QUEER CON at Real Art Ways

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QUEER CON

 

In the spirit of the Stonewall Riots’ 50th Anniversary, Real Art Ways and Hartford Capital City Pride are proud to present QUEER CON – an evening of conversation, performance and community.

Community Dialogue | 5:30 PM
All are invited to attend this round table discussion aimed at exploring and imagining the future of queer rights, equality, and understanding. Utilizing the Stonewall Rebellion as a base, the community dialogue will tackle issues surrounding intersectionality and how the queer struggle is inherently one we all share, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, or identity. Community organizers will be present to help facilitate the conversation throughout the night.

Performances / Reception | 6 PM
Following the dialogue, a social hour with performances throughout the rest of the night will allow us to end on a positive, creative note. This is a chance to be present with other like minded people in an inclusive and welcoming environment.

Performances by: Calvin Bittner, Tenaya Taylor, Ephraim Adamz, Joevanni Stewart, domsentfrommars, Luminous, Emma Bilyou, Natalie Rose, Cheena Exodus & Shinobiiq

Doors open at 5 PM | Event ends at 9 PM

Lary Bloom Book Talk & Signing

 

Author Lary Bloom will give an illuminating presentation and sign copies of his new book, Sol LeWitt, A Life of Ideas. The book represents 11 years of work and 150 interviews around the world.

From the book’s description:

“Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, upended traditional practices of how art is made and marketed. A key figure in minimalism and conceptualism, he proclaimed that the work of the mind is much more important than that of the hand.

For his site-specific work―wall drawings and sculpture in dozens of countries―he created the idea and basic plan and then hired young artists to install the pieces. Though typically enormous and intricate, the physical works held no value. The worth was in the pieces of paper that certified and described them.

LeWitt championed and financially supported colleagues, including women artists brushed aside by the bullies of a male-dominated profession. Yet the man himself has remained an enigma, as he refused to participate in the culture of celebrity.

Lary Bloom’s book draws on personal recollections of LeWitt, whom he knew in the last years of the artist’s life, as well as LeWitt’s letters and papers and over one hundred original interviews with his friends and colleagues, including Chuck Close, Ingrid Sischy, Philip Glass, Adrian Piper, Jan Dibbets, and Carl Andre. This absorbing chronicle brings new information to our understanding of this important artist, linking the extraordinary arc of his life to his iconic work.”

About Lary Bloom
Lary Bloom has authored or co-authored ten books including The Writer Within, The Test of Our Times, with Tom Ridge, and Letters from Nuremberg, with Christopher Dodd. He has taught writing at Yale University, Fairfield University, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

June Riverwood Poetry Series

 

Each night begins with an open mic, followed by a poetry reading featuring regionally-or nationally-known poets.

In Good Time: Incarcerated Voices
The poetry you will hear is from inmates at the maximum security MacDougall Correctional Facility in Suffield, Connecticut. They attended a poetry workshop facilitated by Garrett Phelan. Rarely are these poets’ voices heard beyond the locked classroom door.

Garrett Phelan
Garrett Phelan has been a Teaching Artist under the auspices of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Washington National Opera, The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop and other arts and educational organizations. He has published poems in literary journals as well as a volume of poetry, Ode To Outlaws, and two micro-chapbooks Unfixed Marks and Standing where I am. Garrett lives in Bloomfield, Connecticut.

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry SeriesThe Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” Learn more at their website.

May Riverwood Poetry Series

 

The Series takes place on the second Tuesday of the month through June 2019. Each night begins with an open mic, followed by a poetry reading featuring regionally-or nationally-known poets.

Erica Funkhouser
In addition to Post & Rail, winner of the Idaho Prize for Poetry, Erica Funkhouser has published four books of poetry with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and one with Alice James Books.

Funkhouser’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Poetry, among others. One of her poems has been sand-blasted into the wall of the Davis Square MBTA Station in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Funkhouser was honored as a Literary Light by The Boston Public Library and she is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. She lives in Essex, MA and teaches at MIT.

