A one-of-a-kind musical experience will materialize as thirteen exceptional musicians gather in groupings from solo to large ensemble, creating fully improvised music on the spot. The musicians range from local to internationally known, young to not-so-young, all sharing a love and mastery of their craft as well as an affinity for collaboration. Jerome Deupree / drums and percussion – formerly of the alternative rock band Morphine Joe Morris / guitar “He doesn’t play generic guitar music, having adapted precepts, concepts, and even phrases from musicians who play piano, saxophone, and other instruments.” – Village Voice Stephen Haynes / cornets and flugelhorn Agustí Fernández / piano “One of the most important explorers of avant-garde music in Spain” – Village Voice Nate Wooley / trumpet “In the space of the same song, he can provide memorable lines of melody over a swinging beat, then charge off into innovations that expand your understanding of his instrument.” – Seth Colter Walls, Pitchfork Ben Hall / percussion “Feverishly inventive and wildly curious” – Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader Ben Stapp / tuba “(His) imagination is limitless, his influences truly diffuse, and he realizes his vision due to a type of daring that few artists possess.” – Cisco Bradley, Jazz Right Now Brad Barrett / bass Dan O’Brien / saxophone, clarinet Do Yeon Kim / guyageum (a Korean silk-stringed zither-like instrument) Eric Stilwell / trombone Gabriel Garcia / alto and c-melody saxophones Laila Smith / voice – Recognized in 2012 as one of 20 U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts Curated by Joe Morris
Stephen Haynes / cornet Dan Clucas / cornet Taylor Ho Bynum / cornet Ben Stapp / tuba Eric Rosenthal / drums and percussion Stephen Haynes returns to Real Art Ways to premier a new project – Knuckleball – a “pocket brass band.” RAW listeners will be familiar with Haynes from the long-running Improvisations series, co-curated with Joe Morris. With Knuckleball, Haynes has gathered some old friends – Taylor Ho Bynum and Ben Stapp – and invited a guest artist Dan Clucas, based in Los Angeles. The drummer – Eric Rosenthal – may be familiar to area listeners as a member of Naftules Dream, the iconic avant-klezmer ensemble that has recorded for John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Expect the unexpected with this new group!
Critical Writing and Visual Arts: Free Community Conversation
Join local artists and Jenna Crowder, a Portland, Maine-based artist and writer, for a conversation exploring the importance of critical discourse around visual arts practices and how having such discourse enhances the exchange of ideas in artistic communities. Ms. Crowder will introduce her online arts journal The Chart and discuss the forms of critical writing the publication supports. This free event is part of a cooperative effort between RAW, Artspace New Haven, Franklin Street Works in Stamford, with the intention of launching a shared online journal of experimental, expository and critical writing. Real Art Ways, Artspace New Haven, Franklin Street Works and The Chart are members of Common Field, a visual arts organizing network that has provided a grant to support this program. According to The Charts’s website, “The Chart was founded by visual artist Jenna Crowder and entrepreneurial artist Ashleigh Burskey. While contributors write and document Maine art and artists, placing the work and history in contexts that are unique to Maine, we also investigate work from national and global communities with the intent to make visible the vast network of thoughts, themes, and ideas that artists are grappling with, regardless of geography or market.” About Jenna Crowder Jenna Crowder is a Portland, Maine-based artist and writer. She is the Founding Editor of The Chart, an arts journal that aims to connect Maine artists to national and global contexts while offering specific regional perspectives to larger conversations. Jenna favors collaboration in her artistic practice, which extends across installation, printmaking, public practice, and curation to consider the convergence of written language and visual aesthetics. She is a co-creator, with writer Nadia Prupis, of MTV Crits!, a serial project which hosts themed music video screenings and socio-feminist pop culture critiques at art institutions, lingerie shops, and bars. Jenna has been awarded residencies from Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Ragdale Foundation, and the Stephen Pace House, and project grants from the Kindling Fund and the Maine Arts Commission. She is a member of Pickwick Independent Press and the Portland Public Art Committee. Learn more at Ms. Crowder’s website. Join internationally bestselling author and 36-time Moth StorySLAM and 5-time GrandSLAM champion Matthew Dicks for the launch of his first non-fiction title, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling. In lieu of a traditional book launch, Matthew will perform a one-man show comprising five BRAND NEW stories with short lessons after each story (right from the book!) designed to make you a better storyteller. Following the show, Matthew will take questions, sign books, and give away prizes. Books will be sold in partnership with Barnes & Noble of West Hartford. Live Music performed by Shoulda Coulda Woulda. The show is PG-13, so teens are welcome. Beer, wine, and snacks will be on sale at the Real Art Ways cafe.
