Re-Print: Three Contemporary Printmakers, features the work of Michael Siporin Levine, Eric Simmons, and Renèe Hughes. This show highlights the different approaches to both traditional and modern day printmaking practices. Varied surface treatments provide a unique experience for the viewer.

The show ran from November 11 - December 9, 2021.

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present Capstone 2019-2020 & 2020-2021, an exhibition showcasing the artwork of both the 2019-2020 & 2020-2021 senior undergraduate art majors. Comprising of a variety of works across different disciplines, Capstone is the celebratory conclusion of students’ period here at CCSU that propels them into their lives as independent artists. On September 2nd, 2021, the gallery is open to all for an opening reception from 4 – 7pm. The CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world.

Participating Artists:

Gabriella DiMaio
Gerard Niemierowko
Karina Marquis
Michaela Salvo
Paige Markel
Sophia Firestone

All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building. For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

The show will run from May 2 – May 9, 2019 with scheduled gallery hours from 1-4pm Monday through Friday.

Currently, the CCSU Art Gallery is open to the public upon scucessfully filling out the symptom survey before entering campus.

The CCSU Art Department and Gallery are pleased to present Good Company: Paintings by Sean Greene.

Sean Greene’s work exercises a profound appreciation of color, composition, and pattern. However, while his work approaches these formal concerns, the action remains intuitive and emotional. Sean’s work employs a populist language rarely found in contemporary abstract painting. The graphic “personalities” developed in this work appear as emotionally diverse occupants of a social gathering exhibiting a myriad environment of sound, gesture, and mood. 

Sean lives and works in Northampton, Massachusetts. He earned an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004, where he was awarded a three-year teaching associateship, and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in 1996. Recent exhibitions include New Work, at the Carberry Gallery (2019), Impulse Control at the Grubbs Gallery (2017), and Matereality at the Geoffrey Young Gallery (2018).

Good Company: Paintings by Sean Greene will be on view from September 17th – October 16th, 2020 in the CCSU Art Gallery, 2nd floor of Maloney Hall, with viewing hours available by appointment.

January 30 - February 27, 2020

The CCSU Department of Art proudly presents its latest exhibition, “Industrially Inspired”, which highlights the work of Kenneth Baskin, Pedro Centeno, Chris D’Ambrose, Timothy Kowalcyk and Timothy See. This collection exemplifies industrially-inspired ceramic work by five artists whose manipulation of materials, scale and form resulted in the creation of three-dimensional trompe l’oeil – like works that fool viewers’ eyes.

A corresponding exhibition in the Inner Gallery, “Inspired by Industry”, consists of objects from the New Britain Industrial Museum that asks viewers to consider how historically functional objects can be viewed as aesthetically-interesting forms.

Opening Reception: January 30th

4 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Maloney Hall Art Gallery  (2nd floor, Maloney Hall)

For more information, please visit:

The Recorder

Paintings by Benjamin Shamback, BA '96
Professor of Visual Arts, University of South Alabama

The CCSU art gallery is proud to present Oil on Copper: Paintings By Ben J. Shamback, featuring works by a CCSU alumni artist, Benjamin Shamback. Benjamin received a BA in Art from Central Connecticut State University in 1996. Mr Shamback is Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of South Alabama where he teaches courses in painting and color.

Shamback’s specialty is oil painting on copper. He is one of the only painters in the United States painting exclusively on copper. Benjamin’s still life paintings are characterized by their rich color, fine detail and complex surfaces. His work enriches and exposes copper as an intriguing surface that creates an exquisite final piece.

Opening Reception: October 17
4 p.m. - 7 p.m.
Maloney Hall Art Gallery  (2nd floor, Maloney Hall)

For more information, please visit:
The Recorder

Drip-Drop, Tick-Tock

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present Drip-Drop, Tick-Tock, an exhibition showcasing sculptures and paintings by artist, Joseph Fucigna.

