The Arts Paper | May 2018

apizza 6

rhythm & booze 8

@ctiffeat 10

caribbean 12

fiddlehead 15

The Arts Paper a free publication of The Arts Council of Greater New Haven • artspaper.org

May 2018

Edition always in good taste The culinary arts have long been the estranged sibling to the fine and performing arts, but as we see it, they’re intimately connected. Like the best visual art, dance, music, and theater, we often use food as a first point of contact into other cultures.

A finely written cookbook is a work of literature, expanding our frames of reference page by page. Everybody has at least one food memory that has influenced how they navigate the world around them.

There are lots of goodies for you in these pages. For example, we get to see what pasture-to-table really looks like on a weekly basis, tips on how to cook indigenous plants, and the scoop on one of New Haven’s vegan gems. That’s only an appetizer, but we hope it’s delicious.

We here at The Arts Paper have been cooking with gas. In March, we completely redesigned our spreads to emphasize a commitment to journalistic independence.

In April, we spent a week in the field training a spectacular cohort of Youth

Arts Journalists. And now, in May, we’re dabbling with line art swags and typography, finding ways we might engage New Haven’s professional graphic artists in the future.

Our program of change is coming to a boil. The July/August edition of The Arts Paper will be its last as a print monthly newspaper.

We’re switching production over to a quarterly model and experimenting with printed matter.

In the coming year, you’ll see artist zines, compendia, and glossy magazines.

In its present configuration, The Arts Paper has struggled to reach diverse audiences across the region. We want to give our writers more time to do the work they do so well, producing Grade-A longform content that will hopefully stick with you, our readers, like a good meal.

in this issue Connecticut’s “Food Hub” Takes Off Unless you were born into it, how would you know that those services exist?

lucy gellman...........................4 Pizza: A (New Haven) Love Story The desire to bring something from their homeland, that’s the human condition.

thomas breen..........................6 Rhythm Lager Flows into Connecticut Going through these breweries and brewfests, there was not a lot of people of color.

lucy gellman...........................8 A Family Farm at Four Mile River It’s not about the labels. I just want a quality product.

leah andelsmith.....................9 CTiffEat You can taste every country of the world here.

tagan engel............................10

The Arts Paper The Arts Paper is the voice of The Arts Council ... and of our community.

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven strives to advance Greater New Haven by providing leadership and support to our diverse arts community. We believe that art, culture, and creativity are fundamental human rights that also advance the economy, health, education, and tourism. The arts matter right now. So does arts journalism.

Serving New Haven and its surrounding towns, The Arts Paper explores, investigates, and invests in the arts that make our cities the cultural hubs they are.

Editor

Lucy Gellman

Layout Editor

Stephen Urchick

Reporters

Leah Andelsmith Stephen Urchick Malia West

Partners

Inner-City News New Haven Independent The Table Underground WNHH Community Radio

No Oxtail? No Problem!

Lucy Gellman Editor Stephen Urchick Layout Editor & Reporter

It’s like a barbershop on Sunday morning, but there’s curry instead of clippers.

malia west...............................12 Our Top Five for Food Justice Get off your butt and do something.

staff..........................................14 Fiddling with Fiddleheads To me, it seems everyone is talking about those adorable spiral shaped ferns.

rachel sayet...........................15 Arts at Work Pt. 2: Kyle Kearson New Haven is poppin’.

elizabeth nearing.................16

on the web artspaper.org

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food justice

Chef Nadine Nelson prepping spread lucy gellman

Connecticut’s “Food Hub” Takes Off Local farmers cultivate pro bono legal support by lucy gellman

4 artspaper.org • may 2018

You’re a young farmer trying to negotiate a land transfer in Southern Connecticut. You’re struggling; there are all sorts of specifics you don’t know, and your finances are too tight to hire a lawyer.

Just when you’re thinking of calling it quits, you head to a local legal clinic you’ve heard about, where a pro bono lawyer is waiting to help you get things off the ground.

It makes the difference between not getting the transfer and securing the land.

That’s the idea behind the new CT Legal Food Hub, the state’s first-ever service matching Connecticut farmers and food entrepreneurs with pro bono legal representation. A collaboration among the Conservation Law Foundation, The Ludwig Center for Community & Economic Development, and the Environmental Protection Clinic at Yale Law School, the hub launched earlier this year at Kroon Hall in the Yale School of Forestry.

25 lawyers, legal advocates, farmers, food entrepreneurs and food justice advocates attended the launch.

A Boston-based environmental advocacy organization that serves all of New England, the Conservation Law Foundation started organizing legal food hubs in 2014, under the supervision of Senior Attorney and Farm and Food Director Jenny Rushlow. Each year, the foundation has added a new state: Maine, Rhode Island, and now Connecticut. To qualify, a farm, agricultural business or food entrepreneur must be making less than $30,000 per year in net revenue.

Rushlow said the hubs grew out of a need she’d observed in her pro bono work: Farmers, often strapped economically, were “living on the margins,” unable to afford

or seek out legal assistance of which they were often in need. They teetered on the razor’s edge of sustainability, threatened by the complex landscape of land transfers and agricultural regulations.

“When you’re that close to the edge, it can only take one accident, one mistake to push you over the edge into losing your business,” she said.

“Supporting sustainable agriculture is essential to supporting New England’s economy, environment, and communities,” she added. “We saw an opportunity where the legal community could intersect with agriculture and food producers in a way that they hadn’t before.”

It comes at a time when farming in the state is changing. In the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) 2012 census, the average age of Connecticut farmers was recorded at 58.7 years old, with at least 63 of farmers at 55 years. 75 percent of those farmers are men; 99 percent of them are white, and 54 percent have primary jobs away from their farms.

That aging population may lead to a great deal of turnover in farm real estate, said Rushlow—and “studies have shown that we are not very well prepared to handle that transition.” That leaves the state’s 6,000 farms—many of them familyowned, with farmland at $11,200 per acre— hanging in the balance.

Until now. Working with both farmers and food entrepreneurs across the state, Food Hub attorneys who have registered through a network will provide assistance for land transfer, nonprofit incorporation, new agricultural permitting, and other services. It’s a safeguard so fewer farms will fall through the cracks because they

Isa Mujahid

don’t have enough resources on their own.

“When we reached out to other farms that were doing similar things, we found that many of them just weren’t complying with the regulations and were hoping that they would never be found out,” said Lauren Hobby, a law student who spent last year working with Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York. “That was unacceptable for us … this is work that’s too important to not do the right way.”

Even in its fetal stages, the hub has already helped farm and food advocates like Joey Listro, a founding member of The New CT Farmer Alliance. In fall 2017, Listro and other alliance members expressed interest in “moving from a grassroots organization to an incorporated organization that can serve our members better,” he said.

At the time, those members numbered 200 farmers from around the state, all of whom had been farming for 10 years or less. Through Food and Farm Legal Fellow Brian Fink, alliance members were able to connect with a several attorneys at Wiggin & Dana who took the work on pro bono, helping them inch toward nonprofit status.

It’s also helped food entrepreneurs like Sumiya Kahn and Amelia Reese Masterson, founders of CitySeed’s refugee-centric Sanctuary Kitchen program. As the two have added an incubator component to the program this year, they’ve found that the refugees with whom they’re working need legal assistance with the basics of starting a food business—entity formation, licensing, liability insurance, and Connecticut food laws.

“What’s exciting about that work is we’re able to refer those individuals to the legal food hub,” said Chenault Taylor, a secondyear graduate student at the Yale School of Management who has been working with the

Jenny Rushlow

program. “They’re going to be able to have sustained access to individuals who are really excited to work with them.”

As one of its first steps, the CT Legal Food Hub is also rolling out a legal guide co-written by The Ludwig Center for Community and Economic Development at Yale Law School and The Environmental Protection Clinic at Yale Law School) with chapters on tax regulations, land transitions, and employment law. It is also extending a welcome to farmers and food entrepreneurs who may not know it exists, and trying to spread the word about its services.

“I think about how things have changed,” said Steven Reviczky, the state’s commissioner of agriculture.

“We have young farmers, older farmers, people coming back to the farm, multigenerational farms … and I think that that is changing and has changed. I see a lot of younger people coming back to the farm, and I see a lot of individuals entering farming and agriculture.”

“For me, it is truly exciting,” he added.

“The challenge is that people who aren’t steeped in agriculture don’t necessarily know the services available … unless you were born into it, how would you know that those services exist?”

For CTCORE-Organize Now! Director Isa Mujahid, that’s exactly what the hub is for. A longtime proponent of food justice and health equity in New Haven, Mujahid is interested in acquiring a farm for CTCORE, as a way to expand the organization’s mission of social and racial justice in the state of Connecticut.

“We don’t even know what we don’t know,” he said. “To be able to have a sounding board to ask those questions is really important.” •

screen

Pizza:

A New Haven Love S tory Local food history hits the big screen by thomas breen

courtesy gorman bechard

6 artspaper.org • may 2018

Modern veggie bomb thomas breen Local filmmaker Gorman Bechard feels strongly about a lot of things.

The Replacements are the greatest rock band of all time. Animal abuse should be prosecuted as a felony.

And there are only three pizza places in the whole world: Pepe’s, Sally’s and Modern.

Having already made documentaries on 80s rock and animal rights, this eclectic local filmmaker is now turning his camera’s eye to New Haven’s nationally celebrated culinary delicacy, and to the three pizzerias that, he argues, do it the best.

“It comes down to one thing: passion,” Bechard said on a recent episode of WNHH’s “Deep Focus.” “When I make a film, I do it about a subject for which I am really passionate.”

Pizza, A Love Story, a feature-length documentary that Bechard and producers Colin Caplan and Dean Falcone have been working on for over a decade, is just that: a cri de cœur from three New Haveners who know in their hearts and in their taste buds that the history, influence and legacy of New Haven pizza can be told entirely through the stories of two pizzerias on Wooster Street and one on State Street.

Bechard, Caplan and Falcone are recently met their Kickstarter goal to help fund additional interviews, editing and postproduction for the movie. They hope to have it finished and ready to screen by this summer’s New Haven Documentary Film Festival.

Pizza, A Love Story finds its beginnings not in 1925, when Francesco “Frank” Pepe and his wife and brother opened their first pizza restaurant on Wooster Street, but rather several decades earlier, when an influx of Italian immigrants from the

Amalfi Coast came to New Haven in the 1890s and found work at the Sargent Lock Factory, the Strouse, Adler Corset Factory, and other large manufacturers in the Wooster Square area.

Many of those migrants settled along Grand Avenue, the Hill, Oak Street, Water Street, and Wooster Street, where they opened bakeries with massive coal-fired ovens that produced charred, crusty bread for the surging immigrant workforce.

“The Italians ran forty percent of the bakeries in New Haven,” Caplan said. “The pizzerias evolved from those bakeries.”

The local historian in the group, Caplan has written one book about New Haven pizza, is currently working on two more, and offers local pizza walking tours and biking tours through his company Taste of New Haven.

Enterprising bakers like Angelo Gentile, Francesco Scelzo, and Frank Pepe experimented with flatbread with toppings, often serving it from food carts at nearby markets and when factory workers got out for lunch. According to Caplan, Scelzo opened New Haven’s first “Pizzeria Napoletana” on Fountain Street in 1915.

In 1925, Pepe opened his own pizza restaurant on Wooster Street, in the building that currently houses The Spot.

The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 led to a proliferation of pizzerias, as they could serve alcohol and stay open until 3 a.m.

Modern Apizza was founded in 1934, and Sally’s Apizza in 1938.

“Pizza was a totally ethnic food for people coming out of southern Italy,” Caplan said, noting that, one hundred years ago, only Italians coming from the Neapolitan region of Campagna really knew what pizza

was. “The desire to bring something from their homeland, a missing link, a cultural connection, that’s the human condition.

That is something we all want to find out.”

But Pizza, A Love Story is not just about the early-20th century history of Italian migration to New Haven. For Bechard, Caplan and Falcone, it’s also about how three pizzerias crafted a thin-crust, crispy, chewy concoction of flatbread, tomato and occasionally cheese that would become a staple of American culture, and that has earned New Haven a national reputation as a pizza mecca.

