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Jeffrey Hayes, 1957-2005

Real Art Ways notes with profound sadness the passing of our beloved friend and Board member Jeffrey Hayes. Jeffrey loved movies, poetry, music, food and wine, and created a sense of play and joy with everything he did. Jeffrey left us all too soon; we will continue our work with his spirit in our hearts.

Hartford was once a thriving city in a thriving state. To many, that time has passed. Others think differently. What does it mean to live in Hartford? How has Hartford's past influenced its present? And where might Hartford go next?

WNPR's Where We Live came back to Real Art Ways for a live, interactive broadcast on Hartford's past, present, and future. Ditching the traditional "panel" discussion, this show featured the stories, thoughts, and ideas of audience members alongside the contributions of the show's invited guests.

Host John Dankosky opened the show with a story about arriving in Hartford, and seeing the following phrase on a car's bumper sticker outside his apartment: "Hartford: you could do worse." Turns out, it's one of our bumper stickers.

Our Executive Director Will K. Wilkins, said, "It was our little dose of tempered optimism...there's a lot going on in this town that people don't know about, and there's also a lot of issues. But a lot of those issues contain the seeds of renewal within them."

Will K. Wilkins and host John Dankosky were joined on stage by Mixishawn and Trude Mero. Other contributions came from members of the audience.

The whole conversation is up at wnpr.org. Listen to the entire episode here.

See Images from Where We Live (photos by Chion Wolf)

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Scott Turner Schofield's week-long residency here began yesterday, September 12. He'll be leading a series of workshops in addition to the two performances of his one-man show, Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps.

Tickets are on sale now. They're cheaper in advance, and for sale online, by phone, and in our cafe. Get tickets now.

We're hosting a public, free Trans-Community Forum on Wednesday, September 16. Meet Scott at the 7 PM reception; the workshop begins at 7:30 PM.

And, in case you missed it, Scott was on WNPR's Where We Live on Friday. Listen to the episode here.

Frank Rizzo of the Hartford Courant interviewed Scott for a Sunday feature on the show and residency:

Q: Your show is called "Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps." Are the steps all that easy, Scott?

A: They are easy in the performance, easy on the eyes, easy on the ears. The show is a choose-your-own-adventure, so there are 127 stories and the audience gets a decoder ring and they pick from the identities they want to hear about. If they go, "I see a butch lesbian," that's story No. 24. If someone says, "I see a transgender man," that's story No. 116. Straight girl, straight man ... They're all stories. All of us have at least 127 steps about who we are.

Q: How would you describe the nature of the show?

A: Welcoming, inviting, hilarious and a little bit of an elbow to the ribs.

Q: How did you get your start as a solo artist?

A: I was an intern for [performance artist] Holly Hughes in 2000. I also do workshops when I perform and I follow the model of [performance artist] Tim Miller, who believes in empowering people to tell their own stories and creating performance for social change. I get a lot of theater students at these workshops. Theater students are hot to trot to do something with what they are learning.

Q: Tell me about your family.

A: I was born in San Antonio, Texas, and then my family moved to L.A. and then to England for seven years and then to North Carolina. My dad is in the tire industry and my mom is scheduler for health care. No one [in my family] is in the arts. I also have a half sister from my father's previous marriage. I knew there was this disconnect about how I felt [about myself] and what the world saw. I started changing my name and pronouns in 2004. I had come out to my family and they were having understandable issues. But I'm lucky the family is very accepting. It took them a minute but I won them over with stories. Stories create empathy and understanding.

Q: When did the change of gender begin for you?

A: When I was an acting student at Emory University [in Atlanta], people would perhaps describe me a pretty intense young woman. [When he was a young woman, Scott had the role of May in Sam Shepherd's "Fool for Love," played Moth in "Love's Labour's Lost" and performed in Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues."]

But I found I was passed over for a lot of roles and I was told that I was not like the other girls who would always get cast in shows, and that was the reality. But they [the teachers at Emory] suggested that I create my own roles.

I came out as trans in my senior year of college and my first show was "Underground Transit" where I talked about being on the homecoming court and being a Southern debutante, would you believe, and it was about figuring out my identity.

But it was before I changed my name. I was not identifying as a woman but I was not what people think of as a man either. I was in transition. I had a cultural conception of what a trans person was, through drag queens. I knew men who became women but I had no clue women could become men.

When I started working with Holly, I went to Wow Cafe, which is pretty funny because it is known as a feminist-lesbian space, but there was a trans man there and he told me his story and I had a context and my identity finally made sense to me.

Q: Have you completed the total physical transition to a man?

A: I don't plan a year's worth of operations [to make the gender change physically complete]. I can do a lot of other things with $70,000.

Q: Your life sounds like a great subject for a reality show, one of the more interesting reality shows, that is. Have you ever been approached or considered it?

A: I actually was filmed for the documentary for the History Channel last year, "Strange History" by producer Debbie Blum.

Q: What have you discovered is the essence of manhood?

A: What I figured was there is no essence to any identity, other than that of storytelling. Everybody is always transitioning

Q: How has your perspective changed as a man? Do you feel, inherently, more powerful, privileged, bad in asking for directions?

A: Here's the difference between transgender and transsexual. I can change my sex — and I have — but gender is an identity. But sometimes I feel like my gender has not really changed now that I've changed my sex. I think it's funny that I don't ask for directions.

Also, different jokes become funny. Now that I'm a man even though I have had a period, I no longer make jokes about PMS.

Q: As a modern man, do you feel you also have a feminine side?

A: Absolutely. It's why I am grateful for having a trans identity because it allows me to embrace all of myself.

Q: As a man who was born a woman, do you now feel you are a man who understands women better than most men?

A: To be honest, no. They're their own special thing.

Q: Having been on the other side, so to speak, how many steps would there be to become a woman?

A: Millions.

Q: Are you with someone now as a partner?

A: I had my last first date three years ago. I could not be happier.

Via courant.com, where you can comment on the article.

"It begins with a drawing.

But the abstract journey of lines created by New York artist Gelah Penn on paper are soon translated into loops and extended lines of monofilament that currently traverse big white walls.

One such wall is the Real Art Ways' real gallery, where her installation, "Clash by Night," opens today.

The swirls and loops of line spiraling out from the wall in three dimensions converge into a cocoon of netting and accents of plastic tubing and mesh in the gallery's corner.

The shadows become their own lines of art. It's difficult at first to see which of the swoops are the materials and which are the shadows.

Penn carted in boxes of material Sunday and began work on the installation. She said the work changes once she gets into the space and begins working with the material. Monofilament may sound like an artistic term, but it's nothing more than fishing line of various grades. It often retains the circles of its spools as it's unfurled to catch not fish but viewers' eyes.

Penn's medium "expands the notion of drawing" into dimensions. When she decided to "get rid of the armature altogether," she moved from frames and the edges of paper into wall-length works where space is open.

And she loves the 40-foot Real Art Ways wall.

"It's such a luxury to use so much uninterrupted wall space," she said.

The opening of Penn's "Clash by Night" tonight coincides with the monthly Creative Cocktail Hour at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., from 6 to 8.

The exhibit continues through Oct. 11. Penn gives an artist's talk there Sept. 24 at 6 p.m."

.:Leave a comment and read the full article at courant.com

Steve Starger from Art New England reviewed Corey D'Augustine's solo show in our galleries. The review isn't available online, but we have free copies of the issue in our Loading Dock Lounge. Stop by and pick one up!

Excerpt: "Fans of GMC trucks and Subaru Legacies might be taken aback upon first seeing two of Corey D'Augustine's floor installations. D'Augustine has assembled a pile of white GMC truck doors in a seemingly random pattern, befitting a sparse but intriguing show that stares directly into the shifting eyes of the conceptual art movement. Not far from this heap lies one half of a Subaru Legacy, on its side and lit by flickering pink neon lights, which border the truncated car body. The car has been carefully bisected, but it also looks disturbingly like the remains of a wreck in which the vehicle has been neatly sheared in two by a powerful, unstoppable force."

Check out Artscope's feature on our four public art projects in Hartford's Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods. The full article is available only in print, but here's an excerpt from the magazine's site:

"Hoping to bring tourism into the city and art to the residents, Real Art Ways is presenting four public art projects in the Frog Hollow and Parkville sections of Hartford this summer. Artists Margarida Correia, Satch Hoyt, Sofia Maldonado and Matthew Rodriguez have installed signature pieces created specifically for the Hartford area, which embrace the existing culture, creativity and diversity of its urban neighborhoods.

Sofia Maldonado, a muralist presently residing in Brooklyn New York, is one to watch. She has created works in Europe, New York and Cuba and is one of Puerto Rico’s leading emerging muralists. Her mural on the Pelican Tattoo building at 577 Park Street in Frog Hollow blends “elements of female aesthetics and street culture.” Vibrant color inspired by the rainforest of Puerto Rico, a skill with illustration, and the ability to reach out successfully to the residents of Hartford for inspiration and cooperation has made this project a winner within the community. Historic preservation would not allow Maldonado to paint directly on the building and required the installation of large wooden panels, which prohibited the artist from using the texture and elements of the building within her work. Regardless, she has drawn her images directly from the female personalities she met on Park Street with the intent of brining a feminine component to a rather “macho” area of the neighborhood.

Satch Hoyt’s work must be experienced in person to be truly appreciated. A labyrinth in Frog Hollow’s Pope Park constructed of white poles and clothesline may not appear to be much at first glance. However, in traversing the labyrinth’s path, the participant begins to feel a noted calming effect upon the nerves, and an almost spiritual experience ensues. Hoyt explained that this is not a maze, but rather an open labyrinth and a way to encourage interactivity and eye contact between travelers on the path."

.: read it at artscopemagazine.com

Over the past quarter-century, Hartford has had a remarkable renaissance of outdoor art. The permanent works include those from the Art For All project cooked up by former Northeast Magazine editor Lary Bloom and the outdoor sculptures commissioned by the Greater Hartford Arts Council under former director Ken Kahn.

Many arts organizations have initiated temporary exhibits, but few as intriguing as "Real Public 2009," which has opened in the city's Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods.

Real Art Ways, the nonprofit arts group, commissioned four artists to install the works. Two projects are in Pope Park: a labyrinth made of white poles and clothesline by Satch Hoyt and fanciful smiles on trees by Matthew Rodriguez, who has also adorned Estrella Bakery.

Margarida Correia's photographs of individuals, combined with images of Portugal's beaches and fado album covers, are on banners and posters in the heart of the Portuguese community in Parkville. Muralist Sofia Maldonado has applied a splashy design to the Pelican Tattoo building on Park Street, a marvelous paean to the neighborhood.

This is Real Art Ways at its cutting-edgiest, challenging the notions of how art fits into everyday life. All of the pieces merit your attention (see www.realartways.org).

What's your view? Share it with a Letter to the Editor. Visit www.courant.com/letters and scroll down.

.: Read the article at Courant.com

This is an important moment for the arts in Connecticut, and you can make a difference.

State funding for the arts is threatened: On May 28, Governor Rell proposed her second “no tax” budget, in which she suspends the state’s grant program for cultural resources, eliminates line-item funding for arts organizations, and dissolves the state’s Commission on Culture and Tourism.
 
Connecticut would not be able to receive National Endowment for the Arts funds without a Commission and budgeted matching funds in the state budget.
 
According to a study by the Commission on Culture and Tourism, the arts employ 27,000 people in the state, while the industry supports another 44,000 jobs.  There are 170,000 jobs (10% of the state’s labor force) in culture and tourism in general.  
 
Without state funding, jobs and organizations could be lost.  Real Art Ways would be in trouble.

Please take the time to email the people below.  Let them know you support government funding for the arts.

Governor Jodi Rell

Speaker of the House Chris Donovan

House Majority Leader Denise Merrill

Rep. John Geragosian, Chair of the Appropriations Committee

State Senator Toni Harp, Chair of the Appropriations Committee

We're even providing a sample email. Feel free to copy and paste, or to write your own:

Dear __________

I am writing to express my support for government funding of the arts. In tough times like these, the arts are more important than ever. The proposed May 28 "no tax" budget endangers jobs and organizations that are vital to our state. Don't endanger the 170,000 culture and tourism jobs in Connecticut. That's 10% of our work force. Don't let valuable arts and culture institutions close their doors forever. I urge you to restore arts funding to the budget.

