Here are pics taken during the “Library Science” preparation process…
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CWOS Open Reception 2011
16 OctHere are some pics that were taken at last night’s CWOS Open Reception. They can also been seen on our Facebook page…
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The Liver’s Ten Kinds of Desire
16 SepNow featured at Artspace through October 30, Barbara Weissberger’s wall installation The Liver’s Ten Kinds of Desire conjures immediate disgust and intrigue. An organized amalgamation of photo-collages, the most visible feature of the installation is that each collage includes an image of raw meat. Weissberger says of the work, “Disgust was much on my mind as I worked on the installation – a central image is raw meat.” The concept comes from Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem Anodyne which exalts the body and its urgent desires – “the liver’s ten kinds of desire/& the kidney’s lust for sugar.”
The artist’s process involves many layers. Objects are first arranged and photographed, then those images are drawn on, rearranged, and reflected in a mirror before being photographed again. The resulting images are cut out and organized into a wall-sized installation.
But the piece is about far more than just shock factor. The artist sees meat as both “body and food; in turns beautiful and repulsive; both nature and culture.” This is exemplified by her frequent incorporation of flowers into the collages. Of the gallery-goer she begs the questions: “How easily do sensations of disgust and desire slip from one to the other? How does this slippery relationship drive and shape us as individuals with psyches and bodies, as social beings and as a culture?”
Come to Artspace to try and answer these questions for yourself.
Moses Balian is an intern at Artspace and History of Art major at Yale
Construction Sights
18 AugA leisurely walk around downtown New Haven will reveal a multitude of projects around Yale, including renovations and restorations of Ezra Stiles College, the Payne-Whitney Gym, Battell Chapel, the Yale Bookstore, and the Yale University Art Gallery. This construction fever has spread across the Green to Artspace as well. Now through September 10th, come see Construction Sights, our new show drawn from the Flat File, a collection of works on paper by over 100 artists. Construction Sights, curated by Lindsay Miller, Ilana Harris-Babou, and Nadia Westenburg, emphasizes the ability of an artist’s work to become a location for construction and deconstruction. Throughout the exhibition, artists use paper as not only a structural foundation, but as a primary building material as well. At the same time, the negative space of unfilled paper is interpreted as both a platform for creation and a creation on its own.
The theme of construction is approached from a multitude of viewpoints throughout this one-room show. Sun K. Kwak approaches paper through collage, choosing to assemble various ink and watercolor-strewn papers into a freeform shape, creating a form that not only moves within itself, but one that also seems to expand over the space around. Titled Enclosed Park, this collage creates a bold presence of fluid forms and stark, sinuous lines.
Zachary Keeting
chooses an opposite direction in using paper as a foundation for construction instead of as the construction material. December (1) is a beautifully abstract construction of wide swaths of color that intersect and flow around the composition, each a bolder and richer hue than the next. The piece truly defines the theme of construction, the overlapping forms alluding to multiple layers of paint built one on top of the other.
Across the room from December (1) hangs From Candidates Triptych, a triptych of inkjet prints that uses photography to allude to the same kind of constructed paper collage found in Enclosed Park. Keith Johnson 
lays out three grids, each containing multiple views of peeling campaign posters belonging to three different political candidates. In each section, the posters have weathered to frayed and wrinkled sheets of paper, partially obscuring the candidates’ faces and political motives. The photographer has chosen to show the natural deconstruction of paper that has in turn created a work much more intriguing than untouched, perfect posters.
Though paper constitutes the majority of the body of works in Construction Sights, Kristen Rea Simonsen takes a departure from the group by using thinly cut sheets of wood as a base for reserved, almost sedate illustrations in her works Semi-Detached II &III. In turn, Simonsen addresses 
the theme of construction from the view of its end result, two cookie-cutter houses, set apart in a presumably recently constructed suburban neighborhood. Meanwhile, her use of a traditional building material such as wood connects the work to the theme of construction on a literal level.
Located in Gallery 5, Construction Sights contains work by Ilona Anderson, Christopher Beauchamp, Marion Belanger, John Bent, Robert DiMatteo, Stephen Grossman, Keith Johnson, Zachary Keeting, Sun K. Kwak, Billie Mandle, Tim Nikiforuk, Gabriela Salazar, and Kristen Rea Simonsen.
Jeremy Wolin is a High School sophomore who attends the Educational Center for the Arts when he is not an intern at Artspace
Marie Celeste extended to September 16
11 AugThe disappearance of the crew aboard the Marie Celeste is inexplicable, as is the colony collapse disorder occurring with the North American Honeybees. There is no evidence that they died or migrated to a new location. The mysterious absence of bees could lead to huge problems in the future, because without pollination
no food can be grown. The natural sustainability of using bees to keep producing our food is at risk. This leads to the bigger question of the sustainability of uninterrupted nature. At first glance Alison William’s Glasshouse #3, a shed walled in with panels of terrarium-filled glass, seems naturally self sustaining. However, upon further inspection, one realizes that without the human touch that sealed all the glass terrariums, and built this shed, nothing would have grown in the first place.
