Talk Movies at Reel Fridays get-together at Real Art Ways
Hartford Courant, Sept 29, 2005, Susan Dunne

West Hartford poet Doug Anderson often has used his poetry to share his experiences in Vietnam. So the subject of "Winter Soldier," the film opening this weekend at Real Art Ways, is dear to his heart.

The film, a record of testimony by Vietnam veterans about atrocities committed by American troops, promises to be the chief topic of conversation at the first-ever Reel Fridays social event.

Reel Fridays, an attempt to get film fans from all over the area to gather, mingle and talk about movies, is planned from 5 p.m. to closing every Friday at the Hartford arts venue.

Anderson will attend, as will Nancy Baker, one of makers of the restored 1972 film, local Vietnam and Iraqi veterans and another contributor to the making of the film.

But conversation at Reel Fridays, which is modeled after RAW's Creative Cocktail Hours, won't be limited to discussion of RAW's film. It will embrace all film topics, and that's how RAW wants it.

"We hope Reel Fridays increases movie attendance at RAW, but the real goal is to increase movie attendance everywhere," said Robyn Whittington, coordinator of the events. "Movie attendance is down all over. We're competing with the film experience people can create in their own homes.

"Reel Fridays tries to create a social opportunity for people interested in and knowledgeable about movies, who like movies enough to go on the opening days and then want to talk about it."

Specialty drinks will be offered at the full bar, film magazines and books will be available and, for those whose film discussions aren't complete without the Internet Movie Database, RAW's WiFi access will make its debut Friday.

For details about Reel Fridays, call Whittington at 860-232-1006, Ext. 116, or visit www.realartways.org.

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Swap and Shop
Conceptual-Art `Shopdroppers' Challenge, Spoof Consumer Behavior
Hartford Courant, Sept 26, 2005, Korky Vann

There's a running joke in Lily Tomlin's one-woman show "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe" as Trudy, the narrator, tries - unsuccessfully - to explain to a group of visitors from outer space the difference between an everyday object and art.

"I show 'em this can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, `This is soup.'"

"Then I show 'em a picture of Andy Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, `This is art.'

"`This is soup. And this is art.'

"Then I shuffle the two behind my back."

"`Now what is this?'

[Frustrated by the aliens' inability to distinguish the difference.] "`No! This is soup, and this is art!""

A similar theme runs through artist Zoë Sheehan Saldaña's exhibit on display at Real Art Ways in Hartford. As I observe her work, I understand the aliens' confusion.

At the core of the exhibition is "shopdropping," a conceptual-art phenomenon involving the surreptitious introduction of merchandise - or art, depending on your point of view - to a store's stock. Described by some art critics as an intervention into the standard relationship between consumers and vendors, shopdropping (also called, "reverse shoplifting") has been labeled as a political statement, a spoof and a challenge to normal consumer behavior.

Examples:

Ryan Watkins-Hughes, a Brooklyn photographer, has replaced can labels with wrappers featuring his photographs and the products' original bar code, as well as his Web address, then put the goods back on supermarket shelves.

Artist Packard Jennings constructed a Benito Mussolini doll, packaged it, placed it on a Wal-Mart shelf, then tried to buy it. A spycam film of the attempted purchase was included in his exhibit of the process.

Other retail pranksters, such as the Ministry of Reshelving Project in the San Francisco area, have gone into bookstores and relocated copies of George Orwell's 1984 from "Science Fiction" to "Current Events" or "Politics." Moved books contain a bookmark reading: "This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving." A notecard reading: "All copies of 1984 have been relocated," is left in the empty spot the books originally occupied.

For her Real Art Ways exhibit, Saldaña, a Brooklyn, N.Y., resident who teaches graphic design at City University of New York's Baruch College, purchased six items from the Hartford Wal-Mart: khaki linen crop pants, $14.57; a green camp shirt, $9.97; a white camisole, $8.87; Levi stretch boot-cut jeans, $19.69; a yellow-and-orange canvas tote, $7.84; and a reversible floppy hat, $3.23. She took the items home and duplicated them by using similar fabrics, trim, beading, buttons, zippers and tucking.

After transferring the brand labels from the mass-produced items to her re-creations, the 32-year-old artist photographed the reproductions, attached the original price code tags, returned to Wal-Mart and placed the counterfeit garments back in stock. The exhibit at Real Art Ways displays the six original Wal-Mart items alongside life-size photographs of the handmade reproductions.

"Once a UPC is on a garment, for all intents and purposes it becomes a Wal-Mart item, regardless of its origin," says Saldaña. "I didn't go through a return process. I wasn't trying to get money back. I simply walked into the store, placed my items with similar stock on the floor and left."

Saldaña has never tried to buy back anything she has "shopdropped" or stuck around to see if other shoppers noticed or purchased the ersatz clothing.

As we talk, I realize that I am wearing a pink linen shirt (White Stag, on sale, $5.99) purchased at the same Hartford Wal-Mart, and wonder if my blouse could be an artist's original. Saldaña claims not to recognize my shirt but says it could be the work of another shopdropper - or not.

Does the possibility make my closet a gallery, I ask?

"I think the mystery of the whole transaction is more interesting than knowing. A conceptual piece comes alive in the talking and thinking about it," she says. "It introduces a whole range of questions about the shopping experience: `What are you looking for?' 'What will make you happy?' `What will disappoint you?' `Would you rather have the mass-produced item or the artist-created item?'"

Depends on how it fits and how it washes, I think.

Will K. Wilkins, Real Art Ways executive director, says Saldaña's work was chosen from a pool of 220 applicants for the gallery's Step Up series, which features six emerging artists.

"Her work was totally distinctive," says Wilkins. "It looks at and questions just what consumerism is. We're very much removed from the process of producing the goods we purchase. Zoë's project makes you wonder about those who make the items we buy every day."

Saldaña says that unknowing shoppers could have purchased her artist-created objects at Wal-Mart prices.

The works of art - comprising the Wal-Mart original and the accompanying photograph of the piece shopdropped back into the store's inventory - are priced from $1,500 to $2,450.

"It raises the questions of what is the original and what is the knockoff and which [location] is the museum and which is the store?" asks Saldaña. "That might be a little artsy BS, but it interests me."

Shopdroppers are not the first people to delve into the mysteries of "I shop, therefore I am." Retail anthropologist (yes, there really is such a thing) Paco Underhill explored the differences between the mundane act of "buying" and the deeper, more meaningful experience of "shopping" in his book "Why We Buy" (Touchstone; $15).

"Let's stipulate that shopping is more than the simple, dutiful acquisition of whatever is absolutely necessary to one's life. It's more than what we call the `grab and go' - you need cornflakes, you go to the cornflakes, you grab the cornflakes, you pay for the cornflakes and have a nice day," writes Underhill. "The kind of activity I mean involves experiencing that portion of the world that has been deemed for sale, using our senses - sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing - as the basis for choosing this or rejecting that."

Saldaña admits that some consumers - and retailers - might find the process confusing at best and annoying at worst.

"Some people think the whole concept is horrible, and others say they wish they had bought one of my items," says Saldaña. "What art is depends on the audience viewing it."

Like Trudy said, "Soup or art?"

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Shopgifting
NY Times, Sept 25, 2005, Benjamin Genocchio

Zoë Sheehan Saldaña routinely returns merchandise to stores. But that doesn't mean she collects a refund.

Ms. Sheehan Saldaña, a West Village artist and Baruch College art professor, is a shop-dropper. Shop-dropping, also known as "reverse shoplifting," involves the addition of hand-made imitations of generic merchandise to a store's stock. It is a nascent artistic phenomenon with a nationwide network of devotees.

"The first few times I did a drop, I was pretty nervous, and afraid of getting caught," Ms. Sheehan Saldaña said. "But now it's like a breeze. My fear was irrational, I realized, because store security is focused on stopping people taking stuff out."

An exhibition of her work, at Real Art Ways in Hartford through Oct. 16, (realartways.com) displays two complete outfits (shirt, pants and an accessory) bought from a Wal-Mart in Hartford over the summer, alongside life-size photographs of the almost identical reproductions of each piece she made by hand. After carefully attaching the original labels and price tags to the new pieces, she "returned" them to the correct racks.