Thank you for your attention to this critical issue.

.: Governor Rell's May 28 Proposed Budget (PDF)

Check out the Courant's review of our new Real Room show by Jayson Keeling. Keeling was selected from our annual open call for emerging artists in New York, New England, and New Jersey. His solo show features paintings that use glitter and detritus as well as a video component. The show, titled "99 and 44/100% Pure" opens tonight (Thursday, June 18) during Creative Cocktail Hour.

The full text of the Keeling review is below, or read and comment at courant.com

"Glitter!

Its use can be traced back to mica flakes applied to enhance cave drawings. It has since become a crafts and fashion mainstay, and has been the basis of the glam-rock movement, the title of a bad Mariah Carey movie and an unfortunate ingredient in face and body makeup.

It's also the medium of choice for Jayson Keeling's one-man show opening today at Real Art Ways in Hartford. "99 and 44/100% Pure" is the title of the exhibit, a phrase borrowed from an old slogan for Ivory Soap. The eight works on display are not purely glitter, but also mixed with "detritus" that may or may not be gravel- or asphalt-based. Plus there's a video piece following a horse pulling a cart titled "Like a Woodpecker with a Headache or a Nightingale with a Toothache."

Keeling, who lives and works in the Bronx, is one of six artists chosen in last year's open call for works, Step Up 2008. Keeling had submitted photographs that reflected on his second-generation Jamaican ancestry, according to curator Kristina Newman-Scott. But the largely glittering works he submitted for his show were something else altogether.

Using glue or some other adhesive as an instrument, he spells out words on three of the large works. One of them is recognizable as Allan Ginsburg's "Footnote to Howl" in shades of gold. Another offers the lyrics to George Clinton's anthem "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow." A third is from the Prince song "Let's Pretend We're Married."

Images are familiar, too, though the specter of a mushroom cloud in glitter, a family gathered to watch, is a little incongruous. There are also seeming X-rays, one of a skull with a gold grill, the other of hands with handcuffs. The claws of a super-sized insect is the show's largest image; nearby is a loose and effective drawing in glue and black glitter of Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog of Hades, according to Greek legend. Of course, it also brings to mind the design of the cult Three Wolf Moon T-shirt causing so much spontaneous poetry and exaggeration among reviewers on Amazon.com.

How different are Keeling's glittery heroic images than the enhanced lowbrow similar images all around us? Is graffiti of poetry and song lyrics more alluring if rendered in glitter? Can we be happier with our nuclear world?

For his own part, Keeling says "my continuing objective is to anchor and subtly allude to desire in its purest manifestations" and to express his interests "in death, excess, joy and the search for the futile and unattainable as they relate to notions of power, social hierarchy and the intangible avenues of their exploitation within culture."

Yeah, well that, too.

Keeling's show continues through Aug. 16 at Real Art Ways. The opening reception tonight from 6-8 p.m. will be part of the monthly Real Art Ways Creative Cocktail Hour. Keeling will give an artists talk Aug. 6 at 6 p.m. at the gallery."

.: Full article here. You can leave comments at the bottom of the page.

Sofia Maldonado, whose mural on the Pelican Tattoo building in Frog Hollow opened on Saturday, May 30, is in the new issue of New York Magazine:

"On weekends in high school I would go around Puerto Rico and paint female characters and organic forms on random walls. I like the textures of buildings as they deteriorate. I did a mural 177 feet long in Old San Juan, and an abandoned pool in the rain forest in Rio Grande that we turned into a skateboard park. It’s not graffiti: I never use a can. Always a brush...

...The recession doesn’t affect young artists as much. Except that all this high-class lifestyle that art students wanted to achieve has come down to a realistic level. You’re going to be an artist, but you’re not going to have an artist loft in Soho. It’s time to get a little more real."

She's one of four artists who created new works of public art in Hartford's Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods for Real Public. Her mural mixes floral images reminiscent of the Puerto Rican rainforest and feminine forms inspired by women the artist met while walking through the neighborhood. Audio tours of all four works are available, for free: 860-760-9979

.: "Anarcho-Muralist" | New York Magazine

Be sure to look at the online slideshow of installation images at courant.com, or pick up a copy of Saturday's Hartford Courant. It's the front page of the CT Living section.

Pope Park's grove of trees at the corner of Hamilton Street and Hillside Avenue in Hartford are suddenly happier this week.

Austin artist Matthew Rodriguez's applications of faces on their trunks — big pink lips, gourd-shaped noses and round eyes — have made them a welcoming cartoon-like chorus, not at all the kind of forbidding and gruff anthropomorphic trees that flung apples in "The Wizard of Oz."

As one of four artists invited to Hartford by Real Art Ways to create works for a show opening today called "Real Public," Rodriguez came to town with a box of pre-made smiles, and like a latter-day Keith Haring, is leaving his happy expressions all over town.

Like the other three, he adapts his own style to the locale, in this case the nearby Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods.

Margarida Correia, a New York artist born in Portugal, says she's getting back to her roots by meeting and photographing members of Hartford's tightknit Portuguese community, which stretches out west of Real Art Ways. She's created billboards and banners of photographs of the community and reproduced covers of beloved old fado albums on street posts along Park Street, accompanied by a sound installation.

"I'm learning a lot about my own culture through this community," Correia says.

Puerto Rican muralist Sofia Maldonado, who blends street culture and Latina aesthetics in her designs, has found just the right backdrop for her work: the Pelican Tattoo & Body Piercing building at 577 Park St.

But while decoration is the byword at the Hartford institution, historic preservation codes prevent her from painting directly on the building. So her work was done largely on wooden panels that were being affixed at the storefront Friday morning in preparation for today's opening.

Rain's been a factor in getting all the work complete this week, Real Art Ways director Will K. Wilkins says. Such are the challenges of working outside the controlled conditions of the studio.

For most of the artists, this has been their first foray to Real Art Ways, but British-born artist Satch Hoyt, now based in Berlin, Germany, has been there more than once as a member of the musical band Burnt Sugar. He has since become a visual artist in demand, concentrating in recent years on adapting the ancient mazes known as labyrinths.

His labyrinth in Hartford, in the other end of Pope Park nearer to Park Street and Park Terrace, is marked by a squadron of white poles, connected by clotheslines.

This is not a maze in which to get lost, Hoyt says. Being open and able to see one another in it is a way to recognize and build community. "It encourages eye contact."

There will be further community building in August, he says, when "everybody in the neighborhood will be invited to hang laundry on it. It's another way to be interactive."

Rain hasn't been a factor for Hoyt or Hernandez.

"I love it, are you kidding?" Rodriguez says. "Back in Austin, it's 100 degrees and humid. I'm happy to be here."

The Hartford work is an extension of graffiti he's been doing in New York, albeit illegally, adding faces to traffic control boxes, traffic signs, street-side trash, or painting rainbow faces on walls. His latest trademark is a drop-shaped tri-color candy-corn face.

It's an instinctual thing with him.

"I see a rock on the ground, I'll put a face on it," he says. "I like to put a face on the environment. It lets people know the environment is alive."

Indeed, he's been scrawling his work uninvited back at Real Art Ways' Arbor Street headquarters, where a block of wood near the door now smiles and suggests that people "Cheer Up." Rodriguez's faces have also popped up in the restrooms of the arts center.

Some people have come up to see what he's doing with the trees, and he's added names to some of them based on resemblances to passers-by.

But already the works have had to adapt to the usual uses for the trees. And the handbills stapled to the trees for other purposes serve as square white beards for some characters.

"That's public art," Rodriguez says. "It's a sacrifice. I's like putting out cookies for Santa Claus. You see what happens."

And although most of the public works will be around for this summer at least, Rodriguez painted with water- soluble paint that may last much longer.

"So maybe I'll come back in 20 years and see if they're still there."

•REAL PUBLIC 2009 opens with a reception at 2 p.m. today at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford. A bus tour of the works will run continuously every 10 minutes from 3 to 5 p.m. Bike tours will start at 3 and 4 p.m. For more information go to www.realartways.org/realpublic/index.html or 860-232-1006.

.: full article

Who should fund the arts? The government? Can a city like Hartford afford to provide arts funding? WNPR's Where We Live with John Dankosky asked these questions and more to panelists Colin McEnroe, Power Boothe, Karen Senich, Mike McGarry, local and visiting artists, and a live audience at Real Art Ways on Tuesday, May 26, 2009.

Listen to the episode, broadcast on Thursday, May 28, 2009 (mp3) .: Where We Live - Part 1 .: Where We Live - Part 2 .: Where We Live - Part 3

Gallery: Where We Live, May 26 photos by Chion Wolf .: WNPR's Flickr feed image image image image image image image image image image image image image image

.: John Dankosky, "Two Conversations About Hartford" | cpbn.org
.: WWL @ RAW: Who Pays for the Arts? | cpbn.org

Matthew Rodriguez, one of four artists creating public art projects in Hartford's Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods, was just named one of 20 to Watch by the Austin Museum of Art. Go to their website for an interactive page on the installation "New Art in Austin: 20 to Watch".

From the Curator's Statement:

"Focusing on emerging and lesser-known artists who reside within a fifty-mile radius of the Capitol, "New Art In Austin: 20 to Watch" celebrates the innovations and explorations of twenty visual artists who are at the forefront of the field."

.: Austin Museum of Art
.: Real Public 2009: Four New Public Art Projects in Parkville and Frog Hollow

Read the full article at courant.com

"Artists have been on the front line of urban pioneering, staking claims on crumbling American cities. So it's especially galling when they are displaced by developers whose main goal is to make a buck using such methods as eminent domain.

It's been the crux of court cases in Connecticut. It happened too in New Jersey, where Emma Wilcox's apartment was wiped out to make way for higher-priced units.

She stayed in Newark, where she documented the clearing of her former lot ("There," she wrote in chalk, indicating her own former living space on the dark rubble, photographing from above by helicopter) and wrote atop rooftops in the city in the same manner.

Some of her messages took on the declarations of conceptual artist Barbara Kruger: "My Memory Gets in the Way [of] Your History."

She'd make the messages on rooftops in materials that would fade, but not before she could film them. Those works are part of her new show opening at Real Art Ways tonight, "Salvage Rights."

The 11 photographs and silent video will be of familiar scenes to those from Hartford, New London or any other area of urban upheaval: empty streets, abandoned factories and warehouses, some offices and homes.

Part archaeology, part artistic framing of scenes in gritty black and white, it tells of a life lived in the cities, searching for a glimmer of hope amid its rubble.

Arranging her messages in 12-foot letters atop rooftops and lots "was a solitary act, inspired by the conceptual function of eminent domain as instant blight, as well as by the widespread, false assumption by many Internet users that Google Earth functions in real time," she writes in her artist's statement.

"With 'Salvage Rights,' I am interested in the chemical and textual memory of a landscape and the multiple, sometimes contradictory significances of place. In forensics, the absence of something can signify its presence and scale is subject to continual re-examination."

Wilcox is one of six artists chosen in last year's initial Step Up program, seeking emerging artists from the region, whose prize is an exhibition. She's a particularly good fit with Real Art Ways, which itself grew from what could have been urban rubble to make its own vibrant scene alongside the railroad tracks in industrial Parkville.

Wilcox is a co-founder of a similar place in Newark, an alternative space called Gallery Aferro.

Wilcox will give a free talk at Real Art Ways April 30; the show continues through June 14. She'll also be present at the opening tonight from 6 to 8 during the monthly Creative Cocktail Hour, where other activities include a video screening of "Lynne Cohen: The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the Poe story is told by puppets.

Proposals are being accepted in this year's Step Up program, seeking artists from New York, New Jersey and New England."

.: comment at courant.com

Here's what other people are saying about April 4th's Odd Ball.

Got pictures? Got a blog? let us know on Facebook, Twitter, or by email.

