Hear the interview with Marek Bartelik on WNPR
.: Hear the entire show on WNPR

.: See the original story on The Hartford Courant

The Newark art scene could use more wealthy patrons, and City Without Walls is one place where they would come in handy.

The 32-year-old nonprofit gallery, which supports emerging artists and runs education programs on contemporary art, is one of the most socially engaged and dynamic art spaces in the state. It operates on a shoestring budget of $253,000, made up of donations from members, foundations and government agencies. With more resources, it could do even greater things for the city and for contemporary art in New Jersey.

Part of the gallery’s broader mission is to connect art and artists with the public throughout the state. It does that each year with its annual Metro show, this year celebrating its 25th anniversary. It is a juried, traveling exhibition featuring nearly 70 small works by artists mainly from New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The name of the exhibition refers to a tradition of transporting the works by train to places in New Jersey and New York. Artworks in the exhibition must be smaller than 13 inches in every dimension — length, width and depth. Making art this size is trickier than it sounds, for it forces artists to be extremely economical with their ideas and materials.

Many of the pieces here are skillful and clever. A few are fabulous, combining interesting subject matter and independent thought. Beth Gilfilen’s intricate color-coded collage made of paint swatches from the hardware store is especially impressive; Marco Muñoz’s ethereal still-life photographs from paper negatives are also lovely.

There are a handful of standouts among the many paintings. Joe Waks hunts down amateur landscape paintings in thrift stores, junk shops and yard sales, then paints McDonald’s restaurant signs into them. Finally, he stamps them with his name, claiming them as his own. The paintings are hideous, but the idea is genuinely intriguing.

Amy Hill does oil portraits of urban hipsters in Renaissance style. They are creepy, the figures tough and tattooed, standing in front of brick tenements with the rolling hills of Tuscany in the background. They are like a George Tice photograph crossed with a Piero della Francesca painting. They have a magical feel about them.

Magic also comes to mind across town at Rupert Ravens Contemporary, Newark’s newest major commercial gallery. The space immediately blows you away — an astonishing 30,000 square feet running over three levels of an old discount furniture warehouse on Market Street. That is about double the gallery space in the New Museum of Contemporary Art that opened in New York in early December.

Notwithstanding the intense smell of mold mixed with mildew from a plumbing mishap — something has to be done about the problem — this is a great new initiative for Newark. How long it will last is anyone’s guess, for Mr. Ravens — well known in the local arts community for his enterprising curatorial projects — is financing the gallery himself and needs to sell artwork to survive. (Here, too, those well-heeled patrons would be useful.)

For the moment, at least, Mr. Ravens in doing his best to attract a broad clientele: his inaugural exhibition, “Sanctuary,” is a madcap group sampler of more than 150 works by 71 artists. The show is unfocused, though some sense of order is provided by the nine-page room sheet.

Among the works, all for sale, are minor pieces by the collectible artists Elizabeth Murray, Fred Wilson, Tara Donovan and Vija Celmins, as well as surprises by many who are less well known. (Most of the artists are from New Jersey, with a few from New York and elsewhere.) I liked a series of cow’s-blood paintings preserved in resin by Jordan Eagles, which are so mysteriously beautiful they look like photographs. If Mr. Ravens keeps showing great new work like this, one has to hope he is here to stay.

“Metro 25,” City Without Walls, 6 Crawford Street, Newark, through Dec. 20. Information: (973) 622-1188 or www.citywithoutwalls.com. “Sanctuary,” Rupert Ravens Contemporary, 85 Market Street, Newark, through Jan. 18. Information: (973) 353-0110 or www.rupertravens.net.

.: See the original story on The New York Times

Shadows are the indication of a presence, not the presence itself. In Real Art Ways' Shadow Show, curated by Rhode Island artist Elizabeth Keithline (who has a large installation work in the exhibit) and RAW's Director of visual Arts Kristina Newman-Scott, the various works in various media trade on the presence of absence as well as other associations with the concept of "shadow."