"I'm interested in projects where art and everyday life intersect," Ms. Sheehan Saldaña, 32, explains, "in particular moments and experiences where you can't really tell one from the other." After finishing a project, she said, she generally does not keep track of the reproduced merchandise. "But I did look one time, you know," she said, "when I went back to a store to drop something else off, and the other items were all gone."

And what does Wal-Mart think about all this? The manager of the Hartford store where Ms. Sheehan Saldaña bought the items said he was not authorized to make public comment, referring inquiries to corporate headquarters in Little Rock, Ark. Jacquie Young, Wal-Mart's spokeswoman for the arts, was unavailable for comment.

Safety concerns have been raised about shop-dropping food or toys, but Ms. Sheehan Saldaña said she did not see anything illegal about what she was doing. "To my knowledge I don't think there are any regulatory or consumer protection issues being violated here because I only reproduce clothing," she said. "There is no danger to the consumer involved."

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Trumpeter finds life and art coming together in his adopted hometown
Wethersfield LIFE, Sept 5, 2005, Doug Maine

“It’s almost a cliché: there’s no separation between your work and your life,” said Stephen Haynes, a trumpeter, composer, arts advocate, administrator and educator who lives on Garden Street. Mr. Haynes, 50, has performed with some of the most lionized artists in experimental improvised music in the United States and Europe, but he is most satisfied nowadays by the sense that Greater Hartford is where he’s supposed to be.

After a year as composer in residence at Hartford’s Real Art Ways, during which he gave concerts, held open rehearsals and led master classes, Mr. Haynes sees himself and his music more connected to where he lives. Locally, he spent some time during his residency working with students at the Silas Deane Middle School. “I came in for what was supposed to be a master class with the brass players.” Instead, he and the students ended up writing music together. The music wasn’t written down, and he taught it to the students orally, which is how his mentor, trumpeter Bill Dixon, worked.

Mr. Haynes has also been to meetings with officials from Wethersfield, Newington and Rocky Hill to discuss the idea of a community arts center for the towns south of the city, something like the Farmington Valley Arts Center. He sees it being a place where people of all ages could study the arts. “It would serve the immediate three-town area, but it also brings in people from throughout the area,” he said. Not only would it serve everyone’s need for art, “it’s also about creating work for artists of a certain quality.”

Town Manager “Bonnie Therrien has been fantastic. . . She put us in touch with all the town people,” Mr. Haynes said.

“Separate from my own work, I am concerned with the overall health of the community of which I’m part. . . There needs to be more stuff going on and it needs to make sense,” he said.

Even so, by the time he reaches his mid-50s, Mr. Haynes said he would love to be working in the kind of arts center he envisions, which would be centered around arts education and also open to adult artists, who could be trained to teach and to put together portfolios of their work. Mr. Haynes currently works full-time as a site supervisor for Center City Churches’ Center for Youth & Family Resource Center at María Sánchez School in Hartford. He oversees the operation of a family resources center and an after-school tutoring and arts education program, supervises between five and 11 employees, develops the annual operating budget and writes grants. He is grateful that his employer is understanding and flexible when performances require that he be out of town.

Becoming better known at home
Though the residency has concluded, Mr. Haynes will give two upcoming concerts at Real Art Ways - with his group Bugaboo on Sept. 16 and with another group, Salt, on Sept. 17. These are just two of the ensembles that he leads. “Why so many groups? Because any one of these groups has a limited number of times in a year they can work,” he said.

From a business perspective, performances by each of the groups can fill his calendar. And creatively, he said each offers a distinct sound environment or context in which to work as a soloist and composer. The residency was made possible by a “Creation of New Work Initiative” grant from the West Hartford-based Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation. In preparing his application he worked with Real Art Ways Director Will K. Wilkins. In addition to Mr. Haynes receiving the commission from the foundation, Real Art Ways assumed the costs of promotion and paying other musicians. “There was more than an equal match to that from Real Art Ways,” he said. As a kind of floating staff member at the alternative arts organization, Mr. Haynes said that some of his conversations with Mr. Wilkins and others “had less to do with getting me another gig,” and more to do with also getting other local and regional artists opportunities to present their work.

Mr. Wilkins said the residency had enabled Mr. Haynes to combine his passion for various kinds of music with his commitment to community. “Stephen’s somebody who I respect a lot musically. He is a very, very talented musician,” he said. “In addition to that he’s someone who has quietly been working in Hartford with kids and with other musicians on the local scene and he’s really made an impact. He doesn’t exist in a vacuum. “The other thing I’ve seen coming about as a result of this is him playing around a lot more in town. Hartford has a great musical history. . . and a lot of people don’t realize that,” Mr. Wilkins said. “There’s a real strength of musicians who are coming out of here, and Stephen’s an example of that in a very noncommercial way.”

For Mr. Haynes, the grant afforded a rare opportunity to develop more of a local audience. “This is the most work I’ve done in the area,” he said.

In the case of a non-commercial style of music such as jazz, money is seldom available to keep a band together over an extended period so that members have the opportunity to achieve a deep understanding of new pieces of music they are playing. “Regular, thorough rehearsal is difficult, sometimes even impossible,” he said. As part of preparing for concerts, Mr. Haynes held open rehearsals so that interested non-musicians could see how the music would develop.

Elizabeth Normen, executive director of the Roberts Foundation said she was pleased with Mr. Haynes’ residency and was especially impressed by the amount of collaborating he did with other artists.

“His residency was a whole series of concerts, both formal and informal,” including the rehearsals, she said. “It’s like the creative process revealed. You as an audience member could see it unfolding before your eyes.”

Mr. Haynes said several people became interested in that process and attended both the rehearsals and the concerts. It was different from New York, where people would come to a performance and never be seen again. “I can be in the grocery store picking up a pork roast and have people come up to me with questions about my music,” Mr. Haynes said.

Through such “informed interactions with the audience,” he sees people becoming literate in his musical language and offering cogent comments, even though they may not have musical training.

“It’s been nice to have people you live with year round come and see your work. . . nice to contribute to the cultural life of the community you call home,” he said. He hopes to make recordings of the concerts available. Mr. Haynes’ last recording, with his group Paradigm Shift, was recorded 10 years ago outdoors at Real Art Ways.

Tackling a bugaboo
The residency put Mr. Haynes in a challenging new musical role, as the center of attention.

“I spent most of my life playing other people’s music as a sideman,” he said. “I’ve avoided being in a group where I was the primary soloist. . . You’ve got to stand and deliver. It’s not necessarily easy, and not having done that for a lot of my life it was a little scary.”

Mr. Haynes said that the name of one of his groups, Bugaboo, came to him while he was watching his stepson playing basketball at the middle school, where he saw the word on somebody’s clothing. It means “having an obsessive fear of doing,” he noted.

In describing his music, Mr. Haynes prefers not to use the term jazz. “The people I came up with have never used the word, except as a commercial convenience,” he said, noting that Duke Ellington called it “black music,” decades before the rise of the Black Nationalist movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

In an era when many people never leave home for entertainment, Mr. Haynes recognizes that his experimental approach doesn’t fit easily into the usual categories of music, so there aren’t many places he can perform. And he prefers a concert setting to nightclubs.

Insofar as his creative aims, Mr. Haynes said, “there’s a thing if you’re a leader in the music. . . a phrase from Zen Buddhism called ‘beginner’s mind.’”

It’s a way of understanding how someone like Mr. Ellington would keep himself and the musicians in his band fresh as they constantly toured, playing night after night, year after year.

“He would completely rearrange (a) piece from night to night. . . to keep the artists from falling asleep, from getting complacent,” he said. “In that there’s an element of faith because in an ensemble you’re working with a group of improvisers,” so there is the element of unpredictability. But just as Mr. Haynes trusts that his fellow musicians will know what to do when the time comes, they have high regard for him.

Mario Pavone, a Connecticut native, bassist and critically lauded bandleader and composer who performs with Mr. Haynes, said he admires his work, “and his ethic about the music and the players he’s stayed involved with.” “I’ve known him for probably 25 years. Really, we met each other through what I consider one of Stephen’s major influences, Bill Dixon,” Mr. Pavone said. “He’s really developed a language influenced by Bill, but he’s taken it to his own place. . . He uses sound and silence to very effective ends.”