.: Colin McEnroe | To Wit: "What You Missed Last Night"
.: Real Hartford: "Odd Ball"
.: Sam McKinniss | Weekend Party Update: "odd ballz"
.: MaryEllen Fillo | Java: "RAW Revelers Celebrate at 'Odd Ball'"

Photo albums:
.: Metromix CT: "The Odd Ball at Real Art Ways"
.: Hartford Courant (Photos by MaryEllen Fillo)
.: On Facebook: Steve Laschever photos

"When everybody is odd, is anyone truly odd?

Philosophical questions such as this (plus others like 'Do these light-up cone-breasts make my butt look fat?' and 'Are those your real teeth?') were on the hand-painted lips of hundreds of seriously odd partiers at Saturday night’s Odd Ball at Real Art Ways. The inaugural event brought through the doors of RAW the most creative and daring costumes and ensembles Hartford has likely ever seen."

Check out the first pics of the night and read the rest of Teresa Pelham's Odd Ball Wrap-Up.

.: Teresa Pelham's Odd Ball Wrap Up

The Courant interviewed board member Ileen Swerdloff and artist Anne Cubberly for a multimedia feature on the Odd Ball, our annual fundraiser on Saturday, April 4 at 8 PM.

Check out the article here. Don't miss the audio and photo slideshow, linked on the page.

High-powered divorce attorney Ilene Swerdloff will attend her first Real Art Ways fundraiser Saturday as one of its newest board members. So choosing the right dress was important to the 63-year-old, who is well known as a cutting-edge fashionista.

Her choice? A black-and-gold, ballet-length frock featuring a black bustier top and full skirt fashioned of cast-off rubber inner tubes, and embellished with a sprinkling of various size, black-nippled gold breasts made of repurposed carpet padding.

It's the perfect red-carpet selection for The Odd Ball, the name of this year's fundraiser at Real Art Ways, a popular and eclectic, multi-disciplinary arts organization on Arbor Street in Hartford's Parkville neighborhood.

"When they asked me if I would come up with some kind of costume for the fundraiser, I figured: Why not?" says Swerdloff, a free-spirited clothes horse who proudly proclaims she is a lawyer who does not own one suit.

"I mean, who better to do it than a board member," she laughs. "So I said yes, I'd come up with a costume that was appropriately odd."

Swerdloff turned to Hartford visual artist Anne Cubberly, who is as well known for her eclectic art as Swerdloff is for her wardrobe.

"I told her she needed a fabulous costume," says Cubberly, who describes Swerdloff as "passionate, outspoken and fearless."

"She wears what she wants and has ovaries the size of basketballs," she says, alluding to the Farmington resident's bold and venturesome personality. "We were a perfect match because I am a fearless artist."

Cubberly uses recycled materials in her works. "My idea for the costume was inspired by her personality," she says. "She is a goddess of the underworld, an Earth mother, a caterpillar."

With those images in mind, Cubberly went to work designing a piece that met the criteria and "out of the box" spirit the Real Art Ways parties are known for.

"I think a lot of breasts all over your body is odd," says Cubberly, explaining the thought process that went into the creation. And as far as the slightly cumbersome weblike-looking skirt of rubber?

"It undulates when Ilene walks, and Ilene usually does undulate when she walks," says Cubberly.

Cubberly estimates it took about 100 hours to create, build and then alter the dress. Along the way, most of those hours were filled with some really good laughs as the two women worked together.

"I have to say that Anne knows more of my private body numbers than anyone else," giggles Swerdloff, who was measured just about everywhere in order to get the "dress" to fit. "Our relationship now is very intimate."

Swerdloff says her husband Mark's only comment was to ask if she was planning to wear anything under the dress, which, on its own, would provide a pretty clear view of everything from the waist down.

"No, I am wearing something underneath it," says Swerdloff. "My attitude is, let them drool and wonder what they could be seeing."

•Tickets for Saturday's Real Art Ways' The Odd Ball, which begins at 8 p.m., are available by calling 860-232-1006, Ext. 110, or at the door. Tickets are $45 per person, or $100 a person, which includes an open bar.

.: Read the full story at The Hartford Courant
.: The Odd Ball Page

It was a war story. It was a common story in Japan, the story artist Hirokazu Fukawa's father told him when he was little. A story of occupation first—in Manchuria in China, then called Manchukuo by the Japanese occupiers. Fukawa's father was a sniper with the Japanese occupation forces. Then it was a story of defeat, desperation. Near the end, Fukawa's father and other members of his troop were each handed a landmine in place of a rifle and commanded to suicide bomb approaching Russian tanks. Fukawa's father waited in a foxhole but no tank came; he survived. With surrender came a role reversal: the occupiers become prisoners of the victorious Soviets, abandoned by the vanquished Japanese government. Fukawa's soldier father was marched across the border to spend years in Siberian labor camps, like the hundreds of thousands of other Japanese in occupied Manchukuo. Unlike many, Fukawa's father survived and was repatriated to Japan two years later.

Hirokazu Fukawa's A Thought at the Edge of the Continent at Real Art Ways is a multimedia sculptural exhibition inspired by Fukawa's quest to confront his father's experience as a soldier and detainee. While he had picked up bits and pieces of his father's story as a child, Fukawa decided four years ago to investigate it in depth as the basis for an art project. Although his father is still alive, he suffers from Alzheimer's. Fukawa had to supplement the unreliable information he gleaned from his father's fading memories with facts from a one-page debriefing document Fukawa's father had written for the Japanese government on his 1947 return. Hoping to more fully understand his father's experience, Fukawa made two research trips, to Japan and Northeastern China in 2007 and to Siberia in 2008.

Memories are multi-layered. They are discrete and inter-connected. They are also ephemeral and subject to contestation and dispute. In A Thought at the Edge of the Continent, Fukawa interprets his father's story through separate but related elements in different media. The most literal attempts to tell his story are a three-channel video installation and the three "Starvation" collages.

The predominant element is "Blizzard," a striking installation of some three dozen fluorescent lights in the main gallery. Braced by solid, unpainted wooden boards, the lights are diagonal lines of force. The viewer can (carefully) walk into and through this installation, which evokes a fearsome Siberian snowstorm experienced by Fukawa's father. Its design was influenced by the lines and sensibilities of the avant-garde Soviet Constructivist art movement.

The other large sculpture in the main room is "The Third International," an homage to Constructivist artist Vladimir Tatlin's "Monument to the Third International." Tatlin, as a tribute to the Bolshevik Revolution, had created his model for a planned headquarters of the Comintern, or Communist Third international; the tower was never actually built. Fukawa's sculpture is similar in design but the effect is not triumphal. The unpainted wood boards of "Blizzard" are reprised here, bracing a spiral staircase. The boards and light fixtures of "Blizzard" have an illusory randomness characteristic of the trajectory of falling snow. But the boards in "The Third International" drive up toward a single focus, the platform where the dictatorial leader will stand. Whether it is Stalin or the leaders of Imperial Japan, the viewer's gaze is directed up, up toward those who direct others, up toward those who set remorseless historical forces in motion.

Along with the large sculptural works, there are three smaller plaster creations positioned in the gallery. In contrast to the angular and geometric orientation of "Blizzard" and "The Third International," these works are more organic and natural in shape. Fukawa sees them as "tumors" or "cancers." They are also a source of sound. The form closest to the Tatlin homage plays five songs: "The Internationale" (the anthem of the Communist movement), anthems of the Communist and Nationalist Chinese parties, a Manchukuo occupation song and a song popular in postwar Japan among people waiting for their relatives to return from internment. A second "cancer" recapitulates the soundtrack of the video and the third plays abstract music. There is a layering of sounds. They compete but also complement each other.

The abstract music is derived from "Marching," a map Fukawa drew in pencil of his father's forced march to the several labor camps in which he was held. The line drawing was interpreted as a musical score in the GarageBand computer program.

The three "Starvation" collages deal with the overwhelming hunger the captured Japanese experienced in the prison camps. Over scans of 12th century Buddhist scrolls depicting starvation hells, Fukawa made pencil drawings of his father and some of his soldier colleagues, based on an old photo. Layered over each are dried examples of the wild plants on which the prisoners subsisted: ferns, onion grasses, leaves.

The three-panel video montages footage that Fukawa shot in China, Manchuria and Siberia with video of his father. The soundtrack layers impressions of the ungraspable nature of his quest with details of his father's experience within the broader historical context of the time. One can sense the frustration in Fukawa's efforts. He travels long distances to try and get a sense of the past. But he finds himself in places stubbornly rooted in the present.

There is no fully understanding the past. There is no reliving the past, especially not the past of someone else's jumbled memories. History is often a big story told through the prism of ideology. It is contested. What happened? What was it like to experience the occupation, the war, the imprisonment? Fukawa, in narration over the video installation, found that even in traveling to the locations where his father had fought and been detained, he could not feel his father's experience:

Instead I felt like a void standing in front of a void. Whenever I visited my father's past, whether physical traces remained or not, I felt that I myself was the void, that I was alienated from everything there--out of time and place, floating through lost memories that weren't my own.
These memories were no longer even his father's. Speaking with me in the main gallery at Real Art Ways, Fukawa tells me that when he asked his father where he had been disarmed by the Soviets, his father gave him a place name. Fukawa researched that location for a year before finding out through the official document that in fact his father had been disarmed at another location 150 miles away.

Most of the elements of A Thought at the Edge of the Continent can stand on their own. "Blizzard" is a stunning installation whether one is aware of its back story or not. Taken together, they constitute a moving meditation on political and personal history and the precious yet precarious nature of memory.

"This is my father's story, even though my father couldn't remember. I had to rebuild or reconstitute his memory. Maybe it's not right from his point of view," Fukawa says. "This is my construction/deconstruction of his memory. I tried to fill the gap between his memory and himself and between me and him."

In exploring his father's story, Fukawa touches on the ways the past intrudes into the present. And the ways it remains lost in the past.

Hirokazu Fukawa will give an artist talk in the gallery this Thursday, Mar. 5, at 6 p.m.

.: Comment here

Jeff Jones, former Weather Underground member, led a discussion after a screening of the doc The Weather Underground on Sunday, February 8. Jeff Jones is now a media expert, writer and campaign strategist in Albany, NY, and a regular contributor at The Green Blog.

Jeff wanted us to pass along some information on the SF 8, eight incarcarated former black community activists. He is helping efforts to get two of the members transported to NY so that they can begin parole procedures.
Here's an excerpt:

"Black History Month is a time to not only celebrate, educate and embrace Afrikan contributions, but a time to continue upholding the legacy of our unsung Afrikan heroes, many of whom sacrificed a great deal in the times of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements.

Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Kwame Ture and Huey P. Newton were all incarcerated for political reasons.

Many of the men and women who stood beside the civil rights and black liberation heroes of yesterday are still incarcerated today.

Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell (of the San Francisco 8) are two of many who sacrificed so much during the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements.

Both have been held captive since the early 1970ís. Jalil and Herman are being denied of their right of parole hearings because neither the California nor New York Governor will act on their request to be transferred to NY in order to work on their parole hearings.

ìPhone for Parole! every Monday during Black History Month

Let us commemorate Black History Month by simply calling or faxing for the immediate transporting of Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell for parole hearings."

To learn more, visit freetheSF8.org
more information on how to help.

.: Free the SF8
.: Jeff Jones Strategies

It may not seem that much of a shift to come in out of a cold and particularly snowy New England winter and step into a Siberian-inspired blindness of white called "Blizzard."

But that mesmerizing whiteness is the centerpiece of Hirokazu Fukawa's new exhibit opening Saturday at Real Art Ways. Sixty fluorescent lights mounted on 16-foot two-by-fours angled from the ceiling create a blinding field of light that both attracts and distracts viewers. I hit my head on one.

But there may be hazards inherent in Fukawa's work, "A Thought at the Edge of the Continent: Manchuria to Siberia 1942-1947." The artist had a bandaged right hand Wednesday from an installation injury.

The exhibit traces Fukawa's attempt to discover the World War II tales of his father in Japan, who was trained in his final days, Fukawa says, to hold land mines and jump into any approaching Russian tanks. "He was trained to be a suicide bomber," Fukawa says. No such tanks went by as the father waited, and then the war ended, so he survived — only to become a POW in a Siberian work camp.