Olu Oguibe's brother died of complications of measles and dehydration in the late 1970's at the age of four. It was a death that didn't have to happen. While the proximate cause was physical factors, the real reason was social, economic and political factors. Oguibe's brother, like so many millions of others and not only in Africa (Oguibe is originally from Nigeria), didn't have access to the necessary basic health care. The centerpiece of Oguibe's "Buggy Memorial to the Unknown Child" installation is a large blow-up photo of a young African child (actually Oguibe himself). The old film-based image is marked with dust motes and light scratches. It is mounted on the wall, memorial-style, and framed by heavy somber drapes. Set before it on a pedestal is a worn old baby buggy. Relating to the theme of the show, the shadow here is one of personal loss. But an even larger shadow is cast—the moral shadow over a humanity that has the wealth and knowledge to prevent avoidable deaths like that of Oguibe's brother but squanders those resources in war, waste and obscene concentrations of wealth.

What could be more symbolic of inertness and silence than a stone? Yet it is a chunk of rough granite from the shores of Jamestown, Rhode Island that collaborators Duncan Laurie and Gordon Salisbury used to create the computer animation "Rockstar" (get the pun?). Laurie is an artist and Salisbury is an electronic engineer. For another project, Laurie had developed a "rate of change detector," a device for monitoring "the state of the electrical charge on the surface of plant leaves and stems," according to the work's title card. That varying electrical charge was keyed to an audio track. In the course of that project, he found that some stones possess an internal electrical signal. Capturing the electronic impulses from this nondescript chunk of rock, they used them as the basis for creating a computer animation with electronic music soundtrack. It appears that even rocks may have a vibrant inner life.

Richard Goulis works with found objects. The appeal is not only in the physicality of the objects but also in the suggested presence of the lives connected to the objects. With "High Definition," Goulis employs antique wood and cloth trays used in the sorting of pieces of jewelry for manufacture. In these trays—stained rectangles of cloth of different colors stretched between rickety wood frames—the presence of the past is evident in the wear. More to the point, the workers who used the trays are present in the doodles on them—flowers, faces, a martini glass. There is an element of desire to two that are inscribed with hearts with arrows through them. At work but dreaming of love. While the desire for play—in the midst of what was likely monotonous, tedious work—is inscribed in the trays, Goulis also uses DVD projection to overlay the array of trays with scenes of the hands of his wife and children playing in the yard. This projection interacts with the mottled panels to create a subtle moving abstraction. The freedom of play invades the servitude of work, a daydream outlet of escape. And the presence of work, and particularly exploitative and repetitive work, casts its shadow over the carefree play of those who unreflectively consume the fruits of others' harsh labors.

Reflections and shadows of the intersection between commerce and the home are at the heart of Samuel Ekwurtzel's playful and revealing "Living Spaces of People Who Are Selling Their Television." The work consists of two video loops, showing on two separate televisions, culled from images scavenged from Ebay, the online auction site. Ekwurtzel had noticed that sellers photographing their TVs for sale often inadvertently captured reflections of their location. These are mostly interior spaces, often with the seller in the image. Ekwurtzel downloaded the images and isolated the screens, some of which are surprisingly clear. Isn't it one of the dystopic fears about television that as we watch it, it watches us back? Ekwurtzel presents evidence from Ebay that this eventuality has come to pass.

A further commentary on the dystopia of omni-present surveillance is offered by Erik Gould's "In Plain Sight." Gould presents 77 grainy black and white images of people taken on the streets of Boston and Providence in the summer of 2007. He apparently made no effort to conceal his actions. These random "surveillance photos" capture people talking on their cellphones, slugging coffee, hurrying somewhere. It's a commentary on the loss of privacy or, more accurately, the loss of the expectation of privacy. It's a fact that while we take little or no notice there are images like these being captured of most of us several times a day. It would be interesting to combine this idea somehow with imagery derived from Google Earth.

With "Instances in the Field," Rupert Nesbitt showcases 3-D Studio Max animation. These are hyperreal virtual environments created by Nesbitt wholly in the computer. They look like our world but something's off. The sense of realism is challenged in part by the clinical chilliness of the digital imagery. But there also the odd occurrences, like nightmares made real: the rolling upheaval of the land in one animation, the appearance in another of explosions out of nowhere with a subsequent billowing and dissipation of thick black smoke. This virtual world is a shadow of our analog environment, disturbing both for the virtuosity of the simulation and the sense of cataclysmic instability. We live in a time in which the conceptual ground is shifting beneath us.