Taking up trumpet and teaching
Mr. Haynes was born in Southern California, where his father taught high school biology and American history. Later, the family moved to Boulder, Colo. “Unlike most kids, I didn1t have a fantasy about one instrument I wanted to play,” he said.

So, one day in 1963, when he was 8, his father took him over to the University of Colorado’s music school where he could try out the various instruments. The first time he picked up a trumpet he was hooked. By 10, he had the 14th seat in a college band. At his elementary school, he was in the band and orchestra and sang soprano in a barbershop quartet.

“They didn’t have any more money than they have now - what they had was a commitment to musical education,” he said. Band instructors went from school to school and there was a general music teacher who’d go from one class to the next with a cart loaded with instruments and a record player. After finishing high school in Appleton, Wis., Mr. Haynes spent a year at the Rhode Island School of Design. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Bennington College, where his mentor, Mr. Dixon, was on the faculty.

“Bill was a model of a person who was an organizer,” having put together the “October Revolution in Jazz,” a series of 1964 concerts in New York that were considered a signal event in the emergence of so-called “free jazz.” Mr. Dixon has often accompanied dancers, worked with a lot of other composers and is also a visual artist. “The people I studied with were always doing more than one thing,” Mr. Haynes said.

Another inspiration is his wife, Brigid Kennedy, who is a sculptor and educator. “My constant inspiration is my family, particularly my wife, who’s an amazing artist. . . who brought me here to Wethersfield,” Mr. Haynes said. “To be in a partnership with another artist is very inspiring.” Earlier in life, Mr. Haynes taught visual arts at P.S. 399 in Brooklyn from 1987 to 1993. At the same time he was performing in a variety of musical groups and produced a music series at the New Music Café in New York. He taught visual arts and music and also accompanied dance performances at the Harlem School of the Arts in the early 1990s. One of the projects he led at the school involved the publication of Langston Hughes’ “The Sweet and Sour Animal Book,” a previously unpublished early work by the great poet of the Harlem Renaissance. The writing was accompanied by illustrations created by the students at the school and the book included photographs of every child whose work was used.

By that time he was commuting from the Hartford area down to New York City.

He taught here, in the visual arts program at the Artists Collective in Hartford, and in 1996 became the Center for Youth’s cultural coordinator and later its interim program director, implementing a new family resource center at the city’s Betances School.

Mr. Haynes senses a growing artistic momentum in the Hartford area. “I’m also seeing more and more younger musicians, some of whom we’ve known really as children going away to college and coming back and doing very creative work,” he said.

But at the same time, he thinks efforts to bring people into Downtown Hartford need more music and other arts. “I think when you talk about the developing dynamic in Hartford, which is exciting in many ways, I don’t see enough of a cultural component of that.”

Though the Greater Hartford Arts Council does good things, there1s nothing here comparable to Celebrate Brooklyn in New York, which brings people throughout the summer to Prospect Park. “There’s never a week that’s dark all summer long,” he said.

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It Was Jam-A-Lot
Hartford Courant, Aug 22, 2005, Pat Seremet

It Was Jam-A-Lot

In A Parking Lot

That People Like A Lot

It was as though Hartford was kissing outdoor summer nights goodbye.

Real Art Ways has managed to hold its third-Thursday-of-the-month Creative Cocktail Hours on the smoothest, coolest nights in all this stinking-hot summer. Praise the Lord for the weather, and the night had a bella luna shining between the treetops to boot.

The homegrown Hartford Latin-jazz band Insight was a major attraction this time around, playing outside on the parking-lot asphalt for a crowd of almost 400.

" It's a rare treat - it's Hartford's own that's internationally known," said Gil Martinez, president of the Hispanic Professional Network. "This is a magical event."

Joe Lander of West Hartford, a financial adviser for the Bank of America, got himself a drink, pulled up a chaise lounge on the grass, fetched a small hand-engraved South American drum from his trunk, lit up an Avo cigar and just grooved.

Richie Barshay, drummer with the group, used to live on Lander's block, he said, and they would "jam in Richie's backyard." Barshay is on the road with Herbie Hancock now, so there was a different drummer with the band this night.

Lander liked his solo spot, explaining, "I'm talking to people all day long."
But talking is what many are there for.

" I love meeting people," said Natasha Vybornova, wearing a striking black-and-white polka-dotted dress.

A native of Moscow who came here in 1991, she works for the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society in Hartford in membership and publicity. The society just last week introduced its new executive director, Shery Hack, who came from Canterbury Shaker Village in New Hampshire.

Vybornova was at the party with Paul Chase of Hartford. They had just come from the Hartford Club and found downtown "absolutely dead."

" It was so dead, you want to hang yourself," she said. "But here, there's energy that [the rest of ] Hartford lacks. I don't know why."

They had been in Providence the weekend before for its water show, where there was Italian music and gondolier-paddled boats.

" Buddy Cianci," Chase said, referring to its flamboyant and now-imprisoned former mayor. "He made that city."

The outdoor Latin jazz scene pleased Anthony Berry, associate director of admissions at Trinity College, who came with colleague Shayla Titley, assistant director of admissions.

" We love the environment; we love the music; we love the outside," Berry said. "I love reconnecting with people I haven't seen since high school or college."

" We have wonderful office dynamics, but it's nice to talk about work or not talk about work in a relaxed environment," Titley said.And what have we here - a report of another Drew Carey sighting on Tuesday night.

Besides visiting the Half Door pub and Vaughan's Public House in Hartford, comedian Carey (who was here for the World Cup soccer qualifying game Wednesday) also hit Harry's Pizza in West Hartford, according to Abena Wanza.

Wanza runs the Visitors Center at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, and a co-worker who also works at Harry's had seen him there. Wanza had to content herself with talking with Kevin Glennon of Manchester, whom she declared to be a Carey look-alike.

Wanza said she loves that Real Art Ways has "all kinds of people from everywhere," and she also enjoys their featured drinks - this night it was an orange creamsicle.

Kashif Quraishi, a product engineer at ING, is so high on Hartford, he started his own website (YourHartford.com) in January to let people know what's going on in the city.

" I personally know 70 people who left Hartford because they said there's nothing to do here," he said. "I think what's wrong with Hartford is that the wrong people are promoting it. It's the same people as it had in the '70s. We want to bring a more metro lifestyle into Hartford."
Quraishi is clearly a fan of Real Art Ways.

" It's fabulous listening to great music and being around the friendliest people in Hartford," he said.
And there was dancing - like Doreen Stern, a researcher at University of Connecticut in Storrs, cutting up some parking-lot grit with Viviane Grady, a senior process director at St. Paul Travelers Cos. Grady was recently notified by Hartford Business Journal that she was named to its "Forty Under 40" list of Hartford's most accomplished people.

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Into the Woods
Photographer Sarah Anne Johnson captures life among the tree-planters of Manitoba, in a group show at Real Art Ways

Hartford Advocate, Aug 18, 2005, A. J. Loftin

Don't you just hate the kind of art that tries to make a point? And don't you just hate the kind that doesn't? In the lose-lose arena of contemporary art, it's nice to come across a body of work that allows the viewer to get the big idea.

Stand in the center room of the tranquil gallery space at Real Art Ways and consider the images in Sarah Anne Johnson's show.

Don't read the artist's statement (can't we pass a federal law banning those?) or look at her bio. Just look.

And soon you're likely to have a whole bunch of insights that will make you feel very smart and important. Which may explain why the Guggenheim museum has expressed interest in the show and will be hauling it off to New York after it comes down on Sept. 11.

Johnson, 28, is one of those exceptional Canadians who, having fled a nation of dolts in order to make her name in New York, makes us suspect that all Canadians must be smarter, or at least better educated, than we are. Fresh out of Yale's MFA photography program in 2004, Johnson was picked up by Julie Saul's gallery in Chelsea; her debut show, Tree Planting , opened this past winter to favorable reviews in the New York Times and the Village Voice. This same group of 60 unframed, untitled photographs has now been reassembled at Real Art Ways.