John Kelly has been producing creative work in the worlds of dance, performance, and visual art for decades. Sideways into the Shadows combines his work in drawing and performance to give an insightful yet contemporary look into his history and process. Alongside portraits of artists and friends who died of HIV/AIDS, Sideways into the Shadows includes hand-rendered transcriptions of journal entries originally written during the epidemic. Dating as far back as 1976, the entries weave in and out of humorous, honest, raw, and provocative moments. Says Kelly, “Beginning in 1982, my friends and colleagues were dying…AIDS has framed my story to an unavoidable degree. Their absence remains part of my work.” The drawings serve as elegies to lost compatriots, artists, and creators. The exhibit also includes video documentation of his previous performances, as well as a video installation in our Video Gallery. Real Art Ways would like to acknowledge and thank Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project for helping Sideways into the Shadows travel from their NYC gallery space to Hartford. About John Kelly John Kelly is a performance and visual artist whose multifaceted career spans more than three decades. His innovative performance works stem from autobiographical, cultural, gender, and identity issues, realized through the theatrical, visual, movement-based, and vocal delineation of character. Subjects have included the AIDS epidemic, the Berlin Wall, the Troubadours, and Expressionistic Film, and character studies based on Egon Schiele, Caravaggio, Antonin Artaud, Joni Mitchell, and Jean Cocteau. To learn more about Kelly and view more of his work, visit his website. Featured image: “Ethyl Eichelberger” (detail) 2018. Mixed media on paper. 14″ x 11″
Shields explores ideas about vulnerability, protection, blindness or obscured vision, and non-verbal/pictorial signification. The imagery stems from ancient Middle Eastern and African shields and armor (for humans as well as for animals in battle), but the work reflects a broad imagining of what shields might be, what they accomplish, and when and why they are used. Shields seem to be objects of protection, but they are also markers of vulnerability, weights that complicate agility, screens that compromise vision, and ornate, celebratory displays of identity or belonging. A shield protects and divides, standing between one thing and another. 
In geological terms, “shield” signifies a rigid, ancient layer of the Earth’s crust that withstands change without succumbing to pressure, without folding up into a mountain range or buckling down into a crater. Shields also function as markers of authority, nationality, or inclusion, bearing signs, insignias, or serving as identifying badges. In battle, a shield is typically forged from metal, wood, or another hard material, protecting a vulnerable body behind it. Utilitarian objects of protection and defense, shields are also ornate aesthetic objects that hover between sculpture and painting. Craig’s Shields invites viewers to consider the relationships between defense and design, insulation and exposure, visibility and invisibility. The exhibition includes black and white drawings, paintings, and malleable sewn works, as well as a site-specific, participatory installation that invites visitors to create and display their own shields. A 16-page hand-drawn zine accompanies the show. About Megan Craig Megan Craig is a visual artist and an Associate Professor of philosophy and art at Stony Brook University. Recent solo shows include Rose Sings at Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim in Germany, Lines of Flight at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York, and If and How at Scott and Bowne Fine Art in Connecticut. Craig has also produced several large-scale participatory public performance works, including most recently Traveling in Place (2017) with Rachel Bernsen at The Yale Art Gallery, Gather Round (2017 – 2018) in conjunction with Cold Spring School in New Haven, CT, and The Way Things Felt (2016), commissioned by Artspace and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. Craig has been awarded painting residencies and grants from several institutions including the Pollack Krasner Foundation, The Weir Farm Trust, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Arts Foundation. At Stony Brook University, she teaches courses in aesthetics, ethics, French phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and American philosophy. Her research is focused around accounts of memory, sensibility, and ambiguity – with a focus on sensation, synesthesia, and color perception. Craig is also the graphic designer for Firehouse 12 Records, and a mother of two. www.megancraig.com
