor collages. These new works have roots in her earlier watercolors. One of those older pieces, "Autumn Reflections" from 1979, is a serenely fluid depiction of orange, red and golden leaves on a pond surface.

Stepping three decades ahead finds Friedman still preoccupied with landscape but approaching it with a richer and more experimental aesthetic. "Tanzania Vista" (2009) is typical of her contemporary approach. Instead of painting a straightforward watercolor of the scene (shore, jungle, mountains in the distance), Friedman layers pieces, strips, fragments of watercolor-painted paper, some of which looks handmade. This approach creates a vibrant surface that better captures the feel of nature—unruly, wild and beautiful.

David Millen, who I have written about previously, is showing several of his smaller scale figurative sculptures (as well as some porcelain vessels). Millen's sculptures are characterized by the grace of the interaction between his troupe of dancers, gymnasts and circus aerialists. Miller, with most of these, is working with marbleized epoxy resin to create his figures. They are mounted on a steel base. "Forming a Circle" features three figures. Two males (one standing on his hands) hold a woman up in the air. There is a strong visual circularity to the composition, flowing from the way Millen directs the energy from figure to figure (as though they are swimming after each other). This illusion of movement is accented by the swirling color of the smooth, marbleized surface.

Melbardis' pieces are the most disparate selection in the show, encompassing black and white collages, color collages in quilt-like geometric patterns and a couple of acrylic on paper paintings that combine Pollockesque density with a controlled intricacy of execution.

There are several beautiful pieces of stoneware by Dickman in the show, particularly the stunning "16-Tile Wall Piece."

Tursday evening opening at Parachute Gallery in Erector Square

Parachute Gallery
70 Audubon St., 2nd floor, New Haven, (203) 772-2788
White Collar. Blue Collar. Pink Slip.
Through Sept. 18, 2009
Opening reception: Tues., June 30, 5—7 p.m.

Press release

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven presents White Collar. Blue Collar. Pink Slip., an exhibition that explores the uncertainties, anxieties, and rewards of the workplaces that shape our identities. The exhibition will be on display at The Parachute Factory, Erector Square, 319 Peck St., Bldg. 1, New Haven, from Wed., June 24 through Tues., Sept. 18. An artists' reception is scheduled for Tues., June 30, from 5—7 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

Recently, we've been deluged with a seemingly endless amount of information about the adverse effects of the down economy. Banks and corporations are in trouble, and people are losing their jobs. It is, unquestionably, an anxious time for many.

White Collar. Blue Collar. Pink Slip. examines the impacts of the current economic crisis through works that confront us with symbols of debt and unemployment, and takes us into abandoned, often deteriorating factories whose empty silences scream of crippled industries and decimated workforces.

The exhibition also puts us face to face with the socioeconomic ladder, introducing us, through paintings and photographs, to the white-collar professionals near the top, and the blue-collar workers and manual laborers closer to the bottom. We are introduced to the dignity of those who work in the retail and service industries in New Haven and their counterparts across the United States and in Europe. And we experience the daily struggle for survival of those living "off the grid" in the southeastern United States.

White Collar. Blue Collar. Pink Slip. forces us to look at the process of starting over through the work of the exhibition's artist-in-residence, Moussa Gueye, a political asylee from Mauritania who has begun his artistic career anew here, in his adopted country.

Other featured artists include Roland Becerra, Frank Bruckmann (Web), Lucas Foglia (Web), Douglas McGoldrick (Web), David Ottenstein (Web), Hank Paper (Web), Jean Perkins, Cindy Tower (Web), and Rita Valley (Web).

White Collar. Blue Collar. Pink Slip. is the first of a two-part exhibition called Work/Place, which examines the environments on which our survival depends. The second part of the exhibition, Out of House and Home, opens in October.

The Parachute Factory is a collaboration of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, and Community Services Network of Greater New Haven. White Collar. Blue Collar. Pink Slip. is presented by The Parachute Factory, in collaboration with Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS).

Thursday night opening for City-Wide Open Studios' Index I at Artspace

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
City-Wide Open Studios Index I
June 25-July 25, 2009
Opening reception: Thurs., June 25, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

For the past twelve years, Artspace has supported local Connecticut artists by promoting artistic discourse within the greater community and hosting new events and forums during City-Wide Open Studios (CWOS). On June 25, 2009 from 6—8 p.m., join us for the opening of Index I, an unjuried exhibition on view through July 25, 2009 in galleries 2, 3,4, and 7. Artspace will launch the beginning of the CWOS season by featuring approximately one hundred and twenty artists from a pool of two hundred and forty promising and inventive artists.

