Improvisations :: Arcade at Real Art Ways

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Improvisations :: Arcade
Curator musicians Joe Morris and Stephen Haynes join their invited guests for freely improvised music, created in real time. The listening environment encourages intimate and deep contact with the music, the musicians, and other audience members. On Sunday, December 13 at 3 PM, we continue our fifth Improvisations music series with fresh talent under the title Improvisations::Arcade. Sunday’s event features Dan Blacksberg (trombone), Daniel Levin (cello), and Brandon Lopez (bass). BRANDON LOPEZ is a bassist and composer. He has worked across myriad aesthetic/cultural disciplines, but improvisation is the preferred language. “As with any individual dealing with creative work, much of the inspiration for the work is a difficult pin down. I grew up in a strange cross-section of Appalachia and Suburbia with forest, air, mountains, and new construction homes. I’m Latino and American in various shades. I’ve been in much grappling with the ideals of Euro-centricism, strangled and strangling back. I’m not sure what it all means, but I’d like to be reverent and irreverent with all of it.” – Brandon Lopez DAN BLACKSBERG is rapidly emerging as a new leading voice on the trombone. With musical activity that spans avant-garde jazz, modern classical music, improvised music and klezmer, Dan brings a burly, rough-edged sound intended to push at the technical and textural extremes of his instrument. Based in Philadelphia, Dan leads a variety of groups, such as the Dan Blacksberg Trio and Electric Simcha, and co-leads groups such as Archer Spade, the New York/Philadelphia avant-jazz quartet Bird Fly Yellow, and the terror-improv group Psychotic Quartet. DANIEL LEVIN is “one of the outstanding cellists working in the vanguard arena” (All About Jazz), “ridiculously fluent, virtually overflowing with ideas” (New York City Jazz Record) and “very much the man to watch.” (Penguin Guide to Jazz). No matter what setting he plays in, cellist Daniel Levin occupies a musical space bordered by many kinds of music, but fully defined by none of them. Born in Burlington, Vermont, he began playing the cello at the age of six. In 2001, he graduated with a degree in Jazz Studies from the New England Conservatory of Music, and arrived on New York City jazz scene shortly therafter. Since then, Daniel has developed his own unique voice as a cellist, improviser, and composer. Future Events: SUNDAY JAN 24 | 3 PM: Yasmine Azaiez (violin), Adam Matlock (accordion), Stephen Haynes (cornet), Joe Morris (guitar). SUNDAY FEB 21 | 3 PM: Kirsten Lamb (bass), Zachary Rowden (bass), Matt Rousseau (drums), Dan O’Brien (saxophone, clarinet, flute), Stephen Haynes (cornet), Joe Morris (guitar) SUNDAY MARCH 20 | 3 PM: Lester St. Louis (cello), Dre Hocevar (drums), Stephen Haynes (cornet), Joe Morris (guitar) SUNDAY APRIL 10 | 3 PM: Dana Jessen (bassoon), Stephen Haynes (cornet), Joe Morris (guitar)
Bowl Offering to Benefit Shedrub Ling
Artist Elizabeth Phelps Meyer will culminate her exhibition “Metanoia” with a bowl offering to benefit sacred sites in Nepal. Meyer will offer to the public the 1,080 red ceramic bowls featured in the exhibition. Participants in this exchange will have the opportunity to make a donation toward the rebuilding of the Ky-Nying Shedrub Ling and Nagi Gompa monastery and nunnery, located in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal.

A massive earthquake devastated Nepal in April of 2015. Meyer, who lived in the country in 2007, was moved to create a work to benefit a place for which she feels profound love. The color of the bowls is rooted in the vermilion powder (“sindoor”) that adorns sculptures at sacred sites in Nepal. Each bowl is filled with a mix of sindoor powder, red sand, and occasional clay remnants that are symbolic of the land in a country that needs to be rebuilt.

The creation of the bowls was an accumulative meditative practice for Meyer – part devotion and part “social sculpture.” The decision to give the bowls away after the exhibition is a “reminder of the fragility of our world(s), and [an] opportunity for people to practice generosity themselves,” says Meyer.