The movie tells the story of the creation of the pizza box, and of the origin of the photograph of Frank Pepe holding a pizza that still adorns the cardboard tops for Pepe’s takeout.

Bechard said that he has interviewed former mayor John DeStefano about the secret phone at Sally’s that let customers in the know skip the line to order a pie. He’s interviewed musician Lyle Lovett about how the best New Haven pizza is not just food, but truly a work of art. Bechard said that he’s still trying to get former Yale Law student Hillary Clinton on camera to talk about Sally’s, and that Bill may just make an appearance in the movie as well.

But the interviews are not just with celebrities and high-profile customers.

Bechard said that he spoke to a Grand Avenue native named Helen who has been eating Modern pizza since the 1930s.

And she’s not even Italian! He said that he spoke with State Street residents who recall getting out of school early and eating Modern while watching tanks roll down the street during the 1967 riots.

Falcone, a musician who has gigged around the country, said that pizza is the first thing that fellow musicians bring up when they learn that he hails from the Elm City. He said that almost every musician who plays a show in New Haven tries to figure out how to sneak over to Wooster Street between the soundcheck and the gig.

“I get that more than Yale,” Bechard agreed. “No question.”

On the most recent Daily Meal poll of the country’s top 101 pizza places, Sally’s ranked number eight, Modern number three, and Pepe’s number one.

“We have one percent of the population of New York City,” Bechard said. “And we get those kinds of votes. That says a lot.”

Because at the end of the day, Pizza, A Love Story starts and ends with the filmmakers all-consuming love for pizza in the city they call home.

When asked what was their go-to pie if they could only eat one more meal, these three passionate pizza lovers all voted for Sally’s.

“A small mozzarella at Sally’s,” Bechard said. “Sally’s plain garlic,” Falcone and Caplan agreed.

Falcone said that he grew up in Hamden, first tried Modern in his early 20s, and soon thereafter had a plain (i.e. just sauce and crust) at Sally’s that changed his life.

“Literally since I was 22 years old, every week at some point I am thinking about that pie,” Falcone said with a smile. “And that is really sad. Or it’s really awesome.”

For more episodes of “Deep Focus,” visit WNHH Community Radio on Facebook, Soundcloud, or Twitter at @wnhhlp. “Deep Focus” is also available on iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher. •

may 2018 • artspaper.org 7

brewing

Rhythm Lager Flows Into Connecticut Salsa guru honors women in her life with new beer by lucy gellman david sepulveda For Alisa Bowens-Mercado, a love affair with beer brewing didn’t start in the warm, hoppy air of Overshores Brewing Co. in March of this year.

It didn’t start at the brew festivals that she began to frequent with her nowhusband John, as their friendship bloomed into romance over summer lagers, pilsners, pumpkin ales, and the occasional cider.

And it didn’t start when she looked around Westville, and realized that she wanted to own something more than her salsa studio now that it was almost two decades old.

Nope. It started on the toilet, with one pint-sized potty-training Alisa and one upturned pony of Miller High-Life.

Decades later, it’s the story behind Rhythm Brewing Co., the first Black- and woman-owned brewing company in the state, and one of just a handful in the country. Earlier this year, the company celebrated its official kickoff at Vanity Nightclub in New Haven, after holding an inaugural canning event at Overshores Brewing Co. By April, she had booked 25 accounts with restaurants, bars, and stores in New Haven and the greater New Haven area.

Now, she said she hopes to grow the brand even more as the summer approaches.

“I’m beyond excited!” she said in a recent interview on WNHH’s “Kitchen Sync,” pulling two cans of the beer out of her purse.

Rhythm Brewing Co. is currently known for a single product: a small-batch unfiltered lager, brewed at Overshores Brewing Co. in East Haven. BowensMercado said she chose the product because it was (and continues to be) what she wanted to be drinking herself. Stouts

8 artspaper.org • may 2018

and porters didn’t sit well with her. Imperial Pale Ales (IPAs) that her friends loved were too hoppy and bitter. Even some wheat beers left her feeling weighed down.

“I was like: ‘I know this is what you make, but I can’t drink that,’” she recalled telling craft brewers of IPAs, wheat beers, and even sours and lambics. “So I was very selective with coming up with that taste.”

It’s a love affair with lager that goes way back. Way, way back. At just two years old, Bowens-Mercado was playing with an empty can of Miller beer when she took a seat on the toilet to work on her potty-training skills.

One of her parents—she can’t remember who—snapped a photo. The image went into an album, well-loved by family members as Bowens grew up, moved out of the house, and opened her own business in New Haven. It lived largely out of view until a few years ago, when the image caught her eye on a visit to her parents’ home in Bethany.

“When I saw the photo, I was like: ‘This is gonna come to fruition one day,’” she said. She had already been thinking about starting a beer company in the city, ready to compete with a craft beer scene full of stouts, porters, Imperial Pale Ales (IPAs), and funky, sour beers. Inspired by the image, she moved forward.

It was a decision, she said, that felt natural. Born and raised in New Haven, Bowens-Mercado grew up watching the women in her life drink beer, trading stories and occasional gossip over sweating cans and bottles. She loved sitting with her grandmothers and aunts, listening to their full, unhurried life stories unravel over cool

cans, the hops sweet on their breath.

“When I started getting into this beer thing, I’m like: ‘How do I pay my grandmothers some homage?” she said.

“One beer festival later, that’s it.”

So Bowens-Mercado plunged headfirst into research. She discovered that the odds weren’t in her favor—in the United States, there are only “about eight or nine African-American brewers,” and even fewer are women. There weren’t any she could talk to for advice in New England. The closest, in New York City, was Harlem Brewing Co. owner Celeste Betty.

Bowens-Mercado said she took that as a sign that she was doing something right.

“Going through these breweries and brewfests, there was not a lot of people of color,” she said. “There was not a lot of women, not a lot of folks of color at these festivals. And I’m like: ‘Folks are missing out. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a culture.’”

“It was just disproportionate, she added. “There was really no portion, so I wanted to introduce people of color [to beer]. Some of them, you know, they’re ashamed to ask: What’s craft beer?”

She knew that she wanted a lager— unfiltered, “with all the good stuff,” and none of the yeast stripped away—and started to reach out to potential partners three years ago. It took her a while to convince anyone on Connecticut’s craft beer scene that it was a worthy choice, she said. First, she went to “the IPA guys,” who shrugged her off.

“They were like ‘Ugh, a lager?’” she recalled.

“It’s interesting because three years later, many of them have come out with a lager!”

But Overshores Brewing Co., just over the city line in East Haven, came into

the conversation ready to listen. Known for small-batch, contract brewing (newold Hull’s Export Lager is also a client), Overshores seemed like a tight fit for Bowens-Mercado. One moment, she said, they were confirming the ingredients that would give the beer the taste she wanted.

The next, they had somehow arrived at canning day, and she was doing salsa in sneakers on the factory floor.

“It was really, honestly a collective effort of the beer industry family,” she said of the experience. Of Hull’s specifically, she added that “We help each other to build our brands. We’re New Haven—we’re out of New Haven. That’s important. We want people to support local. Not just support Connecticut, but support things that are coming out of the city.”

Now, she said she wants to spin that support into a conversation about making craft beer accessible. On an early distribution run—the beer is going to independent businesses and restaurants around the state first, before it hits big stores—a young guy stopped her outside of a store, and asked her what a craft beer is. Bowens-Mercado recalled that he took a few steps back, and let out a small gasp, when she said she was the owner of the company, and not just a sales rep.

“I felt humbled and honored to open up that dialogue,” she said.

To listen to Bowens’ full interview on “Kitchen Sync,” check out WNHH Community Radio on Facebook or Soundcloud, or on Twitter at @wnhhlp. “Kitchen Sync” is also available on iTunes as a free podcast. •

farming

A Family Farm at Four Mile River The Corsino Family reflects on three decades in business by leah andelsmith leah andelsmith A half a mile off of Route 95 in Old Lyme, on a pretty country road along the Four Mile River, sits a farm stand built like a tiny red barn and lined with refrigerator cases. One morning in early spring, Four Mile River Farm staff were busy in the work room just behind the stand, packaging short ribs and ground beef for sale in markets from Chester to Greenwich.

Since 1985, Connecticut couple Nunzio and Irene Corsino have been producing pasture-raised meats and eggs at familyowned and operated Four Mile River Farm.

They offer everything from sirloin steak and brisket to center-cut pork chops and nitrate-free hot dogs—and customers with extensive freezer space even order quarter sides of beef and entire sides of pork.

As regular vendors at CitySeed farmers’ markets at Edgewood Park and Wooster Square in New Haven, Four Mile River Farm forms a vital link in the local food chain.

Driving slowly on the winding roads that connect the various parts of his farm, Corsino—better known as Nunz—told the the story of how he fell for cattle. “Growing up, there wasn’t much to do in Old Lyme, and there was even less 50 years ago,” he recalled. So when he got the opportunity to raise a calf through the 4-H Club, he jumped at the chance.

Working hard to care for the heifer and pay for her board was a character-building experience for Corsino and he stayed involved in animal husbandry throughout college and his early years as a teacher.

When he started raising his own children, it became a family affair.

“Even if the kids were the ones showing

the cattle, I could be there to mentor them, guide them, teach them,” he said. “It was a nice experience for the family.”

Corsino and his wife started raising meat for their own family’s table. When the two invited friends over for dinner, they often ended up with requests for meat, and piles of praise around whatever had been the main course. “And so before I knew it, we were in business,” he said.

Raising cattle became a passion for Corsino. After 35 years as a teacher, he left the classroom in order to devote himself to Four Mile River Farm.

The Corsinos’ livestock is raised a few miles away from the farm stand, on a pasture ringed with a low stone wall and nestled behind several large barns. Getting out of the car, Corsino greeted his steer as he approached them.

“Hey there, boys,” he said, his voice low and calming. The steer grazed and rested, free to move at their leisure from barn to field.

“Fresh air is one of the most important things that keeps animals healthy,” said Corsino. When animals are confined indoors, the ammonia that accumulates in soiled pens can “wreak havoc” on their lungs. “Even in the snow and the cold, the steer want to be outside, and they can do that whenever they want to.”

“Look at them,” he added, gesturing to his steer. “You can see how healthy they are.

Their coats are shiny and their eyes clear. They don’t have pink eye. They’re not coughing or wheezing. They don’t have runny noses.”

Cattle get sick when the animals are not treated with care and respect, Corsino said—“just like we do.” He takes

precautions at cattle auctions, looking for animals that have been out on a feedlot, or look unhealthy. When he sees such an animal, he keeps on looking.

It’s a business that is changing. Four Mile River Farm has competition from health-food stores, and—in these days of increasingly informed consuming—even conventional supermarkets, that provide organic options in the meat department.

However, the Corsinos have not pursued organic certification for their farm.

“It can be a fastidious and quite expensive process to have those types of certifications,” said Corsino. “Every inch of the farm has to meet those specifications and that can be very hard to upkeep for a small family farmer. It’s not realistic.”

“It’s not about the labels,” he added. “I just want a quality product.”

Delivering that quality product is a team effort. Many Four Mile River Farm employees take on various roles on the farm, including helping with processing and packaging cuts of meat, as well as being the face of Four Mile at famers’ markets. In addition, the farm sells prepared food—like their popular bacon-cheddar burgers—“mainly because the staff like cooking,” he said. “And also to demonstrate what you can do with our products.”

Corsino is proud of his well-educated and experienced employees and appreciates how they represent the company. He said he tries to build up the team by respecting everyone’s talents and not pushing his agenda solely. “It’s a small family farm,” he said. “We all have to pull together.”

Four Mile River Farm plans to be a

presence at farmers’ markets and at their own farm stand in Old Lyme for many years to come. “I still see us doing what we have to do,” said Corsino. “It’s been very good for us and we enjoy it.”

But what exactly the future holds for the farm will depend on Corsino’s son, Chris, who partners with his father to run the business and wants to preserve the farm for his own children.

“Not many people can say they enjoy what they do for a living,” said Corsino, ensconced in a cozy arm chair in the family’s farm house. He feels grateful for what he has and likes to take it year by year.