Tree Planting is a scrapbook of sorts, a record of the three summers Johnson worked with a team of young Canadians reforesting an area of Northern Manitoba. Reforesting looks to be grimy, buggy, fingernail-despoiling work, yet these trips to the wasteland are apparently a rite of passage for middle-class Canadian youth. They're also a way to make some money -- at 10 cents per tree, Johnson made upwards of $250 a day. And at the end of the work day, puppy love, beer and skinny-dipping are youth's reward, captured in all their gorgeousness by Johnson's photos.
Now here's the twist: Only half the photographs show "real life." The other half are photographs of staged scenes, of sets and clay people -- Johnson calls them "dolls" -- created by the artist in her studio in Winnipeg. Of course, dolls and sets are nothing new -- one thinks of Laurie Simmons' 1950s-era housewife dolls.

But what's nice about Johnson's dolls is that they're not art-world portentous. They're workmanlike without being lifelike. They're a bit clumsy without being calculatedly primitive. They're nice -- not even remotely scary. They bear the same relationship to the Canadian wilderness as do Johnson's blood-and-flesh team members: On the one hand, they fit right in; on the other hand, they look completely out of place.

Look at the sculpted girl lying on the ground with sunlight filtering through the trees: Despite the thick brown coils of clay hair in the foreground, this girl's mood of intense well-being is as palpably real as any memory of first love. Look at the mountaintop, so patently handmade against a background of real mountains, yet it could be real, because nature is always playing tricks on us, making us think the earth is flat and the stones have faces in the moonlight. Like the places in Walter Wick's I Spy books for children, Johnson's wilderness tableaux possess a spirit of enchantment that recalls our childhood experience of nature.

Then go back to the "real" people in Johnson's photographs, and notice that the more real they are, the less real they seem. The beautiful blonde girl gazing coolly into the camera without a trace of self-consciousness: Isn't she more like an idea of beauty than a real girl? Venus, rising from a clamshell of mosquito swaddling and parka hood? Other "real" photos, showing only details, like the two silver studs on the back of one girl's neck, are like illustrations you might see in an anthropology text on some primitive tribe. Then, too, sometimes it's the clay figures who carry symbolic freight. The young man kneeling in the dirt beside his shovel, his expression something between pain and ecstasy, would fit right in to one of those medieval paintings of hermit saints kneeling at the entrance to their caves.

The sole photograph on the facing wall, by the entrance to Johnson's show, is an amusing counterpart to the standard introductory photo you'd see in a history museum exhibition -- the team of archeologists, the infantry unit, the African tribe -- only in this case the group is all clay figures, arranged in rows on a stack of fake logs. This witty reversal has the added virtue of making each individual in the photo interesting, as opposed to real group shots where individuals blend together. And it's funny that one of the clay figures "blinked" at the moment the photographer's lens closed. (In an unfortunate interview, Johnson said the group did actually pose for a photo, and that her boyfriend was the one who mooned for the camera. This is a clear case of too much information.)

Like the young people around them, Johnson's clay people are captured in a moment in time, in the abandon and improvisation of youth, about to take part in the inevitable transformation from innocence to experience, from youth to age, from clay to dust, from ashes ... to reforestation. So that's why the artist insisted on curving walls in the gallery, to emphasize the life cycle. Man, I'm smart.

By the way, Johnson's teachers at Yale reportedly told her not to show real people with clay people. Memo to future artists: If you must go to art school, at least don't listen to your professors.

If Johnson's work needs no introduction, Peter Gregorio's paintings can do with a bit of homework. Gregorio's large-scale canvases, inspired by the artist's visits to Nepal and India, look as if he painted squares of color into the background, and so Grace Glueck assumed in her New York Times review of July 29: "Mr. Gregorio has added a colored rectangle of paint ... that floats in the middle ... Was the device intended to make a connection with the modern world? If so, it's superfluous."

No, no, no. Read the press kit! What's interesting about Gregorio's approach is that he began by painting a modernist color field canvas. Then he added the minarets and temples of Nepal and India, the intricate patterns of devotional architecture. So you might say that the color field painting represents the Western "I" traveling to ancient, "non-I" civilizations.

There's a third show at Real Art Ways, of work by Connecticut artist Eva Lee, but this reviewer ran out of time and brain power, which is no reflection on the artist.

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The Pixies Picked Real Art Ways for a Private Screening
Hartford Courant, Aug 08, 2005, Pat Seremet

The Pixies rocked and rolled into Hartford last week without making a peep.

And only now have Will K. Wilkins, director of Real Art Ways in Hartford, and his wife, Catherine Blinder, been released from their oath of silence.

Blinder explains how this alternative rock group - which formed in 1986, disbanded in 1993 and reunited last year - found its way to the Real Art Ways cinema last Monday night.

Three weeks ago, she got a call from "a mysterious guy from a film company," then from "a mysterious guy from a recording studio," inquiring about using the movie theater to screen a feature-length film. But because it was about "a very famous band," and those band members would be at the screening, it had to be kept secret so they wouldn't be bothered by fans.

Blinder was thinking Rolling Stones.

It was, in fact, the Pixies.
Blinder drew a blank on the name, but Wilkins instantly recognized it, and others familiar with the band's music "went nuts," Blinder said, when they heard - after the secrecy ban was lifted of course.

"It was a real cult band," she said.

The film the band was screening is a documentary of the Pixies' reunion tour. They chose to screen it in Hartford because they have worked with Miles Mangino, who owns the Hartford studio Planet of Sound, ever since the band was first formed in Boston. They were in the city to work in his studio, and then Mangino led them to Real Art Ways.

The Manginos are not alone in their excitement about the group's getting back together.
The band's reunion tour has been "really incredible, with sell-out crowds everywhere," said Planet of Sound office manager Sharon Mangino, who is married to Miles.

"People had been waiting almost 13 years for this," she said.

Recently the band played New York City and Lollapalooza in Chicago, and on Saturday it headlined the Newport Folk Festival, where Miles was the band's lighting designer. It has an upcoming engagement in San Diego and in two weeks is heading to Europe.

The band members, who stayed locally at the Goodwin Hotel, have not made a record in 15 years, but inasmuch as they spent two days in Mangino's studio, Hartford could possibly be the birthplace of the Pixies' next record - just a thought that the studio wouldn't confirm.

As for the film, which has the working title "loudquietloud," Blinder, who was one of the 13 people in the theater, described it as "extraordinary."

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Art in Review
New York Times, 7/29/05, Grace Glueck

Peter Gregorio: 'Paintings'
Eva Lee: 'New Drawings and Digital Animations'
Kevin Van Aelst: 'Complex Confections'

Several shows are the rule at this multidisciplinary alternative space, founded in 1975, and presenting an extensive art exhibition program. Of its current four shows, one, photographs by Sarah Anne Johnson, appeared earlier this year at the Julie Saul Gallery in Manhattan. Among the remaining three, the freshest is "Complex Confections," a show by another up-and-coming photographer, Kevin Van Aelst, who uses scientific and mathematical theory to make witty rearrangements of everyday stuffs, like crackers, donuts and sweater lint.

In Mr. Van Aelst's photographs the magic of fractal geometry, chaos theory and such is manifest in the drops spilling out from a carton of milk that fall in a beautiful logarithmic spiral; lint stuck to a sweater that produces an accurate star chart of the New England summer skies; and a fried egg, sunnyside up, that reproduces its yoke in a set of smaller ones that progressively diminish to the size of buttons. This work is about "creating order where randomness is expected, defying natural probabilities," Mr. Van Aelst says. And he adds that his arrangements illustrate "timeless and lofty ideas," like the Golden Mean. But that doesn't quite account for the fun of them.

Eva Lee shows works on paper and "The Liminal Series," six short video animations. Her striking works on paper, biomorphic ovoid spaces shaped from deep black ground by thready white lines that pattern themselves into showy networks, suggest cellular and body structures, as well as the vast abstractions of the universe. In her video animations, swarms of white dots and dashes move constantly over a black ground, dissolving and rearranging themselves into complex patterns that suggest at once the awesome infinities and minutiae of the cosmos. Watching them can be hypnotic, but in the end they are too bound up with technical concepts to offer much visual nourishment.

Six big paintings by Peter Gregorio, based on his travels in Nepal and India, provide fragmentary glimpses of the complex architecture of these ancient civilizations, solid, heavily ornamented stonework that he shows in isolated elements, so that each painting becomes a sort of composite. As such, they have the rather interesting look of stage sets. Unfortunately, Mr. Gregorio has added a colored rectangle of paint to most of them that floats in the middle of the picture. Was the device intended to make a connection with the modern world? If so, it's superfluous.