This event is free and open to the public. Meyer will be offering bowls from 2-9 PM on January 16th, the final day of her exhibition. One bowl will be offered per person attending the exchange.
DATE CHANGED: Puppetry Workshop
Artist Elizabeth Phelps Meyer will lead a stop-motion animation and puppetry workshop in conjunction with her current exhibition “Metanoia,” now on view. In this workshop, participants will learn about the art of stop-motion animation using a professional figurative armature. Participants will work in teams (of 2-3 people each) both to help construct armatures using kits, and to make short videos using already assembled armatures, a small animation stage, a green-screen, and a DSLR camera mounted to a tripod and tethered to a MAC computer. Non-drying clay will also be available for modeling onto the armatures as each team prepares to make their video by creating a “character” to animate. As they make video, participants will also learn and employ the technique of “rotoscoping” using real-time video they shoot, and the software i-stop motion, in order to represent human movement in a convincing way. At the end of the workshop, participants will enjoy screening the videos created by each team. The workshop will last 6 hours, with a break for lunch (participants are responsible for making their own lunch arrangements).
DATE CHANGED – Now scheduled for Saturday Dec 12
Thank you to everyone who RSVP’d for this event! All slots are now full. If you would like to be added to the waiting list, please send an email to Zoe Allison at zallison@realartways.org
Elizabeth Phelps Meyer: Artist Talk
The artist discusses her art practice and ideas in relation to the concept of metanoia, which is defined as a profound, usually spiritual, conversion, transformation, or awakening. “Metanoia” is a video and sculpture exhibition. A trilogy of videos set in a fictional art gallery feature stop-motion puppetry and crafted landscapes, which explore the transformative power of color. A handmade landscape installation is on display, including twelve of Meyer’s puppets. One thousand and eighty hand-thrown red ceramic bowls, each containing a “fractured landscape” of red sand and clay remnants, complete the exhibition. Free & Open to the Public
Carla Gannis: Garden of Emoji Delights
by Carla Gannis
New media artist Carla Gannis reimagines the 16th century masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights by collaging signs & symbols of everyday virtual speech – called emoji – over Hieronymous Bosch’s original work. Carla Gannis will at Real Art Ways for a artist talk on Thursday, February 4 at 7 PM. Take a look in the Hartford Courant: http://www.courant.com/entertainment/museums-galleries/hc-emoji-art-hartford-1030-20151029-story.html
Insook Hwang: The Energy-Love:Miracle
Exploring ideas of memories and experiences, New Haven-based artist Insook Hwangdraws inspiration from the models of DNA molecules to create small, repeating images that assemble into a larger more net-like form. For The Energy-Love: Miracle exhibition, Hwang creates a site-specific installation in our Real Room, transforming it into a imaginative and invigorating environment as her role as the artist is to bring love and positive energy to the audience.
The American Slave Coast
With Authors Ned & Constance Sublette
Slavery went beyond free labor; domestic slave breeding practices were a deeply entrenched economic system in United States history. By showing that enslaved people functioned as very expensive commodities whose value depended not only on how much they could produce but on how much they could reproduce, the Sublettes’ narrative reveals that the majority of the South’s wealth lay not in land, cotton or rice, but in slaves – specifically, in what they term the “capitalized womb.” Along the way, they describe the roles of major figures of colonial and US history – Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, and many others — in creating and defending the slave-breeding economy, which expanded along with the growing nation, while others – most especially the enslaved themselves – resisted it. This event is free and open to the public.
An Evening with Kate Bornstein

Trans: Beyond the Tipping Point

With Laverne Cox on the cover of Time magazine, and Jazz Jennings with her own television show, it’s clear that the world of transgender is itself in transition. Kate Bornstein speaks to the changing language of trans, the clear division that runs through almost every trans community, and a strategy for unifying all our new and disparate trans identities without “invisibilizing” anyone.

Author, activist, performance artist, and gender theorist Kate Bornstein is one of the most influential voices in the discussion of gender and trans issues. She has created performance pieces and theater works, led workshops, and written several award-winning books in the field of Women and Gender Studies which are taught in over 120 colleges and universities around the world.

Bornstein recently spent two months with Caitlyn Jenner and six other trans women filming season two of “I Am Cait.” She is also about to release a 25th anniversary edition of her first book, Gender Outlaw, and is working on her sixth book, Trans: Just for the Fun of It.

Photo by Virginia Hamrick.

Battle Trance
An unusual combination of four tenor saxophones, Battle Trance mesmerizes with “a floating tapestry of fascinating textures made up of tiny musical motifs, and a music that throbs with tension between stillness and agitation, density and light,” (New York Times). Tickets are $10/$5 for members. Student admission is $7. Preview Battle Trance on their Bandcamp website here: http://battletrance.bandcamp.com/releases
Howard Fromson: Here and Now
“Here and Now” exhibits new sculptures, chairs, and photographs of installations at the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Hartford Library, and the Mortensen Riverfront plaza by inventor, artist, and philanthropist Howard Fromson. Fromson’s pieces emerge from principles of weight and balance defined by a basic geometric shape: the tetrahedron. Steel is bent, crimped, and folded in repeating patterns to create a variety of sculptures, from motorized kinetic pieces to what are known as Fromson Tetra Chairs. Accompanying the sculptures in the exhibit are large photographs of pieces on view around the Hartford region. A four-seat Tetra Chair is installed at the Hartford Public Library, and two other chairs enjoy public use at the Lincoln Financial Sculpture Walk along the Connecticut river.
David Borawski: Sell Me Down the River
From the artist: “Sell Me Down the River consists of three recent video works: Endless War (2010); Governmentally (2013) and Double Down, just completed and premiering for this exhibition . Screened together all three speak to the idea of being trapped, with imagery of confinement and disorientation. The term “sell me down the river,” which in this case is taken from the Stone Temple Pilots song of the same name, refers to betrayal and deception. These works were instigated by our current political landscape, which has fostered hatred and fear in the service of oppression. Ongoing corporate assault on our democracy peels away at our freedoms within a maze of bureaucratic sleight of hand, betraying and deceiving the population.”
Elizabeth Phelps Meyer: Metanoia

Met·a·noi·a (noun): A transformative change of heart; especially a spiritual conversion.

