Its latest achievement is the exhibition of art called "Poza," which runs through January. If you're looking for something interesting and thought-provoking to do to avoid post-holiday letdown, "Poza" is just the thing to lift the spirits.

The work of 31 artists with Polish connections are represented in this show put together by Marek Bartelik, a New York curator and art historian of Polish descent. It is a collaboration between Real Art Ways and the Polish studies department at Central Connecticut State College. You don't have to be Polish or know anything about Poland to enjoy and appreciate these works of art. They are diverse enough to give the show wide appeal.

The eclectic selection includes video presentations, installations, assemblages and photographs, some by famous artists and others by a few just starting out. The artists are from different generations, with some born in the 1930s and others in the 1980s.

Two of the most arresting pieces that exemplify the show's range are Icon Station by Ewa Harabasz of the United States and Skaters NY by Domink Lejman of Poland. Icon Station resembles an ancient altar triptych, but contains brutal images taken from newspapers of the war in Bosnia. In the center panel, where you might expect to see a saint depicted or a portrait of Jesus, is the shocking image of a war-ravaged man and child framed in the cross-hairs of a weapon.

Skate NY is on the opposite end of the gravity scale, a whimsical wall-projected film loop of skaters in Rockefeller Center making their way around and around the ice. It carries a fascination YouTube fanatics will understand, especially when one skater provides drama by falling ignominiously while the other skaters ignore him.

This show is accompanied by a film series, lectures, artist talks, discussions and social events. It's an ambitious undertaking that RAW has pulled off with its usual panache.

.: Original story on Hartford Courant

 

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Her portraits contain young women in various seductive sometimes hostile poses, mounted on elaborate frames with horns or antlers attached to their tops, presenting the girls within the frames as trophies.

I recently spoke with Bereza by phone, and she explained that she draws much of the inspiration for her art from her experiences as a sorority girl at the University of Michigan. The theme throughout the paintings in this exhibit is that of the pursued woman an object of conquest -- to whom a male victor will make promises of love, leading toward a movie-clichéd future of romance and happiness.

Bereza presents this objectification of women clearly in the piece ¨Womanly and True,¨ a composite look at the girls in her sorority, some non-fictional and some fictional. At first glance, the viewer might misinterpret the girls´ contorted faces as being anguished or volatile. But look again.

¨I watched weeks and weeks of internet porn,¨ Bereza said, laughing. Each girl´s face is drawn to emulate their features mid-orgasm. ¨One of my [sorority] sisters e-mailed me out of nowhere once with pictures of her and her new baby. So I thought I´d send her the composite of her face. I never heard back from her,¨ said Bereza.

To be fair though, the young, Brooklyn-based artist also constructed a composite of her own face as well as a display in the Conquest series.

¨A few months ago, I drank too much red wine and I was PMSing and I was crying and wondering what the hell was wrong with me and I realized I looked terrible. So I took a picture of myself.¨

Bereza´s self-portrait, while unnerving, has a kind of dark beauty.

The motto of the sorority that Bereza has created for her work is ¨Womanly and True,¨ ironic for a houseful of catty girls who spent weeks getting ready for social engagements that usually ended in ¨tears, drama, and fighting, ¨ she says.

¨We´d go on these dates in Detroit and there´d be couples fighting and breaking up and everyone throwing up everywhere. We´d spend so much time getting ready and end up being dramatic and causing all this ruckus.¨

More of the artist´s work from other series (that can be viewed on her website) feature girly pillow fights that, upon closer inspection, are closer to scenes from Fight Club , if the movie had been shot with Barbies. The girls aim fists at each other and grab at each other with excited smiles and pink pajamas.

Despite the animosity of sorority life, Bereza says she had fun in her house and still keeps in touch with some of her ¨sisters,¨ some of whose permission she was granted in the development of her project.

¨I didn´t really fit in anywhere,¨ she says. ¨In the sorority I was this weird artsy girl who was always doing something they didn´t understand. Then I got to art school and everyone thought I was this little sorority girl whose daddy bought her an easel.¨

Bereza intends to continue to work in this vein. ¨I like the kind of Renaissance mixture of sorority girls, and I think I´m going to throw some religion in there.¨

Bereza is currently working on a piece whose subject is Eve, who is enjoying being tossed from the garden and donning brand-new snakeskin boots. When I questioned her about her origins as an artist, she said she was going through her parents´ closet and found a newspaper clipping about her brother and his paper route. At the bottom of the article was a mention of ¨3-year-old Sarah, who wants to be an artist when she grows up.¨

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.: Original story at The Hartford Advocate

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There's the 17-cinema multiplex on New Park Avenue, a nearby Wal-Mart and a shopping district. In many ways, Hartford has become more established, he says. The North End is cleaner.

