Read my review of Hank Willis Thomas’s show the truth is i am you here.
Installation shot of the exhibition. John Dennis Photo Courtesy of NXTHVN.
Presence, Performance, and Pregnancy | Essay for The Chart
Last summer I spent one week in Maine as the 2019 Critic in Residence for The Chart, an online arts journal “dedicated to tenderness, visibility, and urgency in arts writing.” I met with artists throughout the state of Maine in their studios. I also participated in John Coleman’s CURING: FORTH with more than a dozen artists, musicians, educators, and performers. I wrote an essay combining my memories of this event with reflections on my pregnancy and performance art.
Read the text here.
Still from Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, 1964.
2020 Connecticut Artist Fellowship Recipient!
I’m excited to share that I am 2020 Connecticut Artist Fellowship recipients! Thank you, Connecticut Office of the Arts!
Exhibition Review | Artists Continue the Campaign For Legal Sanctuary
Read my review of Finding Home: A Campaign for Sanctuary in the Arts Paper here.
In Finding Home, curator and retired educator, journalist, and longtime immigrant rights activist Stephen Kobasa probes shifting attitudes toward immigration, while anchoring the issue to a specific community. Finding Home: A Campaign for Sanctuary runs through March 14 at The Gallery Upstairs at the Institute Library, 847 Chapel St. in New Haven.
Marc Hors, from the “Portraits of Dignity” series.
Review | Diane Simpson: Cardboard–Plus, 1977–1980
Read my review of Diane Simpson: Cardboard–Plus, 1977–1980 for Art New England on their website here.
Diane Simpson with her installation at Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, 1979.
Interview on The Charger Blog
I was interviewed for The Charger Blog. Read the interview here:
https://www.newhaven.edu/news/blog/2019/jacquelyn-gleisner.php
The Million-Petaled Flower of Being Here | Ann P. Lehman
Ann P. Lehman in her basement studio in Bethany, CT. Photo credit: Liz Pagano.
Beyond Banal: The Still-Life Paintings of William Bailey | Arts Paper
Read my review for the Arts Paper of the William Bailey exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery here.
William Bailey, Viale, 2002. Etching and aquatint. Collection of the Artist, Courtesy Betty Cuningham Gallery.
Paper Cuts opens this Thursday, Sept. 14
Please join me this Thursday at Pegasus Gallery, Middlesex Community College for the opening of my solo show Paper Cuts.
Two new scrolls installed in Pegasus Gallery.
City-Wide Open Studios | Erector Square, Oct. 19 & 20
I will be participating in this year’s City-Wide Open Studios during the Erector Square weekend, October 19 and 20. My studio is in building one, second floor, studio G. Hope to see you there!
Scroll XI
At long last, I have made a new scroll! This is the eleventh scroll in the series, which began in 2014. For the past two years, I have mostly been experimenting with other forms, but I wanted to return to this series after spending time reflecting on my work and practice. I recently started reading the book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. Though it’s been two years since I made a scroll, I still feel interested in their apparent purposelessness, an idea Odell explores in her book. Odell argues that we are increasingly asked to be productive or transparent. Within the art world, I think this translates to the ubiquity of easy to read, logical works. That said, I don’t think of this series as meaningless or arbitrary.
The repeating pattern in this scroll comes from a quilt block. In a sense, this work on paper becomes a safety blanket—something cozy or alluring yet strikingly different from its surroundings.
Scroll XI, 2019. Acrylic paint on paper, approximately 48 by 198 inches.
Summer Reading Lists on Connecticut Art Review
This summer I am collecting and posting lists of reading recommendations on my blog, Connecticut Art Review. You can view all the lists here. One of my favorite novels from the past year is Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing—a story about ghosts, family, addiction, and persistent racism. My blurb from the blog is reposted below.