Miniature prints at Center for Contemporary Printmaking

Center for Contemporary Printmaking
299 West Ave., Norwalk, (203) 899-7999
International Miniature Print 2009
Through Aug. 15, 2009.

Press release

CCP is exhibiting 180 miniature prints (see untitled im mage by Carolyn Sheehan) by over one hundred national and international artists. This year's competition was CCP's most competitive, with entries from twenty five states and twenty three countries. The jurors were Lisa Hodermarsky, of The Sutphin Family Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Yale University Art Gallery, and Craig Zammiello, Master Intaglio Printer at the Two Palms Press in New York. Those prints which were not selected are still available to view and purchase via "Salon de Refuse" binders. Please remember that sales are on a first-come, first-serve basis.

CCP's Grace Shanley Gallery is open Mon.—Sat. from 9 a.m.—5 p.m. and Sunday from 12 p.m.—5 p.m. The exhibition is also available to view online @ www.contemprints.org. Please inquire for more information.

Paper beats rock AND scissors

City Gallery
994 State St., New Haven, (203) 782-2489
No Rocks, No Scissors, Just...
Through June 28, 2009.

Edge and surface. Color and texture. It is the confluence of these attributes that provides so much pleasure in Jennifer Davies' No Rocks, No Scissors, Just... show at City Gallery. The one-person exhibit showcases her collaged paper works.These are all abstractions, and consonant with the stylistic groove of the City Gallery artists.

Davies uses both handmade and manufactured papers. She stains them or prints on them—some are leftover cutouts used in making monotypes, scraps recycled into new art—and distresses the surface. Edges are torn. There are creases and crumples; even the manufactured paper appears worn and wearied of fiber. There is a density to these works that is riveting. The various pieces of paper used in each work have rich character, whether the source of that is the intense color or staining or the distressed surface or a combination of the two factors.

One tall vertical work, "Top Shimmer," appears to bleed from the top—the lighter, more open part of the composition—down to its dark, blue-black depths. Sky and ocean. The gray area up top has been wet; the ink bleeds and spreads. Thin torn pieces of paper are affixed in the middle, as though the sky is breaching the surface of the ocean.

Like many of the works, "Compelled Rethinking" is notable for the way the ink adheres to the mottled paper surface, speckling or coating it along long vertical, diagonal and horizontal creases. It's abstraction but I also see landscape in its juxtaposition of form and color choices. To the right is deep water, the paper pigmented black and dark turquoise. Pressed up against this water is the shore, sandy speckling of burnt sienna and dark brown. Hard against the torn left edge of this section is a thin boundary or turquoise and blue. The "west" is marked by expanses of mottled burnt sienna. These effects are enhanced by Davies' overlapping and folding the torn pieces of colored paper.

DiGiovanni shows new direction at Hungry Eye, opening on Wednesday

Hungry Eye Gallery
838 Whalley Avenue West Rock Ave Entrance, New Haven, (203) 494-9905
Featured Artist: Steven DiGiovanni
Through June 28, 2009.
Opening Reception: Wed., June 17, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

New Haven artist, ArLoW resident artist and Creative Arts Workshop Drawing & Painting Department Head Steven DiGiovanni is the featured guest artist this month at Hungry Eye Coop Gallery. As a neighbor to both Jennifer Jane Gallery and Hungry Eye, we are pleased to have Steven be our first Guest Artist.

Artist Statement by Steven DiGiovanni:

The works I have been doing in the last two years represent, for me, a period of terrific energy, play and experimentation. I switched media about one year ago from oil on primed canvas to acrylic on unprimed canvas. My imagery has changed significantly with the change of media, from realistically depicted figurative narratives to a much more graphic and collage-based imagery. Each of my images seems to evolve quite separately from the images that precede it. As I work I am often driven by the accidents that result from pouring, splattering and staining the unprimed material. Each effort results in a different emphasis whether it be graphic, physical or illustrational. I am now reluctant to commit fully to any coherent narrative space. Rather, I prefer that the imagery and space remain open and fluid. I draw images from digital camera snapshots, internet image searches, and my imagination. I enjoy navigating multiple layers of reference and manipulating modalities that lead to a more free-associative narrative structure. I sometimes look at the oil paintings which preceded my current efforts and miss the lush, deep surfaces which distinguish them from the shallower, more graphic acrylic media. However, I have not yet experimented with and experienced the enormous range of technical possibilities that acrylic materials can provide and I find the immediacy and freedom of the acrylic liberating and enervating. I am enjoying a new vigor in my work effort.