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Artistry You Can Chew On
Minimalist Able to Show Cosmic Meaning in the Mundane
Hartford Courant, 7/29/05, Owen McNally

Kevin Van Aelst, a minimalist artist and photographer with a maximalist sense of humor, squeezes cosmic levels of meaning from edible objects - everything from Triscuits and Krispy Kreme doughnuts to chunks of Hershey chocolates and slices of Wonder Bread.

In a typical Van Aelst jest, the photographer showed up at his opening reception at Real Art Ways with a gooey baker's cake whose creamy frosting was imprinted with the text of his artist's statement.

Afterward, much of the cake and Van Aelst's words, sweetly illuminated in vegetable dye, were left over. The frosting described his thoughts on how he juxtaposes lofty, scientific concepts with such ordinary, daily objects as Velveeta and pumpernickel.

"No, I didn't have to eat my own words. My friends, who were at the reception, dug into the cake with their hands and finished it, frosting, words and all," Van Aelst says in his studio at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford.

The 25-year-old artist received his master of fine arts degree last May from the Hartford Art School. This fall he plans to return to the West Hartford campus to teach as an adjunct professor.
His conceptual art is rooted in his ability to show the connection between the ordinary and the extraordinary. He does this by arranging simple materials into shapes and patterns inspired by formulas and concepts found in science and mathematics, including fractal geometry, chaos theory, biology, chemistry and astronomy.

As seen through Van Aelst's wry eye, delicious frosting depicts dividing cells, and gummy worms become chromosomes, on a chart of the human genome.

In Van Aelst's imaginative world, lint that is stuck to a sweater forms an accurate star chart of the summer sky over New England, with thread outlining such familiar constellations as Cassiopeia.
In one of the eight works displayed at RAW, milk spills from a carton into a logarithmic spiral. Instead of a mess on the floor, you see a mathematically pristine pattern cascading timelessly through infinite space.

To create this spacey spilt-milk image, Van Aelst used a medicine dropper to apply milk drops onto a spiral pattern he had sketched on a black Plexiglas surface. The neutral surface gives his photographs a detached, scientific look, as if they were illustrations in a high school science textbook.

Van Aelst compares the aesthetic of his works to "a middle school science fair."
"It's kind of like a demystification of the art process, the idea that art is something esteemed and revered that only trained, studied people can do," he says.

"It's not an intentional goal, but it's important for me that people look at these pieces and say, `Anyone could have done that if they just thought of it first.' It all hinges on the idea and the punch line in the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the timeless. Humor is a key element," he says.
Van Aelst is an incorrigible visual punster who shows that even the most mundane object in daily life can have a surprising, even transcendent double meaning.

For example, the Oreo, the famous black-and-white cookie, is not just a cookie.
If you look at an Oreo in the Van Aelstian worldview, you see its shape and colors are the same as the yin yang symbol, emblematic of the harmonious interaction of opposites. Like the chocolate and white crème Oreo, the yin yang is a circle divided into light and dark segments.

So when you bite into a modern, mass-produced artifact like an Oreo, you're also biting on the ancient symbol of opposing forces in the universe.

Making the same sort of metaphoric leap, a common snack cracker has the same shape as the fundamental unit of a three-dimensional fractal. Van Aelst, an artful food fantasist with a witty scientific/artistic bent, creates a tower of fractal crackers.

Often these odd connections come to Van Aelst when he's pushing a shopping cart around supermarket aisles.

Lettuce, Jell-O or salami, for example, might inspire this vegetarian to think how these foods could be shaped into various three-dimensional figures and surfaces to evoke scientific notions or notations about solid geometric forms or universal mathematical principles.

After a photo session, whatever Van Aelst can't eat or share with colleagues goes into the garbage. For hints on how best to handle food for his photo shoots, he's even gotten tips from experts.

Some subjects, he discovered, are more difficult to use than others.
Lettuce, for example, discolors relatively quickly. And in a close-up shot, salami, after being hacked and shaped into a perverse polyhedron, looks quite disgusting, a kind of grisly poster portrait for vegetarianism.

Appropriately enough, the genesis for Van Aelst's theme of the interconnectedness of all things great and small started with bread, the staple of life, rife with economic, poetic and even sacramental associations.

With its nine sequential panels of bread sliced with a razor into progressively unfolding geometric patterns, Van Aelst's "The Golden Mean" sent him merrily on his hunt for more epiphany-like connections.

Last November, "The Golden Mean" was printed in The New York Times Magazine to illustrate a writer's thoughts on the multiple meanings of white bread - particularly the miraculously named Wonder Bread - in American culture.

The golden mean in the work's title, Van Aelst explains, refers to an ancient concept of symmetry in design. Rooted in geometric principles of balance and proportion in architecture, the venerable idea appears everywhere, he says, from the Parthenon to today's designs for cigarette packs and credit cards.

"Ancient Greeks thought the concept was sacred. When they discovered it, they slaughtered 1,000 oxen in awe of it," he says.

Because his pieces are so symbol-laden, Van Aelst has grown accustomed to hearing many surprising, even wildly inventive interpretations of their meaning, almost as if he had just cooked up a new Rorschach test.

But even he was taken aback a bit by one earnest gallery-goer who came up to him to comment on one of his fractal geometry photographs whose thematic building blocks were Velveeta and German pumpernickel flat bread.

"Oh, it works on so many levels," the viewer gushed. "What with the American Velveeta with the German flat bread ... it's a statement about pan-Atlantic politics!"
To which Van Aelst, soft-spoken and polite, replied, "Sure."

"For me the piece was just about fractals and Velveeta," he says. "But if someone sees more in any of my pieces, that's fine too."

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Ray Of Sunshine For Night Of Salsa
Hartford Courant, July 25, 2005, Pat Seremet

With the intense heat of last week, you'd think people would be either in the Hamptons or the hospital.

But the social stalwarts of Real ArtWays turned out in huge numbers Thursday to salsa and merengue to the music of Ray Gonzalez and Orqueta Tributo, who played under a white canopy in the parking lot.

There were women dancing with women, transgender women with women, men with women, and some dancing alone. There were guys in Hawaiian shirts, guys in Gap caps, cowboy hats and do-rags. One woman wore a purple wig, black corset and black leather laced boots. There were stiletto heels, and there were flipflops.

At Real Art Ways, anything goes, and that's the way they like it on this third-Thursday event called Creative Cocktail Hour.

If you wanted a break from the porch and parking-lot scene, inside the building there was what theatrical set designer Jeff Cowie described as "Republican-strength air conditioning."

"That's what we call it in Texas," he said.

Cowie, wearing a cowboy hat - hee haw - had just returned from Rangeley, Maine, where he visited his sister, brother-in-law and niece "and a whole lot of hippies."

"They have solar and wind power," Cowie said.

Jordi Herold came from Northampton, Mass., for the party and connected with friends Cowie and Jeff Hayes, an owner of the Elbow Room in West Hartford. Jordi's brother, Patrick Herold, is Cowie's agent.

Jordi is founder of the Iron Horse Music Hall, a music mecca in Northampton, and then became a booker of rock 'n' roll shows.

He has switched professions to moving houses, literally; one move closed down I-91 for hours.

"I traded one form of spectacle for another," he said.

Herold was married last month to Elizabeth Dunaway Smith, an extreme kayaker.

And behold, there was a first-time visitor to Real Art Ways, Tasjuaii Moss, 25, who moved to Hartford from Texas three years ago. She and her 30-something friend Peter Kihara were going to go to a wine-and-cheese reception at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, but Kihara, a diehard fan of Real Art Ways, urged her to check it out.

"It's a new eclectic scene," said Moss, a pharmaceutical-drug sales representative. "I love the art, and the crowd is very interesting."

Kihara, who works at Otis Elevator Co., said he moved to the area 11⁄2 years ago from New York.

"I came from a city dripping with culture, and I was driving around and liked the looks of this warehouse," he said. "When I walked in and saw it was an art gallery, I said `wow!'"

As for people saying that young singles have no place to go in Hartford, Kihara said: "That's a commonly held myth. It just takes some extra effort."