Tim Doherty's "I am an impotent necromancer. I know this but I keep trying," besides having one of the longest titles I have ever encountered, uses old-fashioned mechanical rather than digital technology. Doherty has made a machine to reanimate dead birds. The bird carcasses are connected to a machine. When the machine is cranked, the operator can make the birds' wings move up and down in a simulacra of flying although there is no forward motion. In the gallery, the contraption is set on a pedestal. A light is projected from the floor up through it to cast looming shadows on the wall. When the machine is operated, which it wasn't while I was there, the shadows of the birds seem even more realistically to be taking wing.

I don't know whether Bert Crenca was ever an underground comix artist. But if not, he surely missed (one of) his calling(s). Crenca's "You Can't Call Your Own Baby Ugly" is a series of doodles sketched over three years at conferences, school board meetings and at his desk at (supposedly) work. It's an amazing collection of surrealistic, psychedelic and grotesque imagery. Wild misshapen figures twist in upon themselves or merge with their landscapes, all rendered with virtuoso cross-hatching and shading.

One whole room in the main gallery is devoted to co-curator Elizabeth Keithline's "The Lost House Project." An installation, it consists of a set of sculptures Keithline creates by wrapping combustible objects in wire and then burning the object. What is left is the wire mesh form. These forms are suspended from the ceiling. A light is shone through them, projecting shadows. The wire forms are arranged to suggest the outer contours of a house or other building with a peaked roof. The visitor is contained within this "house" that isn't really there, just as the separate wire components contain the presence of the pre-existing form. The projected shadows further feed this notion of presence/absence, substance/shadow.

.: See the original story on Connecticut Art Scene

At its most basic level all vision is about distinguishing light from darkness. This elemental truth is the foundation of "Shadow Show" at Real Art Ways, which runs through Feb. 2.

The show features the work of 16 artists from Rhode Island and Connecticut and explores the concept of shadow.

Perhaps most compelling is a work by Olu Oguibe called "Memorial to the Unknown Child." The installation consists of a baby carriage in front of a large photograph — a portrait of a young boy. Oguibe, who was born in Igbo in West Africa, has seven sisters but his only brother died as a young boy. At first glance, this photograph seems to be Oguibe's brother but no such photographs exist. This is a photograph of Oguibe as a young boy. He has put himself in the place of his brother. The idea is simple, but the execution is powerful.

One gets the impression that Oguibe has carried his brother with him all these decades. The idea of his brother existing in a shadow expands the concept beyond the constraints of light and darkness and turns into something ethereal. Those who stand a bit longer in front of this work will no doubt find their minds drifting to their own departed loved ones. Or considering the vagaries of chance that allow one person to live while another dies. Oguibe's work, indeed the work of the entire show, is designed to foster such thought.

This dreamy state of mind can be difficult to maintain, but one aspect of the show and another in the gallery help preserve the effect. Most important to the mood is the work of artist Duncan Laurie and electrical engineer Gordon Salisbury, who amplified sound found in minerals and plants. This is the exhibit's soundtrack, and it establishes a mood of tranquility at the same time it causes one to wonder what we are missing beneath the clatter of traffic, trains and airplanes. The mood is enhanced by the work Kambui Olujimi, who is not part of the show but whose works from his own dream book inhabit the gallery's other spaces.

Some aspects of the "Shadow" exhibit are political, but most seek simply to explore the idea of what we consider reality.

Tim Doherty's installation "Necromancer" recalls a Renaissance term associated with demonic magic but also the ancient Greek definition that represented an art associated with spiritual wisdom. Duality is at play in the work as well. The installation is lifeless until one climbs aboard and begins pedaling in the manner of an exercise bike. At this point these ancient-looking spirits come to life and begin to move. But to really appreciate the work, one must watch the wall where the shadows seem even more alive — an eerie turn on E.T. silhouetted against the moon.

This sense that the shadows are more alive than reality persists in a room filled with Elizabeth Keithline's mesh sculptures of combustible items wrapped in wire and set ablaze. These sculptures hang like dormant trees and once again the shadows seem more substantial than the actual artifacts. The illusion is powerful and is central to the theme of the show.