In geological terms, “shield” signifies a rigid, ancient layer of the Earth’s crust that withstands change without succumbing to pressure, without folding up into a mountain range or buckling down into a crater. Shields also function as markers of authority, nationality, or inclusion, bearing signs, insignias, or serving as identifying badges. In battle, a shield is typically forged from metal, wood, or another hard material, protecting a vulnerable body behind it. Utilitarian objects of protection and defense, shields are also ornate aesthetic objects that hover between sculpture and painting. Craig’s Shields invites viewers to consider the relationships between defense and design, insulation and exposure, visibility and invisibility. The exhibition includes black and white drawings, paintings, and malleable sewn works, as well as a site-specific, participatory installation that invites visitors to create and display their own shields. A 16-page hand-drawn zine accompanies the show. About Megan Craig Megan Craig is a visual artist and an Associate Professor of philosophy and art at Stony Brook University. Recent solo shows include Rose Sings at Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim in Germany, Lines of Flight at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York, and If and How at Scott and Bowne Fine Art in Connecticut. Craig has also produced several large-scale participatory public performance works, including most recently Traveling in Place (2017) with Rachel Bernsen at The Yale Art Gallery, Gather Round (2017 – 2018) in conjunction with Cold Spring School in New Haven, CT, and The Way Things Felt (2016), commissioned by Artspace and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. Craig has been awarded painting residencies and grants from several institutions including the Pollack Krasner Foundation, The Weir Farm Trust, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Arts Foundation. At Stony Brook University, she teaches courses in aesthetics, ethics, French phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and American philosophy. Her research is focused around accounts of memory, sensibility, and ambiguity – with a focus on sensation, synesthesia, and color perception. Craig is also the graphic designer for Firehouse 12 Records, and a mother of two. www.megancraig.com HSO: Intermix is intimate, inviting, and interactive! Get up close with HSO ensembles as they perform contemporary compositions and intriguing, rare, classical pieces. Enjoy cocktails, conversation, mingling, and more. The final Intermix concert of the season, The Twittering Machine, takes place within the galleries at Real Art Ways. Program Shostakovich – Chamber Symphony. Op. 110a, Mvt. 2 & 3 Shostakovich – String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110, Mvt. 2 & 3 McTee – The Twittering Machine How to Buy Tickets Online www.hartfordsymphony.org/tickets Call Single Tickets and Flex Cards: 860-987-5900 Subscriptions: 860-244-2999 Monday – Friday, 10 AM- 5PM In Person or Mail HSO Box Office at The Bushnell 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford, CT 06106 Questions? tickets@hartfordsymphony.org Supported in part by a Hartford Events Grant through the Greater Hartford Arts Council with major support from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.
Speak Up is an evening of true stories centered on a common theme, told by storytellers chosen for their skill and expertise. Brought to Real Art Ways by Matthew and Elysha Dicks, the event celebrates the craft of live storytelling in the Greater Hartford area. This session’s cast features Speak Up veterans Ron Apter, Jeni Bonaldo, and Valerie Edelman Gordon alongside first time storytellers Donald Frank, Kerri Gawreluk, and Chris Kueffner. All stories are 5-10 minutes long, and may not be suitable for young kids. The stories can be unique, compelling, funny and touching, and show change or growth. The theme of the evening is Hunger.
Combining unconventional materials in unexpected manners, Abductions and Reconstructions offers fresh takes on abstraction, collage, and sculpture. Curated by David Borawksi, three artists present a diverse range of aesthetic considerations. 