About Riverwood Poetry Series
Riverwood Poetry SeriesThe Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc. is a non-profit arts organization committed to the promotion and appreciation of poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming, while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all of them free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” Learn more at their website.

Riverwood Poetry Series Dates
Tuesday, June 11, 7 PM Garrett Phelan (Rescheduled)

Video Gallery: Juan Obando – Museum Mixtape

 

Real Art Ways presents Museum Mixtape (Dirty South Edition)a 2014 video album in which rap artists perform live critiques of museums in the southeast United States. This work was created by artist Juan Obando and produced as a Rhizome commission, an affiliate in residence at the New Museum in New York City.

From the Artist Statement
The piece aims to create a playful connection between hip-hop narratives and institutional art spaces, reflecting on the current state of cultural economies, institutional community engagement and emerging subcultural forms and their intersections.”

About the Artist
Juan Obando is Colombian new media artist currently living and working out of Boston. His work has been shown nationally and internationally at venues including the VOLTA art fair, Kala Art Institute, Duke University, and NADA in Bogota, Colombia. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Featured image: Still from Museum Mixtape (Dirty South Edition)

Evan Parker / Joe Morris / Ned Rothenberg / Tomeka Reid

 

An evening of bold and dynamic improvised music.

“Evan is one of the great living legends of improvised music. No one should ever turn down a chance to play with him, and everyone who enjoys artistic music should take the opportunity to be in the audience and listen to him.” – Joe Morris

The relationship between prominent British free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker and American musicians Joe Morris and Ned Rothenberg goes back several years to a concert they played together in New Haven, Connecticut. Morris says, “The music was really good and we all enjoyed it.” Parker had also joined Morris and cornetist Stephen Haynes at RAW for one of their “Improvisations” series concerts in 2014. Rounding out the lineup at this event is innovative cellist Tomeka Reid, who recently played at RAW with Taylor Ho Bynum in 2018.

About Evan Parker
“Evan Parker is a titan of the British jazz avant-garde, and one of the leading saxophonists in his idiom anywhere.” — Nate Chinen, New York Times

British jazz saxophone revolutionary Evan Parker began to play at the age of 14. Initially he played alto and was an admirer of Paul Desmond; but later he switched to tenor and soprano, following the example of John Coltrane, a major influence who, he would later say, determined “my choice of everything.” Parker moved to London and by end of the 1980s he had played in most European countries and had made various tours to the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Parker has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, but is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music. This singular body of work has centered around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. Parker has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is hypnotic with an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as “the illusion of polyphony.” Parker is widely acknowledged as “one of the music’s greatest living instrumentalists” (The Times), “one of the world’s finest ensemble improvisers” (Chicago Reader) and “one of the modern era’s most original voices” (The Wire).

About Joe Morris
“Joe Morris, The preeminent free music guitarist of his generation”– Downbeat

New Haven, Connecticut native Joe Morris started on guitar at the age of 14 and is essentially self-taught. After receiving a copy of John Coltrane’s book, OM, he was inspired to learn about Jazz and New Music. Early on, he drew on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, Thelonius Monk, and Ornette Coleman. In the late 1970s he was active on the Boston music scene and in 1980 he traveled to Europe where he performed in Belgium and Holland. When he returned to Boston he helped organize the Boston Improvisers Group (BIG). In 1981 he formed his own record company, Riti, and began what would be a six year collaboration with the multi-instrumentalist Lowell Davidson. In the late 1980s he lived and performed in New York City.

Returning to Boston, he performed and recorded with his electric trio and electric quartet. Since the 1990s he has recorded for numerous labels and has toured throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe as a solo and as a leader of a trio and a quartet. He began playing acoustic bass in 2000. He has lectured and conducted workshops throughout the U.S. and Europe and is currently on the faculty at New England Conservatory in the jazz and improvisation department.