Fucigna’s sculptural medium of choice includes colorful plastic fencing and cable ties, intricately shaped to emulate flowing drapery. Exhibited sculptures and acrylic paintings present viewers with an awareness of gravity, visually appearing to be melting and dripping downward toward the gallery floor.

Art critic, Richard Klein, writes, “Fucigna’s sculpture, while clearly abstract, opens itself to the world of lived experience. There is no mystery about how the artist makes his work – the construction is revealed through simple observation. The magic he generates comes through inventiveness of form, dynamic use of color, inventive craftsmanship and a corporeal sense of physicality…. a virtuoso of the ‘weaving’ of industrial fabrics, pushing the limits of what these materials will allow.”

Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world. All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building.

Click for more information on Joe Fucigna.

For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

Reference: Klein, Richard. (2018) Good fences: Recent sculpture by Joseph Fucigna. In Joseph Fucigna (Ed.), Drip-Drop, Tick-Tock Sculpture and Paintings by Joseph Fucigna (pp. 3-7). Bridgeport, CT: Housatonic Museum of Art.

For more information, please visit:

The Recorder

Capstone 2019
May 2 – May 9, 2019

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present Capstone 2019, an exhibition showcasing the artwork of the 2019 senior undergraduate art majors. Comprising of a variety of works across different disciplines, Capstone is the celebratory conclusion of students’ period here at CCSU that propels them into their lives as independent artists. A panel discussion on May 2 at 3pm, “Career and Creative Opportunities Post-Graduation,” features alumnae Lori Camilleri ’11, of the Guggenheim Museum, and Lauren Pelletier ’10, of the Fabric Workshop & Museum, to discuss creative opportunities post-graduation. After the discussion, that gallery is open to all for an opening reception from 4 – 7pm. The CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world.

All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building. For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

The show will run from May 2 – May 9, 2019 with scheduled gallery hours from 1-4pm Monday through Friday.

Capstone title design by CCSU Graphic Design student, Cari Codino.

Participating Artists:

William Bellenger
Peter Bujwid
Courtney Goodall
Brittany Hube
Abigail Lindquist
Melanie Louis
Clara Lopez
Jacqueline Madrazo
Guillermo Novo
Trinh Quach
Bethany Vieira
Deverick Weston

Capstone in the news: The Central Recorder 

Youth Art Celebration: A collaboration between CCSU and the Connecticut Art Education Association

March 9 – April 5, 2019

Central Connecticut State University is proud to present the annual Youth Art Celebration. The exhibition, which features outstanding artwork created by Connecticut art students from grades pre-K through 12, represents a collaboration between the Connecticut Art Education Association and CCSU’s Saturday Art Workshop (SAW) program. SAW offers CCSU teacher candidate students the opportunity to instruct and design classes for children in the Greater Hartford area.

Click for more information on the SAW program and the Connecticut Art Education Association.

For more information on CCSU’s Art Teacher Education program, please visit the CCSU Art Department website or contact the department directly at 860.832.2620.

The show will run March 9 – April 5, 2019 and is available for viewing to the public on the first and second floors of Maloney Hall located at 1615 Stanley Street, New Britain, CT.

Rachel by Chase Westfall

March 21 – April 18, 2019

Curated by Layet Johnson

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present Rachel by Chase Westfall curated by Layet Johnson. Featuring works by Chase Westfall, the exhibition will take a wide-ranging look at the subject of mourning by investigating various expressions of loss and trauma through fictional and factional narratives. Named for the archetype of the mourning mother (the biblical Rachel), Westfall’s exhibition aims to create a space for considering loss without directly experiencing it. “Rachel” include includes recent painting, sculpture, print, photographic, and performance work. A video of the CCSU Dance department’s performance at the opening of Rachel is available for your viewing here.

Chase Westfall lives and works in Richmond, Virginia. His recent exhibitions include Control, at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and Resist Evil, at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. Westfall is a recent recipient of the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art. For more information on the artist and his work, please visit his website http://www.charlesawestfall.com/.