Meg Hitchcock uses sacred texts to craft intricate designs and imagery. The labor intensive practice of cutting minute details mimics the rituals and meditations contained in her source materials. Hitchcock often uses letters from one text, such as the Bible, to craft passages in another text, like the Quran. Regarding this process, Hitchcock says “…by deconstructing and recombining the holy books of diverse religions, I undermine their authority and animate the common thread that weaves through all scripture.” Featured image at right: Bling No. 4: Visitation, 2017; Letters cut from the Bible, print by Gustave Dore, paper burned with Tibetan incense; 8 7/8 x 7 1/4 in. Ryan Sarah Murphy’s bright cardboard reliefs live in between the worlds of sculpture and painting. Her assemblages create what could be aerial views of farmland, architecture plans, or political maps of imaginary nations. She crafts these objects with a sense of seriousness and play befitting the found, casual nature of her materials. Featured image, top of page: at the margins of the land, 2017; Unpainted cardboard, foam core; 6.25 x 9.75 x 2.5 inches. Liz Sweibel uses both found and purposefully acquired materials in her precarious sculptures and assemblages. Speaking to her process, Sweibel says “I build [my art] using particular yet ordinary materials and gestures. The process is low-tech, immediate, and improvisational, and primarily takes form as spare, abstract sculpture, installation, and drawing.” Featured image below: Untitled (Splinter #11), 2015; Wood, paint; four elements; 2.5″ x 6″ x 4″ (variable). 
To view more of Hitchcock’s work, visit her website. To view more of Murphy’s work, visit her website. To view more of Sweibel’s work, visit her website.
Meg Hitchcock uses sacred texts to craft intricate designs and imagery. The labor intensive practice of cutting minute details mimics the rituals and meditations contained in her source materials. Hitchcock often uses letters from one text, such as the Bible, to craft passages in another text, like the Quran. Regarding this process, Hitchcock says “…by deconstructing and recombining the holy books of diverse religions, I undermine their authority and animate the common thread that weaves through all scripture.” Featured image at right: Bling No. 4: Visitation, 2017; Letters cut from the Bible, print by Gustave Dore, paper burned with Tibetan incense; 8 7/8 x 7 1/4 in. Ryan Sarah Murphy’s bright cardboard reliefs live in between the worlds of sculpture and painting. Her assemblages create what could be aerial views of farmland, architecture plans, or political maps of imaginary nations. She crafts these objects with a sense of seriousness and play befitting the found, casual nature of her materials. Featured image, top of page: at the margins of the land, 2017; Unpainted cardboard, foam core; 6.25 x 9.75 x 2.5 inches. Liz Sweibel uses both found and purposefully acquired materials in her precarious sculptures and assemblages. Speaking to her process, Sweibel says “I build [my art] using particular yet ordinary materials and gestures. The process is low-tech, immediate, and improvisational, and primarily takes form as spare, abstract sculpture, installation, and drawing.” Featured image below: Untitled (Splinter #11), 2015; Wood, paint; four elements; 2.5″ x 6″ x 4″ (variable). To view more of Hitchcock’s work, visit her website. To view more of Murphy’s work, visit her website. To view more of Sweibel’s work, visit her website. Trained as an architect, New Haven-based artist Stephen Grossman uses drawing and painting as a means to navigate dimensional space on paper and panel. Through mixing organic and geometric shapes, his work embodies both structural architecture and figurative bodies. Charcoal, ink, and graphite create subtle differences in warmth throughout his drawings, accented by moments of intensity through gouache. The works presented in Wander allow the viewer to engage an imaginative sense of space through Grossman’s line weight, texture, and sparse usage of color. To view more of Grossman’s work, go to his website. Featured image: I once delivered a package to the 89th floor of the Empire State Building, gouache on panel, 16” x 20”, 2017.
Come join exhibiting artist Peter Edlund as he discusses the work in his current exhibition, Names on the Land. Light refreshments will be served. About Peter Edlund Edlund studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has shown nationally and internationally, and has received honors including MacDowell Colony Residencies, a Gottlieb Foundation grant, and a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant. He has exhibited at Jack Shainman Gallery, among many others. Edlund is originally from West Hartford, Connecticut. His work has been exhibited at Real Art Ways on multiple occasions, including a solo exhibition in 2000, Majestic America. Read more about Names on the Land here. Read the Art New England review of Names on the Land. Read the Hartford Courant article about Names on the Land. Special thanks to the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture at University of Hartford and MakeHartford for assistance in creating laser-cut stencils used to produce several works in the exhibition and public art works in various locations around Hartford.