Like many U.S. veterans of World War II, Fukawa's father was hesitant to discuss details of those days. And now, at 85, his memory has been affected by Alzheimer's disease.

But working from a single document written in his father's hand, Fukawa, a sculpture professor at the University of Hartford, found a way to trace his father's steps and represent the history not only with "Blizzard" but with an adjoining sculpture of wood bolstering a steel spiral staircase that speaks to the rickety heights of imperial power and is called "The Third International."

A video of the journey and interviews with his father are in one room of the gallery. There also are drawings of the only existing image of his father from his days in Manchuria, along with images from old scrolls depicting starvation and the kind of plants on which he and the 1,000 other soldiers in his division lived.

The most important work, Fukawa says, was a framed drawing of the craggy line formed by his father's division as it was forced to march for hundreds of miles; Fukawa had the line translated into musical tones that emanate from a trio of white, organic forms in the gallery.

Retracing his father's steps and reacting to it visually has made this one of the most personal installations from an artist whose work has been exhibited in Berlin, Kyoto and Chicago.

"A Thought at the Edge of the Continent" opens Saturday at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St. in Hartford, with a reception at 4 p.m. Admission to the opening is free, after which there will be a $3 suggested donation through the run of the exhibit to March 22.

An artist talk is scheduled for March 5 at 6 p.m.

.: Original article at courant.com

Colin McEnroe reviewed John Kelly: Paved Paradise Redux on his blog, "To Wit." We encourange you to participate in the discussion here, or click the link below.

"First, this is a naked attempt to help Real Art Ways sell tickets to its 3 p.m. show today by Joni-Mitchell-inhabiting performance artist John Kelly. RAW leader Will Wilkins asked for help from the stage last night. The house was packed for that show. Not so today, I guess.

Second, this is an opportunity to consider Kelly's show, which insists on its own status as art, as opposed to impersonation. As either, it's pretty interesting. I struggled last night with my own reactions to it. I think I wanted a little more insight into Mitchell, but the piece isn't one of those one-person-shows that makes a stab at life-review. It's more of a study in persona and transformation, in which the original and the copy mutually possess each other, more angelically than demonically.

Third, Kelly show makes few if any compromises about Mitchell's music. He's a serious student of her ENORMOUS oevre. He and his two-person band don't shy away from the challenges posed by Joni, who began to write in complex forms starting in 1974 and who, for that matter, adopted a completely idiosyncratic approach to guitar tunings, time signatures and key, pretty much from the get-go. Kelly's keyboardist Zeccha Esquibel so completely realizes the orchestrations of the show's pivotal song, "Down To You," that you momentarily forget he's doing it all himself. Starting with "Miles of Aisles," Mitchell worked with a series of jazz bassists -- often encouraging them to play an open counterpoint against her melodies -- and this imposes some special burdens on Kelly's bassist Blake Newman (although at no point does he really try to ape the work of Jaco Pastorius, the most talented human being ever to pick up an electric bass).

Kelly's singing is expert and fearless. He nails Mitchell's famous wide vibrato and many of her signature glissando. His delivery of "Shadows and Light" is so expressive that he ultimately sold me, in a way that Mitchell never did, on a song I was never sure I liked.

As all of the above suggests, Kelly's show is -- in addition to its probings into persona -- an invitation to visit with a musical artist most of us think we know, even if we've been listening pretty inattentively for two decades or more. I've pretty well decided I need to put together a cluster of at least ten more Mitchell songs on my not-exactly-Joniless iPod, with special attention to "The Hissing of Summer Lawns," the 1975 LP in which Mitchell gambled a streak of mainstream popularity on an eccentrically cerebral creative breakthrough. It was a huge moment -- more courageous and volcanic than Paul Simon,'s "Graceland" -- and comparatively under-celebrated."

.: Orignal Post

We note with sorrow the passing of our beloved Mayor Mike.  Mike Peters was a friend of Real Art Ways, and a friend of all who care about this city.  He had a keen and irrepressible wit, an indomitable spirit, and a generosity and kindness that touched all who knew him.

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.: link to article

Jeffrey Hayes, 1957-2005

Real Art Ways notes with profound sadness the passing of our beloved friend and Board member Jeffrey Hayes. Jeffrey loved movies, poetry, music, food and wine, and created a sense of play and joy with everything he did. Jeffrey left us all too soon; we will continue our work with his spirit in our hearts.

Check out the Courant's review of our new Real Room show by Jayson Keeling. Keeling was selected from our annual open call for emerging artists in New York, New England, and New Jersey. His solo show features paintings that use glitter and detritus as well as a video component. The show, titled "99 and 44/100% Pure" opens tonight (Thursday, June 18) during Creative Cocktail Hour.

The full text of the Keeling review is below, or read and comment at courant.com

"Glitter!

Its use can be traced back to mica flakes applied to enhance cave drawings. It has since become a crafts and fashion mainstay, and has been the basis of the glam-rock movement, the title of a bad Mariah Carey movie and an unfortunate ingredient in face and body makeup.

It's also the medium of choice for Jayson Keeling's one-man show opening today at Real Art Ways in Hartford. "99 and 44/100% Pure" is the title of the exhibit, a phrase borrowed from an old slogan for Ivory Soap. The eight works on display are not purely glitter, but also mixed with "detritus" that may or may not be gravel- or asphalt-based. Plus there's a video piece following a horse pulling a cart titled "Like a Woodpecker with a Headache or a Nightingale with a Toothache."

Keeling, who lives and works in the Bronx, is one of six artists chosen in last year's open call for works, Step Up 2008. Keeling had submitted photographs that reflected on his second-generation Jamaican ancestry, according to curator Kristina Newman-Scott. But the largely glittering works he submitted for his show were something else altogether.

Using glue or some other adhesive as an instrument, he spells out words on three of the large works. One of them is recognizable as Allan Ginsburg's "Footnote to Howl" in shades of gold. Another offers the lyrics to George Clinton's anthem "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow." A third is from the Prince song "Let's Pretend We're Married."

Images are familiar, too, though the specter of a mushroom cloud in glitter, a family gathered to watch, is a little incongruous. There are also seeming X-rays, one of a skull with a gold grill, the other of hands with handcuffs. The claws of a super-sized insect is the show's largest image; nearby is a loose and effective drawing in glue and black glitter of Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog of Hades, according to Greek legend. Of course, it also brings to mind the design of the cult Three Wolf Moon T-shirt causing so much spontaneous poetry and exaggeration among reviewers on Amazon.com.

How different are Keeling's glittery heroic images than the enhanced lowbrow similar images all around us? Is graffiti of poetry and song lyrics more alluring if rendered in glitter? Can we be happier with our nuclear world?

For his own part, Keeling says "my continuing objective is to anchor and subtly allude to desire in its purest manifestations" and to express his interests "in death, excess, joy and the search for the futile and unattainable as they relate to notions of power, social hierarchy and the intangible avenues of their exploitation within culture."

Yeah, well that, too.

Keeling's show continues through Aug. 16 at Real Art Ways. The opening reception tonight from 6-8 p.m. will be part of the monthly Real Art Ways Creative Cocktail Hour. Keeling will give an artists talk Aug. 6 at 6 p.m. at the gallery."

.: Full article here. You can leave comments at the bottom of the page.

Sofia Maldonado, whose mural on the Pelican Tattoo building in Frog Hollow opened on Saturday, May 30, is in the new issue of New York Magazine:

"On weekends in high school I would go around Puerto Rico and paint female characters and organic forms on random walls. I like the textures of buildings as they deteriorate. I did a mural 177 feet long in Old San Juan, and an abandoned pool in the rain forest in Rio Grande that we turned into a skateboard park. It’s not graffiti: I never use a can. Always a brush...

...The recession doesn’t affect young artists as much. Except that all this high-class lifestyle that art students wanted to achieve has come down to a realistic level. You’re going to be an artist, but you’re not going to have an artist loft in Soho. It’s time to get a little more real."

She's one of four artists who created new works of public art in Hartford's Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods for Real Public. Her mural mixes floral images reminiscent of the Puerto Rican rainforest and feminine forms inspired by women the artist met while walking through the neighborhood. Audio tours of all four works are available, for free: 860-760-9979

.: "Anarcho-Muralist" | New York Magazine

Be sure to look at the online slideshow of installation images at courant.com, or pick up a copy of Saturday's Hartford Courant. It's the front page of the CT Living section.

Pope Park's grove of trees at the corner of Hamilton Street and Hillside Avenue in Hartford are suddenly happier this week.

Austin artist Matthew Rodriguez's applications of faces on their trunks — big pink lips, gourd-shaped noses and round eyes — have made them a welcoming cartoon-like chorus, not at all the kind of forbidding and gruff anthropomorphic trees that flung apples in "The Wizard of Oz."

As one of four artists invited to Hartford by Real Art Ways to create works for a show opening today called "Real Public," Rodriguez came to town with a box of pre-made smiles, and like a latter-day Keith Haring, is leaving his happy expressions all over town.

Like the other three, he adapts his own style to the locale, in this case the nearby Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods.

Margarida Correia, a New York artist born in Portugal, says she's getting back to her roots by meeting and photographing members of Hartford's tightknit Portuguese community, which stretches out west of Real Art Ways. She's created billboards and banners of photographs of the community and reproduced covers of beloved old fado albums on street posts along Park Street, accompanied by a sound installation.

"I'm learning a lot about my own culture through this community," Correia says.

Puerto Rican muralist Sofia Maldonado, who blends street culture and Latina aesthetics in her designs, has found just the right backdrop for her work: the Pelican Tattoo & Body Piercing building at 577 Park St.

But while decoration is the byword at the Hartford institution, historic preservation codes prevent her from painting directly on the building. So her work was done largely on wooden panels that were being affixed at the storefront Friday morning in preparation for today's opening.

Rain's been a factor in getting all the work complete this week, Real Art Ways director Will K. Wilkins says. Such are the challenges of working outside the controlled conditions of the studio.

For most of the artists, this has been their first foray to Real Art Ways, but British-born artist Satch Hoyt, now based in Berlin, Germany, has been there more than once as a member of the musical band Burnt Sugar. He has since become a visual artist in demand, concentrating in recent years on adapting the ancient mazes known as labyrinths.

His labyrinth in Hartford, in the other end of Pope Park nearer to Park Street and Park Terrace, is marked by a squadron of white poles, connected by clotheslines.

This is not a maze in which to get lost, Hoyt says. Being open and able to see one another in it is a way to recognize and build community. "It encourages eye contact."

There will be further community building in August, he says, when "everybody in the neighborhood will be invited to hang laundry on it. It's another way to be interactive."

Rain hasn't been a factor for Hoyt or Hernandez.

"I love it, are you kidding?" Rodriguez says. "Back in Austin, it's 100 degrees and humid. I'm happy to be here."

The Hartford work is an extension of graffiti he's been doing in New York, albeit illegally, adding faces to traffic control boxes, traffic signs, street-side trash, or painting rainbow faces on walls. His latest trademark is a drop-shaped tri-color candy-corn face.

It's an instinctual thing with him.

"I see a rock on the ground, I'll put a face on it," he says. "I like to put a face on the environment. It lets people know the environment is alive."

Indeed, he's been scrawling his work uninvited back at Real Art Ways' Arbor Street headquarters, where a block of wood near the door now smiles and suggests that people "Cheer Up." Rodriguez's faces have also popped up in the restrooms of the arts center.

Some people have come up to see what he's doing with the trees, and he's added names to some of them based on resemblances to passers-by.

But already the works have had to adapt to the usual uses for the trees. And the handbills stapled to the trees for other purposes serve as square white beards for some characters.

"That's public art," Rodriguez says. "It's a sacrifice. I's like putting out cookies for Santa Claus. You see what happens."

And although most of the public works will be around for this summer at least, Rodriguez painted with water- soluble paint that may last much longer.

"So maybe I'll come back in 20 years and see if they're still there."