About Ned Rothenberg
“Woodwind/saxophone ace Ned Rothenberg has a formidable reputation as an innovator. He also shares the restless eclecticism of colleagues like John Zorn and Anthony Braxton.” — Glen Hirshberg, LA Weekly

Composer/Performer Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 33 years on 5 continents.  He performs primarily on  alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and the shakuhachi – an endblown Japanese bamboo flute. His trademark solo technique is self-taught. Rothenberg’s musical interests are numerous and his work varies widely in its sonic, emotive and stylistic profiles. He incorporates polyphony and accurate microtonal organization through the manipulation of multiphonics, circular breathing, and overtone control, using his horns both in a normal melodic role and also as rhythmic and harmonic engines in both solo and ensemble contexts.

As a composer he can move from the contemporary classical setting of his Quintet for Clarinet and Strings to “Jazz-funk in cubist perspective, dizzying, yet visceral” (Jon Pareles, NY Times re Double Band) to music that is “intense, slightly melancholic, rhapsodic without being sentimental” (Edward Rothstein, NY Times referring to his solo work). Recent recordings include this Quintet, The World of Odd Harmonics, Ryu Nashi (new music for shakuhachi), and Inner Diaspora, all on John Zorn’s Tzadik label, as well as Live at Roulette with Evan Parker,  and The Fell Clutch, on Rothenberg’s Animul label.

About Tomeka Reid
“Reid achieves a timbral intensity and rhythmic thrust of the kind usually associated with electrified jazz fusion.” – David Whiteis, JazzTimes

Recently described as a “New Jazz Power Source” by the New York Times, cellist and composer Tomeka Reid emerged as one of the most original, versatile, and curious musicians in Chicago’s bustling jazz and improvised music community. Now based in New York, her distinctive melodic sensibility, usually braided to a strong sense of groove, has been featured in many distinguished ensembles.

Reid has been a key member of ensembles led by legendary reedists like Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, as well as a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell, singer Dee Alexander, and drummer Mike Reed. Reid released her debut recording as a bandleader in 2015: the Tomeka Reid Quartet (Jason Roebke, Tomas Fujiwara and Mary Halvorson).

By focusing on developing her craft primarily as a side person and working in countless improvisational contexts, she has achieved a stunning musical maturity. Reid is a 2016 recipient of a 3Arts award in music and received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign in 2017.

Gil Scullion: Artist Talk and Reception

 

A reception will begin at 2:30 PM, with the talk commencing at 3 PM.

Gil Scullion will speak about his work and process for the exhibit Empty Spaces, Home Bodiesfollowed by a moderated Q+A with curator David Borawski.

More info about Empty Spaces, Home Bodies is at this link.

About the Artist
Gil Scullion is an artist living and working in Middletown, Connecticut. Upon finishing his undergraduate studies, Scullion moved from Austin, Texas to New York City. There, his work developed in a conceptual manner before he pursued graduate studies at the State University of New York Albany.

His work has been featured at Real Art Ways, the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut, P.S.1 in Long Island City, New York, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut and the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

He has taught for the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Wesleyan University and Manchester Community College. His work has received support in the form of grants from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, the Hartford Downtown Council and the Middletown Commission on the Arts.

 

Mateo Nava: Encuentro

 

Real Art Ways presents new works by 2018 Real Art Awards recipient Mateo Nava.

In Mateo Nava’s exhibition Encuentro, the viewer encounters bodega forms that feel simultaneously alien yet familiar. Utilizing the languages of painting outside the standard canvas on stretcher bars format, Nava creates an alternative to image making. His mixed-media works challenge the viewer to consider Mexican culture from a diasporan standpoint, feeling both at home and displaced.

Read an article in the Hartford Courant about Mateo’s and Keith Clougherty’s Exhibitions.

About the Artist
Mateo Nava was born in 1994 in San Luis Potosí, Mexico and grew up in Mexico City. In 2016, Mateo completed a residency at Yale University’s Summer School of Art in Norfolk, Connecticut and in 2017 he earned a BFA from The Cooper Union, where his work began to focus on painting, collage, layering, pattern, and iconography in relationship to Latin American visual tradition.

His work has been included in group exhibitions in New York and Miami. He recently completed a residency with the National YoungArts Foundation and Bay Parc in Miami, which culminated in a solo exhibition of works.

