visual arts | innovative
contemporary art
Tuesday-Thursday, Sunday: 2-10pm
Friday-Saturday: 2-11pm
Closed Mondays
Gallery Admission:
$3 Suggested Donation
Free for Members and Cinema Ticketholders
| Real Public 2009 Opening Photos by Steven Laschever Photography |
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One of 77 trees in Pope Park, by Matthew Rodriguez.
photo: Steven Laschever Photography
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Sofia Maldonado in front of her mural on the Pelican Tattoo building in Frog Hollow.
photo: Steven Laschever Photography
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Satch hoyt stands in front of his line labyrinth in pope park.
photo: Steven Laschever Photography
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Margarida Correia
Real Public
four new public art projects
in Parkville and Frog Hollow
Real Public in the news:
Sunday, May 31: "Anarcho-Muralist" | New York Magazine
Saturday, May 30: "Four Public Projects Put Art In The Streets, Parks Of Parkville, Frog Hollow" -- Roger Catlin, The Hartford Courant
[More news]
Four public art projects, each created specifically for Hartford, make use of the existing creativity, vibrancy, and culture of the Parkville and Frog Hollow neighborhoods.
Photographer Margarida Correia has been working with members of Hartford’s Portuguese community.A Parkville billboard displays the Praia da Nazaré, Portugal's famous beach. Street lamp banners on Park Street display album covers of famous Fado singers. Stores along Parkville play music from the albums. Artist Talk: TBA
Satch Hoyt created a labyrinth in Frog Hollow's Pope Park. The labyrinth, constructed from clotheslines, addresses the migratory voyage of the residents who reside in the neighborhood. The public are invited to traverse the labyrinth's path. Artist Talk: Thursday, May 28 6 PM, with Matthew Rodriguez
Sofia Maldonado's mural, on the Pelican Tattoo building in Frog Hollow, blends elements of female aesthetics and street cultures. Maldonado worked with two interns to create the project, including a neighborhood teenager from Mi Casa. Artist Talk: Thursday, August 27, 6 PM
Matthew Rodriguez has created faces on 77 trees in Pope Park The results are playful “characters” residing in the neighborhood’s neglected spaces. Artist Talk: Thursday, May 28 6 PM, with Satch Hoyt
Support
Major support for Real Public comes from:
The Ensworth Charitable Trust, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, The Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Art Campaign, The J. Walton Bissell Foundation, Sandy and Howard Fromson, Travelers, Robinson and Nancy Grover, The Wallace Foundation, and Real Art Ways' Members.
Major support for Real Art Ways’ visual arts programs comes from Real Art Ways members, Howard & Sandy Fromson, Greater Hartford Arts Council’s United Arts Campaign, Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Wallace Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, Travelers, Robinson and Nancy Grover, and Gary E. West.
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Video Still: “like a woodpecker with a headache or a nightingale with a toothache” 3:57 minutes. single channel video with sound, 2009.
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“I am you and you are me and together we are slowly becoming dust” (glitter and debris on canvas, 2009) 36 x 48 in
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Jayson Keeling
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“The Kingdom of Heaven is Within” detail. (glitter and debris on canvas, 2009) 60 x 72 in
Jayson Keeling
Artist talk: Thursday August 6, 6 PM
Artist's Statement
"My continuing objective is to anchor and subtly allude to desire in its purest manifestations. I am interested in death, excess, joy and the search for the futile and unattainable as they relate to notions of power, social hierarchy and the intangible avenues of their exploitation within culture. To this end, I apply an interdisciplinary practice that simultaneously explores and exploits cultural iconography and residue, with appropriationist gestures. I use painting, video, sculpture and photography to achieve this goal. I seek to undermine both the objectivity that people bring to the art experience, along with the creation in the viewer, of an acute awareness of their position in relation to the construction and confines of power."