•REAL PUBLIC 2009 opens with a reception at 2 p.m. today at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford. A bus tour of the works will run continuously every 10 minutes from 3 to 5 p.m. Bike tours will start at 3 and 4 p.m. For more information go to www.realartways.org/realpublic/index.html or 860-232-1006.

.: full article

Who should fund the arts? The government? Can a city like Hartford afford to provide arts funding? WNPR's Where We Live with John Dankosky asked these questions and more to panelists Colin McEnroe, Power Boothe, Karen Senich, Mike McGarry, local and visiting artists, and a live audience at Real Art Ways on Tuesday, May 26, 2009.

Listen to the episode, broadcast on Thursday, May 28, 2009 (mp3) .: Where We Live - Part 1 .: Where We Live - Part 2 .: Where We Live - Part 3

Gallery: Where We Live, May 26 photos by Chion Wolf .: WNPR's Flickr feed image image image image image image image image image image image image image image

.: John Dankosky, "Two Conversations About Hartford" | cpbn.org
.: WWL @ RAW: Who Pays for the Arts? | cpbn.org

Matthew Rodriguez, one of four artists creating public art projects in Hartford's Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods, was just named one of 20 to Watch by the Austin Museum of Art. Go to their website for an interactive page on the installation "New Art in Austin: 20 to Watch".

From the Curator's Statement:

"Focusing on emerging and lesser-known artists who reside within a fifty-mile radius of the Capitol, "New Art In Austin: 20 to Watch" celebrates the innovations and explorations of twenty visual artists who are at the forefront of the field."

.: Austin Museum of Art
.: Real Public 2009: Four New Public Art Projects in Parkville and Frog Hollow

Read the full article at courant.com

"Artists have been on the front line of urban pioneering, staking claims on crumbling American cities. So it's especially galling when they are displaced by developers whose main goal is to make a buck using such methods as eminent domain.

It's been the crux of court cases in Connecticut. It happened too in New Jersey, where Emma Wilcox's apartment was wiped out to make way for higher-priced units.

She stayed in Newark, where she documented the clearing of her former lot ("There," she wrote in chalk, indicating her own former living space on the dark rubble, photographing from above by helicopter) and wrote atop rooftops in the city in the same manner.

Some of her messages took on the declarations of conceptual artist Barbara Kruger: "My Memory Gets in the Way [of] Your History."

She'd make the messages on rooftops in materials that would fade, but not before she could film them. Those works are part of her new show opening at Real Art Ways tonight, "Salvage Rights."

The 11 photographs and silent video will be of familiar scenes to those from Hartford, New London or any other area of urban upheaval: empty streets, abandoned factories and warehouses, some offices and homes.

Part archaeology, part artistic framing of scenes in gritty black and white, it tells of a life lived in the cities, searching for a glimmer of hope amid its rubble.

Arranging her messages in 12-foot letters atop rooftops and lots "was a solitary act, inspired by the conceptual function of eminent domain as instant blight, as well as by the widespread, false assumption by many Internet users that Google Earth functions in real time," she writes in her artist's statement.

"With 'Salvage Rights,' I am interested in the chemical and textual memory of a landscape and the multiple, sometimes contradictory significances of place. In forensics, the absence of something can signify its presence and scale is subject to continual re-examination."

Wilcox is one of six artists chosen in last year's initial Step Up program, seeking emerging artists from the region, whose prize is an exhibition. She's a particularly good fit with Real Art Ways, which itself grew from what could have been urban rubble to make its own vibrant scene alongside the railroad tracks in industrial Parkville.

Wilcox is a co-founder of a similar place in Newark, an alternative space called Gallery Aferro.

Wilcox will give a free talk at Real Art Ways April 30; the show continues through June 14. She'll also be present at the opening tonight from 6 to 8 during the monthly Creative Cocktail Hour, where other activities include a video screening of "Lynne Cohen: The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the Poe story is told by puppets.

Proposals are being accepted in this year's Step Up program, seeking artists from New York, New Jersey and New England."

.: comment at courant.com

Here's what other people are saying about April 4th's Odd Ball.

Got pictures? Got a blog? let us know on Facebook, Twitter, or by email.

.: Colin McEnroe | To Wit: "What You Missed Last Night"
.: Real Hartford: "Odd Ball"
.: Sam McKinniss | Weekend Party Update: "odd ballz"
.: MaryEllen Fillo | Java: "RAW Revelers Celebrate at 'Odd Ball'"

Photo albums:
.: Metromix CT: "The Odd Ball at Real Art Ways"
.: Hartford Courant (Photos by MaryEllen Fillo)
.: On Facebook: Steve Laschever photos

"When everybody is odd, is anyone truly odd?

Philosophical questions such as this (plus others like 'Do these light-up cone-breasts make my butt look fat?' and 'Are those your real teeth?') were on the hand-painted lips of hundreds of seriously odd partiers at Saturday night’s Odd Ball at Real Art Ways. The inaugural event brought through the doors of RAW the most creative and daring costumes and ensembles Hartford has likely ever seen."

Check out the first pics of the night and read the rest of Teresa Pelham's Odd Ball Wrap-Up.

.: Teresa Pelham's Odd Ball Wrap Up

The Courant interviewed board member Ileen Swerdloff and artist Anne Cubberly for a multimedia feature on the Odd Ball, our annual fundraiser on Saturday, April 4 at 8 PM.

Check out the article here. Don't miss the audio and photo slideshow, linked on the page.

High-powered divorce attorney Ilene Swerdloff will attend her first Real Art Ways fundraiser Saturday as one of its newest board members. So choosing the right dress was important to the 63-year-old, who is well known as a cutting-edge fashionista.

Her choice? A black-and-gold, ballet-length frock featuring a black bustier top and full skirt fashioned of cast-off rubber inner tubes, and embellished with a sprinkling of various size, black-nippled gold breasts made of repurposed carpet padding.

It's the perfect red-carpet selection for The Odd Ball, the name of this year's fundraiser at Real Art Ways, a popular and eclectic, multi-disciplinary arts organization on Arbor Street in Hartford's Parkville neighborhood.

"When they asked me if I would come up with some kind of costume for the fundraiser, I figured: Why not?" says Swerdloff, a free-spirited clothes horse who proudly proclaims she is a lawyer who does not own one suit.

"I mean, who better to do it than a board member," she laughs. "So I said yes, I'd come up with a costume that was appropriately odd."

Swerdloff turned to Hartford visual artist Anne Cubberly, who is as well known for her eclectic art as Swerdloff is for her wardrobe.

"I told her she needed a fabulous costume," says Cubberly, who describes Swerdloff as "passionate, outspoken and fearless."

"She wears what she wants and has ovaries the size of basketballs," she says, alluding to the Farmington resident's bold and venturesome personality. "We were a perfect match because I am a fearless artist."

Cubberly uses recycled materials in her works. "My idea for the costume was inspired by her personality," she says. "She is a goddess of the underworld, an Earth mother, a caterpillar."

With those images in mind, Cubberly went to work designing a piece that met the criteria and "out of the box" spirit the Real Art Ways parties are known for.

"I think a lot of breasts all over your body is odd," says Cubberly, explaining the thought process that went into the creation. And as far as the slightly cumbersome weblike-looking skirt of rubber?

"It undulates when Ilene walks, and Ilene usually does undulate when she walks," says Cubberly.

Cubberly estimates it took about 100 hours to create, build and then alter the dress. Along the way, most of those hours were filled with some really good laughs as the two women worked together.

"I have to say that Anne knows more of my private body numbers than anyone else," giggles Swerdloff, who was measured just about everywhere in order to get the "dress" to fit. "Our relationship now is very intimate."

Swerdloff says her husband Mark's only comment was to ask if she was planning to wear anything under the dress, which, on its own, would provide a pretty clear view of everything from the waist down.

"No, I am wearing something underneath it," says Swerdloff. "My attitude is, let them drool and wonder what they could be seeing."

•Tickets for Saturday's Real Art Ways' The Odd Ball, which begins at 8 p.m., are available by calling 860-232-1006, Ext. 110, or at the door. Tickets are $45 per person, or $100 a person, which includes an open bar.

.: Read the full story at The Hartford Courant
.: The Odd Ball Page

It was a war story. It was a common story in Japan, the story artist Hirokazu Fukawa's father told him when he was little. A story of occupation first—in Manchuria in China, then called Manchukuo by the Japanese occupiers. Fukawa's father was a sniper with the Japanese occupation forces. Then it was a story of defeat, desperation. Near the end, Fukawa's father and other members of his troop were each handed a landmine in place of a rifle and commanded to suicide bomb approaching Russian tanks. Fukawa's father waited in a foxhole but no tank came; he survived. With surrender came a role reversal: the occupiers become prisoners of the victorious Soviets, abandoned by the vanquished Japanese government. Fukawa's soldier father was marched across the border to spend years in Siberian labor camps, like the hundreds of thousands of other Japanese in occupied Manchukuo. Unlike many, Fukawa's father survived and was repatriated to Japan two years later.

Hirokazu Fukawa's A Thought at the Edge of the Continent at Real Art Ways is a multimedia sculptural exhibition inspired by Fukawa's quest to confront his father's experience as a soldier and detainee. While he had picked up bits and pieces of his father's story as a child, Fukawa decided four years ago to investigate it in depth as the basis for an art project. Although his father is still alive, he suffers from Alzheimer's. Fukawa had to supplement the unreliable information he gleaned from his father's fading memories with facts from a one-page debriefing document Fukawa's father had written for the Japanese government on his 1947 return. Hoping to more fully understand his father's experience, Fukawa made two research trips, to Japan and Northeastern China in 2007 and to Siberia in 2008.

Memories are multi-layered. They are discrete and inter-connected. They are also ephemeral and subject to contestation and dispute. In A Thought at the Edge of the Continent, Fukawa interprets his father's story through separate but related elements in different media. The most literal attempts to tell his story are a three-channel video installation and the three "Starvation" collages.

The predominant element is "Blizzard," a striking installation of some three dozen fluorescent lights in the main gallery. Braced by solid, unpainted wooden boards, the lights are diagonal lines of force. The viewer can (carefully) walk into and through this installation, which evokes a fearsome Siberian snowstorm experienced by Fukawa's father. Its design was influenced by the lines and sensibilities of the avant-garde Soviet Constructivist art movement.

The other large sculpture in the main room is "The Third International," an homage to Constructivist artist Vladimir Tatlin's "Monument to the Third International." Tatlin, as a tribute to the Bolshevik Revolution, had created his model for a planned headquarters of the Comintern, or Communist Third international; the tower was never actually built. Fukawa's sculpture is similar in design but the effect is not triumphal. The unpainted wood boards of "Blizzard" are reprised here, bracing a spiral staircase. The boards and light fixtures of "Blizzard" have an illusory randomness characteristic of the trajectory of falling snow. But the boards in "The Third International" drive up toward a single focus, the platform where the dictatorial leader will stand. Whether it is Stalin or the leaders of Imperial Japan, the viewer's gaze is directed up, up toward those who direct others, up toward those who set remorseless historical forces in motion.

Along with the large sculptural works, there are three smaller plaster creations positioned in the gallery. In contrast to the angular and geometric orientation of "Blizzard" and "The Third International," these works are more organic and natural in shape. Fukawa sees them as "tumors" or "cancers." They are also a source of sound. The form closest to the Tatlin homage plays five songs: "The Internationale" (the anthem of the Communist movement), anthems of the Communist and Nationalist Chinese parties, a Manchukuo occupation song and a song popular in postwar Japan among people waiting for their relatives to return from internment. A second "cancer" recapitulates the soundtrack of the video and the third plays abstract music. There is a layering of sounds. They compete but also complement each other.

The abstract music is derived from "Marching," a map Fukawa drew in pencil of his father's forced march to the several labor camps in which he was held. The line drawing was interpreted as a musical score in the GarageBand computer program.

The three "Starvation" collages deal with the overwhelming hunger the captured Japanese experienced in the prison camps. Over scans of 12th century Buddhist scrolls depicting starvation hells, Fukawa made pencil drawings of his father and some of his soldier colleagues, based on an old photo. Layered over each are dried examples of the wild plants on which the prisoners subsisted: ferns, onion grasses, leaves.