An autobiographical multimedia solo performance portraying memories of strong, beautiful and black women. Colleen explores her personal diasporic identity by revisiting tidbits passed on to her from her grandmother, mother, sister, and other strong female influences. Her performance is informed by their cultures, stories, foods, dances, clothes, hair, songs and words. The work is informed by the family recipe she is desperate to learn, the dances she watched her sister do her whole life, or simply the way these women carry themselves. Colleen “carves a space for us to celebrate black women.” She says, “Putting the body on stage is an act of protest. The work serves as an urgent declaration that black women are important, beautiful and magical.” This work was made possible by artist residencies at Brote Residencia Creativa (ARG), Denmark Arts Center (US), and Casa Muñecas (ARG). Also thanks to the support of OiHoy and Fabiana Castro. Idea and performance: Colleen Ndemeh Fitzgerald Assistance: María Esther Mejia Collaborators: Kukily Colectivo Music: Jojo Abot, Mehkamu Wayson Photos: Jasmin Sanchez
Real Art Ways presents three concerts that explore distinct types of drums. Each concert includes a discussion with the performing artists.
Kaoru Watanabe’s Néo featuring Fumi Tanakadate“Néo is so ethereal that words to describe it skip like a breeze on water. It encompasses time and space from a culture that remains elusive and exotic, yet is audibly accessible in this presentation.” – James Nadal, All About Jazz (Full review here.)
Kaoru Watanabe is a composer and musician, acclaimed for his innovative approach to powerful Japanese drums and the texturally rich melodies of the Japanese flutes. Joined by percussionist Fumi Tanakadate, the duo will play selections from their newly released album Néo. Read an article about this concert in the Hartford Courant. About Kaoru Watanabe Kaoru Watanabe is a Brooklyn based composer and musician, who has a passion for cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary collaborations, working with such artists as National Living Treasure Bando Tamasaburo, Jason Moran, So Percussion, Adam Rudolph, directors Wes Anderson and Martin Scorsese and was a featured guest on Yo-Yo Ma’s Grammy Award-winning album Sing Me Home. Watanabe was a performer and artistic director of the internationally acclaimed Japanese taiko performing arts ensemble Kodo for close to a decade. Watanabe has performed his compositions at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Kabukiza and in Minamiza, has performed in all 47 prefectures in Japan as well as across the North, Central and South Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. About Fumi Tanakadate Fumi Tanakadate is a taiko artist and pianist based in New York, who has a unique combination of an expertise in European Classical music and a background in traditional folk dance and music from Japan. After studying extensively with Kaoru Watanabe, Fumi now performs frequently with Watanabe, often in a duo setting where she plays taiko and piano and sings, sometimes doing all at once. She has performed at such venues as Joe’s Pub, National Sawdust, Pioneer Works, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, the Rubin Museum of Art, Super Deluxe in Tokyo and at PASIC, Percussive Arts Society International Convention. Fumi has collaborated with Shane Shanahan of the Silkroad Ensemble, Brooklyn Raga Massive, Chieko Kojima and Yuta Sumiyoshi of KODO, Alicia Hall Moran, Satoshi Takeishi and Kiyohiko Semba. Fumi also serves as the primary instructor at Kaoru Watanabe Taiko Center, teaching classes and giving educational workshops at local schools and colleges. As a classical pianist, Fumi has performed throughout Japan, tri-state area, Austria, and Spain. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Wesleyan University and a Master of Music degree in piano performance from Manhattan School of Music. Major support comes from the Richard P. Garmany Fund.Real Art Ways presents three concerts that explore distinct types of drums. Each concert includes a discussion with the performing artists.