More than anything, "Shadow Show" wants to create a space where the mind can wander unencumbered by the baggage of stubborn reality.

SHADOW SHOW runs through Feb. 2 at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St., Hartford. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday, 2-10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 2-11 p.m. Information at www.realartways.org.

Contact Matt Eagan at eagan@courant.com.

.: See the original story on Hartford Courant

HARTFORD - Real Art Ways on 56 Arbor St. in the Parkville section isn't the easiest place in the world to find, tucked back as it is off a side road, and in the back of a refurbished industrial brick building.

But just like a gem in the rough, it is absolutely worth the search.

About 500 people each month make the sojourn to the Real Art Ways Creative Cocktail Party held on the third Thursday of each month, where people meet to see the art, listen to live music, dance, and just have fun.

Through word-of-mouth, the event has continued to grow with a life of its own, says Executive Director Will K. Wilkins of the Creative Cocktail Hour, one of many activities at Real Art Ways.

"We are in an interesting position. We don't have a collection," says Wilkins, who has been at the helm since 1990. "A collection can weight you down" while the art they display is "of the present and in the moment."

First and foremost Wilkins says they are dedicated to artists and to making new art accessible to people.

They are also dedicated not just to visual artists, but also to musicians and authors, with readings given by different published authors, and poets, as well as independent films shown in their movie theater, which was built in 1996.

Wilkins says he wants people to come to Real Art Ways and relax. "There is no test - There is no right or wrong answers."

Wilkins says he was working happily for a theater group in New York City when he came upon an advertisement in a trade newsletter seeking a director for the non-profit organization that had started in 1975.

By the time Wilkins came on the scene, Real Art Ways had been housed in three different locations and was in a transitional period.

Something about their message and goals spoke to Wilkins, who applied and was chosen for the executive director's spot in 1990.

And the rest, as they say, is history. A soft spoken but clearly passionate person, Wilkins says life has improved and become more stable over the years for RAW, but there were many tough years, and it took longer than he had originally thought it would to get to where they are today.

"Life is not an unbroken string of successes," Wilkins philosophized, saying they are now in a transitionary period once again, bringing on new staff and expanding.

"There is always something new to see. "What is exciting about this, is this is Hartford. This could be in any vibrant city," Wilkins says.

One of the things that makes Real Art Ways so successful is that it does not try to make itself into something it is not, or compare itself to others. "We are not trying to be the Wadsworth," he says. "We are just trying to be ourselves."

With more than 1,200 members, Real Art Ways just keeps on growing and evolving, but continues to be devoted to new and emerging artists and to the community.

.: See the original Journal Inquirer story

The duo of Kris Tiner (trumpet) and Mike Baggetta (guitar), a.k.a. TIN/BAG, makes music that is both spare and rich, at times thick with ideas. Yet there are moments of quiet contemplation, when the guitar is so quiet in the background one must lean into the speakers. Some of the their music moves so slowly, like conversation in which each word is ripe with meaning and one wishes not to lose anything.
Their professional relationship is a bi-coastal one, with the trumpeter based in Southern California and the guitarist in Brooklyn, N.Y. Therefore, the fact they are touring and will appear at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday November 1 in Hartford, at Real Art Ways, no less (great to see the venue involved in presenting creative music again.) RAW is located at 56 Arbor Street in the Capital City. The duo starts a short 4-days/4-gigs tour in Hartford and then goes to Brookline, MA, Portland, ME and ends in Brooklyn, NY.

TIN/BAG will play music from their 2nd CD, "And Begin Again", released earlier this year on the Evander label. On the recording, 4 of the 10 tracks feature an expanded group (clarinet and drums) but the tour is just the two of them. One expects you'll hear beautiful ballads like "For Wadada" (dedicated to the great trumpeter-composer Wadada Leo Smith, once a New Haven resident now living and teaching on the West Coast.) Much of the music on the CD is slow but never lugubrious or boring. That's because the songs have a melodic base that the instrumentalists build their conversations off of. "Bienvenue" has a quick boppish line played by Baggetta while Tiner swerves and dances around and then they switch for a moment so the guitar lines are dancing. On "The In-Between", they start together and then quickly go in different directions then back together, split again, and so on. There's a heavy backbeat for the opening section of "Half Life Part II: A Slight Shift" but the piece softens and one hears the interplay of guitar with Harris Eisenstadt's active drumwork. Tiner soon joins in as does clarinetist Brian Walsh and the quartet find the beat again, taking them to the close of the piece. Tiner's muted trumpet is just the right touch for "Fishers of the Stars", the introspective piece that closes the disk. Yet, listen to Baggetta and his smart, melodic yet ever-so-playful supporting guitar work - this inventive dialogue can be heard throughout the program and lifts the music high above the ordinary.