What hasn't changed is the gun violence.

"It's disappointing," he says. On a small grassy lot at 128 Albany Ave., Pope is encircled by the colorful graffiti of a neighboring building and his public installation "Silent Wishes, Unconscious Prayers and Dreams ...Fulfilled."

Commissioned in 1996 by Real Art Ways, the 17 tons of Connecticut brownstone slabs, etched with the words of 11 deceased African-American and Hispanic young adults from Hartford, was created in response to gun shootings and violent deaths in the early to mid-90s.

"When the piece was made, there was a lot of press around it, and for a while it seemed like things died down. And I thought, well, maybe the piece did its job," says Pope. "But now it's back, and from what I hear, people have forgotten that they have a piece that really talks about this issue."

In late May came the news of 16 people shot in Hartford over a five-day period. As of June 10, the number of shooting victims in Hartford stands at 103, a 24 percent increase from last year.

It's sobering to read the tomb-like inscriptions on the 1996 installation - all of which came from interviews the artist had with family and friends of the deceased. There is the prescient quotation from Carlos "Manny" Carrasco Jr.: "When I was fourteen years old, I didn't believe I'll see eighteen. When I turned eighteen, I knew I'll never see twenty-one." Carrasco was shot and killed a couple of weeks shy of his 21st birthday.

"Madeline, when my time come, I don't want you to cry, and I don't want you to suffer. Go on with your life, and keep on being the person you are. Don't stop doing whatever it is you're doing. Keep on going with your life." Those words were uttered by 17-year-old José Manuel Gonzalez to his girlfriend. Gonzalez was the victim of a single bullet to the head in July 1995.

Choking back tears, Pope recalls the story behind each brownstone slab in minute detail. The 45-year-old Indianapolis-born artist likens the inscriptions, each in a different typeface, to an individual voice that can be heard anew - in spite of the passage of time, growing lichens and minor vandalism on the rocks.

"For me, this piece is a call for action, for people to really think about what they're doing to their community, to themselves, and hopefully call for changes, however that's supposed to look," he says.

Social critique has been a frequent subject of Pope's work. He recalls how he wanted to be an artist at age 5. An interest in photography was stoked by a high school teacher who taught her students how photographs had an instrumental role in turning public opinion against the Vietnam War.

"I just always thought I was going to be a photographer. And then when I wanted to address issues and things that I really couldn't do in photography, I started on doing other things," says Pope who graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1984 with a photography degree. "The thing that connects all of the work that I've shown in Hartford, that I've done for Hartford institutions, is that it has focused on the element of text and writing."

Pope's long experience with Hartford audiences includes a show at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art's Matrix Gallery in 1998. The artist, who lives in Saratoga, Calif., was invited back by Real Art Ways this month for "The Bad Air Smelled of Roses." The work, comprised of letterpress posters, marks an expansion in a direction first started with the 1996 installation.

"`Silent Wishes' was a piece which really began my own private look to myself via my artistic practice. Because before, although I was engaged in self-portraiture in certain kinds of ways, it hadn't really actively become a part of my work," he says.

Pope explains that "The Bad Air Smelled of Roses" deals with darkness in all shapes and forms, including his African-American identity, the Freudian unconscious, the occult and bleak emotions. The elliptical poster collage made up of colorful slogans and quotations sheds light on the subjects of blackness and the unconscious. The quotations includes disparate sources, such as African-American writers Ralph Ellison and Ishmael Reed, French rationalist philosopher René Descartes and dialogue from the films "The Matrix" and "Casablanca."

The signs are funny, political and esoteric. Pope points to one prominent poster that he says encapsulates the spirit of the project: "People have a lot more of the unknown than the known in their minds. The unknown is great, it's like the darkness ..."

"My whole point of doing that was to not create a narrative that everybody understands but for the posters to interact with the viewer's own wealth of information and to bring out and highlight the viewer's own individual relationship to these signs of blackness," says Pope.

In an attempt to bridge the public and private aspects of his art, Pope recently asked the question "What does blackness mean to you?" to members of the Mobile, Ala., community. Billboards were created with some of the responses.