A Circle Has No Beginning by Sameer Gupta featuring Marc Cary“The New York-based drummer-tabla player’s own compositions, which fill most of A Circle Has No Beginning, are in the fusion vein, continuing in Weather Report’s trajectory with echoes of ’70s Herbie Hancock and Jean-Luc Ponty. Oriental modes, celestial vibes and muted funk are heard. Not surprisingly, percussion is integral.” – Morton Shlabotnik, Shepherd Express
Sameer Gupta will perform tabla and drumset in selections from his February 2018 release A Circle Has No Beginning that features a fusion of Indian classical music and jazz. Joining Gupta will be Marc Cary (keys), Jay Gandhi (bansuri), Arun Ramamurthy (carnatic violin), Marika Hughes (cello), Pawan Benjamin (sax), and Rahsaan Carter (bass). About Sameer Gupta Sameer Gupta is known as one of the few percussionists simultaneously representing the traditions of American jazz on drumset and Indian classical music on tabla. He has performed at Lincoln Center, SFJAZZ, Nehru Centre London, Jazz at Lincoln Center, MoMA NYC and Yerba Buena Gardens San Francisco. His own interests and love of tabla brought him to the great maestro Pt Anindo Chatterjee, of whom he is now a dedicated disciple, though his first few years were spent under the guidance of Ustad Zakir Hussain. Sameer is also a co-founder and an Artistic Director of the non-profit collective Brooklyn Raga Massive.After graduating with a music performance BA, Gupta worked and taught in the Bay Area for 10 years as a jazz drummer, and later also as a classical Indian tabla player. Today he lives in Brooklyn, NYC and is actively involved in performing, curating, producing and teaching through various institutions including Brooklyn Raga Massive, Carnegie Hall’s Global Encounters and Ragas Live Festival. Gupta has held workshops on Indian music and cross over drumming styles, at The Jazzschool in Berkeley, California and Berklee College of Music in Boston. His influences range from Elvin Jones and Tony Williams to Ustad Allah Rakha and Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, and he’s has had the pleasure to play with many great musicians including Falu Shah, Rez Abbasi, Marc Cary, Wallace Roney, Karsh Kale, Pandit Krishna Bhatt, Ravi Chandra Kulur, Mysore Manjunath, Prasant Radhakrishnan, Pandit Chitresh Das, Jason Samuels Smith, Pandit Ramesh Mishra, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee and numerous other luminaries. Gupta continues to build his career by combining traditional and modern improvisational styles drawing from his dual Indian and American heritage, and has already established himself as an original musical voice in jazz, world, and fusion music. From his early percussion studies in Tokyo, Japan in the mid 80s, he has consistently placed himself in many challenging musical environments – from bebop to avant-garde jazz, and European classical percussion to North Indian classical tabla. Gupta continues to compose and perform music from a true multi-cultural perspective that bridges several continents. More at Sameer Gupta’s website. Major support comes from the Richard P. Garmany Fund. Andrew Buck’s sense of the term “landscape” is inspired by the writings of John Brinkerhoff Jackson. “He went back to the source word, the German landschaften, which referred to that which results when ‘man’ reconfigures and uses the land, in essence creating his own landscape on the natural landscape,” says Buck. Real Art Ways Executive Director Will K. Wilkins says, “Andrew Buck’s work is abstract, specific, tactile and spirited. There is a lot going on in what seems like straight-forward landscape.” Buck is interested in the documentary aspects of his work, but he also cites abstract expressionism as an inspiration. Says Buck, “The sheer size of the space of most quarries is awe-inspiring in a strange manner. That is, that these spaces are man-made, not natural. Many of them are otherworldly in both appearance and in actual experience. The overwhelming silence enhances the experience.” About Andrew Buck Andrew Buck lives and works in Farmington, Connecticut. His work is included in many public and private collections, include the Yale University Art Gallery and the New Britain Museum of American Art. He has shown both his Rockface and Tobacco series at Real Art Ways. Buck is a recipient of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in both 2016 and 1995 as well as a Berkshire Taconic Foundation Artist Resource Grant in 2010. To see more of Buck’s work, visit his website. 
Quarry Panorama 5 (Stony Creek Granite Quarry); 2014; 85″ x 25″ Click to enlarge. 
Quarry Panorama 9 (Trap Rock Quarry, Plainville, CT); 2017; 324″ x 40″ Click to enlarge.
Quarry Panorama 5 (Stony Creek Granite Quarry); 2014; 85″ x 25″ Click to enlarge. Quarry Panorama 9 (Trap Rock Quarry, Plainville, CT); 2017; 324″ x 40″ Click to enlarge. This hour-long video program will be shown continuously in RAW’s Video Gallery and continued daily through December 31.