“The nicest part about it is that I’ve mostly been able to do what I want to do. It’s definitely been a challenge. It’s been over 20 years, but I’m not going anywhere.” •

Saturday, May 19, 2018 10am to 5pm The Friends of the New Haven Animal Shelter & Other Rescue Groups

Shoreline Spring Festival & Pet Adoption Madison Green 26 Meeting House Lane, Madison, CT

Over 80 Artisan Booths & Specialty Foods specialtyeventsllc.com

findafriendforlife.org

C

blogging

TIFF EAT

Blogger explores wide world of food in Bridgeport by tagan engel I met food blogger Tiffany Jones in line at Trader Joe’s for the first time several weeks ago, while she was working the register. Having worked in the food industry for a good part of my life, and generally loving people, I tend to talk to everyone, and often that talk revolves around food.

So when Jones, who prefers “Tiff,” started waxing poetic about her boyfriend’s family’s Jamaican restaurant in Bridgeport and her second job at my favorite New Haven ramen spot, Mecha—and then she told me she had a food blog—my heart was very full. Lucky for me, she felt the same way. A week later, we were chatting up our

10 artspaper.org • may 2018

mutual love of food and community.

Tiff’s love for food began as a kid growing up in Bridgeport, devouring soul food her mom and aunties cooked—while also feeding a personal love for Chef Boyardee ravioli. When she was young, the tomatoey, slick canned pasta was the first thing she learned to make for herself, and it bloomed into a lifelong love for baked ziti, bubbly cheeses, and all types of noodles.

But it also made her appreciate home cooking, and the way recipes were handed down from grandmother to mother, mother to daughter, history in each bite.

“Every holiday, we always looked forward

to the potato salad, the baked macaroni and cheese, the nicely, perfectly seasoned collard greens,” she recalled. “We’d use smoked turkey necks … things you would associate with the typical soul food. It was so simple, but those things, to this day, comfort me.”

Her family—“a family of eaters, and it’s mostly women”—helped her learn her way around the kitchen, instilling in her a love for the culinary arts at a young age. As she got older, her world expanded with the dishes that were put on her plate, like a California roll that blew her sense of possibility wide open.

By high school, she was helping to organize an annual “Diversity Dinner” at her

school, tasting baklava and flan for the first time.

As she left Bridgeport each day on the train to attend a private school in Westport (“It was a hard transition for me that I don’t ever think that I got through,” she said), her curiosity in food remained a sort of anchoring force.

“To realize that I could experience other people’s cultures through their food … I love experiencing what other people feel to be nostalgic,” she said. “Doing that through food is doing that in such a fun and gratifying way.”

“I just wanted to learn how these things were made and where they came from,” she added. “It just opened up these different spaces in my brain.”

tiffany jones As she went from high school to college in Boston, she expanded her palate, diving into restaurants and kitchens as often as she was able to. While she consulted thenburgeoning sites like Yelp from time to time, she said she found that she was just as likely to search the internet broadly, or look around to see what came highly recommended. To favorites like Bridgeport institution Frankie’s Diner, she added new hotspots across Connecticut, and New England.

She said she sees it as a way of celebrating Connecticut’s cities and communities. I do too. Both of our home cities, New Haven and Bridgeport are often characterized as dangerous and run-down by the media—and by people in wealthy, suburban or rural parts of our highly segregated state.

“I want to celebrate the good parts of what people don’t know about Bridgeport and people don’t know about Connecticut,” she said. “Right now I’m doing

that through food, but I do want to share so much more about it. I want to support the local businesses that base their livelihood on providing such great food and opportunities for people to revisit their country through a meal, and have other people visit their culture through a meal.”

Most of her food adventures are within the state of Connecticut, but the joy for her is that “you can taste every country of the world here” and find great comfort food, she said. In Bridgeport, staff members at Frankie’s Diner have watched her grow up, and she said it feels like being welcomed by old friends every time she sits down to eat.

At Teff in Stamford, she learned about the conflicts between Eritrea and Ethiopia and how their shared cuisines serve as a common bond between people. She fell in love with the Brazilian buffets in Bridgeport, like Terra Brasilis, Pantanal, and Rancho Pantanal.

And she uses it as a way to connect with

family and community. When her dad comes to visit from upstate New York, they’ll hit Hoodoo Brown Texas style BBQ in Ridgefield, or Jimmy’s at Savin Rock for seafood. She frequents her boyfriend’s mom’s Jamaican take out spot, Mommy’s Patties on the Boston Ave in Bridgeport, or goes next door for a cone at Scoopers, also owned by the family. She tastes years of growing up in Bridgeport at Tai Jiang. It’s word-of-mouth great food, that you have to go check out for yourself.

In addition to her job at Trader Joe’s, Tiff works at Mecha Noodle Bar in New Haven, one of my absolute favorite restaurants. She does prep in the kitchen, including their spicy miso ramen and mushroom dumplings.

Mecha has ramen and Pho, drawing from both Japanese and Vietnamese cuisines, and the owners also have Pho Vietnam restaurant in Danbury with even more adventurous soups like tendon and

tripe. When she’s not in the kitchen, she’s growing her blog, to not just include photos, but video and anecdotes about restaurants around the state.

“I think Connecticut is a place that people don’t think to have such a rich cultural base for food,” she said. “I don’t get to travel much, I don’t get to go outside of the country, but I can when I get to try another culture’s food. And I also enjoy talking to the people who own the places … it becomes an entire experience. I want to share a little piece of that. I want everybody to feel what I feel when I’m eating my food.”

To keep up with the food wanderings of CTiff Eat, as well as some of the delicious food she is creating at home, follow @CTiffEat on Instagram, and other social media. This story first appeared on The Table Underground, as Episode 31 of The Table Underground podcast.

Find it and more at thetableunderground.com. •

may 2018 • artspaper.org 11

veganism

No Oxtail? No Problem!

Meatless Caribbean cuisine in Ninth Square by malia west

lucy gellman

Two beef patties, oxtails, rice and peas and cabbage. That’s my standard order when I walk up to the counter at a Jamaican spot. Sometimes there’s the option to add cheese in the beef patties, giving the crunchy shell and greasy ground beef a creamy finish. It tastes like home.

Or at least I thought it did until I met Qulen Wright, and learned that there was such a thing as meatless Caribbean food.

Lots and lots of it.

Curried vegetables and spicy cabbage

12 artspaper.org • may 2018

Wright and his wife Elisha Hazel own Ninth Square Caribbean Style, a vegan Jamaican restaurant on George Street in New Haven’s Ninth Square neighborhood.

After opening in late 2016, the restaurant has been serving up vegan mac and cheese, jerk tofu, rich curried vegetables, fragrant lentil patties, spicy cabbage and more out of its bright storefront, the windows painted to announce the fare inside.

But the story of its genesis goes way

back. Wright’s love for vegan food began in the 1990s, when he cut meat and dairy out of his diet almost entirely. At that time, he was channeling a different creative outlet: music production, which he did (at one point, around the corner from his current digs at Baobab Studios) until opening the restaurant.

As he cooked, he thought constantly about how easy it was to cut meat from his food. His Jamaican upbringing had introduced him to fruits, vegetables, and

flavors Americans often overlook: soft, almost egg-like ackee, bright greens in glistening yellow curry, peppers cooked just so. In the U.S., he found that other cultures adapted their food portions to match the meat-heavy American diet. But there was no need to, as far as he was concerned.

“There’s more vegetarian food than all the meats,” he said in a recent interview at the restaurant. “People will talk about Jamaica and talk about how the meat wasn’t

Hazel and Wright

the center of the dish, it was more of the side. Whereas [in America] it’s more of the reverse, the sides are tiny and the meat is big.”

“That’s the American diet, the sad diet,” he added after a pause.

Wright hails from Trelawny Parrish, a town in northwest Jamaica nestled in Cornwall County. As he was growing up there, Hazel was experiencing a different childhood in New Haven, where the idea of the city as a culinary mecca had not yet been born. Raised

by Jamaican parents, Hazel said she was always familiar with the diversity of their food, but had more trouble finding it in the city.

“People are looking for different kinds of food now,” she said, recalling the New Haven restaurant scene of her youth. As she grew older, she said she witnessed a transformation, with restaurants like Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant, Soul de Cuba, and Amoy’s Cajun and Creole coming in one by one, and then very quickly.

What they didn’t see in that diversity was vegan Caribbean food (although New Haven and Bridgeport do lay claim to several Jamaican spots, especially on Whalley Avenue in New Haven and Boston Avenue in Bridgeport). That would be their niche, they agreed. Working together, the two designed a menu celebrating vegetables: protein-packed lentils and split peas, sweet and peppery potatoes, steaming stew that customers could drink from the bowl.

“It’s all about flavor,” Hazel said. “Meat doesn’t actually have flavor. Take away the seasoning and you have nothing.”

One veggie patty, curried vegetables, nine bean stew, green beans, curried chick peas and rice was all it took to make this oxtail lover forget meat entirely. The flavors and tenderness of Caribbean Style’s food is true to form. It has every element of Jamaican

food, without the animal carcass. The curried vegetables have the perfect balance of smoky and buttery, tender and crunch. The nine bean stew compliments the rice and the curried chick peas.

Like Wright’s music, there’s a harmony in their intention. The restaurant is proudly Black-owned, and runs like a well-oiled machine. Customers are greeted by their names and asked about their lives. Regulars all have a favorite dish, and few of them overlap. It’s like a barbershop on Sunday morning, but there’s curry instead of clippers.

“A lot of people like talking to us about how they’re changing their diet and they’re happy we’re here because they don’t know what else to eat,” Hazel said. “There are customers that look like us, they see [the food] and they’re familiar with the flavor, they like seeing a Black-owned business, let alone a family running a business. That’s something that they want to support.”

Wright and Hazel are working to make it community-focused in their outreach efforts as well. Ninth Square Caribbean Style has provided Career High School with food, and catered popular community events like local fashion designer Neville Wisdom’s fashion show, local vegan food festival Compassionfest, and New Haven’s LEAP for Kids program. The couple said they hope their presence in the New Haven restaurant world is shifting residents’ understanding of what health tastes like, and how easy it can be to make delicious meat and dairy free food.

“Vegan food brings a lot of different kind of people together,” Wright said.

“We’ve had reggae bands passing through, we had Styles P, we had a punk rock band come in! It’s kind of like how music brings people together.” •

food justice

Our Top Five for Food Justice I t’s happened a couple times this year. We’ll go to an event, cover it, post the article on artspaper.org (or occasionally even in print)—and then hear from our readers that they wish they’d known beforehand. That they would have attended if information had been more publicly accessible, or there had been more lead time. That they want to get involved, but just don’t know how.

Sometimes that first step can be the hardest part. So we thought we’d make a list of some of our favorite food justice initiatives, many of them new to the city. It’s just a starter, for readers looking for that first point of contact. On here, you’ll find classes, a working group, and options for volunteering.

* * *

Chef Nadine Nelson thomas breen

SANCTUARY KITCHEN The New Haven Land Trust manages nearly 50 community gardens across the city. They’re looking for folks to get involved, learn more about their initiatives, and come along on tours and activities. Employing a three-pronged approach to land conservation, community gardening, and environmental education, the Land Trust works with lifelong green thumbs and gardening novices alike.

Each year, the NHLT puts out a call for volunteers to prep its gardens for the coming growing season, clear litter and refuse from nature preserves, help clear and forge trails, and remove invasive plants, and lead nature walks. To find out more, contact volunteer@newhavenlandtrust.org.

A program of CitySeed New Haven, Sanctuary Kitchen launched officially in 2017, as a way to spread and celebrate refugee narratives through the culinary arts.

Through supper clubs, community dinners, and cooking classes, New Haveners get to know some of the city’s newest residents through their food, cooking dishes from countries including Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Eritrea, Colombia, Cuba, Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In January of this year, Sanctuary Kitchen expanded the program, facilitating a multi-week business incubator for aspiring chefs, food cart owners, and restaurateurs.

Celin Garcia

In 2010, New Havener Rebecca Kline started a community garden on James Street, in a patch of land owned by Chabaso Bakery. Almost a decade and several directors later, New Haven Farms has grown widely in scope, hosting a farm-based wellness program, community-wide farm days, and community supported agriculture (CSA) shares out of multiple locations.