The three-panel video montages footage that Fukawa shot in China, Manchuria and Siberia with video of his father. The soundtrack layers impressions of the ungraspable nature of his quest with details of his father's experience within the broader historical context of the time. One can sense the frustration in Fukawa's efforts. He travels long distances to try and get a sense of the past. But he finds himself in places stubbornly rooted in the present.

There is no fully understanding the past. There is no reliving the past, especially not the past of someone else's jumbled memories. History is often a big story told through the prism of ideology. It is contested. What happened? What was it like to experience the occupation, the war, the imprisonment? Fukawa, in narration over the video installation, found that even in traveling to the locations where his father had fought and been detained, he could not feel his father's experience:

Instead I felt like a void standing in front of a void. Whenever I visited my father's past, whether physical traces remained or not, I felt that I myself was the void, that I was alienated from everything there--out of time and place, floating through lost memories that weren't my own.
These memories were no longer even his father's. Speaking with me in the main gallery at Real Art Ways, Fukawa tells me that when he asked his father where he had been disarmed by the Soviets, his father gave him a place name. Fukawa researched that location for a year before finding out through the official document that in fact his father had been disarmed at another location 150 miles away.

Most of the elements of A Thought at the Edge of the Continent can stand on their own. "Blizzard" is a stunning installation whether one is aware of its back story or not. Taken together, they constitute a moving meditation on political and personal history and the precious yet precarious nature of memory.

"This is my father's story, even though my father couldn't remember. I had to rebuild or reconstitute his memory. Maybe it's not right from his point of view," Fukawa says. "This is my construction/deconstruction of his memory. I tried to fill the gap between his memory and himself and between me and him."

In exploring his father's story, Fukawa touches on the ways the past intrudes into the present. And the ways it remains lost in the past.

Hirokazu Fukawa will give an artist talk in the gallery this Thursday, Mar. 5, at 6 p.m.

.: Comment here

Jeff Jones, former Weather Underground member, led a discussion after a screening of the doc The Weather Underground on Sunday, February 8. Jeff Jones is now a media expert, writer and campaign strategist in Albany, NY, and a regular contributor at The Green Blog.

Jeff wanted us to pass along some information on the SF 8, eight incarcarated former black community activists. He is helping efforts to get two of the members transported to NY so that they can begin parole procedures.
Here's an excerpt:

"Black History Month is a time to not only celebrate, educate and embrace Afrikan contributions, but a time to continue upholding the legacy of our unsung Afrikan heroes, many of whom sacrificed a great deal in the times of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements.

Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Kwame Ture and Huey P. Newton were all incarcerated for political reasons.

Many of the men and women who stood beside the civil rights and black liberation heroes of yesterday are still incarcerated today.

Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell (of the San Francisco 8) are two of many who sacrificed so much during the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements.

Both have been held captive since the early 1970ís. Jalil and Herman are being denied of their right of parole hearings because neither the California nor New York Governor will act on their request to be transferred to NY in order to work on their parole hearings.

ìPhone for Parole! every Monday during Black History Month

Let us commemorate Black History Month by simply calling or faxing for the immediate transporting of Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell for parole hearings."

To learn more, visit freetheSF8.org
more information on how to help.

.: Free the SF8
.: Jeff Jones Strategies

It may not seem that much of a shift to come in out of a cold and particularly snowy New England winter and step into a Siberian-inspired blindness of white called "Blizzard."

But that mesmerizing whiteness is the centerpiece of Hirokazu Fukawa's new exhibit opening Saturday at Real Art Ways. Sixty fluorescent lights mounted on 16-foot two-by-fours angled from the ceiling create a blinding field of light that both attracts and distracts viewers. I hit my head on one.

But there may be hazards inherent in Fukawa's work, "A Thought at the Edge of the Continent: Manchuria to Siberia 1942-1947." The artist had a bandaged right hand Wednesday from an installation injury.

The exhibit traces Fukawa's attempt to discover the World War II tales of his father in Japan, who was trained in his final days, Fukawa says, to hold land mines and jump into any approaching Russian tanks. "He was trained to be a suicide bomber," Fukawa says. No such tanks went by as the father waited, and then the war ended, so he survived — only to become a POW in a Siberian work camp.

Like many U.S. veterans of World War II, Fukawa's father was hesitant to discuss details of those days. And now, at 85, his memory has been affected by Alzheimer's disease.

But working from a single document written in his father's hand, Fukawa, a sculpture professor at the University of Hartford, found a way to trace his father's steps and represent the history not only with "Blizzard" but with an adjoining sculpture of wood bolstering a steel spiral staircase that speaks to the rickety heights of imperial power and is called "The Third International."

A video of the journey and interviews with his father are in one room of the gallery. There also are drawings of the only existing image of his father from his days in Manchuria, along with images from old scrolls depicting starvation and the kind of plants on which he and the 1,000 other soldiers in his division lived.

The most important work, Fukawa says, was a framed drawing of the craggy line formed by his father's division as it was forced to march for hundreds of miles; Fukawa had the line translated into musical tones that emanate from a trio of white, organic forms in the gallery.

Retracing his father's steps and reacting to it visually has made this one of the most personal installations from an artist whose work has been exhibited in Berlin, Kyoto and Chicago.

"A Thought at the Edge of the Continent" opens Saturday at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St. in Hartford, with a reception at 4 p.m. Admission to the opening is free, after which there will be a $3 suggested donation through the run of the exhibit to March 22.

An artist talk is scheduled for March 5 at 6 p.m.

.: Original article at courant.com

Colin McEnroe reviewed John Kelly: Paved Paradise Redux on his blog, "To Wit." We encourange you to participate in the discussion here, or click the link below.

"First, this is a naked attempt to help Real Art Ways sell tickets to its 3 p.m. show today by Joni-Mitchell-inhabiting performance artist John Kelly. RAW leader Will Wilkins asked for help from the stage last night. The house was packed for that show. Not so today, I guess.

Second, this is an opportunity to consider Kelly's show, which insists on its own status as art, as opposed to impersonation. As either, it's pretty interesting. I struggled last night with my own reactions to it. I think I wanted a little more insight into Mitchell, but the piece isn't one of those one-person-shows that makes a stab at life-review. It's more of a study in persona and transformation, in which the original and the copy mutually possess each other, more angelically than demonically.

Third, Kelly show makes few if any compromises about Mitchell's music. He's a serious student of her ENORMOUS oevre. He and his two-person band don't shy away from the challenges posed by Joni, who began to write in complex forms starting in 1974 and who, for that matter, adopted a completely idiosyncratic approach to guitar tunings, time signatures and key, pretty much from the get-go. Kelly's keyboardist Zeccha Esquibel so completely realizes the orchestrations of the show's pivotal song, "Down To You," that you momentarily forget he's doing it all himself. Starting with "Miles of Aisles," Mitchell worked with a series of jazz bassists -- often encouraging them to play an open counterpoint against her melodies -- and this imposes some special burdens on Kelly's bassist Blake Newman (although at no point does he really try to ape the work of Jaco Pastorius, the most talented human being ever to pick up an electric bass).

Kelly's singing is expert and fearless. He nails Mitchell's famous wide vibrato and many of her signature glissando. His delivery of "Shadows and Light" is so expressive that he ultimately sold me, in a way that Mitchell never did, on a song I was never sure I liked.

As all of the above suggests, Kelly's show is -- in addition to its probings into persona -- an invitation to visit with a musical artist most of us think we know, even if we've been listening pretty inattentively for two decades or more. I've pretty well decided I need to put together a cluster of at least ten more Mitchell songs on my not-exactly-Joniless iPod, with special attention to "The Hissing of Summer Lawns," the 1975 LP in which Mitchell gambled a streak of mainstream popularity on an eccentrically cerebral creative breakthrough. It was a huge moment -- more courageous and volcanic than Paul Simon,'s "Graceland" -- and comparatively under-celebrated."

.: Orignal Post

We note with sorrow the passing of our beloved Mayor Mike.  Mike Peters was a friend of Real Art Ways, and a friend of all who care about this city.  He had a keen and irrepressible wit, an indomitable spirit, and a generosity and kindness that touched all who knew him.

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.: link to article

Jeffrey Hayes, 1957-2005

Real Art Ways notes with profound sadness the passing of our beloved friend and Board member Jeffrey Hayes. Jeffrey loved movies, poetry, music, food and wine, and created a sense of play and joy with everything he did. Jeffrey left us all too soon; we will continue our work with his spirit in our hearts.

Check out the Courant's review of our new Real Room show by Jayson Keeling. Keeling was selected from our annual open call for emerging artists in New York, New England, and New Jersey. His solo show features paintings that use glitter and detritus as well as a video component. The show, titled "99 and 44/100% Pure" opens tonight (Thursday, June 18) during Creative Cocktail Hour.

The full text of the Keeling review is below, or read and comment at courant.com

"Glitter!

Its use can be traced back to mica flakes applied to enhance cave drawings. It has since become a crafts and fashion mainstay, and has been the basis of the glam-rock movement, the title of a bad Mariah Carey movie and an unfortunate ingredient in face and body makeup.

It's also the medium of choice for Jayson Keeling's one-man show opening today at Real Art Ways in Hartford. "99 and 44/100% Pure" is the title of the exhibit, a phrase borrowed from an old slogan for Ivory Soap. The eight works on display are not purely glitter, but also mixed with "detritus" that may or may not be gravel- or asphalt-based. Plus there's a video piece following a horse pulling a cart titled "Like a Woodpecker with a Headache or a Nightingale with a Toothache."

Keeling, who lives and works in the Bronx, is one of six artists chosen in last year's open call for works, Step Up 2008. Keeling had submitted photographs that reflected on his second-generation Jamaican ancestry, according to curator Kristina Newman-Scott. But the largely glittering works he submitted for his show were something else altogether.

Using glue or some other adhesive as an instrument, he spells out words on three of the large works. One of them is recognizable as Allan Ginsburg's "Footnote to Howl" in shades of gold. Another offers the lyrics to George Clinton's anthem "Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow." A third is from the Prince song "Let's Pretend We're Married."

Images are familiar, too, though the specter of a mushroom cloud in glitter, a family gathered to watch, is a little incongruous. There are also seeming X-rays, one of a skull with a gold grill, the other of hands with handcuffs. The claws of a super-sized insect is the show's largest image; nearby is a loose and effective drawing in glue and black glitter of Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog of Hades, according to Greek legend. Of course, it also brings to mind the design of the cult Three Wolf Moon T-shirt causing so much spontaneous poetry and exaggeration among reviewers on Amazon.com.

How different are Keeling's glittery heroic images than the enhanced lowbrow similar images all around us? Is graffiti of poetry and song lyrics more alluring if rendered in glitter? Can we be happier with our nuclear world?

For his own part, Keeling says "my continuing objective is to anchor and subtly allude to desire in its purest manifestations" and to express his interests "in death, excess, joy and the search for the futile and unattainable as they relate to notions of power, social hierarchy and the intangible avenues of their exploitation within culture."

Yeah, well that, too.

Keeling's show continues through Aug. 16 at Real Art Ways. The opening reception tonight from 6-8 p.m. will be part of the monthly Real Art Ways Creative Cocktail Hour. Keeling will give an artists talk Aug. 6 at 6 p.m. at the gallery."

.: Full article here. You can leave comments at the bottom of the page.

Sofia Maldonado, whose mural on the Pelican Tattoo building in Frog Hollow opened on Saturday, May 30, is in the new issue of New York Magazine:

"On weekends in high school I would go around Puerto Rico and paint female characters and organic forms on random walls. I like the textures of buildings as they deteriorate. I did a mural 177 feet long in Old San Juan, and an abandoned pool in the rain forest in Rio Grande that we turned into a skateboard park. It’s not graffiti: I never use a can. Always a brush...

...The recession doesn’t affect young artists as much. Except that all this high-class lifestyle that art students wanted to achieve has come down to a realistic level. You’re going to be an artist, but you’re not going to have an artist loft in Soho. It’s time to get a little more real."