Jordan Polon, who manages the Welcome Center downtown, reels in her "young, professional" friends to come to city events.

Adam Kubota, communications coordinator for Real Art Ways, makes sure its events make Polon's list. He was making the rounds snapping pictures and then headed for Sully's in Hartford, where he was to play bass with the Kate Dunphy Band.

Last week, his band played the Bitter End in its New York debut.

Ffiona McDonough, a Hartford lawyer, was also paying her first visit to the arts center because her friends were going.

"It's awesome," she said. "I'll come here again. It's different from a lot of other places in Hartford, having such a diverse crowd."

Besides the music and dancing, there was an art exhibit by University of Hartford graduate Kevin Van Aelst, of what he describes as "a combination of complex, important ideas with banal and mundane subject matter."

Like, say, a picture of chocolate doughnuts with sprinkles, which was one of the works on display.

You never know how well gooey doughnuts go with a creative cocktail until you've tried it.

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"Clay For The Cause" Gets Summer Parkart Sizzling

We are honored to announce that the Student Arts Collective of Manchester Community College has raised $1,300 for our Parkart Summer Program through sales of student made ceramics at their "Clay for the Cause" event.

Real Art Ways would like to thank Deanna Grady who is President of the Collective and all students who contributed their artwork, and Susan Classen-Sullivan. Thank you all!

Party Cost A Lot Of Green, But
Had Lettuce And Lots Of Fancy Dressing
Hartford Courant, April 12, 2005, Pat Seremet

Has Real Art Ways turned into Real Affluent Ways? The ticket price for The Real pARTy Saturday night was heftier than for any other event held at Hartford's happening alternative arts gathering place. It was $250 per couple - yes, we didn't forget a decimal point.

Hartford's poor bohemian artists will have to turn to a generic coffee blend instead of Starbucks and order from the well instead of asking for Grey Goose, but it was so worth the sacrifice. While its regular Creative Cocktail parties cost only a few bucks, Real Art Ways decided it was time to make some serious ca-ching and throw a grown-up event with grown-up prices.

There were 450 people, and while there were boas and tuxedos and guests toting around aquamarine- colored drinks, Real Art Ways can't really put on the dog in an offensive way. There was the Boom-Boom room for dancing. For auctioneers, hope no one expected some stiff from Sotheby because there was former Hartford Mayor Mike Peters paired with Hedda Lettuce, dressed in a sparkling green vampish gown that even lettuce boycotter Cesar Chavez would have embraced. This Lettuce was a Green Goddess. And as an unusual party twist, every couple went home with an original work of art adding an element of drama at the end of the party as people scrambled for their prize.

"It's all about creativity and new ideas," said Real Art Ways executive director Will K. Wilkins, both thrilled and relieved at the party's success. "It's a manifestation about how people feel about Real Art Ways."

As for his choice of co-auctioneers, he said: "Mayor Mike is one of the funniest guys I know, and Hedda's a statuesque, sassy broad."

Actually, Ms. Lettuce is a premiere drag-comedian, famous in New York circles, and brought the house down when she reached into her beehive hairdo, dug out a can of hairspray and proceeded to spray her hair, then Peters' hair and whatever else was within the reach of her aerosol weapon.
One of the live-auction big ticket items was a tetra chair (based on a pair of tetra-hedra, which are four-sided triangular polygons) created by Hartford inventor Howard Fromson. The chair is made of stainless steel and doubles as a piece of sculpture.

"Would this look good in my backyard or what?" said Michele Parrotta of Hartford who appeared to be a little in shock for getting the high bid of $3,600.

It turned out to be a coming-out party for downtown real estate developer Phil Schonberger, who had shaved off his voluminous gray beard that he had for 33 years. He was in Belize for three nights looking at real estate, and it just got too hot. It was a shocker and made him look at least 10 years younger.

"In 30 years, I've never seen his face," said friend Peter Hirschl, planting a big kiss on his now-unfurry cheek.

This was a party to do serious face time.

"This is the most interesting, diverse group of people in Hartford," said Ilze Krisst. "And you can see movies that are incredible, that take your breath away, and you see them in this fabulous, low-budget space with ever-changing art exhibits with coffee. The venue is gorgeous."

Peter and Janet Cummings Good fled their own artistic village of Chester to attend the party.

"This is the art event of the year," Peter Good said. "There's art for every taste."

"I think this is one of the funnest and funkiest parties," said Marilda Gandara.

And if you wondered where people bought their funky outfit, check out Gandara's retail spot.
Company girl that she is, Gandara, head of the Aetna Foundation, had bought her smashing red knit top with silver sparkles the day before in the Aetna cafeteria, where vendors sell their wares.
"I put my tray down, ran into the ladies' room, tried it on, and bought it for $48," she said.

Hartford graphic designer John Alves had another good shopping story. He wore a blue and green pop-arty jacket that he had bought in the women's department of Ann Taylor 30 years ago.
Despite how well everyone looked, there were those envious of the enticing and crisp Hedda Lettuce.

"I wish my body looked as good as hers," Ness said.

"I want her green shoes," said Margarita Torres.

And here's a couple we haven't spotted on the social scene for a while - former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Curry and his girlfriend, Karen Cichon. (Cichon's twentysomething niece picked out a shimmery brocade coat for her at Banana Republic for the occasion.)

"Catherine [Blinder] and Will [Wilkins] are very close friends of ours," Curry said. "But as close as I am, I'd be here anyhow. There's not an institution in Hartford like it. It's a gift to my hometown. Real Art Ways is a treasure."

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RAW: 30 Years Of Celebrating Art and Hartford
Hartford Courant, 4/3/2005 by Frank Rizzo

Will K. Wilkins sure knows how to throw a party.

The director of Real Art Ways, an alternative arts and film center, has devised a fundraising wingding Saturday at its funky Arbor Street complex. It will be a high-priced ticket event that rewards supporters with real art. Unlike other galas’ quiche and cosmos, partygoers can select a piece of art from several hundred donated for the event. Talk about party favors.

RAW has plenty of practice entertaining a crowd. Every month it hosts a popular “creative cocktail hour” to launch its exhibits. What was envisioned was a cool little soiree has turned into a mammoth fest attracting 200 to 600 people.

But Real Art Ways’ most impressive display of party planning is the way it has celebrated Hartford. At a time when the city’s low self-esteem practically called for medication, Real Art Ways welcomed-and brought together-Hartford’s diverse folks. Isn’t that what a good host does best?

This smorgasbord approach was done on a budget that could barely afford chips and dip. But, over the last three decades, when many other alternative arts groups have come and gone across the country (mostly gone), Real Art Ways not only survived but has emerged as a model of efficiency while still being committed to its mission.

“There are people who live here who are hungry for an urban experience, who like being around people who are different than they are, who are interested in new and challenging things,” Wilkins says. “When you come to these RAW events, they are filled with Puerto Ricans, African Americans, West Indians, whites, gays, straights, transgendered people, the young and old. It actually feels like a city, and there aren’t many places in Hartford where you can get that. The real potential for this city is breaking down those walls.”

When Wilkins talks about Hartford, one wonders why he hasn’t been on every task force that has deemed to determine the fate of the city over the decades. “Things are less polarized now. Now when people talk about neighborhoods – and there’s more talk of that talk than ever – people don’t think it’s in opposition to the downtown but it’s actually about having a real city.”

Now major corporations sponsor this center, which will enter its 30th year in the fall. (That’s a millennium in alternative arts group years.) Wilkins took over in 1990 just after RAW was given the heave-ho from its downtown Hartford digs on Allyn Street. The rationale was that downtown real estate was destined to skyrocket, so keeping a non-profit arts group would be a financial folly. Guess who has the last sad laugh after a decade or two of tumbleweeds whooshing through the downtown streets?

One looks back at the urban potential that Hartford powers at the time rejected for a different strategy. In the 70’s, Hartford claimed such alternative groups as Real Art Ways, Peace Train, Protean Theater, MonteVideo, ArtWorks Company One and Sidewalk Inc. It was a heady time when alternative schools, newspapers, and arts groups were being established, helped by government funds targeted to grass-roots organizations, not just epic urban developments. “For a time, Hartford was the center of alternative art for New England.” Says Wilkins. But what could have been a long-running phenomenon turned into a footnote. Some blame goes into organizations, which allowed themselves to be so dependent on a single source of income and did not pay enough attention with developing their audiences.