About The Artist
Jayson Keeling was born in Brooklyn, NY and attended The Fashion Institute of Technology. He lives and works in Long Island City, Queens. For most of his career Keeling worked almost exclusively in the medium of photography but recently he has begun to explore painting, video,
and sculpture as well. His work has been featured in many exhibitions including The Queens International 4, The Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY; Filmic, VideoStudio, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Summer Mixtape Vol. 1, Exit Art, New York and The Wu-Tang googolplex Show (Congress), GBE@passerby, New York. His residencies include: The Apex Art Outbound Travel Residency to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2009), The Lower Manhattan Cultural
Council's Swing Space Residency (2009) and Workspace Residency (2007), The Bronx Museum?s A.I.M 27 (2006) and Aljiria?s Emerge 08 (2006).
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Chris Kaczmarek
Artist Talk: Thursday, September 3
Artist Statement
"At an early age, I was drawn to the almost mystical power of sculptural objects and to the alchemy of their making. I was motivated to learn the grammar of this three-dimensional language. As I became adept in many of the traditional skills, my investigations expanded to include aspects of technology and new media, the study of which continues to be a major influence and source of content for my work.Most recently, my primary artistic concerns have been with the interactions of people with their physical and cerebral environments. This includes the control that is both
consciously and unconsciously imposed upon us by our media saturated and didactically crafted surroundings. I am intrigued by how our perceptions and our personal realities
are formed and directed through the information we allow ourselves to receive through both passive and active avenues. There is an exciting and unexamined uncertainty about how we shape our understanding about the world in which we live. Through my work I attempt to investigate that ambiguity, and allow others to question the internal and
external structure of their worlds."
About Chris Kaczmarek
Chris Kaczmarek’s work incorporates both traditional and experimental practices using a broad variety of mediums. He creates interactive, site-specific installations that are designed to guide the viewer towards a deeper contemplation about the environment they inhabit. Other works include performance, sound scores for the stage, multi-channel video and handmade electronic instruments.
Support
This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of our Members, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alexander A. Goldfarb Memorial Trust, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
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Gelah Penn at Real Art Ways
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Gelah Penn at Real Art Ways
Gelah Penn
Artist Talk: Thursday, September 24, 6 pm
exhibition through Sunday, October 11
Gelah Penn’s work is both sparse and substantial. Her site-specific installation presents jagged, three dimensional lines, shapes, and colors set against stark white walls.
Artist Statement
“In my recent work I explore the linear language of drawing in three-dimensional space using the lexicon of gestural abstraction. By manipulating colored monofilament and other tendril-like materials, I mean to construct a kind of substantive ephemerality, an accretion of marks and their shadows delineating maelstroms of visual noise; a luminous expanse in suspended animation, conjuring microscopic activity, arterial systems, dust, and weather.”
About the Artist:
Gelah Penn was born in Beaver Falls, PA, and attended the San Francisco Art Institute and Brandeis University. Exhibition history includes solo and group exhibitions at the Kentler International Drawing Space, Smack Mellon, and the Sculpture Center.
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Corey D’Augustine, photo: John Groo
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Corey D’Augustine, Photo: Groo
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Corey D’Augustine, Photo: Groo
Corey D'Augustine
Artist Talk: THursday, July 23
Artist Statement
"My work attempts to find a positive reception for the negativity that surrounds us by examining the intersection of formalism and everyday life.
We live in a reality of rampant social and economic inequality that is a function of social systems that consistently reward greed. For me, art is a model for a personal withdrawal from these systems to maintain a positive influence on the people and environment around us. This could be called positivist or utopian and is no new idea.
This model aims to erase preconceived distinctions in favor of the direct experience of materials and their formal qualities. To do this, I bring attention to aesthetic binary pairs and undercut their opposition through paradox. By highlighting the extraordinary qualities of everyday materials and the commonplace properties of fine materials, for example, or by locating refined qualities in the most prosaic techniques, I try to use perceived difference against itself toward a blank aesthetics.