In 2005, Pope was awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award for the Mobile project and "The Bad Air Smelled of Roses."

Pope's thoughts turn to the Albany Avene installation. He's concerned about its future. The property where it stands no longer belongs to the city and may be sold again. He'd like to find it a permanent home.

"Really, I want the piece to stay in Hartford. It belongs in Hartford; it was done for Hartford. And it's a community piece, so I have to find a home for it," he says.

"It's clear that it's an ongoing critical issue in the community. It's not anything to be ashamed of. It's something to be consistently aware of and dealt with," he says.

"Yes, it's a memorial, but it's also a very good reminder of what to be vigilant about when it comes to the young people of this area."

Carl Pope's installation "The Bad Air Smelled Of Roses" is on view through July 15 at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford. Information: 860-232-1006 or www.realartways.org.

.: Original story at Hartford Courant

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Mike Womack's "Heat Is Not Made Of Tiny Hot Things" truly lives up to its name. Womack created the original image - a modernist, abstract painting - in Photoshop, where he converted it into a "digital matrix" to plan out the color of every square. Using 4,750 handmade mirror-pixels, Womack "steals" color from painted assemblages in the periphery of the space, using a laser beam to reflect the precise color to each carefully positioned mirror. The result is an 11-foot-tall and 20-foot-wide luminescent grid resembling stained-glass windows.

Precision is key in Womack's work. Variables such as shadows had to be controlled, or the mirrors wouldn't reflect the intended colors.The viewing space also had to be limited because once the viewer enters the space the light varies, changing the color of the mirrors.

While very little in Womack's piece is happenstance, Adam Niklewicz celebrates the spontaneity of his surrealist-dreamscape, "The Ballad of the Twin Beekeepers." With bees taking center stage in everything from books ("The Secret Life of Bees") to body-care products (Burt's Bees), Niklewicz uses his family's beekeeping business to explore themes of childhood and dislocation.

A red curtain separates his piece from the rest of the space, creating his own distinct world. In one corner hangs a deep-sea diver, covered in dead bees, an object that he says symbolizes Freud's subconscious and the act of diving beneath the surface to explore one's life. The diver, which took four months to make working at three bees a minute, casts a shadow on the floor of the space, giving the feeling that the whole room is under water.

Walking into Niklewicz's work summons up an inherently ominous feeling: a watch lies under a fluorescent green bee hive, robotic papier-mâché beekeepers roam aimlessly, and the body of a dead animal slowly decomposes. But there is also humor. One of the hives is covered in bees that re-create the map of the Philippines, which is strikingly similar to the birthmark on the forehead of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Joseph Smolinski's "Transmission," like Womack's piece, comments on the relationship between technology and humans. Yet there is a darker, futuristic side to Smolinski's installation. The centerpiece is a video projection of an insect-like creature. Only later does it become clear that the video is attached to a parasitic orb, which feeds off it by stealing light from the video.Inside the orb a man and a woman are stranded, an electric tower is down and lights are flashing on and off. Is this the future of technology? Are we just tiny figures controlled by an overgrown creature? Are we constantly looking for the next energy source?

Tim Hutchings contends his "Very Large Wargame Table" is the largest wargame table in the world. And it just might be. It's a super-sized game of "Risk," with mountainous terrains and wide swaths of grass, perfect to engage in battles and conquer enemies. In fact, Hutchings' piece is an interactive sculpture, and gamers are invited to bring toy soldiers and game pieces to play. The piece is not aesthetically engaging, but the sheer size, coupled with the opportunity to see visitors crawling around and ducking for cover, is worth a visit.

"Four Solo Shows" continues through July 9 at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 2 to 9:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 2 to 10 p.m. Closed Mondays. Admission is $3, free for RAW members and cinema ticketholders. Information: 860-232-1006.

Contact Ruth Ackerman at rxackerman@courant.com  

.: Original story on Hartford Courant

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Aronie, a former Hartford resident and writer for Northeast magazine, is a commentator for National Public Radio who now lives in Chilmark, Mass. Witham, who produced the film with Ken Wentworth, her partner in Film-Truth Productions, lives in nearby Aquinnah.

The fourth annual festival, run by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel, is influential. Two of last year's winners, "God Sleeps in Rwanda" and "Darwin's Nightmare," received Oscar nominations. This year, 1,687 documentaries were submitted from 22 countries, and 100 were chosen.