Rachel features a series of inspired dance performances in collaboration with the CCSU Dance department:

Thursday 3/28, 3pm: Beloved choreographed and performed by Erica Nelson.

Thursday 4/4, 3pm: Niobe performed by Ruby Cabbell and choreographed by José Limón. Niobe is a solo performance excerpt from Dances for Isadora, a piece choreographed based on the life of dance, Isadora Duncan.

Thursday 4/11, 3pm: Listen Carefully choreographed by Erica Nelson.

Thursday 4/18, 3pm: Thanatos choreographed by Erica Nelson.

To learn more about the CCSU Art Gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery directly at (860) 832-2633.

The show will run March 21– April 18, 2019 with gallery visitation from 1 – 4pm, Monday through Friday.

Rachel in the news:

The New Britain Herald
The Recorder | April 3, 2019
The Recorder | March 19, 2019
The West Hartford News 
HappeningHere 

Fix Flux

January 31 – February 28, 2019

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present, Fix Flux. Fix Flux highlights the newly formed collaboration and international friendship between Partium Christian University (https://www.partium.ro/en ) of Romania and Central Connecticut State University’s Department of Art.

Included are digital images that record a moment from the 15-year long life-education-work-art cycle or flux of the Art Department at Partium Christian University. The selected works in this exhibition identify key aspects of this exemplary art program while showcasing the artistic accomplishments of their students.

The show will run January 31 through February 28, 2019, with gallery visitation from 1 to 4pm, Monday through Friday. Please visit the gallery website at http://www.ccsu.edu/art/galleries/ or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

For more information on Fix Flux, please visit:

Partium Christian University’s Diploma Works 2018

Partium Christian University’s Diploma Works 2017

Art Capital – Fix Flux 2018 Exhibition, Oradea, Romania

Fix Flux 2018 Exhibition, Oradea, Romania – Exhibition Statement

Happening Here

The Recorder

West Hartford News

The Register Citizen

The Hartford Courant

The Bristol Press

Faculty Exhibition 2018

September 6 – October 4, 2018 

Faculty Exhibition 2018 in the news:

The Central Recorder
New Britain Herald 

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present the Faculty Exhibition 2018, an exhibition of artwork by permanent and adjunct faculty from the Art Department. This exhibition reflects the innovative and diverse approach of the CCSU artist-faculty while simultaneously showcasing a variety of media used by our talented team.

The show will run September 6 through October 4, 2018 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Participating artists:

James Buxton  
Melanie Carr (Melanie Carr Gallery, click here) 
Thomas Edwards  
Linda Edwards 
Theodore Efremoff  
Sherinatu Fafunwa-Ndibe
Theresa Feder
Sean Gallagher
Vicente Garcia 
David Holzman
Eben Kling  
Victoria Kniering
Layet Johnson 
Glenn LaVertu
Adam Niklewicz  
Daniel Riccio
Rachel Siporin
Patricia Weise 

Sex, Death, and Visceral Honesty: Artworks and Publications by Independent Women’s Comic Artists from the 1960s Underground Movement to Today

October 16-November 15
Curated by Layet Johnson and Leela Corman

Sex, Death, and Visceral Honesty in the News
The Central Recorder
The Hartford Courant

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present Sex, Death, and Visceral Honesty: Artworks and Publications by Independent Women’s Comic Artists from the 1960s Underground movement to Today, curated by Layet Johnson and Leela Corman.

Sex, Death, and Visceral Honesty represents independent women’s comic book artists not merely as an underrepresented category of artists, but as artists who are and have been telling stories concerning their bodies and experiences in patriarchal society since the 1960's underground comics scene. As an extension of the
Feminist movement, currently epitomized by “Me Too,” women's comic book art becomes a protest in itself, making an exhibition of it a form of rally. Unlike historical
exhibition models that present subsequent events on a theme, ours is a critical mass. In organizing the exhibition, the curator's role is thus to facilitate and to record a conversation between women comic book artists, writers, editors, critics, and publishers who may weigh in on this moment we are in that is so personal to them.