When Wilkins arrived at a homeless RAW, he thought it should go where it was wanted. So RAW relocated in an old factory building on Arbor St. and soon made itself part of the Parkville neighborhood. RAW grew from a warehouse space, to include one gallery, then a second, then a movie theater, then an expanded lobby and lounge. Membership is now more than 1,000 (up from 29 when Wilkins arrived), extraordinary for an alternative arts center in a small city. RAW has an annual modest budget of $900,000, no debt and 20 more years to go on its lease. Wilkins says the movie theater was a major catalyst in expanding RAW’s audiences as well as in developing a grass-roots commitment to the organization.

“That social dynamic is fundamental to appreciating contemporary art and artistic expression,” he says. “How do people become interested in contemporary art, film and music? It’s usually through people whom they know.”

Wilkins saw the need for a place to sit together and talk about what they’ve just experienced, and that’s why the center’s lounge was as important as anything else it created. “The talking is as important as the artistic experience,” he says. “The talking defines the experience. That social piece is especially important to a place like RAW, which is not always trying to please people here with the art. Some of the art is more challenging and that social engagement is part of the process. That social element has tended to be something that hasn’t been valued as highly by organizations. I wanted to create an environment where people can come and see something and really not like it and have a really great time talking about it and want to come back. Liking things may be a little overrated.”

Wilkins hopes RAW can expand, create a performance space, maybe build another cinema, and offer more programming. “But we need more money to do this,” he says. “We’re short-staffed as it is, and we already work really hard.”

What RAW has done with just crumbs from the table of state largess has been a creative act of art in itself. It has built a complex, connected to a community, found an audience and helped celebrate a city.

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The Art and Science of Restoration
NPR's Talk of the Nation 3/25/2005

Rachel Berwick's sculptural installation may-por-é, which features live parrots, extinct language, and a graceful and evocative presentation, was commissioned by and originally exhibited at Real Art Ways in 1997.

Recently Berwick was on NPR's Talk of the Nation speaking about her work.

.: Listen to the interview

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From Young Artists, Work that Reverberates

NY Times, 3/13/2005, By Benjamin Genocchio

Sometimes, late at night, after a hard day, I fantasize about being at the controls of a tank and casually lobbying mortars into a remote desert city. I don't know what it all means (paging Dr.Freud), but the sight of little twisters of smoke spiraling up from the bombed-out wreckage makes me feel calm and peaceful.

Kate Gilmore

Kate Gilmore knows what I am talking about, I guess, for she acts out similarly violent fantasies for her video artworks, a group of which are showing at Real Art Ways in Hartford. In the central video Ms. Gilmore, 30, and from New York, attacks a makeshift wooden heart with an ax. The action for the artist seems to be cathartic.

Ms.Gilmore is one of six young artists from New York and New England whose work is on display at Real Art Ways. The others are Sandra Burns, Jonathan Grassi, Gene Gort, Joo-Mee Paik and Emily Farranto. Not much unifies them, other than that they are all young and talented and make ambitious, thoughtful work that reverberates in your mind after you leave.

I first saw Ms. Gilmore's work in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art last year. At that show, she had a video of herself with her left leg set firmly, knee high, in a bucket of plaster. She sits on the ground with a hammer, hitting the bucket with an effort to pulverize the plaster and free her leg. She is in visible pain throughout.

That video, "My Love is an Anchor" (2004) is also showing here, along with a pair of others in which the artists submits herself to painful experiences. In one piece, "Double Dutch" (2004), she tries to skip rope in high heels on a perforated platform, while in the other she is pelted with soggy tomatoes. In these, she plays a passive fool who endures ritualized pain and humiliation for our enjoyment. It is wacko.

But despite the rather batty, sadomasochistic streak in these videos, I like them a lot. They are fresh, lively, watchable and funny. Ms.Gilmore's pluck will also take your breath away, for she appears to have no fear of harm. She abandons herself to each task, performing long after she has reached a state of physical exhaustion.

I also like them because they avoid the decorative and academic, two common pitfalls for artists these days. Ms. Gilmore, rather, manages to elicit from us a feeling that we are viewing some kind of underground, clandestine event. Unadulterated, raw and real, her videos are the purest manifestation of a true emerging talent. I defy you to shrug this off.

Jonathan Grassi

Mr. Grassi, just 24, takes photographs of friends and peers rolling down a hill, as they might have done during childhood. He likes the free-flowing movement and strange facial expressions of the participants, as well as their loss of self-control, all of which he captures on film. It is a goofy idea, lacking substance, but resulting in pictures of unusual originality, poignancy and occasional beauty.

Joo-Mee Paik

Ms. Farranto and Mr. Gort deal with nature, in one way or another. Mr. Gort presents a video and photographs of an up-side down waterfall, while Ms. Farranto has painted bits of snap-shot photographs of a recent trip to the West. Both artists are interested in restraint, giving you just enough information about their subjects to whet your appetite for more. It is a clever strategy.

Because Ms. Farranto has 35 small, square paintings in the show, she captured the central space of the gallery. Her images look nice installed in narrative sequences around three sides of the room. You feel as if you are traveling the West with her, looking out a car window in the sights.

Sandra Burns

Ms. Burns and Ms. Paik dabble with new technology. Ms. Burns presents a languid video projection that shows the artists in a suit overlaid with text, while Ms. Paik delivers an interactive. The artists have a sound grasp of technology, although in both pieces, the technology overshadows the art.

Known mostly for its support for young artists, Real Art Ways has benefited tremendously over the last five years from the expert guidance of its chief curator, Steven Holmes, who oversaw this show. His departure from the center last month to become curator of a local private collection is a loss, although no doubt the gallery will continue to organize similarly risky shows.

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REAL ART WAYS Announces @TheCinema
A NEW PROGRAM OF SHORT VIDEOS

Starting Friday March 4

Real Art Ways is pleased to announce its new program of short videos entitled @ the Cinema. Each month, Real Art Ways will present a different 1-3 minute video to play before feature-length movies in its cinema. In conjunction with this, Real Art Ways will issue an open call for submissions to be featured as part of @ the Cinema.

The first installment of the @ the Cinema series will feature works by video artist, Laura McLeod. Laura McLeod has been making brave invigorating, and beautiful art for twenty years. A choreographer, filmmaker and performance maverick, her award winning creations have been seen nationally, internationally and online. Since 2001, her work has focused exclusively on the creation short underwater films. These shorts have been seen nationwide in a variety of different venues including Lincoln Center, San Francisco Performances, Jacob¹s Pillow and on PBS.

Visit Lauri McLeod's Web Site

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From Real Art Ways To San Juan
Puerto Rican Artworks Find Their Way Home

HARTFORD COURANT, January 24, 2005
BY MATTHEW HAY BROWN, COURANT STAFF WRITER

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Last spring, Hartford's Real Arts Ways gathered an eclectic selection of pieces by Puerto Rican artists for a show that demonstrated the wide variety of their contemporary art.

Now it has come home.

"None of the Above: Contemporary Work by Puerto Rican Artists" opened Saturday at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan - among the largest and most influential museums on the island, and a prestigious showcase for the 15 established and emerging artists whose work is featured.

"It's important for the people to see what Puerto Rican artists are doing, and also for them to see that contemporary art by Puerto Ricans is being taken seriously elsewhere," says Diana Berezdivin, who chairs the museum's committee on acquisitions and exhibitions.

"Museums validate," says Berezdivin, a noted collector of contemporary art. "It will be interesting to see the reactions here."

As in Hartford last year, some of those reactions are likely to be strong. The show's three co-curators have adopted an expansive definition of Puerto Rican, to include not only those artists working on the island but also their counterparts in the United States and overseas.

Some pieces - outsized reproductions by Enoc Pérez of hotel postcards from the 1950s heyday of island tourism, a film by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla of a man riding around Vieques on a motorbike fitted with a trumpet for a tailpipe - concern themselves specificallywith island issues.

Others seem to look elsewhere for inspiration: the fantastical climb-in weapon constructed by Arnaldo Morales, the soft-sculpture re-imaginings by Chemi Rosado Seijo of cubes made famous by Swedish artist Claes Oldenburg, the electronic music-influenced bead-and-canvas works of Carlos Rolón.