From March through October, volunteers transform into farm team members, planting and harvesting produce through the growing season or helping with the organization’s farm-based wellness program. For more, contact volunteercoordinator@newhavenfarms.org.

Fanny Reyes preparing empanadas at Sanctuary Kitchen event lucy gellman

14 artspaper.org • may 2018

In January of this year, Stir The Pot was born in a kitchen on Grand Avenue, when a handful of master cooks, food policy people, and food justice newbies sat down to talk about Mikki Halpin’s “Practical Activism: If You Want To Do Something, Don’t Do Everything.” Around the table, smells rose up to meet each other: freshly baked bread, turmeric-kissed vegetable curries, nutty rice, a lemon cake that oozed yellow.

The brainchild of Chef Nadine Nelson and Austin Bryniarski, the monthly series is a potluck with a social justice flair. Dates and locations vary, but you can check “Stir The Pot” on Facebook and Twitter (follow Chef Nelson at @GlobalLocalFood) for more information.

lucy gellman

forage

Fiddling with Fiddleheads Community gardener with New Haven Land Trust lucy gellman

Don’t throw away your wild edibles by rachel sayet

Do you need extra food? Or are you a business that has extra food? This might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

In New Haven, food insecurity has reached staggering highs: 22 percent overall and 34 percent in low-income neighborhoods.

There are wraparound services that aren’t enough anymore. There’s also this thing called Food Rescue U.S. Food Rescue U.S. is a national organization that pairs supermarkets, bakeries, and specialty food stores with

organizations in need of food. Each week, food providers with excess product send their food to pantries, religious organizations, schools, daycare and outreach centers that serve food insecure individuals and families.

That’s where New Haven’s local chapter, led by lifelong Nutmegger Lori Martin, comes in. Using a Food Rescue U.S. app that lets her know who needs food and who has food, Martin organizes and deploys a network of volunteers on a near-daily basis. She is in constant need of volunteers. •

Bonus: Read Your Local News no, seriously. there’s all kinds of food justice there.

Okay. We’re a little biased because we cover food justice at artspaper.org on the reg, and see it as part of a vibrant arts and cultural wheelhouse. But we’re not the only ones. New Haven is brimming with good writing on food justice, garden education, agriculture and the culinary arts.

From Tagan Engel, who graces us with a piece in this issue, check out The Table Underground (thetableunderground.com) for stories on “food, radical love, and creative social justice.” One week you may learn about heirloom seed collection, the next about a social justice seder in upstate New York. Her podcast of the same name also plays on WNHH Community Radio, 103.5 FM in New Haven, every other Friday at 1 p.m.

There’s also the New Haven Independent, a partner in our content share and the best digital news site a New Haven enthusiast could ask for. At least once a month (and usually more often), there’s a new story on a chef, restaurant, or new foodie initiative taking root. Check it out at newhavenindependent.org or @newhavenindy on Twitter and on Instagram. •

Spring has finally arrived, and indigenous wild edibles can be found in your backyard, as well as at local supermarkets and restaurants.

Plant walks bloom across the state, like those at the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, Conn.

To me, it seems everyone is talking about fiddleheads, those adorable spiral shaped ferns which taste like something in between spinach and mushrooms. Fiddleheads are one of the first spring plants, and they grow in forested regions in the North Atlantic and North Pacific coasts. They have been used

by Native peoples in this region since time immemorial. One could only imagine how exciting it would be for ancient peoples to see those little funny fronds poke out their heads after a long hard winter.

Fiddleheads are tannic—super acerbic—so be sure to blanch them before using, as otherwise they could be toxic to your system. Some Native cooks toss the fiddleheads in Oolichan or Candlefish oil.

But they can also be simply sautéed with garlic and onion after blanching or mixed into a salad. If you don’t find them growing in your backyard, they are available at some of the organic food markets in Connecticut.

Some other plants you can find this time of year include dandelion greens and ramps (wild leeks), both indigenous plants.

Dandelion leaves are a very powerful multivitamin, and the flowers can be used to make wine. Ramps are a type of wild growing onion, with a strong garlic flavor. The ramp would’ve been used as a flavoring agent in ancient times and still is, as onions and garlic are not indigenous to New England.

Please enjoy this modern Fiddlehead recipe courtesy of the the Mitsitam Cafe Cookbook: Recipes from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

by Richard Hetzler. Mitsitam means “Let’s eat!” in the Piscataway language, the tribe whose homeland the museum sits on. It’s been a favorite of mine and I hope to pass it on to you as the days grow warmer. •

serves 4-6

Fiddlehead Salad 3-4 slices bacon 1 pound fiddlehead fern 2 cups radishes, coarsely chopped 1/2 cup minced fresh chives salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Apple Cider Vinaigrette 6 tablespoons apple cider vinegar 1/4 cup honey 3/4 cup oil salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

For the vinaigrette: in a small bowl, combine all the ingredients and whisk to blend. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour or up to 10 days.

For the salad: in a medium skillet, fry the bacon over medium heat until crisp.

Using tongs, transfer to the paper towel—lined plate to drain. Crumble the bacon and set aside.

In a pot of salted boiling water, blanch the fiddleheads for two minutes. Transfer to a bowl of ice water to cool. Drain and transfer to a salad bowl. Add the radishes, cucumber and chives to the ferns.

Add 1/2 cup vinaigrette and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Top each serving with the crumbling bacon.

may 2018 • artspaper.org 15

visual art

Arts At Work Pt. II: Kyle Kearson Making art and handling it by elizabeth nearing

What do you do?

This is usually the first question I’m asked in new situations, when people want to know about my profession. The short answer is community outreach at Long Wharf Theatre, where I act as the Community Engagement Manager. But the long answer—and it’s much, much longer—often gives me pause.

As an artist, arts administrator, producer, director, and organizer, it’s hard to distill that identity into a job description. No two days are the same on the job. And I hypothesize that’s the same for many in the field.

As someone who is constantly asking “Why do this? Why choose the arts?,” I wanted to dig a little deeper. This is the second installment in a series of interviews on the arts—fine, performing, culinary, and more— and their practitioners at work in New Haven.

Work is one of the central tenets of culture in America. This is an opportunity to get a look into the worlds of the people that make art happen in this city.

In the first installment, I spoke with cellist Ravenna Michalsen. If you haven’t read that, go check it out in the April 2018 issue, or on artspaper.org. What follows is an edited version of the conversation I had with Kyle Kearson in his studio in Erector Square earlier this year.

* * * What do you do?

I am sculptor and an art handler.

What does that mean?

I work as a museum technician at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA). I help with installation, setting up the exhibits, maintaining the space, transporting the art work. I’m in the museum from 8am to 4pm Monday through Friday. That’s my day job.

I’m also a practicing artist. I’m trained.

I got my BFA in sculpture and ceramics.

After work, I continue to try to make sculptural works that excite me and keep my thoughts going.

What is a day at the museum like?

A regular day can be described in two seasons. When we’re in the midst of setting up or breaking down a new exhibition, it’s hectic. Every step of the process. Whether it’s receiving all the crates full of art work, late night deliveries, taking inventory of the work that’s going to go up. That’s all physical labor, exhausting work, a real investment with my body.

16 artspaper.org • may 2018

Along with that process comes hanging the show, opening everything up, hanging paintings on the wall, mounting sculpture, installing all the precious objects that are going to be seen in the next couple weeks.

So it’s busy busy busy, go go go, all day.

The second season is more a quiet time, when the show is up and running, there’s not as much to do. We’re doing the maintenance. We’re dusting, we’re transporting here and there. If a painting needs to go to photography, or get brought out for somebody that’s doing a study. Or if a curator wants to do a change on the floor.

It’s a little bit more low key. But the same process, just less hectic.

What is the training like for art handling?

How did you wind up doing that work?

I really learned on the job. I started there as a New Haven Promise intern.

I went through the Promise program in college, they provided a scholarship and had the opportunity for internships at many different organizations and jobs around New Haven. I ended up at the YCBA. I got to come on the summer of 2016 and really developed a good rapport with the team. I got asked to stay on for the next show, and that turned into being picked up full time.

That’s amazing.

It is amazing. It’s truly a blessing because some of the people that graduated with me from art school are still looking for a job that can meet their needs.

How does it relate to your studio time—as both a sculptor and an art handler? What does the transition look like between those things?

Sometimes it’s a symbiotic relationship. Sometimes I leave my job very excited about going to make art because I’m surrounded by art every day. Often I’ll be inspired—even by the building I work in. It kinda like peaks my mind in terms of materials. It’s a famous Louis Kahn building and there’s a lot of concrete. Do you ever come by to visit?

Oh yeah. Especially in the winter.

I like going on walks to clear my head.

Especially when it’s cold and gross outside, it’s still beautiful in the art gallery.

Yeah that’s true. You talking about the YCBA? Not [the Yale University Art Gallery] across the street?

I go there too. I really like the YCBA. I’ll go up to the Turner room and find it very peaceful.

You are truly an art-y person.

I am! This whole interview series is a thinly veiled excuse to talk about art with people I think are cool.

I love it. Sometimes I tell people where I work and they think it’s the other gallery.

Is there a rivalry?

There’s a rivalry! Because they do them, we do us. We’re separate. I’m glad you’re familiar with the building. To be in there and look at our collection, it’s beautiful and inspiring.

Sometimes I’m excited. Sometimes if we’re in that busy season I’m tired and I can’t make it over here. I gotta weigh what’s most important. What’s most important is my well being. I try to come here as much as I can. I love it. I come here sometimes just to break free. A lot of my stuff that is labor intensive is a workout and a release.

Like if I’m mixing up cement or if I’m breaking a panel down, there’s a release of built up frustration or just enjoyment in the studio. I’m in the lab experimenting.

How did you wind up working in sculpture?

That’s a funny story. I went to college with the goal of becoming a mechanical engineer. I liked it. I thought I knew what it was. It was tied to my childhood dream of becoming an architect, but they aren’t the same. My college didn’t offer architecture, I thought I’ll do this, it’ll be a good job, a fruitful career and I’ll have some sort of creative practice. Freshman year I realized that wasn’t going to happen, it wasn’t for me and that there wasn’t enough creative freedom in that area of study. I made my way to the art school.

I was still treading lightly—thinking I’d do graphic design, because of the same mentality, get a job, security, money. I ended up taking a clay class, hands in the mud my heart was just opened up to the world of sculpture.

I’ve always loved art ever since I was young, but I never considered it a true career until studying it at UConn.

When you loved as art as a kid, you wanted to be an architect?

Yeah, because I love the creative aspect of it, but then the tangible architecture.

These buildings are the biggest sculptures you can experience. They’re a work of art and they serve a vital function.

And going to work in the building that you do, you’re surrounded.

Do you have favorite pieces in the gallery?

It’s hard to say. I do. I like most of our contemporary work actually. There’s one piece that we don’t show often. But it was out when I first visited. Rachel Whiteread.

She makes these amazing casts out of the negative spaces of furniture and other architectural pieces—like doors and I think she did a whole house one time.

She had cast the negative space of this conference table. It was these huge white blocks. It read well. It was different than everything else I saw around.

There’s a lot of traditional work around. But yours isn’t. Do you find yourself working in opposition of or inspired by work from the day job to the studio time?

Kind of, yeah. British culture is undeniably tied to colonialism and some of that shows up at my job. Even just living with some of the works that depict times of slavery or invasion of certain lands, it can be upsetting. I guess I do come here and rebel in some ways. But, if I didn’t work there I’d still be doing some of the same work because i’m dealing with issues I see in society.

I think our collection is wonderful for its vast nature and there’s no denying the great artists that have made great work.

There is an entrenchment in that colonial environment—so the idea of greatness has pros and cons.

For sure. We could talk about the works that we value and deem as great as being written by the people who are making the history, so who is claimed in the canon is of a certain demographic.

You’ve talked about liberation as a theme in your work, can you tell me a little bit more about that?

I identify as a Black sculptor. I’m an artist of color. I’m of a biracial background. My father is Black, my mother is white. Growing up I had to process that and grow into myself and figure out who I was. I’m still doing that today. My work is through my lens looking at society and a lot of the implications of the outside world on certain people.