The film is part of the festival's newest category, focusing on global health. The film's world premiere will be on June 15 at the festival, which runs June 13 through 18 in Silver Spring, Md.

It then moves to the smaller Provincetown Film Festival, with screenings June 16 and 18.

A Real Art Ways audience last week got a sneak peek at a private, invitation-only screening attended by Nancy Aronie; Dan Aronie; her other son, Josh; and her husband, Joel, all of whom appear in the film. Also at the screening were Wentworth, Witham and Gerald Lake Storrow, who started the film with Aronie. The two filmed Dan for six years before bringing Witham aboard.

(In 2004, a few minutes of the film-in-progress was presented as "Dan Aronie: Rough Cut," also at Real Art Ways.)

Dan Aronie was diagnosed with MS in 1994 at age 22. Before the diagnosis, his mother said, he was strong, healthy and "a bit arrogant." In subsequent years, his condition deteriorated, went into remission, and deteriorated again. This was complicated by his inability to get enough of the right kind of medication.

"I remember once, when he was at a wedding, Dan was so angry you couldn't even look at him. He was terrified, and we were terrified," Nancy Aronie said. "We didn't know what to do. He was starting to fall. We would walk behind him to try to catch him."

Later, when he was completely wheelchair-bound and could no longer feed himself or go to the bathroom without help, his anger turned to despair.

"He visited friends in Northern California. We were gong to take a hike. Dan obviously couldn't go," she said. "He was sitting in his chair wearing his whole macho leather motorcycle outfit, 6 foot 3, and he was broken. The toughness was seeping out of him."

Aronie and Witham say the movie is about moving beyond anger, through despair and to acceptance. "It's about a guy who loses the rage and gains wisdom and humor. He's now an incredibly funny, wise and gentle soul," Aronie said. "Everyone who goes to see him leaves saying `I was worried about my car, my elbow, my marriage, my whatever.' ... It just reminds people of what is really important."

Making the film was a way of "putting something between his anger and my terror."

"The first hour of the beginning of this project was so stunning to me," she said. "It was the first time I ever saw Dan as a guy. He'd always been a sick kid to me."

Aronie says that after the screening at Real Art Ways, many people wanted to write to Dan. His e-mail address is funymandan@aol.com.

Contact Susan Dunne at sdunne@courant.com

.: Original story on Hartford Courant

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Miscegenation, Caucasian, race, felony, concubinage, fornication, mulatto. Those are just a handful of the words the Calhouns translated from anti-miscegenation statutes that existed until 1967 into brightly hued and inviting tiles that represent virtual hate speech. A generation later, similar types of dressed-up hate speech have been implemented to sell the masses on the idea of laws that ban same-sex marriage - a parallel that Linda says she hopes the public that views the work will draw. As an African-American woman married to a Caucasian man, Linda says marriage discrimination is a subject the couple knows a few things about.

The Calhouns used Adobe Illustrator to assign a different color to correspond with each letter of the alphabet and recreate the 16 laws the Supreme Court struck down in June of the "summer of love." The pieces are, "pretty, colorful, bright and cheerful," Linda says.

Linda was eight years old in 1958 when 24 states still upheld anti-miscegenation laws, she says. Although it would be another nine years before Mildred Loving - an African-American woman from Virginia - would fight the system that indicted her and her Caucasian husband in 1958 for violating the state's "Racial Integrity Act of 1924," which was the tool the state used to deem her marriage a crime. On June 12, 1967, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, with Loving's case before him said, "Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man," and proceeded to overturn the laws in the 16 states.

Holding the show's debut at Real Art Ways, "has a lot of meaning and resonance having grown up in Connecticut," Linda says, adding that the "Blue" state of Connecticut is one of the few states that never had laws banning inter-racial marriage.

"Color-Coded" runs from May 18 through June 12 at Real Art Ways in Hartford. Opening reception on Thursday, May 18, 6 to 9 p.m., with artist talk at 5:30 p.m. For gallery hours and other information, connect to www.realartways.org.

.: Original story on www.innewsweekly.com

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Common Ground Community is located in NYC, but they are also active in Hartford, where they took over the vacant building on Asylum Street in downtown and are planning a development there. Rosanne Haggerty, their Founder and Executive Director, is from West Hartford originally. Haggerty received a MacArthur Foundation “Genius grant” in 2001.