Sing, Unburied, Sing
JESMYN WARD
Sing, Unburied, Sing follows one family in a fictional town called Bois Sauvage in rural Mississippi. Death both opens and closes this novel: thirteen-year-old Jojo witnesses his grandfather, Pop, slaughter a goat in the opening scene and the story ends with the loss of Jojo’s grandmother, who is slowly dying of cancer throughout the narrative. In between, Ward unfurls Jojo’s fraught relationship with his mother, Leonie, a young black woman who struggles with drug addiction and co-dependency with Jojo’s white father, Michael. When Michael gets released from prison, Leonie packs Jojo and his toddler sister, Kalya, into her friend’s car to drive across the state. Throughout the story, the narrator switches from Jojo to Leonie (among others) and the reader learns about the presence of the ghosts who haunt various characters. These spirits are trapped in this world by the unresolved injustices that consume them. Ward’s fluid, poetic writing does not distract from the searing tragedies of the book and its message lingers as do her otherworldly characters.
Last Day of "near orbit"
Today is the last day to see “near orbit” at Melanie Carr Gallery in Essex, CT. Installation images provided by the curator, Eric Litke.
"near orbit" | opening this Saturday at Melanie Carr Gallery
Near Orbit
"near orbit: in state, on paper" is a focused yet freewheeling survey of recent works by artists based throughout Connecticut, slightly complicated by the inclusion of one historical work by William Kent, a Yale-trained musician but self-taught visual artist who worked in New Haven and Durham from the late 1940s till his death in 2012. The Kent work ("Leave The Moon Alone!", 1964, embossed print from carved slate) came two years after his discovery of Pop Art in New York galleries and an iteration of the print was included in the 1966 Whitney Annual. It serves as a talismanic presence in the exhibition and a leaping-off point to muse on the range of options of engagement with Art World currents available to artists within the daytrip radius, the transmission of ideas and influence, and notions of freedom and dispersion."
Curated by Eric Litke
Opening Saturday, March 30, 4 - 6 p.m.
1 North Main Street, Essex, CT 06426 USA
Studio Visit with Jaclyn Conley in Art New England
Studio Visit with Jaclyn Conley
Pick up the current issue of the Art New England magazine to read my studio visit with New Haven-based artist, Jaclyn Conley. In her ongoing series of paintings, All The President’s Children, Conley references the archived photographs of First Ladies and Presidents sourced from Presidential Library collections across the country.
Jaclyn Conley, Christmas Pageant (2018). Oil on panel, 60 inches square. Image courtesy of the artist.
Also in the March/April issue of the Art New England magazine is my preview of the exhibition, Blue Collar Ornament. Read it online here.
Mark Burns’ show is on view at the Joseloff Gallery in Hartford, CT through March 29, 2019.
Recent Reviews on Connecticut Art Review
This week I posted two new exhibition reviews on my blog, Connecticut Art Review:
Feb 19 | Joe Bun Keo: silence like lasagna at Middlesex Community College
Bun Keo is a Hartford-based conceptual artist. His show, silence like lasagna, forces viewers to think about commonplace items in new ways. On view through March 7, 2019.
Joe Bun Keo, The Good Place (2019).
Feb 18 | Colin Burke: 16 Weeks Under the Pines at Hamden Hall Country Day School
Burke uses a unique process called solargraphy to forge connections with early experiments in the field of photography.
Installation view, 16 Weeks Under the Pines, Colin Burke, Hamden Hall Country Day School.
College Art Association Workshop
On Saturday, I led a workshop at the College Art Association’s Annual Meeting in New York called “Writing Successful Grant Applications.” The website for this presentation is viewable here.
Co-Creatives in Residence at Ives Squared
Ryan and I are co-Creatives in Residence at Ives Squared, the new maker space at the main branch of the New Haven Free Public Library. We will be holding weekly programming. More information here.
Walter Martin (American, b. 1953) and Paloma Muñoz (American, b. 1965), Traveler 292, 2014, mixed media, 9 x 6 x 6″. © Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz.
Two Previews in the current issue of Art New England
I wrote two previews for the current issue of Art New England— Downsized at the Bruce Museum and All Together at the Flinn Gallery, both in Greenwich, CT.
Read the preview for Downsized here.
the POD in Arts Paper
Leah Andelsmith from the Arts Paper visited our POD over the weekend and gave us a shoutout in the writeup for the weekend’s events. Here’s a link to learn more:
https://www.newhavenarts.org/arts-paper/articles/the-world-of-westvilles-pods
Photo: Leah Andelsmith