She's one of four artists who created new works of public art in Hartford's Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods for Real Public. Her mural mixes floral images reminiscent of the Puerto Rican rainforest and feminine forms inspired by women the artist met while walking through the neighborhood. Audio tours of all four works are available, for free: 860-760-9979

.: "Anarcho-Muralist" | New York Magazine

Be sure to look at the online slideshow of installation images at courant.com, or pick up a copy of Saturday's Hartford Courant. It's the front page of the CT Living section.

Pope Park's grove of trees at the corner of Hamilton Street and Hillside Avenue in Hartford are suddenly happier this week.

Austin artist Matthew Rodriguez's applications of faces on their trunks — big pink lips, gourd-shaped noses and round eyes — have made them a welcoming cartoon-like chorus, not at all the kind of forbidding and gruff anthropomorphic trees that flung apples in "The Wizard of Oz."

As one of four artists invited to Hartford by Real Art Ways to create works for a show opening today called "Real Public," Rodriguez came to town with a box of pre-made smiles, and like a latter-day Keith Haring, is leaving his happy expressions all over town.

Like the other three, he adapts his own style to the locale, in this case the nearby Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods.

Margarida Correia, a New York artist born in Portugal, says she's getting back to her roots by meeting and photographing members of Hartford's tightknit Portuguese community, which stretches out west of Real Art Ways. She's created billboards and banners of photographs of the community and reproduced covers of beloved old fado albums on street posts along Park Street, accompanied by a sound installation.

"I'm learning a lot about my own culture through this community," Correia says.

Puerto Rican muralist Sofia Maldonado, who blends street culture and Latina aesthetics in her designs, has found just the right backdrop for her work: the Pelican Tattoo & Body Piercing building at 577 Park St.

But while decoration is the byword at the Hartford institution, historic preservation codes prevent her from painting directly on the building. So her work was done largely on wooden panels that were being affixed at the storefront Friday morning in preparation for today's opening.

Rain's been a factor in getting all the work complete this week, Real Art Ways director Will K. Wilkins says. Such are the challenges of working outside the controlled conditions of the studio.

For most of the artists, this has been their first foray to Real Art Ways, but British-born artist Satch Hoyt, now based in Berlin, Germany, has been there more than once as a member of the musical band Burnt Sugar. He has since become a visual artist in demand, concentrating in recent years on adapting the ancient mazes known as labyrinths.

His labyrinth in Hartford, in the other end of Pope Park nearer to Park Street and Park Terrace, is marked by a squadron of white poles, connected by clotheslines.

This is not a maze in which to get lost, Hoyt says. Being open and able to see one another in it is a way to recognize and build community. "It encourages eye contact."

There will be further community building in August, he says, when "everybody in the neighborhood will be invited to hang laundry on it. It's another way to be interactive."

Rain hasn't been a factor for Hoyt or Hernandez.

"I love it, are you kidding?" Rodriguez says. "Back in Austin, it's 100 degrees and humid. I'm happy to be here."

The Hartford work is an extension of graffiti he's been doing in New York, albeit illegally, adding faces to traffic control boxes, traffic signs, street-side trash, or painting rainbow faces on walls. His latest trademark is a drop-shaped tri-color candy-corn face.

It's an instinctual thing with him.

"I see a rock on the ground, I'll put a face on it," he says. "I like to put a face on the environment. It lets people know the environment is alive."

Indeed, he's been scrawling his work uninvited back at Real Art Ways' Arbor Street headquarters, where a block of wood near the door now smiles and suggests that people "Cheer Up." Rodriguez's faces have also popped up in the restrooms of the arts center.

Some people have come up to see what he's doing with the trees, and he's added names to some of them based on resemblances to passers-by.

But already the works have had to adapt to the usual uses for the trees. And the handbills stapled to the trees for other purposes serve as square white beards for some characters.

"That's public art," Rodriguez says. "It's a sacrifice. I's like putting out cookies for Santa Claus. You see what happens."

And although most of the public works will be around for this summer at least, Rodriguez painted with water- soluble paint that may last much longer.

"So maybe I'll come back in 20 years and see if they're still there."

•REAL PUBLIC 2009 opens with a reception at 2 p.m. today at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford. A bus tour of the works will run continuously every 10 minutes from 3 to 5 p.m. Bike tours will start at 3 and 4 p.m. For more information go to www.realartways.org/realpublic/index.html or 860-232-1006.

.: full article

Who should fund the arts? The government? Can a city like Hartford afford to provide arts funding? WNPR's Where We Live with John Dankosky asked these questions and more to panelists Colin McEnroe, Power Boothe, Karen Senich, Mike McGarry, local and visiting artists, and a live audience at Real Art Ways on Tuesday, May 26, 2009.

Listen to the episode, broadcast on Thursday, May 28, 2009 (mp3) .: Where We Live - Part 1 .: Where We Live - Part 2 .: Where We Live - Part 3

Gallery: Where We Live, May 26 photos by Chion Wolf .: WNPR's Flickr feed image image image image image image image image image image image image image image

.: John Dankosky, "Two Conversations About Hartford" | cpbn.org
.: WWL @ RAW: Who Pays for the Arts? | cpbn.org

Matthew Rodriguez, one of four artists creating public art projects in Hartford's Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods, was just named one of 20 to Watch by the Austin Museum of Art. Go to their website for an interactive page on the installation "New Art in Austin: 20 to Watch".

From the Curator's Statement:

"Focusing on emerging and lesser-known artists who reside within a fifty-mile radius of the Capitol, "New Art In Austin: 20 to Watch" celebrates the innovations and explorations of twenty visual artists who are at the forefront of the field."

.: Austin Museum of Art
.: Real Public 2009: Four New Public Art Projects in Parkville and Frog Hollow

Read the full article at courant.com

"Artists have been on the front line of urban pioneering, staking claims on crumbling American cities. So it's especially galling when they are displaced by developers whose main goal is to make a buck using such methods as eminent domain.

It's been the crux of court cases in Connecticut. It happened too in New Jersey, where Emma Wilcox's apartment was wiped out to make way for higher-priced units.

She stayed in Newark, where she documented the clearing of her former lot ("There," she wrote in chalk, indicating her own former living space on the dark rubble, photographing from above by helicopter) and wrote atop rooftops in the city in the same manner.

Some of her messages took on the declarations of conceptual artist Barbara Kruger: "My Memory Gets in the Way [of] Your History."

She'd make the messages on rooftops in materials that would fade, but not before she could film them. Those works are part of her new show opening at Real Art Ways tonight, "Salvage Rights."

The 11 photographs and silent video will be of familiar scenes to those from Hartford, New London or any other area of urban upheaval: empty streets, abandoned factories and warehouses, some offices and homes.

Part archaeology, part artistic framing of scenes in gritty black and white, it tells of a life lived in the cities, searching for a glimmer of hope amid its rubble.

Arranging her messages in 12-foot letters atop rooftops and lots "was a solitary act, inspired by the conceptual function of eminent domain as instant blight, as well as by the widespread, false assumption by many Internet users that Google Earth functions in real time," she writes in her artist's statement.

"With 'Salvage Rights,' I am interested in the chemical and textual memory of a landscape and the multiple, sometimes contradictory significances of place. In forensics, the absence of something can signify its presence and scale is subject to continual re-examination."

Wilcox is one of six artists chosen in last year's initial Step Up program, seeking emerging artists from the region, whose prize is an exhibition. She's a particularly good fit with Real Art Ways, which itself grew from what could have been urban rubble to make its own vibrant scene alongside the railroad tracks in industrial Parkville.

Wilcox is a co-founder of a similar place in Newark, an alternative space called Gallery Aferro.

Wilcox will give a free talk at Real Art Ways April 30; the show continues through June 14. She'll also be present at the opening tonight from 6 to 8 during the monthly Creative Cocktail Hour, where other activities include a video screening of "Lynne Cohen: The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the Poe story is told by puppets.

Proposals are being accepted in this year's Step Up program, seeking artists from New York, New Jersey and New England."

.: comment at courant.com

Here's what other people are saying about April 4th's Odd Ball.

Got pictures? Got a blog? let us know on Facebook, Twitter, or by email.

.: Colin McEnroe | To Wit: "What You Missed Last Night"
.: Real Hartford: "Odd Ball"
.: Sam McKinniss | Weekend Party Update: "odd ballz"
.: MaryEllen Fillo | Java: "RAW Revelers Celebrate at 'Odd Ball'"

Photo albums:
.: Metromix CT: "The Odd Ball at Real Art Ways"
.: Hartford Courant (Photos by MaryEllen Fillo)
.: On Facebook: Steve Laschever photos

"When everybody is odd, is anyone truly odd?

Philosophical questions such as this (plus others like 'Do these light-up cone-breasts make my butt look fat?' and 'Are those your real teeth?') were on the hand-painted lips of hundreds of seriously odd partiers at Saturday night’s Odd Ball at Real Art Ways. The inaugural event brought through the doors of RAW the most creative and daring costumes and ensembles Hartford has likely ever seen."

Check out the first pics of the night and read the rest of Teresa Pelham's Odd Ball Wrap-Up.

.: Teresa Pelham's Odd Ball Wrap Up

The Courant interviewed board member Ileen Swerdloff and artist Anne Cubberly for a multimedia feature on the Odd Ball, our annual fundraiser on Saturday, April 4 at 8 PM.

Check out the article here. Don't miss the audio and photo slideshow, linked on the page.

High-powered divorce attorney Ilene Swerdloff will attend her first Real Art Ways fundraiser Saturday as one of its newest board members. So choosing the right dress was important to the 63-year-old, who is well known as a cutting-edge fashionista.

Her choice? A black-and-gold, ballet-length frock featuring a black bustier top and full skirt fashioned of cast-off rubber inner tubes, and embellished with a sprinkling of various size, black-nippled gold breasts made of repurposed carpet padding.

It's the perfect red-carpet selection for The Odd Ball, the name of this year's fundraiser at Real Art Ways, a popular and eclectic, multi-disciplinary arts organization on Arbor Street in Hartford's Parkville neighborhood.

"When they asked me if I would come up with some kind of costume for the fundraiser, I figured: Why not?" says Swerdloff, a free-spirited clothes horse who proudly proclaims she is a lawyer who does not own one suit.

"I mean, who better to do it than a board member," she laughs. "So I said yes, I'd come up with a costume that was appropriately odd."

Swerdloff turned to Hartford visual artist Anne Cubberly, who is as well known for her eclectic art as Swerdloff is for her wardrobe.

"I told her she needed a fabulous costume," says Cubberly, who describes Swerdloff as "passionate, outspoken and fearless."

"She wears what she wants and has ovaries the size of basketballs," she says, alluding to the Farmington resident's bold and venturesome personality. "We were a perfect match because I am a fearless artist."

Cubberly uses recycled materials in her works. "My idea for the costume was inspired by her personality," she says. "She is a goddess of the underworld, an Earth mother, a caterpillar."

With those images in mind, Cubberly went to work designing a piece that met the criteria and "out of the box" spirit the Real Art Ways parties are known for.

"I think a lot of breasts all over your body is odd," says Cubberly, explaining the thought process that went into the creation. And as far as the slightly cumbersome weblike-looking skirt of rubber?

"It undulates when Ilene walks, and Ilene usually does undulate when she walks," says Cubberly.

Cubberly estimates it took about 100 hours to create, build and then alter the dress. Along the way, most of those hours were filled with some really good laughs as the two women worked together.

"I have to say that Anne knows more of my private body numbers than anyone else," giggles Swerdloff, who was measured just about everywhere in order to get the "dress" to fit. "Our relationship now is very intimate."

Swerdloff says her husband Mark's only comment was to ask if she was planning to wear anything under the dress, which, on its own, would provide a pretty clear view of everything from the waist down.

"No, I am wearing something underneath it," says Swerdloff. "My attitude is, let them drool and wonder what they could be seeing."

•Tickets for Saturday's Real Art Ways' The Odd Ball, which begins at 8 p.m., are available by calling 860-232-1006, Ext. 110, or at the door. Tickets are $45 per person, or $100 a person, which includes an open bar.