One thousand and eighty hand-thrown ceramic bowls, each containing a miniature fractured landscape, hundreds of hand-painted leaves woven through a paper and clay forest, twelve puppets, and a trilogy of videos set in a fictional art gallery constitute works that explore the transformative power of color.

“Metanoia” will culminate on January 16, 2016 when Meyer will offer all 1,080 red ceramic bowls from the exhibit to the public. Participants will have the opportunity to receive a bowl and in exchange make a donation toward the rebuilding of the Ky-Nying Shedrub Ling and Nagi Gompa monastery and nunnery, located in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal.

A massive earthquake devastated Nepal in April of 2015. Meyer, who lived in the country in 2007, was moved to create a work to benefit a place for which she feels profound love. The color of the bowls is rooted in the vermilion powder (“sindoor”) that adorns sculptures at sacred sites in Nepal. Each bowl is filled with a mix of sindoor powder, red sand, and occasional clay remnants that are symbolic of the land in a country that needs to be rebuilt.
Elizabeth Enders: Come In!
Elizabeth Enders welcomes you to an exhibition of works spanning more than four decades of her career. Come In! is an inviting look at art that aims to acquaint viewers with Enders’ vision of the hidden magic in everyday experiences. Throughout her career, the New London native has engaged with written language, mark-making, and natural elements to create works that transform commonplace realities into fields of color, mood, and emotion. The exhibit is presented in collaboration with the Lyman Allyn Art Museum. Charlotta Kotik, Curator Emerita of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, curated the exhibition in its entirety, with each venue hosting a distinct collection of Enders’ work.
Artist and Author Joe Fig’s Book Talk
When walking through a museum it is easy to forget that the perfectly hung paintings and well-lit sculptures are products of a long and arduous process. They are the end result of creative inspiration, but also a myriad of physical and logistical details. It is these details—aspects of an artist’s daily routine—that motivated Joe Fig to embark on a life-long exploration of the working lives of his fellow professional artists. Over the years he has interviewed more than 120 leading contemporary artists. On Thursday, October 22 starting at 6 PM, Joe Fig will be speaking about the evolution of his work and the insights he has gained which are published in his new book Inside the Artist’s Studio. A book signing will follow the lecture. Joe Fig is an artist and author known for his works that explore the creative process and the spaces where art is made. His paintings and sculptures are exhibited internationally and can be found in numerous museums and leading private collections. He is represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York. Fig works and lives in Connecticut’s Farmington River Valley. This event is free and open to the public.
Other People’s Stories
  Other People’s Stories celebrates the way that our favorite tales evolve with every telling, whether they’re stories our parents told us about their parents, stories our friends told us about ourselves, or the far-fetched boasting of a neighborhood raconteur. There are only two rules for Other People’s Stories: (1) No notes! Tell it as you remember it; make up the parts you forget. (2) No first-hand knowledge! Tell something that someone else told you. Who will be telling these stories? A revolving crowd of Hartford area regulars, first timers, and maybe YOU! If you’ve got someone else’s story that you love to tell, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a message at otherstorieshartford@gmail.com. We’re definitely looking for submissions. Even if you have no interest in telling a story, put it on your calendar now, then come to listen. You won’t want to miss it. The event is free, and open to all.  
Improvisations :: Arcade
Curator musicians Joe Morris and Stephen Haynes join their invited guests for freely improvised music, created in real time. The listening environment encourages intimate and deep contact with the music, the musicians, and other audience members. On Sunday, November 15 we continue our fifth Improvisations music series with fresh talent under the title Improvisations::Arcade. Sunday’s event features Brad Barrett (bass) and Andria Nicodemou (vibes). BRAD BARRETT is a bassist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator born in Florida, raised in Texas, and currently residing in Boston Massachusetts. He is involved in projects ranging from jazz, bluegrass, folk, flamenco, and a variety of world musics. Brad is also an active member of the international avant garde/improvised music community and has performanced with Jason Moran, Julian Lage, Joe Morris, Kenwood Dennard, Bob Moses, Nate Wooley, Ingrid Laubrock, Agusti Fernandez, and Peter Evans. ANDRIA NICODEMOU is an important emerging musician in the avant-garde, experimental, improvised, free jazz music idioms in the USA and Europe having worked with musicians such as Joe Morris, Anthony Coleman, Ikue Morri, Tayler Ho Bynum, Tatsuya Nakatani, Ab Baars, Anne La Berge. Future Events: SUNDAY DEC 13 | 3 PM: Dan Blacksberg (trombone), Daniel Levin (cello), Brandon Lopez (bass), Stephen Haynes (cornet), Joe Morris (guitar). SUNDAY JAN 24 | 3 PM: Yasmine Azaiez (violin), Adam Matlock (accordion), Stephen Haynes (cornet), Joe Morris (guitar).