I’m looking at established structures and systems in place that hold people back, or were

meant to hold people back, limit people’s freedoms. I’m trying to make work that makes people think about that stuff, think about the histories and what’s still present today.

For me it comes out through tactility.

The material carries so much emotion. I use concrete a lot. It’s a real heaviness.

While that’s not directly racial, or loaded with any ethnic connotation, the industrial nature of it speaks to my urban environment, and just the making. I’m a real maker, and I think Black folk have always had to make a way, make their own way.

What are you working on right now?

Right now I’m working on a few projects. This cast is part of a sculpture called “A Dream Deferred.” A concrete block is going to rest on top of a beautiful cloudscape built from fabric, in a big billowing form. This weight is literally going to rest on it, the title, the Langston Hughes poem, is talking about how the exterior forces will try to limit you by saying wait or don’t as a way to stop you reaching towards the sky.

Some poetic stuff, some more overt stuff, some conceptual stuff. There are these freedom bricks I’m developing, another piece in process called “Land of the Free.” My goal is to lay out this floor form of nearly 300-400 white bricks. Each has the word freedom falling into it. I was thinking about where we are today, there are many freedoms that are disintegrating.

Our country was supposedly founded on these freedoms for all people but that’s obviously not the case. This installation would be this walkway of whiteness that is presenting who the freedoms were for.

There’s an internal contradiction about the labor, and who would actually put down the infrastructure and early foundations. The enslaved people that worked for our freedoms.

If somebody wants to go see your work, where can they go?

Right now you can find out more directly from my website at www. kylekearson.com. I participate in City-Wide Open Studios and am always trying to make connections and show around town.

Where do you hope this takes you?

What do you hope either the day job, studio time? What does the journey look like do you think?

I’ve been questioning that a lot lately, because I want to be free to make my work full time. By 50, I hope to be in a professor position. Well established, continued my practice and develop a name for myself internationally and then be able to influence the minds of college aged students.

It was in my undergrad training that I really began to take this art stuff seriously and the impact that it could have I want to work with young people and motivate them to use their voice to say something. Use their hands to make something. Use their art to do something.

Why New Haven?

I’m born and raised in New Haven.

I’ve been here and I’ve never gotten tired of it. This scene is really poppin’. It’s really bubbling with so many creatives, so many opportunities to connect and network with people that are doing amazing projects.

I love New Haven for its highs and its lows. There’s literally a very full experience of the human spectrum here. We have Yale University and we have neighborhoods of richness with so much culture to experience.

I don’t want to just compare Yale and neighborhoods. They are just two facets.

And they intertwine. There are some walls, but there are some bridges and tunnels too.

For sure. I think you’re right though about walls too. That’s something i’ve noticed after beginning to work at Yale, how much it has a relationship or doesn’t with neighborhoods.

Actually at the YCBA, they have some connection with New Haven Public Schools that every student will visit the museum at least twice between K-8. I visited it when I was little, and now I work there. There’s this whole cycle of growth.

So much to explore. So much to learn.

Anything else you want to add?

I just want to add, that New Haven is poppin’. I know I said it. But it’s poppin’. •

may 2018 • artspaper.org 17

bulletin Entries appear as they are submitted by member organizations to us. We do not have time to recheck date, time, location or fee for each of these, nor do we have time to track down member orgs who are late with information. The next deadline, for the June 2018 issue, is April 23 at 5 p.m. Late submissions will not be accepted.

calls for Artists Mills Pond Gallery invites artists to submit works for a juried exhibition June 30 – July 28, 2018. Juried by Edmond Rochat, Interior will showcase drawings and oil paintings which express the various meanings found in the spaces we inhabit, the objects we encounter and the people we interact with. The exhibition will accept oil paintings and drawings in graphite or charcoal. The exhibition seeks work that does not separate representational skill from emotional content, but sees both as necessary ingredients for a meaningful work of art. Deadline May 11, 2018. Entry Fee $45/3 images. Awards: $700 Best in Show, $400 Second Place, $200 Third Place. https://www.millspondgallery.org/ upcoming-exhibits-and-calls-for-entry#/ interior-juried-fine-art/

Prospectus: http://spectrumartgallery.org/ Prospectus-2018-Summer-Arts-FestivalGallery-Group-Show.pdf Artists The Connecticut Sea Grant Arts Support Awards Program awards up to $1000 to an artist through this competitive funding program. The winning submission will be selected on the basis of its aesthetic quality, relevance to coastal and marine environments and Connecticut Sea Grant themes, as well as its potential impact on non-traditional “audiences”. Artists who live in Connecticut, or whose work is related to Connecticut’s coastal and marine environments and/or Long Island Sound are eligible for funding consideration. Previous recipients of Sea Grant Arts awards are not eligible for 5 years. The grant application will be submitted electronically as a compiled PDF file with one additional media file (mp3 or mov file), if needed, via email to SeagrantResearch@uconn. edu for receipt no later than 4:30 p.m.

EDT on Monday, May 7, 2018. For more information refer to the Call guidelines: http://seagrant.uconn.edu/wp-content/ uploads/sites/1985/2017/10/CTSG_ artsgrant_rfp_2018.pdf Artist Residencies

Artists The Bruce S. Kershner Gallery of the Fairfield Public Library would like to invite visual artists to apply to show their work in its dedicated gallery space during the upcoming calendar of rotating exhibitions.

Artists interested in applying should visit the website for full information about submitting an application: http:// fairfieldpubliclibrary.org/our-community/ bruce-s-kershner-gallery/ Also follow us on Instagram to see the gallery and our recent exhibitions: https://www.instagram.com/ the_kershner_gallery/

The Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, an American owned and operated artist studio located on the Greek Island of Skopelos is offering artist residencies for 2018. The studio is equipped for painters, printmakers, clay artists, digital photographers, and videographers. The length of residence is from 2-4 weeks from March-October. The studio is perched high on a hill overlooking the Aegean Sea near the village of Skopelos.

Application information: https://www. skopartfoundation.org.

Singers

Artists Spectrum Gallery announces a call for Representational and Abstract Painters, Sculptors, Illustrators, Photographers, Original Printmakers, Fabric Artists, Glass and Wood Artisans, Jewelry Designers and Crafters for the 2018 Essex Town Green Outdoor Summer Arts Festival! Open to visual artists working in oil, acrylic, watercolor, photography, pencil and charcoal, paper, mixed media, fabric, glass, wood, stone and clay. The Summer Festival in Essex is Saturday, June 9 (10-5pm) and Sunday, June 10 (11-5pm) and will be limited to 50 local and regional fine artists and artisans.

This event is free for guests. If you are in the Festival, you can also submit work for consideration in our concurrent 6-week long exhibit at the Gallery in Centerbrook, CT (May 25-July 8, 2018), Essex Green Summer Arts Festival Group Show. Receiving for this show is May 14-18. Only artists participating in the Essex Arts Festival are invited to submit for this show. There is no specific theme. Note the Essex Green can only display a limited number of booths so, please, submit early to the festival and then after acceptance into the festival submit as soon as possible to the gallery group show which opens two weeks ahead of the Essex Green Festival. And finally, another opportunity for those involved in the Gallery Show and Festival is to present and sell work in our online shop and gallery, Spectrum Anytime.

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Singers Silk ’n Sounds a’ Capella women’s chorus is looking for new members to join us on our amazing journey of musical discovery! Come meet us (we are very friendly) and our award winning director, Christine Lampe-Onnerud, at one of our Tuesday night rehearsals from 6:15-9:15pm at the Spring Glen Church located at 1825 Whitney Ave in Hamden. You can contact Lynn at (203) 623-1276 for more information or check us out online at www. silknsounds.org or on Facebook.

Singers The New Haven Oratorio Choir, a community chamber choir, invites singers of all voice parts to audition for a position in the choir. Singers are also welcome to attend one of our rehearsals which are held Wednesday nights from 8-10 pm at Church of the Redeemer, 185 Cold Spring St. in New Haven. For more information please check out our website http://www. nhoratorio.org/sing-with-us/. To schedule an audition please contact Gretchen at 203-624-2520 or membership@ nhoratorio.org.

new skills, meet new people, and be part of a creative organization that gives to the community. Opportunities exist throughout the year for a variety of events and ongoing programs. Teens are welcome and can earn community service credit. Email Barbara Nair, Director, at barbara@spectrumartgallery.org or call 860-663-5593.

certified Tai Chi instructor Joe Atkins.

Tai Chi classes will allow you to find new energy and stamina. Tai chi also helps improve balance, flexibility and mobility, and reduces stiffness and soreness. Wear comfortable clothes. All levels welcome.

Feb. 7-Dec. 31 . Every Wednesday, 10-11:00 a.m. $8-$12. 10-11:00 a.m.

Volunteers

Ongoing Art Classes and Workshops

Interested in working with theatre artists in a thriving New Haven Arts Community?

If the answer is yes, join Collective Consciousness Theatre’s volunteer team today! Ushering, House Management, Social Media Consulting, Marketing. Please email us at ccttheatreorg@gmail.com if you are interested in becoming a part of CCT.

Spectrum Art Gallery 61 Main Street, Centerbrook. 860-767-0742. spectrumartgallery.org. Spectrum Gallery in Essex Township hosts an array of seasonal art programs for adults and children. Please visit: our online calendar for information and to register: spectrumartgallery.org. Questions?

Call 860-663-5593. April 1-Aug. 1.

classes

Botanical Watercolor

Modern Contemporary Dance Classes Come dance with us in a friendly, supportive atmosphere. Release tight muscles, increase flexibility, improve posture, and strengthen your body.

Integrate your movement and experience dance as an art form. Times and dates vary by skill level. May 3-30. Intermediate Level Class: Mondays & Wednesdays, 6-7:30 p.m. Beginning/Intermediate: Fridays, 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Drop In Class: $18.00. Single Class For Regular Students: $15.00. Annie Sailer Studio Space. Erector Square, Building 2, 1st Flr., Studio D, 319 Peck St., New Haven. 347-306-7660. anniesailerdancecompany.com Barre Workout Class I can come to you, New Haven to Westport.

203-690-8501. sharonbaily30@gmail.com Private Barre fitness training Offering private Barre fitness training. Get help with losing weight while sculpting and toning all parts of the body with this ballet and yoga inspired workout. See great results right away using isometric movements at the ballet barre. Get personal private training focusing on desired target areas that need muscular toning and developing. $55 for an hour session.

Free Ballroom Dance Classes Bethesda Lutheran Church 450 Whitney Avenue, New Haven. 203-787-2346. bethesdanewhaven.org/dance Ballroom dance classes are being held at Bethesda Lutheran Church. Singles or couples are welcome, beginners to advanced. Please join teacher Christina Castaneda for a fun, easy, causal lesson. Jan. we start Tango!

Email bethesdadance@yahoo.com with questions or to sign up. Wednesdays Jan. 9-May 15. Freewill offering. 6:30-7:30 p.m.

Yoga in the Galleries Mattatuck Museum 144 West Main street, Waterbury. 203-753-0381. mattmuseum.org Find a calm mind and strengthened body with an all-levels flowing yoga class in the Early American Art Gallery. Instructors may vary.

Bring your own mat. Feb. 6- Dec. 31. Every Tuesday, 5:30-6:30 p.m. $8-12. 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Volunteers

Tai Chi

The non-profit Spectrum Art Gallery and its affiliate, Arts Center Killingworth offer numerous opportunities for volunteers! Learn

Mattatuck Museum 144 West Main street, Waterbury. 203-753-0381. mattmuseum. org . Move and groove to music with

Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History 170 Whitney Avenue, New Haven. 203432-5050. peabody.yale.edu/events/ Discover how to paint portraits of flowering plants in watercolor as you observe them in the classroom. Hone your drawing and watercolor skills as you discover the intricacies of different plants that are blooming in the spring. Many examples of Botanical Art will be shared. April 13-June 8 . Every Friday, except May 25, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Registration closes April 3. Register at peabody.yale.edu/education/naturalscience-illustration-registration . $400.

Peabody member $360.

creative services Express Yourself Expressive writing & art sessions for healing through grief and life transitions in private and group settings, facilitated

by Amy J. Barry, certified expressive arts educator and bereavement counselor.