Marysol Nieves, the museum's curator of contemporary art, says, "What's important to note is the variety of perspectives. Many of the works respond to issues important to Puerto Rico, but it's not necessarily the defining factor in the work. These are artists who are very much engaged internationally in addition to locally."

One of the pieces talked about most at Real Art Ways has expanded since its appearance last year. "I-scream (resist!)," a full-size armored car (rendered in plywood) that mingled the music of an ice-cream truck with memories of the 1983 Wells Fargo robbery in West Hartford to fund Puerto Rican nationalists, is reduced to toy dimensions by a gigantic Popsicle made of green currency coated in brown soil.

Those pieces are flanked by a series of electrified images fashioned from glowing resistance coils set in concrete; creator Charles Juhász Alvarado plans to serve ice cream during the opening.

"It's going to be a different experience for each person," says Juhász, who studied at Yale. "There's the truck, which for me is a very powerful symbol of Puerto Rican nationalism. But it also represents capitalism, or it could be an ice cream truck. There's the contrast between the heat from the resistance wire and the cold ice cream. For some people, it might be a question of how much can you take?"

A second piece in the show also refers to Connecticut. In "Hartford Revisions Plan: Park and Main I, II and III," Manuel Acevedo embellishes a triptych of photographs of a downtown vacant lot with proposals for new construction.

The title "None of the Above" refers to the most popular choice in the 1998 plebiscite on political status options for this Caribbean U.S. territory. Confronted with official definitions of commonwealth, statehood and independence, a plurality of islanders voted to reject all three.

Similarly, the show's co-curators have sought to transcend what Nieves calls "the traditional curatorial models of politics or identity" to explore the variety of inspirations, methods and creations at play within the community.

"It's looking beyond geography, beyond identity, beyond race, beyond political relationships," says co-curator Steven Holmes. "It comes together as the work of Puerto Rican artists, but in the art world, at least, one could easily argue ... that this work needs to be understood and thought of and taken seriously simply as art taking part in global, universal conversation."

"None of the Above" and the book of essays to be published in conjunction with it can be seen as deepening the connection between Real Art Ways and the Puerto Rican artistic community. A decade ago, the organization commissioned Pepón Osorio's landmark installation "En la barbería no se llora" - "No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop" - now in the collection at the Museo.

The arrival of "None of the Above" in San Juan is the latest development in that relationship.

"From the very first, we had it as a goal that we wanted it to be able to go to San Juan," Holmes says. "It was important that the cultural community of San Juan and of Puerto Rico understand how highly their artists and the culture that produces these artists are regarded in the larger art world."

The exhibition will run at the Museo through April 17.

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Island Gig For Real Art Ways

HARTFORD COURANT, January 21, 2005

Hartford's reputation as a magnet for arts and culture lovers is well-known beyond the state's borders. The latest example of the impact of creative minds from the capital city is Real Art Ways' success as a promoter of Latin art and artists.

The Parkville gallery will take its recent show, "None of the Above: Contemporary Work by Puerto Rican Artists," to San Juan this month. The exhibition of work by 15 artists will open at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan's largest museum, on Saturday and run through April 17. This is a very big deal on several levels.

For one, it illustrates that Real Arts Ways has standing in the Puerto Rican art community. It also cements the arts organization's cultural connection to Hartford and its social fabric.

In 1994, Real Art Ways commissioned and produced Pepón Osorio's public art project "En la Barberia no se Llora," (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop) on Park Street in Frog Hollow. At the time, gang violence was hurting the neighborhood, and Real Art Ways decided to do something to boost it. The organization under Executive Director Will K. Wilkins found an empty storefront for Mr. Osorio to create his vision of an all-male Puerto Rican barbershop.

The whimsical installation enthralled visitors and, Mr. Wilkins believes, signaled the neighborhood's upswing. It also helped launch Mr. Osorio's successful career in public art. A version of the barbershop is exhibited in the San Juan museum where "None of the Above" will be displayed.

Mr. Wilkins et al. should be congratulated for having a superb eye for talent and the ambition to produce this major exhibit and accompanying catalog.

Sometimes we tend to take things in our own backyard for granted. That should not be the case with Real Art Ways, which has brought innovative art and programs to Hartford for nearly 30 years. We wish it well on the road.

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Images from the opening of NOTA in San Juan

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REAL ART WAYS’ Exhibition of Contemporary Puerto Rican Art
to Open at Museo De Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan
01/12/05

“None of the Above: Contemporary Work by Puerto Rican Artists”

Premiered in Hartford Summer 2004
Originated and Produced by Real Art Ways

Real Art Ways is pleased to announce that None of the Above: Contemporary Work By Puerto Rican Artists will open at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on January 22, 2005. The exhibition will run at the Museo, San Juan’s largest museum, from January 22 through April 17, 2005.

The exhibit, which originally opened at Real Art Ways in May of 2004 includes work by 15 artists, who variously live and work in Puerto Rico, on the mainland, and in Europe. While other exhibitions of Puerto Rican art have often focused on nationalism, identity, or geography as unifying themes; this exhibition proposes a new way of seeing and thinking about Puerto Rican art, going beyond the standard curatorial frameworks to identify and embrace critical strains that have typically not been seen as central to Puerto Rican art practice, and to include artists whose Puerto Rican identity transcends physical location.

While some of the work makes apparent the “Puerto Rican-ness” of some of the artists, all of these artists tend to be influenced by aesthetic and personal issues, and to be engaged in an international artistic dialogue. At the same time that their work has international influences, it can also be traced to antecedents in Puerto Rican artistic practice.

Artists included in the exhibition are:
Manuel Acevedo, Allora & Calzadilla, Javier Cambre, Nayda Collazo-Llórens, Dzine, Cari González-Casanova, Ivelisse Jiménez, Charles Juhász-Alvarado, Ignacio Lang, Malika, Arnaldo Morales, Enoc Pérez, Carlos A. Rivera Villafañe and Chemi Rosado Seijo.

None of the Above is curated by:
Deborah Cullen (Curator, El Museo del Barrio, NYC), Silvia Karman Cubiñá (Director, The Moore Space, Miami) and Steven Holmes (Director of Visual Arts, Real Art Ways).

NOTA CATALOGUE

In conjunction with the exhibition, Real Art Ways is publishing a 200 page illustrated catalogue, edited by Deborah Cullen, which examines the relationships between this contemporary generation and its predecessors in the art scene of the 1970s.

The catalogue will include essays by Steven Holmes, Silvia Karman Cubiñá, Deborah Cullen, Papo Colo, Laura Roulet, Marimar Benítez, Paco Barragán, Miriam Basilio and Taína B. Carago, as well as statements by artists Paul Camacho, Luis Hernández Cruz, Lope Max Diaz and Antonio Navia, Rafael Montañez Ortiz and the late Reverend Pedro Pietri.

FUNDING

None of the Above was funded by major support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, United Technologies, and St. Paul Travelers. Real Art Ways Visual Arts program receives major support from Marjorie Morrissey, Howard and Sandy Fromson, The Ritter Foundation, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the Greater Hartford Arts Council, and Real Art Ways Members. Additional support comes from the Connecticut Commission on Arts and Tourism, the Bissell Foundation and the Ensworth Foundation.

Quotes from reviews of None of the Above:

“Real Art Ways should be congratulated for such an ambitious, revelatory exhibition, which raises the bar for contemporary art projects throughout the state.”
— Benjamin Genocchio, New York Times, 6/13/2004

"...'None of the Above' travels to Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in January. But Real Art Ways, a space New Yorkers would do well to keep their eye on, gets credit for presenting it first, and well” — Holland Cotter, New York Times, 6/4/2004

More information on the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico:

Puerto Rico's artistic tradition - painting, sculpture, graphics, ceramics, folk art, photography and other contemporary media - is nearly 500 years old. The non-profit Museum supports this dynamic tradition by collecting, exhibiting and interpreting art. At the same time, the MAPR fosters awareness of other art traditions from Latin America and the rest of the world.

Galleries in the West Wing display the Museum's permanent collection and loans of Puerto Rican art from colonial times to the present in changing exhibitions. On the fourth floor over 10,000 square feet of gallery space for temporary exhibitions surround the atrium.

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