.: Read the full story at The Hartford Courant
.: The Odd Ball Page

It was a war story. It was a common story in Japan, the story artist Hirokazu Fukawa's father told him when he was little. A story of occupation first—in Manchuria in China, then called Manchukuo by the Japanese occupiers. Fukawa's father was a sniper with the Japanese occupation forces. Then it was a story of defeat, desperation. Near the end, Fukawa's father and other members of his troop were each handed a landmine in place of a rifle and commanded to suicide bomb approaching Russian tanks. Fukawa's father waited in a foxhole but no tank came; he survived. With surrender came a role reversal: the occupiers become prisoners of the victorious Soviets, abandoned by the vanquished Japanese government. Fukawa's soldier father was marched across the border to spend years in Siberian labor camps, like the hundreds of thousands of other Japanese in occupied Manchukuo. Unlike many, Fukawa's father survived and was repatriated to Japan two years later.

Hirokazu Fukawa's A Thought at the Edge of the Continent at Real Art Ways is a multimedia sculptural exhibition inspired by Fukawa's quest to confront his father's experience as a soldier and detainee. While he had picked up bits and pieces of his father's story as a child, Fukawa decided four years ago to investigate it in depth as the basis for an art project. Although his father is still alive, he suffers from Alzheimer's. Fukawa had to supplement the unreliable information he gleaned from his father's fading memories with facts from a one-page debriefing document Fukawa's father had written for the Japanese government on his 1947 return. Hoping to more fully understand his father's experience, Fukawa made two research trips, to Japan and Northeastern China in 2007 and to Siberia in 2008.

Memories are multi-layered. They are discrete and inter-connected. They are also ephemeral and subject to contestation and dispute. In A Thought at the Edge of the Continent, Fukawa interprets his father's story through separate but related elements in different media. The most literal attempts to tell his story are a three-channel video installation and the three "Starvation" collages.

The predominant element is "Blizzard," a striking installation of some three dozen fluorescent lights in the main gallery. Braced by solid, unpainted wooden boards, the lights are diagonal lines of force. The viewer can (carefully) walk into and through this installation, which evokes a fearsome Siberian snowstorm experienced by Fukawa's father. Its design was influenced by the lines and sensibilities of the avant-garde Soviet Constructivist art movement.

The other large sculpture in the main room is "The Third International," an homage to Constructivist artist Vladimir Tatlin's "Monument to the Third International." Tatlin, as a tribute to the Bolshevik Revolution, had created his model for a planned headquarters of the Comintern, or Communist Third international; the tower was never actually built. Fukawa's sculpture is similar in design but the effect is not triumphal. The unpainted wood boards of "Blizzard" are reprised here, bracing a spiral staircase. The boards and light fixtures of "Blizzard" have an illusory randomness characteristic of the trajectory of falling snow. But the boards in "The Third International" drive up toward a single focus, the platform where the dictatorial leader will stand. Whether it is Stalin or the leaders of Imperial Japan, the viewer's gaze is directed up, up toward those who direct others, up toward those who set remorseless historical forces in motion.

Along with the large sculptural works, there are three smaller plaster creations positioned in the gallery. In contrast to the angular and geometric orientation of "Blizzard" and "The Third International," these works are more organic and natural in shape. Fukawa sees them as "tumors" or "cancers." They are also a source of sound. The form closest to the Tatlin homage plays five songs: "The Internationale" (the anthem of the Communist movement), anthems of the Communist and Nationalist Chinese parties, a Manchukuo occupation song and a song popular in postwar Japan among people waiting for their relatives to return from internment. A second "cancer" recapitulates the soundtrack of the video and the third plays abstract music. There is a layering of sounds. They compete but also complement each other.

The abstract music is derived from "Marching," a map Fukawa drew in pencil of his father's forced march to the several labor camps in which he was held. The line drawing was interpreted as a musical score in the GarageBand computer program.

The three "Starvation" collages deal with the overwhelming hunger the captured Japanese experienced in the prison camps. Over scans of 12th century Buddhist scrolls depicting starvation hells, Fukawa made pencil drawings of his father and some of his soldier colleagues, based on an old photo. Layered over each are dried examples of the wild plants on which the prisoners subsisted: ferns, onion grasses, leaves.

The three-panel video montages footage that Fukawa shot in China, Manchuria and Siberia with video of his father. The soundtrack layers impressions of the ungraspable nature of his quest with details of his father's experience within the broader historical context of the time. One can sense the frustration in Fukawa's efforts. He travels long distances to try and get a sense of the past. But he finds himself in places stubbornly rooted in the present.

There is no fully understanding the past. There is no reliving the past, especially not the past of someone else's jumbled memories. History is often a big story told through the prism of ideology. It is contested. What happened? What was it like to experience the occupation, the war, the imprisonment? Fukawa, in narration over the video installation, found that even in traveling to the locations where his father had fought and been detained, he could not feel his father's experience:

Instead I felt like a void standing in front of a void. Whenever I visited my father's past, whether physical traces remained or not, I felt that I myself was the void, that I was alienated from everything there--out of time and place, floating through lost memories that weren't my own.
These memories were no longer even his father's. Speaking with me in the main gallery at Real Art Ways, Fukawa tells me that when he asked his father where he had been disarmed by the Soviets, his father gave him a place name. Fukawa researched that location for a year before finding out through the official document that in fact his father had been disarmed at another location 150 miles away.

Most of the elements of A Thought at the Edge of the Continent can stand on their own. "Blizzard" is a stunning installation whether one is aware of its back story or not. Taken together, they constitute a moving meditation on political and personal history and the precious yet precarious nature of memory.

"This is my father's story, even though my father couldn't remember. I had to rebuild or reconstitute his memory. Maybe it's not right from his point of view," Fukawa says. "This is my construction/deconstruction of his memory. I tried to fill the gap between his memory and himself and between me and him."

In exploring his father's story, Fukawa touches on the ways the past intrudes into the present. And the ways it remains lost in the past.

Hirokazu Fukawa will give an artist talk in the gallery this Thursday, Mar. 5, at 6 p.m.

.: Comment here

Jeff Jones, former Weather Underground member, led a discussion after a screening of the doc The Weather Underground on Sunday, February 8. Jeff Jones is now a media expert, writer and campaign strategist in Albany, NY, and a regular contributor at The Green Blog.

Jeff wanted us to pass along some information on the SF 8, eight incarcarated former black community activists. He is helping efforts to get two of the members transported to NY so that they can begin parole procedures.
Here's an excerpt:

"Black History Month is a time to not only celebrate, educate and embrace Afrikan contributions, but a time to continue upholding the legacy of our unsung Afrikan heroes, many of whom sacrificed a great deal in the times of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements.

Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Kwame Ture and Huey P. Newton were all incarcerated for political reasons.

Many of the men and women who stood beside the civil rights and black liberation heroes of yesterday are still incarcerated today.

Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell (of the San Francisco 8) are two of many who sacrificed so much during the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements.

Both have been held captive since the early 1970ís. Jalil and Herman are being denied of their right of parole hearings because neither the California nor New York Governor will act on their request to be transferred to NY in order to work on their parole hearings.

ìPhone for Parole! every Monday during Black History Month

Let us commemorate Black History Month by simply calling or faxing for the immediate transporting of Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell for parole hearings."

To learn more, visit freetheSF8.org
more information on how to help.

.: Free the SF8
.: Jeff Jones Strategies

It may not seem that much of a shift to come in out of a cold and particularly snowy New England winter and step into a Siberian-inspired blindness of white called "Blizzard."

But that mesmerizing whiteness is the centerpiece of Hirokazu Fukawa's new exhibit opening Saturday at Real Art Ways. Sixty fluorescent lights mounted on 16-foot two-by-fours angled from the ceiling create a blinding field of light that both attracts and distracts viewers. I hit my head on one.

But there may be hazards inherent in Fukawa's work, "A Thought at the Edge of the Continent: Manchuria to Siberia 1942-1947." The artist had a bandaged right hand Wednesday from an installation injury.

The exhibit traces Fukawa's attempt to discover the World War II tales of his father in Japan, who was trained in his final days, Fukawa says, to hold land mines and jump into any approaching Russian tanks. "He was trained to be a suicide bomber," Fukawa says. No such tanks went by as the father waited, and then the war ended, so he survived — only to become a POW in a Siberian work camp.

Like many U.S. veterans of World War II, Fukawa's father was hesitant to discuss details of those days. And now, at 85, his memory has been affected by Alzheimer's disease.

But working from a single document written in his father's hand, Fukawa, a sculpture professor at the University of Hartford, found a way to trace his father's steps and represent the history not only with "Blizzard" but with an adjoining sculpture of wood bolstering a steel spiral staircase that speaks to the rickety heights of imperial power and is called "The Third International."

A video of the journey and interviews with his father are in one room of the gallery. There also are drawings of the only existing image of his father from his days in Manchuria, along with images from old scrolls depicting starvation and the kind of plants on which he and the 1,000 other soldiers in his division lived.

The most important work, Fukawa says, was a framed drawing of the craggy line formed by his father's division as it was forced to march for hundreds of miles; Fukawa had the line translated into musical tones that emanate from a trio of white, organic forms in the gallery.

Retracing his father's steps and reacting to it visually has made this one of the most personal installations from an artist whose work has been exhibited in Berlin, Kyoto and Chicago.

"A Thought at the Edge of the Continent" opens Saturday at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St. in Hartford, with a reception at 4 p.m. Admission to the opening is free, after which there will be a $3 suggested donation through the run of the exhibit to March 22.

An artist talk is scheduled for March 5 at 6 p.m.

.: Original article at courant.com

Colin McEnroe reviewed John Kelly: Paved Paradise Redux on his blog, "To Wit." We encourange you to participate in the discussion here, or click the link below.

"First, this is a naked attempt to help Real Art Ways sell tickets to its 3 p.m. show today by Joni-Mitchell-inhabiting performance artist John Kelly. RAW leader Will Wilkins asked for help from the stage last night. The house was packed for that show. Not so today, I guess.

Second, this is an opportunity to consider Kelly's show, which insists on its own status as art, as opposed to impersonation. As either, it's pretty interesting. I struggled last night with my own reactions to it. I think I wanted a little more insight into Mitchell, but the piece isn't one of those one-person-shows that makes a stab at life-review. It's more of a study in persona and transformation, in which the original and the copy mutually possess each other, more angelically than demonically.

Third, Kelly show makes few if any compromises about Mitchell's music. He's a serious student of her ENORMOUS oevre. He and his two-person band don't shy away from the challenges posed by Joni, who began to write in complex forms starting in 1974 and who, for that matter, adopted a completely idiosyncratic approach to guitar tunings, time signatures and key, pretty much from the get-go. Kelly's keyboardist Zeccha Esquibel so completely realizes the orchestrations of the show's pivotal song, "Down To You," that you momentarily forget he's doing it all himself. Starting with "Miles of Aisles," Mitchell worked with a series of jazz bassists -- often encouraging them to play an open counterpoint against her melodies -- and this imposes some special burdens on Kelly's bassist Blake Newman (although at no point does he really try to ape the work of Jaco Pastorius, the most talented human being ever to pick up an electric bass).

Kelly's singing is expert and fearless. He nails Mitchell's famous wide vibrato and many of her signature glissando. His delivery of "Shadows and Light" is so expressive that he ultimately sold me, in a way that Mitchell never did, on a song I was never sure I liked.

As all of the above suggests, Kelly's show is -- in addition to its probings into persona -- an invitation to visit with a musical artist most of us think we know, even if we've been listening pretty inattentively for two decades or more. I've pretty well decided I need to put together a cluster of at least ten more Mitchell songs on my not-exactly-Joniless iPod, with special attention to "The Hissing of Summer Lawns," the 1975 LP in which Mitchell gambled a streak of mainstream popularity on an eccentrically cerebral creative breakthrough. It was a huge moment -- more courageous and volcanic than Paul Simon,'s "Graceland" -- and comparatively under-celebrated."

.: Orignal Post

We note with sorrow the passing of our beloved Mayor Mike.  Mike Peters was a friend of Real Art Ways, and a friend of all who care about this city.  He had a keen and irrepressible wit, an indomitable spirit, and a generosity and kindness that touched all who knew him.