For rates and more information, email amyjaybarry@gmail.com, visit www.aimwrite-ct.net or www. rubeesconstellation.com Historic Home Restoration Period appropriate additions, baths, kitchens; remodeling; sagging porches straightened/ leveled; wood windows restored; plaster restored; historic molding & hardware; vinyl/ aluminum siding removed; wood siding repair/replace. CT & NH Preservation Trusts.

RJ Aley Building Contractor (203) 226-9933 jaley@rjaley.com Web Design & Art Consulting Services Startup business solutions. Creative, sleek Web design by art curator and editor for artist, design, architecture, and smallbusiness sites. Will create and maintain any kind of website. Hosting provided.

Also low-cost in-depth artwork analysis, writing, editing services. (203) 387-4933. azothgallery@comcast.net.

dance Yogi Boho Fitness Yogi Boho Fitness is offering Barre workout classes. Barre is a sculpting and conditioning class inspired by ballet barre warmups targeting the core, posture alignment, toning and strengthening the arms, legs as well as firming the bottom. A

portion of the class utilizes small weights and the class cools down with gentle yoga floor stretches.For more information, contact Yogo Boho Fitness, 1125 Dixwell Ave, Hamden. 203-690-8501.

Worlds of Dance Concert Crowell Concert Hall, Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, “Introduction to Dance” and beginning dance students perform works of various styles including Bharata Natyam (South Indian classical), jazz, and hip hop. May 6, 2 p.m. Free and open to the public. 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown.

860-685-3355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/ Beauty and The Beast The award-winning New Haven Ballet, with studios in New Haven and Branford, presents Beauty and the Beast. This familyfriendly performance will feature former Miami City Ballet Principal dancer Jeremy Cox in the role of “The Beast” and New Haven Ballet School students.In addition, New Haven Ballet’s outreach program, Shared Ability, will present a dance, and New Haven Ballet will perform excerpts from the classical ballet, Paquita, May 19 For tickets and more information visit: hubert.com/shows-events/new-havenballet-spring-performance

exhibitions City Gallery City Gallery, 994 State St, New Haven.

203-782-2489. city-gallery.org Partial Vision Photographer Phyllis Crowley presents Partial Vision, featuring images of snow storms taken mostly through icy, frosty or dripping car windows. The exhibit will be on view at City Gallery from May 31June 24; Opening Reception: June 3 from 4-6 p.m. Refreshment. Free, open to the public. For more about the show, visit: citygallery.org. May 31-June 24 . Visit: website for Gallery hours. Free Creative Arts Workshop New Haven Paint & Clay Club, 80 Audubon Street, New Haven. 203-562-4927. newhavenpaintandclayclub.org 117th Annual Juried Art Exhibit at Creative Arts Workshop The New Haven Paint and Clay Club exhibition will feature works created by artists from Connecticut and New England. The juror for the exhibition is D. Samuel Quigley, Director of the Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT. Opening reception on Saturday, May 12 from 2-4 p.m. Awards will be presented at 3 p.m.

May 7-June 2 . Gallery hours are MondayFriday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Free.

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, 283 Washington Terrace, Middletown.

860-685-3355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/ Reception ”Thesis Art Exhibition Zilkha Gallery showcases the work of the Class of 2018’s thesis students in the Department of Art and Art History’s Art Studio Program. Each student is invited to select a single work from their Senior Thesis Exhibition for this curated yearend showcase of drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, mixed media, and architecture. May 26 . 3:30 p.m.

Guilford Art Center Mill Gallery The Artists of Gallery One, 411 Church Street, Guilford. 860-575-9113. galleryoneCT.com The Artists of Gallery One & Friends at Guilford Art Center, Mill Gallery The work is by a diverse group of mid-career artists who use current modes of expression in a variety of contemporary media. The hanging intentionally emphasizes connections between representational and abstract work.

Opening reception on May 4 from 5-7 p.m..

Closing reception with a performance by The Wild Angels dance troupe on May 20, 2-4 p.m.. April 30-May 20 . Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.. Free

in Black and White Spectrum Gallery’s Spring exhibit features works by artists who through a palette of grays, whites and blacks show the detail and beauty found in nature. Show opens, Friday, March 30, 6:30-9 p.m. with an opening reception and closes May 13. Spectrum Gallery, 61 Main St., Centerbrook. Visit: spectrumartgallery. org or call the gallery for more info March 30-May 13 . Opening Reception, March 30, 2018 Gallery Hours-Wed.-Sat 12:00-6:00 Sun12:00-500 6:30-9:00 Free Summer Group Gallery Exhibit A six-week group gallery show at the Spectrum Gallery and Store of select pieces by artists participating in the annual Summer Arts Festival in Essex (June 9-10, 2018). May 25-July 8 . Wed, Fri & Sat 12-6pm, Thur & Sun 12-5pm Free

Kehler Liddell Gallery Yale Center for British Art 873 Whalley Ave, New Haven, CT. 203389-9555. kehlerliddellgallery.com How with this Rage shall Beauty hold a Plea?

(Shakespeare) Are we as artists responsible for creating challenging works and addressing critical issues of our time? Are other expressions trite or selfish acts of escapism? Or can beauty be powerful? Can the act of creating beauty during a time of ugliness be a form of resistance? This is the second Annual Juried Show at KLG. April 26-May 27 . Opening Reception: Sunday April 29th, 3-6 p.m., with panel discussion at 2 p.m. Special events during Westville’s Annual ArtWalk, Saturday May 11-12.

Gallery Hours: Thursday & Friday, 11am4pm; Saturday & Sunday, 10am-4pm; or by appointment. Free and open to all Robert Bienstock, From the artist: “I use near-parallel lines to explore theoretical spaces“ spatial, mathematical, emotional and philosophical. I lay them down with paint and ink, pen and brush, on monotype or painted backgrounds. My lines explore concepts such as the intersection of order and disorder, and relationships between independently coherent spaces.” May 31-July 1 . Opening Reception: June 9th, 3-6pm Gallery Hours: Thursday + Friday, 11am-4pm; Saturday + Sunday, 10am-4pm; or by appointment. Free and open to all.

Amy Browning, From the artist: “The works are abstract reflections of life on the island we have shared for the last quarter century with many friends, animal, vegetable and mineral. Change is the leit-motif of island existence with the ever-present elements of wind, calm, heat, cold, tides, bloom, decay and the daily orbit of the sun.” May 31-July 1 . Opening Reception: Saturday, June 9th, 3-6pm Gallery hours: Thursday & Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday & Sunday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; or by appointment Free and open to all

1080 Chapel Street, New Haven. 203432-2800. britishart.yale.edu Exhibition | The Paston Treasure: Microcosm of the Known World The seventeenth-century painting The Paston Treasure (ca. 1663) is an enigmatic masterpiece that defies categorization because it combines several art historical genres: still life, portraiture, animal painting, and allegory. The painting makes its North a.m.erican debut at the YCBA in partnership with the Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, UK. Feb. 15-May 27 . Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Free and open to the public. Celia Paul The Center will present an exhibition of work by the contemporary British artist Celia Paul (b.

1959) in spring 2018, the first in a series of three successive exhibitions curated by the

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hilton Als. Following the final exhibition, the Center will publish a volume of Als’ personal reflections on the three artists. April 3-Aug. 12 . Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Free Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History 170 Whitney Avenue, New Haven. 203432-5050. peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/ object-study-gallery Object Study Gallery: Teaching With the Collection From the bones of massive dinosaurs to art and cultural artifacts from across the globe, the collections of the Yale Peabody Museum and like institutions are the foundation for our understanding of the world. Spanning many disciplines, the objects in this gallery have been selected by Yale University faculty to support courses in a broad range.

March 28-June 30 . 12-5 p.m. $6-$13

film Beckerman Jewish Film Series A series of Jewish and Israeli films featuring documentary, narrative, historical, and human interest content. Free and paid events, April 5-May 8. Films will take place at the JCC of Greater New Haven and other locations. For more information, call: 203387-2424. jccnh.org/filmseries Film Screening: Rabbi Wolff William Wolff is nearly 90 and perhaps the most unconventional rabbi in the world. As the State Rabbi of Northeast Germany but still living in England, he commutes from Heathrow

GIVE ARTS & to your

CULTURE organizations this year

New Haven Museum 114 Whitney Avenue,, New Haven. 203-5624183. newhavenmuseum.org 21st-Century Tales from WWI Award-winning comicbook illustrator Nadir Balan creates a series of dynamic, over-sized, graphic-novel style murals based on the dramatic World War I (WWI) diary of one New Haven serviceman who witnessed firsthand the adventure, horror, and pathos of the front lines. Nov. 7, 2017-Nov. 11, 2018. Tuesday-Friday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday 12-5 p.m. Free 1st Sundays: 1-4 p.m. $2- $4 Spectrum Art Gallery 61 Main Street, Centerbrook. 860-7670742. spectrumartgallery.org Nature

A 36-hour online-giving event to support local nonprofits @GiveGreater

#TheGreatGive

thegreatgive.org

bulletin to Germany each week. A Holocaust survivor, former London-based politician, and respected rabbi, Wolff is a fascinating character blessed with a tremendous joie de vivre. May 2, 6:30 p.m., New Haven Free Public Library, Ives Main Library, 133 Elm St, New Haven. 203-946-8130.

kids & families Paul Mellon Arts Center 332 Christian Street, Wallingford. 203697-2398. https://choate.edu/arts/pmac/ event-details/~occur-id/10792270 Bring It On! The New York Times summed up this sassy musical as an alternately snarky and sentimental show about rival high school cheer squads. Bitingly relevant, Bring It On is filled with the complexities of friendship, jealousy, betrayal and forgiveness, all wrapped up in a high-flying package that will leave you cheering in your seat. May 17-19 . 7:30 p.m. $20 adults; $15 seniors and students.

Yale Center for British Art 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, CT 06510. 203-432-2800. britishart.yale.edu Family Program | Exploring Artism This is a free program for families with children who are five to twelve years of age and on the autism spectrum. Families look at artwork in the Center’s galleries, which is followed by an activity in a museum classroom.

Feb. 10-May 19 . Saturdays, Feb. 10, March 10, April 21, and May 19, 10:30noon 10:30-noon The program is free, but preregistration is required. Please contact Education (ycba.education@yale.edu | +1 203 432 2858) with your name, number,

and a good time to reach you. A museum educator will contact you by phone to complete and confirm your registration.

music Greater New Haven Community Chorus A non-auditioned, four-part (SATB) chorus with singers of diverse musical backgrounds—some who have never sung in a chorus before and others who are highly skilled. GNHCC offers a welcoming and supportive atmosphere for all. During the three-week enrollment period at the beginning of each semester (September and Jan.), interested singers are invited to attend three rehearsals before making the commitment to join. Even after open enrollment ends, rehearsals are open to visit:ors. Rehearsals are held every Thursday from September to midDecember and Jan. to mid-June, from 7-9 p.m, at the First Presbyterian Church, 704 Whitney Ave., New Haven. GNHCC presents a concert at the end of each semester. For more, contact: info@gnhcc. org, (203) 303-4642, or visit: gnhcc.org.

New Haven Chorale Will hold auditions throughout the year by appointment with the music director.

Interested singers are encouraged to call the Chorale office for appointments or go to our audition website to request more information or to schedule an audition: newhavenchoraleauditions.com. Sept. 11May 14 . Monday evenings from 7-9:30 p.m. Annual Dues after the first year.. New Haven Chorale, Bethesda Lutheran Church,

450 Whitney Avenue, New Haven. 203776-SONG. newhavenchoraleauditions.com South Indian Music Student Recital Students of Adjunct Associate Professor of Music B. Balasubrahmaniyan and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music David Nelson perform music from the Karnatak tradition of South India. May 2 . 7pm Free. Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, World Music Hall, 40 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. 860685-3355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/ New Music New Haven with Caroline Shaw, guest composer A program of works by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and YSM alumna Caroline Shaw. May 3 . Thursday, May 3, 2018 7:30 p.m. Free Admission. Yale School of Music, Sudler Recital Hall in WLH, 100 Wall Street, New Haven. 203-432-4158. music-tickets.yale.edu/single/EventDetail. aspx?p=17630 Javanese Gamelan Experience the culture of Java with beginning students of the Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble. The concert includes a prelude by the Wesleyan Youth Gamelan Ensemble. May 3 . 7pm Free. Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, World Music Hall, 40 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. 860685-3355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/ Decades Rewind Take a journey back in time with Decades Rewind. Come celebrate the hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s, the most prominent decades in music history. Disco, Funk, Rock and Motown all take center stage in this theatrical production that includes over 60 songs, 100 costume changes and nostalgic video. For more information visit: the Shubert Theatre at shubert.com/showsevents/Decades-Rewind

Fisher Piano Competition Concert The Fisher Competition aims to nurture the growth and development of young pianists, reward them for outstanding achievement in the classical repertoire and encourage them to acquaint themselves with, and to perform, contemporary music. Join us to hear the outstanding talent of Connecticut’s young pianists.