For me blank is empty. Empty not as in zero, but as in nothing distinct, nothing artificial, nothing that makes it different from anything else. Art can be awareness and can change our relationship to what surrounds us."
Support
This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of our Members, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alexander A. Goldfarb Memorial Trust, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
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Beth Krebs, “Wild Blue Yonder,” 2009. Photo: John Groo
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Beth Krebs, “Wild Blue Yonder,” 2009.
Beth Krebs
Artist Talk: Thursday, july 9
Artist Statement
"My installations and videos bring makeshift magic to unexpected places. The projects use low-tech processes and basic building materials to make extraordinary interruptions in ordinary spaces, such as a dropped ceiling hung in the woods, burping papier mache standpipes on the sidewalk, or a tiny vinyl boat sailing across a bedroom’s waterbed. The work encourages a suspension of disbelief, where a constructed scenario is persuasive despite the fact that the means used to create it are fully apparent. The projects ask people to notice where they are, and, with humor, to imagine what else might be possible there."
About the Artist
Beth Krebs grew up in Connecticut, lived for nearly a decade in New Orleans, and currently lives in Brooklyn. She has exhibited her installations in galleries and alternative spaces in and around Manhattan, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the Bronx Museum of Art, The Jersey City Museum of Art, Smack Mellon Gallery, the Cue Foundation, and the Elizabeth Foundation Project Space. She is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant (2004) and the Paul Robeson Emerging Artist Award from Rutgers University (2004). She was chosen as a finalist in the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) and Aljira Emerge programs, and has been an artist in residence at the Bemis Center in Omaha, Nebraska (2005), Sculpture Space (2006), and at the MacDowell Colony (2008).
Support
This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of our Members, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alexander A. Goldfarb Memorial Trust, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
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Chris Taylor, “Small Craft Advisory” photo by John Groo
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Chris Taylor (right) and Damien Francois installing “Small Craft Advisory.”
Chris Taylor
Artist Talk: thursday, July 23
Chris Taylor will install a self-sufficient, traditional glass blowing studio built into a seven-foot boat. The glass blowing in that studio will be influenced by the motion of the boat, and the artist will document the process of re-learning a traditional craft skill in a new environment.
Artist's Statement
"I am an artist who derives significant insight from conventions within craft tradition by challenging them directly and simply. From learning to blow glass upside down to reproducing a 16th century venetian goblet and then placing my creation in a cabinet next to the original in the collections room of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, I engage the friction generated within a material and process that is a product of convention and tradition."
Support
This exhibition is made possible with the generous support of our Members, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alexander A. Goldfarb Memorial Trust, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
- Links coming soon!
Step Up '09
A series of six solo exhibitions, open to emerging artists living in New York, New Jersey, and New England.
selected applicants will be notified by July 31st.
The STEP UP exhibition series seeks to provide emerging
artists in our region an exhibition and publication opportunity at a critical moment in their careers.
Artists selected will receive an exhibition, an exhibition publication, and will be given an opportunity to participate in an artist talk in conjunction with the exhibit schedule. Information on all projects by selected artists including their final exhibition publication will also be available on our web site, which is viewed by 165,000 unique visitors per month.
While artists are permitted to propose the exhibition of existing work, the jury will place special emphasis on proposals that call for the creation of new work.
The jury will select work based on: the quality of the artist’s work, the innovation evidenced by the submitted work and proposal, the potential impact of the exhibition on the artist’s career and the economic and physical feasibility of the proposed exhibition.
Selections from the submitted slides, videos, and electronic media that are not chosen by the jury for exhibition will be considered for inclusion in a presentation called Slide
Slam.
We are pleased to announce the jury for Step Up '09:
- Andrea Grover - Founding Director, Aurora Picture Show,TX
- Susan Cross - Curator, MASS MoCA, MA
- Deborah Willis - University Professor, Chair, Tisch School of the Arts, NY & Artist
STEP UP '09 is made possible with the generous support of our Members, the National Endowment for the Arts, Sandy and Howard Fromson, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