Premiering on World AIDS Day 2017, and showing at over 100 museums, galleries and cultural institutions across the world. ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS is the 28th annual iteration of Visual AIDS’ longstanding Day With(out) Art project. Curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett for Visual AIDS, the video program prioritizes Black narratives within the ongoing AIDS epidemic, commissioning seven new and innovative short videos from artists Mykki Blanco, Cheryl Dunye & Ellen Spiro, Reina Gossett, Thomas Allen Harris, Kia Labeija, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, and Brontez Purnell. In spite of the impact of HIV/AIDS within Black communities, these stories and experiences are constantly excluded from larger artistic and historical narratives. In 2016 African Americans represented 44% of all new HIV diagnoses in the United States. Given this context, it is increasingly urgent to feature a myriad of stories that consider and represent the lives of those housed within this statistic. ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS seeks to highlight the voices of those that are marginalized within broader Black communities nationwide, including queer and trans people. The commissioned projects include intimate meditations of young HIV positive protagonists; a consideration of community-based HIV/AIDS activism in the South; explorations of the legacies and contemporary resonances within AIDS archives; a poetic journey through New York exploring historical traces of queer and trans life, and more. Together, the videos provide a platform centering voices deeply impacted by the ongoing epidemic.
An evening of musical contrasts and creative surprises as eight Connecticut artists play songs by each other, rearranged in their own characteristic performance styles. Each of the eight Rearrange Me artists will be secretly assigned one of the other artists. They will then choose a song and perform it as though it was their own. This means that a folk artist, if assigned a hip-hop artist, will rearrange and perform a song by the hip-hop artist in folk style… and so forth. Each artist will only know their own Rearrange Me assignment, so the audience and the other performers will hear the pieces for the first time together. Produced in cooperation with Julie Beman. Participating Artists: Kate Callahan | Lys Guillorn & Her Band | Angela Luna | The Sawtelles Self Suffice | That Virginia | Charmagne Tripp | Zoo Front
World Premieres of Electroacoustic and Acoustic Music
Hartford composers and Hartt School faculty Lief Ellis and David Macbride will present music involving winds, voices, percussion, and piano interior. Audio spatialization will be featured and audience members will be an integral part of the music making. Come experience music in a new and exciting way! Program Leaves and Cicadas – Lief Ellis Fighting Futility – Lief Ellis Selections from Sri Yantra – David Macbride: Yantra 7 (2017) – Charles Huang, Ling-Fei Kang, Janet Rosen – oboes; Bradley Karas, Shane Rathburn, Perry Roth – soprano saxophones. Yantra 5 (2017) – Angelica Ansbacher, Saerom Kim, Alex Kollias – bass clarinets; Connor Baba, Krissia Molina, Joseph David Spence – baritone saxophones. Yantra 9 (2017) – Genevieve Clements, Anna Koogler, Andersen White – voices; Devon Cupo, Christopher Natale, Yudong Wang, Benjamin Yuscavage – percussion.
Lief Ellis has a diverse career that encompasses music composition, electronic performance, collaborator and educator. His works have been performed all over the country as well as having premieres in Iceland and Greece. As a collaborator, he has worked with choreographers, dancers, composers, media artists, actors, and musicians in a variety of roles that include videography, interactive programming, and tech support. He has been awarded prizes for his music composition as well as his teaching. For more information please visit LiefEllis.com. 