He is currently an Artist in Residence at Fountainhead Studios in Miami and is a recent recipient of an Artist Opportunity Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, where he will complete a residency this summer.

Featured image: “Fotos de Pasaporte” (detail) – Acrylic, paper, photo collage, glitter and confetti on canvas, 56″ x 78″, 2018.

More about the Real Art Awards here.

The 2018 Real Art Awards is supported in part by the National Endowment of the Arts and The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation.

National Endowment for the Arts

 

Real Wall: Michael Chang

 

Michael Chang has created a layered installation on the Real Wall exploring identity, gender, and materiality.

Utilizing clothing, a material he often uses to reflect on identity construction and personal memories, Chang has created a large-scale sculptural tapestry that is a record of his fluctuating emotional and mental state during his time so far in New Haven, Connecticut. The clothes are sourced from multiple trips to Saver’s 50% off sales, at which he would hoard menswear. In addition to the fabric piece, framed photographs and prints hide behind the surface of the quilt curtain. Viewers can peek in between the holes and gaps in the clothing to discover what’s behind the smiles.

From his Artist’s Statement:
“I’m a Taiwanese American conceptual artist who reflects and articulates my experiences. I form the conceptual foundations of my practice in a localized way, considering anecdotes, memories, and objects from my life. I conflate these personal details and moments with broader systems that affect and interest me: cultural heritage; aspirational movement; urbanism; historical revisionism; racism; intergenerational trauma and identity politics.

Erasure and exclusion often are the consequence of the myth that one or two anchoring commonalities can be ascribed to the Asian American identity when the number of experiences is actually infinite. I want to make art that is genuinely tied to me, letting it relate to whoever chooses to participate with it, instead of reinforcing a prescriptive definition of what it means to be Taiwanese American, because I’m uncertain there is an answer.

About the Artist
Michael Chang is a Taiwanese American conceptual artist. He was born in 1995 and raised in Irvine, California. He received his BFA from the University of Southern California in 2016. Recently solo exhibitions include a site specific solo exhibition in his childhood home titled Suburban Dreaming in the summer of 2018, which was followed up by a sequel exhibition at LA Artcore Brewery Annex titled Space-time Displacement. Both exhibitions dealt with his memories, identity politics, and the psychological conditioning of growing up in the suburbs.

Notable group shows include FRESH 2019 at SoLA in Los Angeles, Home at Collarworks in Troy, New York, and No Longer Negotiable at Nous Tous Gallery in Los Angeles. In conjunction with the work shown in No Longer Negotiable, Chang and a group of collaborators put together a fashion show as a public program for the exhibition. Chang’s work has also been published in an independent anthology of Asian American artists called Bow, featuring writers, poets, musicians, and visual artists. He currently lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.

Keith Clougherty: Homestead Metabolism

 

2018 Real Art Awards recipient Keith Clougherty will present a new installation of works created with and inspired by his Great Aunt Mary.

Keith Clougherty practices social sculpture, creating objects, installations, and experiences using his ancestry and the history of land as a starting point. The vignettes in this installation include objects from his Aunt Mary’s house as well as artworks inspired by her life. Clougherty’s work questions our understanding of history by utilizing a blunt approach in exploring the continued effects of colonialism in North America. His work explores topics as broad and varied as elder care, Irish ancestry, economics, ecology, and production.

Read an article in the Hartford Courant about Keith’s and Mateo Nava’s Exhibitions.

About the Artist
Born in Miami Beach, Florida, Keith Clougherty attended The Design and Architecture Senior High in Miami. During this time he was selected as one of ten Visual Art finalists in the 2009 YoungArts program, a prestigious national competition sponsored by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (NFAA). Keith earned his undergraduate degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. In addition to his art and care practices, Clougherty is a member of The FANG Collective, a group of politically active organizers and community advocates. Working with FANG has helped galvanize his social sculpture to directly address issues like white supremacy, capitalism, and global warming. Keith currently resides in Braintree, Massachusetts.

More about the Real Art Awards here.

The 2018 Real Art Awards is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation.