May 5 . 7:30-9:00pm Free and open to the public. Neighborhood Music School, Neighborhood Music School, 100 Audubon St., New Haven. 203-624-5189.

NMSnewhaven.org Guitar Chamber Music Students from Benjamin Verdery’s guitar studio perform a variety of chamber music. Please note that this concert was originally scheduled for April 30, 2018, at 7:30pm. May 5 . Saturday, May 5, 2018 4:30 p.m. Free Admission. Yale School of Music, Sudler Recital Hall in WLH, 100 Wall Street, New Haven. 203-432-4158. music-tickets.yale.edu/single/EventDetail. aspx?p=18171 Wesleyan Concert Choir The Wesleyan Concert Choir and friends, under the direction of Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Nadya Potemkina, celebrate the legacy of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). May 5. 7 p.m. Free.

Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. 860-685-3355. wesleyan. edu/cfa/ Let There Be Light

Student recitals are one hour in length.

May 4. 7:30-8:30 p.m. Free. Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street, New Haven. 203-432-5062. ism.yale.edu/calendar

The New Haven Chorale presents a beautiful, powerful and uplifting performance of two masterpieces: Faure’s, “Requiem” featuring soprano Constance Rock and Laurisden’s transcendental “Lux Aeterna”. 275 committed and dedicated singers and instrumentalists perform the masterworks in the Woolsey Hall. May 6.

3:30 p.m. $20 Regular Tickets $15 Senior Tickets Students with ID admitted free.

New Haven Chorale, Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street, New Haven. 203-776SONG. newhavenchorale.org/concerts/ our-2017-2018-concert-season.html

Wesleyan Taiko Concert

Wesleyan University Orchestra

Student Recital: Gabriel Benton, organ

Taiko drumming classes perform thunderous and thrilling rhythms of Japanese kumi daiko drumming under the direction of Visit:ing Instructor in Music Barbara Merjan. Several dynamic and exciting styles will be showcased, demonstrating both traditional and contemporary Taiko repertoire. May 4 .

8pm Free. Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. 860-685-3355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/ Hansel and Gretel A fully-staged production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel in the intimate Morse Recital Hall. May 4-5. Friday, May 4, at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday, May 5, at 7:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $10, Students $5. Yale School of Music, Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall, 470 College St, New Haven. 203-432-4158. music-tickets. yale.edu/single/EventDetail.aspx?p=17663

The Wesleyan University Orchestra, under the direction of Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Nadya Potemkina, features the winners of annual Concerto Competition, and celebrates the legacy of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). May 6 .

8pm Free. Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. 860-685-3355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/ Ebony Singers Spring Concert An evening of great gospel music featuring Wesleyan’s Ebony Singers under the direction of Marichal Monts ‘85. Come to sing, clap, and be encouraged. May 7 .

8pm $7 general public; $6 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, nonWesleyan students; $5 Wesleyan students, youth under 18. Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. 860-6853355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/

Oneppo Chamber Music Competition Performances by the winners of the Yale School of Music’s annual Chamber Music Competition. May 8. Tuesday, May 8, 2018 7:30 p.m. Tickets from $10, Students $6.

Yale School of Music, Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Hall, 470 College St, New Haven.

203-432-4158. music-tickets.yale.edu/ single/EventDetail.aspx?p=17251 Wesleyan Chamber Music Concert Students from the Wesleyan chamber music program perform works by various composers on a variety of instruments.

May 8 . 12pm Free. Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. 860-6853355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/

for You,” “Love Somebody,” and “Human Touch.” Join his this Friday at 8 p.m. for another look at his career, and where it has gone most recently. For tickets and more information, shubert.com/shows-events/ rick-springfield-stripped-down West African Drumming and Dance An invigorating performance filled with the rhythms of West Africa, featuring Wesleyan Artists in Residence choreographer Iddi Saaka and master drummer John Dankwa joined by students in West African Dance classes. Rain site is Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. May 11 . 3pm Free.

Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, CFA Courtyard, 283 Washington Terrace, Middletown. 860-685-3355. wesleyan. edu/cfa/

WesWinds Spring Concert Rosanne Cash The Wesleyan Wind Ensemble performs an exciting array of pieces for winds and percussion. May 8 . 8pm Free.

Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. 860-685-3355. wesleyan. edu/cfa/ EarthSounds Wesleyan’s new Real-Time Autoschediasms for Electroacoustic Creative Orchestra, directed by Assistant Professor of Music Tyshawn Sorey, and the Toneburst Laptop and Electronic Arts Ensemble under the direction of Associate Professor and Chair of the Music Department Paula Matthusen, join forces to premiere a series of live electroacoustic pieces. May 9 . 8pm Free. Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, World Music Hall, 40 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. 860685-3355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/ Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra Program to include: Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra Rachmaninoff, Isle of the Dead Korngold, Violin Concerto Zhou, First Sight May 10 . 7:30-9:30 p.m. $15-$74; KidTix Free with Adult; College Students $10. New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Woolsey hall, 500 College St, New Haven CT. 203-4364840. NewHavenSymphony.org Annual Organ Romp Wesleyan student organists (“rompers”) put on a new show each spring, featuring dancing, costumes for performers and audience alike, and performances of music ranging from rock to schlock, accompanied by multiple ensembles of instruments.

This concert is considered part of the students’ Spring Fling event. May 10 . 10pm Free. Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Memorial Chapel, 221 High Street, Middletown. 860-685-3355. wesleyan. edu/cfa/ Rick Springfield Stripped Down Over the past four decades, Rick Springfield has worn many hats as an entertainer and performer. The creator of some of the finest power-pop of the ’80s, a Grammy winning singer, songwriter, and musician who has sold 25 million albums and scored 17 U.S. Top 40 hits, including “Jessie’s Girl,” “Don’t Talk to Strangers,” “An Affair of the Heart,” “I’ve Done Everything

And her collaborator, musical director, guitarist and husband John Leventhal present an acoustic evening celebrating her prolific and deeply-rooted catalog of music at the Shubert Theatre. For tickets and more information, visit:: shubert.com/ shows-events/rosanne-cash-with-johnleventhal Heroes and Villains A musical exploration of the best and the worst in us Something wicked this way comes. But don’t worry -- something good is close behind! Individuals real and imagined will make an appearance: from the heroism of Joan of Arc and Harriet Tubman to shenanigans in Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones to machinations of the Grinch, Jolene, and Cruella de Vil. May 12 and 19 7 p.m. Ticket prices range from $18-32.

More info and to purchase tickets visit: anotheroctave.org and see us on FB..

Another Octave: Connecticut Women’s Chorus, Congregational Church in South Glastonbury, 949 Main Street, South Glastonbury, CT. 203-672-1919. anotheroctave.org

Chamber Orchestra Spring Concert The concert features winners of our annual Concerto Competition for New Haven Public School students. Each soloist will perform a movement from a concerto with the orchestra. The orchestra will perform selections from Swan Lake, and Romeo and Juliet. Also, NH public school students will join the orchestra in a rousing finale! May 12 . Saturday 2:00 p.m.

Admission is free and there is off street parking. . New Haven Chamber Orchestra, Fair Haven Middle School, 164 Grand Avenue, New Haven. 203-799-2240. newhavenchamberorchestra.org/

Nick Di Paolo – one of the sharpest minds (and tongues) in stand-up comedy over the past 20 years, is coming to the Shubert Theatre for one big night of comedy with “The Nick is Right Tour.” Prepare for a night of hilarious, brutally honest, unapologetic comedy! For tickets and more information, visit: hubert.com/shows-events/nickdipaolo-nick-is-right-tour.

Pink Martini with China Forbes

Hamden Art League

Drawing inspiration from music from all over the world – crossing genres of classical, jazz and old-fashioned pop – Thomas Lauderdale founded Pink Martini in 1994 to provide more beautiful and inclusive musical soundtracks for political fundraisers for causes such as civil rights, affordable housing, the environment, libraries, public broadcasting, education and parks. Twenty years later, Pink Martini still tours the world, singing in 22 languages at opera houses, concert halls and film festivals. Join them at the Shubert for this special performance. For tickets and more information, visit:: shubert.com/ shows-events/pink-martini-with-chinaforbes

Hosts Anne Doris-Eisner The Hamden Art League will host artist Anne DorisEisner at its May 8th meeting. She will demonstrate and present examples of the unconventional techniques she uses to create signature marks on paper with black acrylic paint. Ms. Doris-Eisner utilizes these techniques in her work to reveal the endurance and resilience of the natural world. May 8. Hamden Art League meetings are held the second Tuesday of each month from September-May, with the December and April meeting dates devoted to the Opening Receptions for HAL’s Silverbells and Goldenbells Art Exhibitions.

Regular meetings begin at 7 p.m. with refreshments and socializing, followed by a brief business meeting at 7:15 p.m., and the artist’s presentation at 7:30 p.m.. 7 p.m.-9 p.m. All Hamden Art League meetings and opening receptions are free and open to the public. Please enter the Miller Library Complex through the back entrance. In the event that inclement weather forces the Library to close, the meeting/reception will be cancel. 2901 Dixwell Avenue, Hamden.

203-287-1322. hamdenartleague.com

Elijah by Mendelssohn Three Choirs Concert! Mendelssohn’s powerful oratorio Elijah will be presented by the choirs of Bethesda Lutheran, United Church on the Green, and First Presbyterian Church, with soloists and orchestra, directed by Lars Gjerde. Come enjoy this choral classic with our powerful combined choirs! Free parking. Reception to follow.

May 23 . 7pm Freewill offering. Bethesda Music Series, Bethesda Lutheran Church, 450 Whitney Avenue, New Haven. 203787-2346. bethesdanewhaven.org/music/ bethesda-music-series/ Summer Performance Party

Spring Concert The choir performs a selection of English church music written for organ and choir, including pieces by Britten, Elgar, Howells, Parry and more. A reception with refreshments follows the performance.

May 12 . 7:30-10:00 p.m. General Admission $20, Seniors and students $15.

New Haven Oratorio Choir, Church of the Redeemer, 185 Cold Spring Street, New Haven. 203-624-2520. nhoratorio.org/

Chairs and tables on premises. Contact whitneyartsctr@aol.com.

Join the Music Haven community as we celebrate the accomplishments of our 80 young students! Hear performances by Music Haven students and their teachers, the Haven String Quartet. Thursday, May 31st, 2018 6:00 p.m. Free. Music Haven, John C. Daniels School, 569 Congress Avenue, New Haven. 203-745-9030. musichavenct.org

spaces

Greater New Haven Youth Ensemble

Studio/Event Space

Concert 2 p.m.: Concert Orchestra Marvin Warshaw, Conductor Chris Jones, Assistant Conductor Sue Zollner-Cross, Wind Coach Youth Orchestra Thomas C. Duffy, Conductor 4:00 p.m. All-City Honors Symphonic Band Ruben Rodriguez, Conductor Matthew Fired, Conductor Marissa Lezzi, Conductor Symphonic Wind Ensemble Mark Gahm, Conductor May 12 .

2 p.m.-6 p.m. Tickets $10 adults $5 seniors and children Tickets available at the door or in the NMS front office.. Neighborhood Music School, Battell Chapel-Yale University, 400 Chapel Street, New Haven.

203-624-5189. NMSnewhaven.org

At Erector Square in New Haven available for dance and theatre rehearsals and performances, events, workshops, and exhibitions. 1,500 sq. ft., 1st floor, 14 ft ceilings, white walls, great light, wooden floors.