In The Lot, William’s Homage to Guerrilla Gardening displays a similar, “almost all natural” sustainability. Around the lot are a vast array of plants growing in old sinks, bathtubs and other man-made objects. On one side of the lot, a bicycle that has been retrofitted to pump the collected rain water to the plants when pedaled, stands as a reminder that the plants are growing because humans allow them to. Williams says that she has “come to realize that [her] role is that of a facilitator.” She initiates the life of the plants, and then lets them inhabit her creations. Her art recognizes the importance of the human touch in nature.
Eva Struble’s Bitumar Tanks, a painting dominated by three large metal tanks in various states of disrepair seems to warn that the human touch can also subjugate and destroy nature. Behind the tanks in the foreground are roughly painted green forms, which seem to represent wildlife that has been caged behind a multitude of vertical black lines. This wildlife looks desperate, reaching out from behind its cage, trying to cling to any last resources it can find. This scene displays the threatening side of adding too much human artificiality to natural processes.
What happens after too many human-made things have overrun nature? Stephen Bush’s Rhodamine Mabel Bungaara, and Eva Strauble’s Cambridge Iron I each seem to answer that question very differently. Bush illustrates a landscape of iridescent colors, containing purple trees, green and pink clouds and a vermilion ground, marked with unhealthy green 
puddles. This painting depicts a changed form of nature. In the middle-ground stands an old-fashion style explorer, which seems to represent a re-finding of the ravaged landscape, and then rebuilding off of it. This rebuilding is reflected in the few country-style houses populating the orange landscape. In the foreground is a sickly looking goat, representing the damage to nature. To its left is a beekeeper, protected by a full beekeeping suit, but wearing sandals. The beekeeper is faithfully doing his job, spraying smoke at the ground by the goat’s feet, despite the lack of bees. Perhaps the beekeeper and the humans of this post-apocalyptic scene blame nature for their downfall, even though they have caused it themselves. This lonesome beekeeper is trying subdue any nature he can find.
While Bush seems to predict an attempt at rebuilding, Eva Strauble’s Cambridge Iron I contains a vast disarray of broken mounds of man made objects, all so jumbled that they are no longer discernible as individual objects. Covering the entire scene are wires and cables, tangled so densely they attract attention wherever you look at the painting. Notably absent from the painting is anything living, or anything that was once living. Just piles of materials left behind. Strauble seems to predict a Marie Celeste on such a grand scale that all of life has disappeared.
The Marie Celeste exhibition has been extended, on view now through September 16, at Artspace 50 Orange Street, New Haven, CT.
-Philip Bayer
Philip Bayer is a rising sophomore at Glastonbury High School
Images: (Right) Alison Williams ,Glasshouse #3, 2011 (Left) Stephen Bush, Rhodamine Bungaara, 2011
Summer Apprentice Program 2011
8 AugThe Summer Apprentice Program concluded with the Trellised Bench Project in the Lot at Chapel Street. The purpose of the 11th Annual Summer Apprenticeship was to introduce New Haven Public High School students to the execution of a civic project through conceptual and practical lectures and workshops dealing with the design, fabrication, and installation of a series of Trellised Benches,a modular shaded seating and planter system for an urban garden. In keeping with contemporary environmental issues and the aesthetic of artist Alison Williams’ installation “Homage to Guerilla Gardening,” currently on view in Artspace’s public lot on Chapel Street, the Trellised Bench was constructed using discarded/repurposed/ recycled materials, all from the New Haven area.
Here are some images from the program and the ribbon cutting ceremony that followed.
Common Ground saves the weary garden!
16 JulThanks to Bryan and Rayvone from Common Ground, who have rescued the garden in the lot. With the help of their hard work and dedication, the plants are now flourishing and we have pumpkins starting to emerge!
Week one: 11th Annual Summer Apprentice Program
14 JulProgress shots from the 11th Annual Summer Apprenticeship Program. New Haven Public High School students will execute a civic project through conceptual and practical lectures and workshops dealing with the design,fabrication, and installation of a series of Trellised Benches, a modular shaded seating and planter system for an urban garden. The Trellised Bench will be constructed using discarded/repurposed/recycled materials, all from the New Haven area.
Trellised Bench progress
Trellised Bench progress
Trellised Bench progress
Trellised Bench progress
Trellised Bench progress