National Endowment for the Arts

Community Panel Discussion: Tree Spa for Urban Forest Healing

 

An open discussion on the project, Tree Spa for Urban Forest Healing, featuring artist Colin McMullan and a distinguished panel of speakers:

Shubhada Kambli, Sustainability Coordinator from the Office of Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin

Chris Newell, Passamaquoddy Indigenous Educator and Director of Education at Akomawt Educational Initiative and Educational Supervisor at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center

Herb Virgo, Founder and Director of Keney Park Sustainability Project

Lauren Little, Environmental Education Coordinator at KNOX

Colin McNamara, Steward Chair from Manchester Land Trust

Moderator: Linda Weintraub, curator, educator, artist, and author of books about contemporary art with emphasis on environmental consciousness.

About Tree Spa for Urban Forest Healing
The project uses commercial maple syrup production equipment to produce steam for a functional steam room, creating a healing venue for environmentally-charged conversations and experiences.

This social/public project by Colin McMullan, has multiple community partners in Hartford, including Keney Park Sustainability Project, the Hartford Maple Syrup Club, and KNOX.  

The Tree Spa provides a space to think about histories of land connection and displacement in the settlement of New England.

The project represents a vision for synthesizing complex social and environmental issues, by a holistic approach to building urban/rural community and reconnecting with the Earth.

More about Tree Spa for Urban Forest Healing here.

Originally commissioned by Artspace, Inc, for City-Wide Open Studios with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Connecticut Office of the Arts.

Artist Talk: Liona Nyariri

 

2018 Real Art Award recipient Liona Nyariri will present a performative lecture about her work and her fictional character the “Pidgin.”

The Pidgin embodies a physical manifestation of pidgin, or hybrid, languages of Southern Africa.

Nyariri has created installations and objects based on her development of the Pidgin character and its backstory.

In the performance, Liona will take on the persona of a researcher who is studying the Pidgin and the mythology surrounding it.

Says Visual Arts Coordinator Neil Daigle Orians, “I have been continually fascinated during my conversations with Liona. Her work is an experiential dive into her thought process in creating the collective, characters, alphabet, and lore behind the Pidgin. Her performance will blur the lines between scholarship and art, allowing for a new narrative to come forward.”

Read more about Liona’s exhibition, Pfimbi Yemashoko (the place where the words are kept).

About the Artist
Liona R. Nyariri (b. 1991) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in Fine Art from Parsons The New School of Design and completed her Whitney Independent Study Program fellowship in 2017.

Her work has been presented at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, AC Institute, Participant Inc., Long Island City Art Fair, Gallery MOMO, Cape Town Month of Photography, Young Blood Gallery, AVA Gallery and others. Nyariri is the recipient of the ABSA Art and Life award as well as a top finalist for the Sasol New Signatures Award.

Nyariri has completed a residency with Artist Alliance Inc., New York and is currently completing a fellowship in Germany at the Hochschule Für Bidende Künste Braunschweig, funded by the state of Lower Saxony (BS Projects scholarship 2018/19).

The 2018 Real Art Awards is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation.

National Endowment for the Arts

Ken Vandermark & Nate Wooley

 

Free improvisation meets modern composition

Presenting Chicago saxophonist/composer Ken Vandermark and New York trumpeter Nate Wooley. The two musicians have worked together to create an organic combination of the jazz tradition, free improvisation, and modern composition, and have then placed it into the raw and intimate context of a duo. With this unique ensemble, they deal directly with each other’s iconoclastic compositional and improvisational vocabularies and have created a body of original material.

They will perform pieces from their latest release, “Deeply Discounted II/Sequences of Snow,” their two previous albums, “East by Northwest” and “All Directions Home,” plus a new set of music composed in collaboration using the “exquisite corpse” method first made popular by the Surrealist art movement.

About the Artists
Ken Vandermark was named a 1999 MacArthur “genius” Fellow and was selected as one of DownBeat’s “25 For The Future” list of most significant improvisors.

Nate Wooley, a masterful trumpeter from New York has performed on over 100 recordings. His specific style is part of a burgeoning revolution in experimental trumpet technique.