David Macbride has written numerous works, ranging from solo, chamber and orchestral music to music for film, TV, dance and theatre, with particular emphasis on music for percussion and musical landscapes. His works have been performed extensively in the United States and abroad. Solo CDs are available on Innova Recordings and on Albany Records. As a pianist, Macbride was invited to give a recital tour of Peru by the Instituto Cultural Peruano NorteAmericano, and has performed recitals in Spain and in Mexico. Macbride is Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the Hartt School, University of Hartford. See davidmacbride.com. ARTIST TALK: Saturday, January 27 | 4 PM
Peter Edlund explores the contradictions in utopian American landscape imagery. Taking aesthetic and visual cues from the work of artists ranging from the Hudson River School to Ansel Adams, Edlund’s paintings employ allegorical imagery to investigate contemporary issues. His landscapes reference the mythic images of Manifest Destiny while shedding light on the “actual social and political reality of racism and genocide in our country.”[1] In 2005, Edlund began researching Algonkian languages to understand the meanings of Native American place names in the Northeast, adding the Oneida language indigenous to central New York State in 2013. His research has informed his paintings since. Says Edlund, I am attempting to “address the collective amnesia of American society by using the ‘landscape’ as my means of expression.”[2] Edlund’s work raises compelling questions. Why is there generally a lack of cultural understanding of the meanings and significance of native words that are the names of rivers, mountains, lakes and towns? Through appropriating the aesthetics of historic landscape painting, Edlund’s work takes aim directly at colonialism and the forces that created the rifts in understanding and knowledge that we live with today. Edlund uses traditional allegory as a tool to investigate contemporary issues, while simultaneously connecting us with the history we come from. Picking the most contentious battle states from the 2016 Presidential Election, Edlund investigates contemporary social issues each state faces that are deeply rooted in historical events and practices. He utilizes idyllic landscape painting to create imagery that evokes breathtaking sunsets while embedding deep allegorical meaning. For example, The Battle of Wisconsin shows a swan and her hatchlings being threatened by a fox, raccoons and an eagle. The imagery “evokes the conflicts of Wisconsin’s history from the displacement and relocation of indigenous peoples to the current conservative agenda of social cutbacks, racial inequalities and voter suppression.”[3] Edlund crafts his imagery in the Battle States paintings by taking place names from respective states and translating their original Native American meanings into English — Waukesha meaning fox, Waubesa meaning swan, Kanabec meaning snake, and so forth. Read the article in the Hartford Courant. Here’s a review of the exhibition in Art New England. About Peter Edlund Edlund studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has shown nationally and internationally, and has received honors incluing MacDowell Colony Residencies, a Gottlieb Foundation grant, and a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant. He has exhibited at Jack Shainman Gallery, among many others. Edlund is originally from West Hartford, Connecticut. His work has been exhibited at Real Art Ways on mulitiple occastions, including a solo exhibition in 2000, Majestic America. [1] Artist Statement, Peter Edlund, http://www.peteredlundart.com/artist.html [2] Artist Statement, Peter Edlund, http://www.peteredlundart.com/artist.html [3] The Battle for Wisconsin artist statement card, Peter Edlund, 2017 Featured image: Weatogue (Hut-Land), 36″x46″, oil on canvas, 2007 Thanks to the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture at University of Hartford for assistance in creating laser-cut stencils used to produce several works in the exhibition and public art works in various locations around Hartford.
Tuesday, October 10 | 2:30 PM The author will discuss, sell, and sign copies of Among the Survivors, her new novel. She will talk about her 56 years in Greater Hartford plus the joys and torments of a writer’s life.
About Ann Z. Leventhal Ann Z. Leventhal is the author of Life-lines, a novel about a wife who runs away with her husband’s mistress. Her short stories, articles, poems, and reviews have appeared in Vignettes, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Christopher Street, The New York Times Book Review, and Publishers Weekly. See Ann’s website. About Among the Survivors, A Novel Though twenty-one-year-old Karla Most manages to bag Saxton Perry, a virtual prince thirty years her senior, she has no idea how to live happily ever after, with or without him. Karla cannot get past her anger at having been deceived by her single, now-dead mother, Mutti, who―supposedly a “Holocaust victim,” complete with tattooed numbers―was in fact a German Christian who got into the United States by falsifying her background. So what does that make her daughter? Before she can answer that question, Karla must track down the actual story of her own existence.
About Ann Z. Leventhal Ann Z. Leventhal is the author of Life-lines, a novel about a wife who runs away with her husband’s mistress. Her short stories, articles, poems, and reviews have appeared in Vignettes, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Christopher Street, The New York Times Book Review, and Publishers Weekly. See Ann’s website. About Among the Survivors, A Novel Though twenty-one-year-old Karla Most manages to bag Saxton Perry, a virtual prince thirty years her senior, she has no idea how to live happily ever after, with or without him. Karla cannot get past her anger at having been deceived by her single, now-dead mother, Mutti, who―supposedly a “Holocaust victim,” complete with tattooed numbers―was in fact a German Christian who got into the United States by falsifying her background. So what does that make her daughter? Before she can answer that question, Karla must track down the actual story of her own existence.