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The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America:
A Guide to Field Identification
By Julian Montague
Abrams Image
ISBN: 0810955202 $17.95 flexi bind;
176 pages: 250 color photographs
PUBLICATION DATE: May 1, 2006

The book is available now from most online book sellers (see below) and in a lot of stores in the US (to my chagrin it is being placed in the "Humor" section at both Barnes & Noble and Borders). I encourage people to support their local independent bookshop.

Best,
Julian Montague

My websites http://www.montagueprojects.com or http://www.strayshoppingcart.com have information on upcoming shows and book related events.

Online Sources

USA: Strandbooks and Amazon
UK: Amazon
Canada: Amazon
Germany: Amazon
Japan: Amazon
Australia: Boomerang Books

I have not figured out where to order the book for Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands, but I am sure it is available online.

 

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Some glanced curiously around the funky, low-lit space; others suggested that the visit might be boring. But as images of Rosa Parks and the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott flashed across the screen, the middle schoolers got quiet.

The film, "Mighty Times, the Legacy of Rosa Parks," contained things the students said they already knew. It showed blacks in the 1950s working hard as maids, seamstresses, day laborers and cab drivers. It showed how they lived, ate and were educated separately; from how they paid to ride the bus only to have to cram together in the back as seats in the front remained empty.

But what many of the children said they had forgotten was the unity the black community displayed, even as the discrimination and violence against them intensified.

"It was very emotional," Phillip Campbell 14, said of the film. "If more people came and saw this movie, a lot of gang violence and stuff that is going on in the streets wouldn't be happening. ... You see a lot of people going against each other, fighting about territory and none of it really matters."

The film is part of Real Art Ways' "Film Field Trips" program, which has drawn more than 2,500 Hartford students since October.

"We thought this [film] would be very striking for Hartford students because it is very segregated here, not only in our schools but in our neighborhoods," said Robyn Whittington, a program manager at Real Art Ways. "The purpose of the civil rights movement was to create change. ...We want to get them to begin to ask questions, to create that spark."

After the film, during a question-and-answer period, the children shared reactions ranging from pity to anger to pride.

"They were inspirational people who set out to make a difference and make the way for how we live now," 13-year-old Kenneth Wilson said. "We really got to have a team. If you work by yourself, who's going to hear you?"

Bill Harris, an independent diversity facilitator and trainer, asked the children about their own challenges, which they said include peer pressure, violence, drug dealers and name calling.

Together they discussed strategies on dealing with these issues and, through it all, Harris talked of the peace and the power of leading by example.

"We are trying to get them to see they don't have to fight back, they can deal with things in a peaceful way," said Kara Gagliarducci, who is studying the civil rights movement with her seventh- and eighth-grade English students. "They can see it, but when it comes to their own lives, it's hard for them."

In a themed evening entitled, "A Night of Literary Humor," author Dan Pope, pictured below, ( In The Cherry Tree ), author/teacher/NPR commentator Steve Almond, pictured at left, ( My Life in Heavy Metal,  Candyfreak, and The Evil B. B. Chow and Other Stories ) and Jennifer Vanderbes ( Easter Island ), will each read a rib-tickling passage of comic fiction, followed by an informal discussion, this Thu., Jan. 26 at 6 p.m. Writers & Readers is a bi-monthly social gathering for people who love to talk about books and literature over a relaxing glass of wine or invigorating cup of espresso. Real Art Ways is located at 56 Arbor St., Hartford. (860) 232-1006. www.realartways.org. Jan. 26, 6-9 p.m.$3 suggested donation.  --A.B.

.: Original story on Hartford Advocate

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Tonight from 6 to 9, the bimonthly social gathering that Real Art Ways calls "Writers and Readers" features Steve Almond, Dan Pope and Jennifer Vanderbes.

Each will read some comic fiction at this night of literary humor, and their readings will be followed by a discussion with the audience.

Almond, who teaches creative writing at Boston College and is a commentator on National Public Radio, is the author of "Candyfreak," "My Life in Heavy Metal" and "The Evil B.B. Chow."

Pope, who grew up in West Hartford, wrote the comic novel "In the Cherry Tree."

Vanderbes is the author of the 2003 novel "Easter Island."

The event is free. Real Art Ways is at 56 Arbor St., Hartford. For information, call 860-232-1006.

.: Original story on Hartford Courant

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