Contact Annie at anniesailer@gmail.com.

special events The Nick Is Right Tour

From Ship to Shape Walker Vreeland’s From Ship to Shape, a funny and gut-wrenching autobiographical monologue about losing your mind while chasing your dreams and the journey from hell to healing. The one-man musical made its New York premiere in Sept 2017 and enjoyed a critical acclaimed, sold-out OffBroadway run at Theatre Row during the United Solo Theatre Festiv May 9 . “CT. debut one night only” 6:30 p.m.-8:45 p $25.

441 Elm Street, New Haven. 203-401-4227.

FellowshipPlace.org/The-CT-Premiere-ofWalker-Vreelands-From-Ship-To-Shape Guilford High School Poetry Contest Join the Guilford Poets Guilford for its Second Thursday Poetry Series on May 10 featuring winners of the Guilford High School Poetry Contest. An open mic begins at 6:30pm followed by the featured poets. Refreshments. Free and open to the public. May 10 . 6:30pm-8:30p Free.

67 Park Street, Guilford. 203-453-8282. guilfordfreelibrary.org/ Westville’s 21st Annual ArtWalk

Studio Space For Dance, Performing Arts, Events Hall A 1,500-square-foot space with adjoining rooms in a turn-of-the-century mansion in a historic district. Hardwood floors. Vintage stage with curtains. Mahogany woodwork and glass doors. Ample natural light.

The Westville Village ArtWalk is a free, annual, community-based arts festival that spans three blocks in Historic Westville Village and Edgewood Park, New Haven, CT every Mother’s Day weekend. Featuring a full day of live music, art exhibitions and demonstrations, interactive art-making

may 2018 • artspaper.org 21

bulletin

A MONTHLY COLLISION OF

ART & CULTURE & COMMUNITY

Bethesda Music Series bethesdanewhaven.org (203) 787-2346

Guilford Art Center guilfordartcenter.org (203) 453-5947

Blackfriars Repertory Theatre blackfriarsrep.com (646) 461-2445

Guilford Art League gal-ct.blogspot.com

Branford Art Center branfordartcenterct.com (203) 208-4455

MAY 31 5PM-9PM • FREE

for kids and adults, theater performances, walking tours, and May 11-May 12 . Starting on May 11, 5:00-10:00pm and again on May 12, 11:00am-5:00pm FREE. TBD , New Haven. 203-285-8539. westvillect.org/ events/artwalk-0 Branford Land Trust Poetry Reading Join the Branford Land Trust for a special evening of poetry featuring shoreline poets Carol Altieri, Juliana Harris, Nancy Meneely, and Jen Payne. There will be an open mic at 6:30pm, followed by the reading. The poets will have books for sale. May 18 . 6:30-8:30pm Free. 26 School Street, Branford. 203-483-3795. branfordlandtrust.org Open Reception for Summer Exhibition Open Reception for the Summer Arts Festival and Group Gallery Exhibit, FREE to the public on Friday, May 25 (6:30-9pm) at Spectrum Gallery with refreshments. includes representational and abstract painters working, photographers and mixed media artists. May 25 . 6:30-9pm Free. 61 Main Street, Centerbrook. 860-767-0742. spectrumartgallery.org

theater Italian Wedding Soup Award-winning Pantochino Productions presents a delicious new musical about love and marriage and food and family! When wedding bells ring and everything comes together for the ‘big day,’ a surprising glitch causes tempers to flair and cannoli to fly. If you enjoyed “Noni Cimino’s Kitchen,” you’ll love this new musical--a recipe for contagious lau April 20-May 6 . Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 2pm All seats $25.00 online. 40 Railroad Avenue South, Milford.

203-937-6206. pantochino.com Life is a Dream A story of extreme actions taken by extreme people, Life is a Dream was probably written when Pedro Calderón de la Barca was in his late 20s, a college drop-out disowned by his father for pursuing a life in the theater.

Nevertheless, he went on to become a favorite of King Philip IV, and a defining playwright of the Spanish Golden Age. May 4-May 6 .

Friday, May 4, 2018 at 8pm; Saturday, May 5, 2018 at 2pm and 8pm; Sunday, May 6, 2018

22 artspaper.org • may 2018

Branford Arts and Cultural Alliance facebook.com/bacact

Guitartown CT Productions guitartownct.com (203) 430-6020

Branford Folk Music Society branfordfolk.org (203) 488-7715

Hamden Art League hamdenartleague.com (203) 494-2316

Chestnut Hill Concerts chestnuthillconcerts.org (203) 245-5736

@breakfastxlunchxdinner

at 2pm $8 general public; $5 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students; $4 Wesleyan students, youth under 18. 271 Washington Terrace, Middletown.

860-685-3355. wesleyan.edu/cfa/

The Choirs of Trinity Church on the Green trinitynewhaven.org (203) 776-2616 City Gallery city-gallery.org (203) 782-2489

Triple Espresso The story of three guys whose bid for showbiz fame and fortune ended in 4 minutes of magnificent failure on national television. Hugh Butternut, Buzz Maxwell and Bobby Bean tell their rags-to-rags story earnestly, with hysterical results.

The laughter is infectious and the comedy appeals to all ages. Special return for our 10th anniversary! May 10-May 20 .

Thursday May 10th & 17th at 2:00 p.m.; Friday May 11th & 18th at 2:00 & 7:30 p.m.; Saturday May 12th & 19th at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday May 13th & 20th at 4:00 p.m. Prices range from $12-$41. 140 Cook Hill Road, Cheshire. 203-699-5495. nelsonhallelimpark.org

arts council member organizations A Broken Umbrella Theatre abrokenumbrella.org (203) 868-0428 Alyla Suzuki Childhood Music Education alylasuzuki.com (203) 239-6026 American Guild of Organists sacredmusicct.org (203) 671-9393 Another Octave-CT Women’s Chorus anotheroctave.org (203) 672-1919 Artspace artspacenh.org (203) 772-2709 Artsplace: Cheshire Performing & Fine Arts cpfa-artsplace.org (203) 272-2787 Artfarm art-farm.org (860) 346-4390 Ball & Socket Arts ballandsocket.org

Guilford Poets Guild guilfordpoetsguild.org (203) 453-5213

Civic Orchestra of New Haven civicorchestraofnewhaven.org College Street Music Hall collegestreetmusichall.com (203) 867-2000 Connecticut Dance Alliance ctdanceall.com Connecticut Gay Men’s Chorus ctgmc.org (203) 777-2923 Connecticut Hospice Arts Program hospice.com (203) 315-7522 Connecticut Women Artists ctwomenartists.org (201) 803-3766 Creative Arts Workshop creativeartsworkshop.org (203) 562-4927 Creative Concerts (203) 795-3365

Hamden Arts Commission hamdenartscommission.org (203) 287-2546 Hamden Symphony Orchestra hamdensymphony.org (203) 433-4207 Hugo Kauder Society hugokauder.org (203) 562-5200 Imaginary Theater Company imaginarytheatercompany.org The Institute Library institutelibrary.org (203) 562-4045 International Festival of Arts & Ideas artidea.org (203) 498-1212 Jazz Haven jazzhaven.org (203) 393-3002 Kehler Liddell Gallery kehlerliddell.com (203) 389-9555 Knights of Columbus Museum kofcmuseum.org (203) 865-0400 Legacy Theatre legacytheatrect.org (203) 208-5504

CT Folk ctfolk.com

Madison Art Society madisonartsociety.blogspot.com (203) 458-8555

DaSilva Gallery dasilva-gallery.com (203) 387-2539

Make Haven makehaven.org (203) 936-9830

East Street Arts eaststreetartsnh.org (203) 776-6310 EcoWorks CT ecoworksct.org (203) 498-0710

Mattatuck Museum mattatuckmuseum.org (203) 753-0381 Meet the Artists and Artisans meettheartistsandartisans.com (203) 874-5672

Elm Shakespeare Company elmshakespeare.org (203) 392-8882

Mirror Visions Ensemble mirrorvisions.org

Firehouse 12 firehouse12.com (203) 785-0468

Milford Arts Council milfordarts.org (203) 876-9013

Gallery One CT galleryonect.com (860) 663-3095

Musical Folk musicalfolk.com (203) 691-9759

Music Haven musichavenct.org (203) 745-9030

Wesleyan University Center for the Arts wesleyan.edu/cfa (860) 685-3355

Yale-China Association yalechina.org (203) 432-0880

Neighborhood Music School neighborhoodmusicschool.org (203) 624-5189

Whitney Arts Center (203) 773-3033

business members

Nelson Hall at Elim Park nelsonhallelimpark.org

Yale Cabaret yalecabaret.org (203) 432-1566

New Haven Ballet newhavenballet.org (203) 782-9038

Yale Center for British Art britishart.yale.edu (203) 432-2800

New Haven Chamber Orchestra newhavenchamberorchestra.org

Yale Institute of Sacred Music yale.edu.ism (203) 432-5180

New Haven Chorale newhavenchorale.org (203) 776-7664 New Haven Museum newhavenmuseum.org (203) 562-4183 New Haven Oratorio Choir nhoratorio.org (860) 339-6462 New Haven Paint and Clay Club newhavenpaintandclayclub.org New Haven Symphony Orchestra newhavensymphony.org (203) 865-0831 Orchestra New England orchestranewengland.org (203) 777-4690 Pantochino Productions pantochino.com (203) 937-6206 Paul Mellon Arts Center choate.edu/artscenter (203) 697-2398 The Second Movement secondmovementseries.org Shoreline Arts Alliance shorelinearts.org (203) 453-3890 Shoreline Arts Trail shorelineartstrail.com Shubert Theater shubert.com (203) 562-5666

Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History peabody.yale.edu (203) 432-8987 Yale Repertory Theatre yalerep.org (203) 432-1234 Yale School of Music music.yale.edu (203) 432-1965 Yale University Art Gallery artgallery.yale.edu (203) 432-0601 Yale University Bands bands.yalecollege.yale.edu

community partners Department of Arts Culture & Tourism cityofnewhaven.com (203) 946-8378 Dept. of Economic & Community Development cultureandtourism.org (860) 256-2800 Homehaven homehavenvillages.org (203) 776-7378 JCC of Greater New Haven jccnh.org (203) 387-2522 New Haven Free Public Library nhfpl.org (203) 946-8130

Silk n’ Sounds silknsounds.org

New Haven Preservation Trust nhpt.org (203) 562-5919

Site Projects siteprojects.org (203) 376-8668

Overseas Ministries Study Center omsc.org (203) 624-6672

Spectrum Art Gallery & Store spectrumartgallery.org (860) 767-0742

Town Green Special Services District infonewhaven.com (203) 401-4245

Susan Powell Fine Art susanpowellfineart.com (203) 318-0616

Visit New Haven visitnewhaven.com

Theater Department at SCSU southernct.edu/theater

Westville Village Renaissance Alliance westvillect.org (203) 285-8539

University Glee Club of New Haven universitygleeclub.org (203) 248-8515

Whitneyville Cultural Commons 1253whitney.com (203) 780-8890

Access Audio-Visual Systems accessaudiovisual.com (203) 287-1907 Billy DiCrosta Vocal Studio billydicrosta.com (203) 376-0609 Hull’s Art Supply and Framing hullsnewhaven.com (203) 865-4855 Toad’s Place toadsplace.com (203) 624-8623

institutional support Executive Champions Yale University Senior Patrons H. Pearce Real Estate L. Suzio York Hill Companies Marcum Odonnell Company

Corporate Partners Firehouse 12 Fusco Management Company Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce Jewish Foundation of Greater New Haven Knights of Columbus Webster Bank Yale-New Haven Hospital Business Patrons Albertus Magnus College Gateway Community College Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale Newmann Architects Wiggin and Dana Business Members Access Audio-Visual Systems Branford Arts Center Brenner, Saltzman & Wallman, LLP Griswold Home Care Foundations & Government Community Foundation for Greater New Haven DECD/CT Office of the Arts City of New Haven Department of Arts, Culture, & Tourism The Ethel & Abe Lapides Foundation Josef and Anni Albers Foundation National Endowment for the Arts NewAlliance Foundation The Wells Fargo Foundation The Werth Family Foundation