The duo’s performance at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, New York in 2017 was heralded as one of the “Concerts of the Year” by The New York City Jazz Record. Their latest album, “Deeply Discounted/Sequences of Snow,” is an exciting new statement, featuring long-form compositions written specifically for the LP format and developed while touring in North America during 2017.

Learn More About Ken & Nate

Video Gallery: Experimental Research On The Nonexistence of Borders

 

Colin McMullan is an interdisciplinary social practice artist interested in research and collaborative work involving wild foods, indigeneity, environmental justice, and decolonization. Experimental Research On The Nonexistence of Borders is a video installation work, in which an American field research scientist character performs experiments to prove the insubstantiality of political barriers from a natural law perspective.

The video was produced on location at the fence on the closed border between Armenia and Turkey. This video is a part of a series of works utilizing humor and pathos to question the legitimacy of political borders and promote transnational identity formation.

Colin performs as a somewhat obstinate, naive professor, conducting field research experiments to prove that borders have no meaningful impact on soil, air, water, flora, fauna, and human populations in the border region. The conceit of the work is that natural law defies the limitations of human legal constructs.

Political borders are intangible, ephemeral, imaginary, contrived, and highly permeable. Biological populations in border zones, including humans, are often at some liberty to defy these abstract limitations in service of greater, simpler truths.

The Experimental Research On The Nonexistence of Borders video will be accompanied by a short video on the concurrent social art project, Tree Spa for Urban Forest Healing, which will take place from Saturday, March 16 through Saturday, March 23.

About the Artist
Emcee C.M., Master of None is the pseudonym of Colin McMullan. He has a practice of active, cooperative, social, public art often utilizing vehicles, play, conversation, moving pictures, publications, and food, for which he has received institutional support from LMCC, IPG, CAG, ISCP, CUE, CBA, BHK, BBBP, Eyelevel BQE, ICA Yerevan, Smack Mellon, Skowhegan, Bronx Museum, Queens Museum, Flux Factory, the Aldrich, Artspace, i-park, el Taller Boricua, and Real Art Ways.

He is currently based in Hartford, Connecticut, performing transnational “Experimental Research on the Nonexistence of Borders,” and operating the “Tree Spa for Urban Forest Healing.” Recent professional highlights include shows at Dorsky Gallery in New York, Real Art Ways in Hartford, the Museum of Modern Art in Yerevan.

Learn more at this link.

Liona Nyariri: Pfimbi Yemashoko (the place where the words are kept)

 

Opening Thursday, March 21, 6-8 PM, during Creative Cocktail Hour
Artist Talk: Sunday, March 24, 2:30-4 PM

2018 Real Art Awards recipient Liona Nyariri presents a new installation. Exploring the complexities of colonization, language, and mythology, Nyariri’s multidisciplinary work challenges how we understand systems. Utilizing scholarly research in the fields of linguistics and history, Nyariri constructs an alternative mythology utilizing both historic and contemporary narratives. Her installation creates a visceral feeling, making real the complicated emotions and experiences of her character, the Pidgin.

From Nyariri’s Artist Statement
“Liona Nyariri’s work revolves around the study of pidgin languages (similar to creoles or patois) that came from Southern Africa during European colonization. A pidgin language emerges when one or more languages come together to form a hybrid.

Nyariri is specifically focused on English as part of British colonialism and the colonization of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Nyariri uses her research to propel the creation of her own mythology around a character known as ‘Pidgin.’ This character is meant to represent the physical manifestation of pidgin languages and is the metaphor through which she explores how mythologies and language intersect and how they are used for political, social and economic gain or otherwise.

Nyariri’s process includes creating text work and objects that perpetuate the mythology of the character, Pidgin.”

About the Artist
Liona R. Nyariri (b. 1991) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in Fine Art from Parsons The New School of Design and completed her Whitney Independent Study Program fellowship in 2017.

Her work has been presented at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, AC Institute, Participant Inc., Long Island City Art Fair, Gallery MOMO, Cape Town Month of Photography, Young Blood Gallery, AVA Gallery and others. Nyariri is the recipient of the ABSA Art and Life award as well as a top finalist for the Sasol New Signatures Award.