Having heard Mike Baggetta play experimental guitar pieces at The Buttonwood Tree several years ago, his work here often seems spare yet even the low volume can't hide the rich sounds he creates. Because the majority of the songs are ballads, Tiner does not go in for flashy technique and swift phrases - instead, one can hear the influence of Miles Davis and Wadada Smith in his deliberate delivery. He does let loose now and again but never loses his focus. For more information about TIN/BAG and their 2 CDs, go to www.kristiner.com and follow the links. Baggetta has an informative blog and you can check that out by clicking here. To find out more about the duo's Real Art Ways date, go to www.realartways.org.

.: PDF of the original Hartford Courant story

.: See a PDF of the story

Real Art Ways garners Best Bet 1

BEST BET 1: "Shadow Show" at Real Art Ways.

Perhaps no word in the English language does a better job of evoking its meaning than the word "shadow." The range of associations with the word and idea of shadow, from comforting companion to a place where all hope vanishes, is explored in this show featuring 16 artists from Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York.

The exhibit, which opens Oct. 26, includes painting, sculpture, video, new media, installation and performance art. The show runs through Dec. 30.

.: See a PDF of the story

.: Download PDF here

Franco-Brazilian artist Alexis Peskine, whose work will be shown at Real Art Ways, opening September 20, 2007, was featured in the New York Times for his exhibition commenting on French race relations at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in NYC.

.: Alexis Peskine in the NY Times

Legendary performance poet and acclaimed writer Sekou Sundiata passed away at the age of 59 on July 18, 2007. He performed at Real Art Ways several times in the 1990s.

.: Obituary by Louis Reyes Rivera

Real Art Ways Executive Director Will K. Wilkins and 50,000 Beds creator Chris Doyle were featured on WNPR's "Where We Live," discussing the ambitious project and the importance of community and contemporary art.

.: Will K. Wilkins and Chris Doyle on WNPR

50,000 Beds receives a great preview in the New York Times. This ambitious collaboration between 3 of Connecticut's leading contemporary arts organizations opens at Real Art Ways July 21, from 6-9pm.

.: New York Times Article

Check out this New York Times review of Bill Dixon and the Sound Vision Orchestra, featuring Real Art Ways' favorite trumpeter and former Composer-in-Residence Stephen Haynes.

.: New York Times

Artist Jordan Eagles, whose work is on display in our galleries through July 15, has been attracting a lot of media attention.

.: Review by Matt Eagan of the Hartford Courant
.: Real Art Ways and Jordan Eagles on Fox 61

Review by Chuck Obuchowski of BassDrumBone Concert

.: BassDrumBone Review

One of the notorious "NEA 4," Tim Miller brought his censored performance art to Real Art Ways.  Now he's winning awards.  Coincidence?

.: Lambda Literary Site
.: Tim Miller's Blog

Julian was one of the first artists selected in our juried process for emerging artists. The Stray Shopping Cart: AN Illustrated System of Identification, Montague examines an every day feature of urban life, positing shopping cart finds as a sociological adventure. His new book is a continuation of his work at Real Art Ways.

.: Montague in The Independent

Colin McEnroe interviewed Henriette Mantel, co-director of An Unreasonable Man opening at Real Art Ways March 30. A book signing, along with Q&A with Ralph Nader will take place opening night.

.: Listen to Henriette Mantel with Colin McEnroe
.: Listen to Ralph Nader on WNPR's Where We Live (recorded March 27, 2007)

Leroy Jenkins was an outstanding violinist, who played at Real Art Ways most recently in November, 2002, to help us celebrate the opening of the Real Room.

.: Jazz Times Retrospective on Leroy Jenkins