My review:

There are three new paintings by DiGiovanni on display in the Hungry Eye Gallery. These acrylics on canvas mark a real shift for DiGiovanni, who has specialized in precisely articulated figurative and (mystifying) narrative oil paintings. Working with acrylics has freed up his approach.

His brush strokes are more vigorous. Using a lot of thinner in his paints, DiGiovanni is drenching his canvases in fluid, dripping colors. Figurative imagery remains at the core of his work. But he's drawing his inspiration less from photographing friends and acquaintances (with the exception of his partner Chisato) and more often from pop culture and advertising detritus. I could see references to rock band logos (the Buzzcocks), record covers, advertising imagery and mechanical drawings.

In his earlier work, DiGiovanni often hinted at a narrative. His figures were often posed in domestic interiors in ways that suggested some obscure drama of alienated relationships. But these narrative hints were linear. The new works have more of a collage feeling, as though they derive fictive inspiration from the avant-garde cut-ups of William S. Burroughs.

DiGiovanni has always been content to leave room for the viewer to complete the artwork with their own imagination. Now, he leaves the actual surface "unfinished." In the work in the center of the room, imagery overlays imagery. Line sketches are overpainted by blocks of color and precisely rendered text. It is a bold move, one that allows DiGiovanni more compositional freedom without sacrificing the strengths of his draftsmanship and grasp of the figure.

There will be an opening reception for this mini-show this Wed., June 17, from 6—8 p.m.

Creative Arts Workshop exhibition showcases talented faculty

Creative Arts Workshop Hilles Gallery
80 Audubon St., New Haven, (203) 562-4927
Faculty Show
Through June 26, 2009

On thing that struck me as I wandered through the second floor of the two-floor Hilles Gallery at Creative Arts Workshop, checking out the Faculty Show, is the seductive energy of the gesture. It isn't that there were gestural drawings. Rather, there were a number of works in which the physical dynamism of the approach—or the appearance thereof—is reflected in a compelling liveliness of expression. This gestural current is present in Kelley Kapp's "Mad Plaid," a two-panel monochromatic acrylic on canvas. There's something about Kapp's doodle-like profusion of brush strokes that invites closer inspection.

A sense of fervent commotion also animates Julie Rogoff's "Through the Trees," an oil painting and abstraction. The pastel hues in "Through the Trees" capture the sense of sunlight coursing through the forest canopy. Her "Chomping at the Edge, CT River" relies on a darker palette but still conveys the feel of gestural motion.

This energy is present in Dorothy Powers' "Round Again," collaged and enlarged photocopies of a drawing of objects that look like balls of string. Nancy Eisenfeld's "Vortex," ink on paper, weds sweeps of pen lines with what appears to be stamps of abstract natural forms. Again, whether Eisenfeld approached the execution of "Vortex" in a gestural manner, the drawing pulses with visual energy.

Some works convey this sense of motion and urgency even though the act of creation was likely meticulous, even painstaking. Connie Pfeiffer's "Opening" is a steel wire wall sculpture in which two vertical, parallel lines anchor a chaotic profusion of horizontal threads. It is like a 3-D drawing in black and white. There is also motion captured in the sculptures of David Millen and Susan Clinard—figures poised in one-legged balance.

The exhibition showcases the breadth of media in which CAW's artist/teachers work. One example is the trio of sculptures by Jeannie Thomma. Thomma's poles are wrapped and decorated with felted wool and mixed media—thread, lace, sequins, ribbon. Thomma uses the characteristics of all materials at her disposal—the colors, textures and surfaces—to create complex, visually engaging works.

Downstairs, I loved the contrast between Steven R. DiGiovanni's "Untitled" acrylic on canvas and Josh Gaetjen's "Story and Play II." Lines and form are important for both painters. But where Gaetjen's urban landscape is concerned with accurately replicating architectural perspective and the play of light and shadows, DiGiovanni bends and warps his geometric shapes. He turns space inside out, painting a funhouse mirror of his imagination. Both large works satisfy in their very different ways (although both painters share a command of their craft.)

A short review like this can't do justice to this show. Suffice to say, Creative Arts Workshop is a treasure trove of talent and a real jewel for New Haven.