Nyariri has completed a residency with Artist Alliance Inc., New York and is currently completing a fellowship in Germany at the Hochschule Für Bidende Künste Braunschweig, funded by the state of Lower Saxony (BS Projects scholarship 2018/19).

The 2018 Real Art Awards is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation.

National Endowment for the Arts

Gil Scullion: Empty Spaces, Home Bodies

 

Real Art Ways presents new large scale paintings by Gil Scullion.

Artist Talk – Saturday, April 27 | 2:30 PM

Using hand-cut stencils on cardboard, Empty Spaces utilizes imagery culled from uninhabited hallways, kitchens, and other domestic scenes. The resulting paintings contain an eerie sense of familiarity, upended by the lack of bodies these spaces are meant for. Scullion’s use of the photomechanical texture of halftones as well as repetition furthers the less-than-human feeling of these pieces.

From his Artist Statement
“The paintings comprising the two-dimensional elements of Empty Spaces are produced through the use of stencils, which challenges conventional notions of the original and the handmade. As such they take on a singularly theatrical quality; they exist solely for the sake of the overall effect, only for the sake of the show. The artworks dispense with any notion of autonomy or even a sustainable object quality. These works are hollow stand-ins for what is expected from art. They will ultimately be discarded. They are an absence masquerading as a presence.”

About the Artist
Gil Scullion is an artist living and working in Middletown, Connecticut. Upon finishing his undergraduate studies, Scullion moved from Austin, Texas to New York City. There, his work developed in a conceptual manner before he pursued graduate studies at the State University of New York Albany.

His work has been featured at Real Art Ways, the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut, P.S.1 in Long Island City, New York, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut and the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

He has taught for the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Wesleyan University and Manchester Community College. His work has received support in the form of grants from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, the Hartford Downtown Council and the Middletown Commission on the Arts.

Featured image: Sitting Room (detail)

Speak Up – Courage

 

Speak Up is a Hartford-based storytelling organization that promotes the art of personal storytelling to a wide audience and supports a community of storytellers in Connecticut. Speak Up brings professional and amateur storytellers to the stage to share true stories from their lives.

Speak Up events feature storytellers who tell true stories on a predetermined theme. The events showcase a blend of seasoned storytellers and first-timers and always promise to be surprising and entertaining.

Storytellers at this event are:

Ted Olds, patent attorney and 16 time Moth StorySLAM champion with wins in EIGHT different cities throughout the United States.

Kat Koppett, Co-Director of The Mopco Improv Theatre and the Founder of Koppett, a consultancy specializing in the use of applied improvisation to grow individual and group performance. She is the author of Training to Imagine: Practical Improvisational Theatre Techniques to Enhance Communication, Creativity, Leadership and Learning and the co-host of the podcast “Dare to be Human”

Esam Boraey, a human rights activist working for freedom and democracy in the Middle East. This passion led him to play a key role in the Egyptian revolution of 2011, which helped overthrow dictator Hosni Mubarak. Esam left the country after being sentenced to prison in Egypt’s criminal court for his work for human rights and democratization in the Middle East.

John DeMeo, mathematics educator currently teaching at Quinnipiac University and in his 47th year of teaching.

Corey Jeffries, who lives in Warwick, NY but grew up in rural Tennessee. His hobbies include playing guitar, writing parody songs, and telling stories to his friends and co workers.

Matthew Dicks, internationally bestselling novelist, 39-time Moth StorySLAM and 6-time GrandSLAM champion, wedding DJ, minister, and elementary school teacher for 20 years.

The show will be hosted by Elysha Dicks.

Speak Up founders and producers Matthew and Elysha Dicks work closely with storytellers to help them craft their narratives for the stage. They also teach workshops for storytellers at all levels.

The theme of the evening is Courage.

Real Wall: Angelica Hilliman Cotto

 

Combining found objects and materials with yarn, Angelica Hilliman Cotto creates sculptures that subvert the familiar to create intriguing compositions. Open spaces, spokes and rubber straps create intricate shadows on the wall, acting as an additional layer in her work by creating a greater sense of depth.

Artist Statement
“The Forever Bound project addresses addiction, unjust laws, mental health, our darker attachments, bad habits, betrayal, toxic relationships, and all of the things that keep us chained when we hunger for true freedom. It is the notion of being stagnant, caged, limited, restricted, confined. How do we become liberated? And what does that look like? Riding bicycles allows for a taste of true liberation, physically pushing to move past something. Forever Bound uses deconstructed bicycles to do the exact opposite, where they now behave as cages rendering (the viewer) immobile and oppressed.” – Angelica Hilliman Cotto

About the Artist
Angelica Hilliman Cotto was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She grew up in the Blue Hills neighborhood surrounded by a family of activists, artists, politicians, and community organizers. At the age of 13, she enrolled in a progressive boarding school in Williamstown, Massachusetts where she learned to stretch canvases and experimented with oil paint. Her artistic style was influenced by the travel back and forth between the vibrant urban setting of Hartford and the rural environment of the Berkshires. Her painting became very free and gestural, with the act of painting becoming more of a dance.

After high school, she pursued a painting degree at Syracuse University and later transferred to the sculpture department at Hartford Art School. There she found joy in the freedom to use anything and everything for materials. She produced multiple sound pieces, as well as work that incorporated ritual and nostalgic items.

Cotto has installed work at Spark Contemporary Art Space, Artspace Hartford, Pumphouse Gallery and The Mill. Her paintings were recently displayed at several businesses in the Parkville area of Hartford, including Firebox Restaurant, Story and Soil coffee shop, and Little River Restoratives.

Cotto is also a member of Girl on Girl, a collective of female-identifying artists with chapters in Syracuse, New York and Los Angeles that provides a supportive community for collaboration and growth across all mediums. Angelica lives in Hartford’s North End, works as a teacher through the YWCA and ride bikes as her main form of transportation.

About Real Wall
Real Wall is a series of wall-mounted exhibitions taking place in between formal gallery spaces. Artists are invited to engage with the space in experimental ways meaningful to their practices in short-run exhibitions.

Artist Talk – Barbara Hocker: Downstream

 

A reception will begin at 2:30 PM, with the talk commencing at 3:00 PM.

Visual Arts Coordinator, Neil Daigle Orians will engage with Barbara in a dialogue surrounding her work and process, including her practice of Tai Chi & Qigong.

More info about Downstream is at this link.

About the Artist
Barbara Hocker is a Connecticut native with extensive experience creating and exhibiting work including solo shows and projects in Hartford, New Haven, Newport, and Boston. She has work in several corporate and private collections, including the permanent collection of The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan and several related hospitals in New York and New Jersey. Awards received include an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Greater Hartford Arts Council, a Creation of New Work Initiative Grant from the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, and an Artist Resource Trust Fellowship from the Berkshire Taconic Foundation. She holds a degree in Fibers from Syracuse University’s College of Visual & Performing Arts and attended Cranbrook Academy of Arts. Barbara lives in Bolton, Connecticut and maintains a studio in the Arbor Arts Center in Hartford. Her art process has been informed by her practice of Yoga, Tai Chi and Qi Gong for more than 25 years.

Learn more at her website.

Hartt School: Foot in the Door

 

Foot in the DoorReal Art Ways welcomes The Hartt School’s new music ensemble, Foot In the Door.

They will perform a concert of New Music with works by Shuying Li, Lior Navok, Stephen Michael Gryc, Gilda Lyons & Michael Daugherty. The performance will be conducted by Glen Adsit and Edward Cumming.

Foot in the Door is a mixed ensemble of musicians whose repertoire includes music of established as well as emerging 20th- and 21st-century composers. Members play in a variety of ensemble sizes from small chamber groups to large chamber orchestras.

The ensemble has appeared in several major U.S. cities, and has been heard on Connecticut Public Radio and WNYC-FM and recorded for Opus One and CRI labels.