The show will run October 16 through November 15, 2018 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.
Please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at
directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Participating artists:
Justine Andersen 
Ivy Atoms 
Ariel Bordeaux 
Jessica Campbell 
Lilli Carré 
Flannery Cashill 
Tyler Cohen 
Leela Corman 
Erin Curry 
Anya Davidson 
Emily Flake 
Margot Ferrick 
Jess Fink 
Mary Fleener 
Winnie T. Frick 
Phoebe Gloeckner 
Veronica Graham 
Roberta Gregory
Rachel Mesplay Helm 
Mari Naomi 
Megan Kelso 
Lucy Knisley 
Caroline McClain 
Carta Monir 
Molly Colleen O’Connell 
Lark Pien 
Kristen Radtke 
Keiler Jean Roberts 
Jess Ruliffson 
Beatrix Urkowitz 
Mickey Zacchilli 

Art Educators 2018

November 29 – December 6, 2018

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present the Art Educators 2018 exhibition his year’s show is a chance for the 2018 graduating Art Education students to showcase their skills and talents. The participating artists are future art educators who will assume positions at elementary and secondary schools throughout Connecticut. In these roles they will be promoting art, creativity, and the importance of an art education while inspiring young minds to create and pursue further their own studies in the arts.

Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world. All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building.

For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

The show will run November 29 through December 6, 2018 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Participating artists:

Rebecca Billingsley
Kelly Bordeaux
Andi Cherry
Lauren Gervasi
Tara Malboeuf
Jorge Melendez
Heather Ripley
Allison Rusgrove
Jessy Stanavage
Nina Szot
Valerie Szmurlo
Arden Warinsky

Art Educators 2018 in the news:

The Recorder - Allison Rusgrove

The Recorder

Capstone 2018: B.A. in Art Majors

Please join us on Thursday, April 26^th for the opening reception of Capstone 2018: B.A. in Art Majors. This exhibit will be showcasing the culminating artwork of the graduating senior art majors. Comprising a variety of materials across different disciplines, the exhibition is a celebration of what the seniors have learned in one final show to complete their time here at CCSU and propel them into their lives as independent artists. The show will run from April 26 – May 3, with scheduled gallery hours from 1-4pm Monday through Friday.

Please feel free to join the Post Graduation Community Dialogue before the reception as well. Sarah Fritchey, curator and gallery director at Artspace New Haven, and Will Wilkins, Executive Director of Real Art Ways, discuss creative opportunities post-graduation from 2:30pm – 4pm in the gallery before the reception begins.

The CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world. All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building. 

For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633. 

Scheduled gallery hours are from 1-4pm Monday through Friday.

Participating artists:

Sarah Bachenheimer
Kelly Bordeaux
Marissa Campisi
Steve Chirdon
Ting Fan
Kendra Jones
Sara Maddalena
Drew Marquis
Katie Nemec
Chris Pavliscsak
Rebecca Rugar
Courtney Silvia
Carolyn Tanksi

Teacher / Artist / Mentor: A collaboration with CCSU and the Connecticut Art Education Association

March 10-April 6, 2018
Curated by Cassandra Broadus-Garcia

This invitational exhibition “Teacher/Artist/Mentor” was held in conjunction with the 2018 Connecticut Art Education Association’s (CAEA) Youth Art Month Celebration.  The show featured select CAEA art teachers as teachers, artists, and mentors and their former students with whom they worked, namely individuals who have gone on to study visual arts in a university or college. Teacher/Artist/Mentor showcased the mentorship role that art teachers play in their students’ artistic paths and careers.

Corresponding Exhibition: Youth Art Celebrates: A Collaboration between CCSU and Connecticut Art Education Association.

Brian Flinn:  Teacher/Mentor to Eben Kling

Eben Kling: Student of Brian Flinn

Hollie A. Hecht: Teacher/Mentor to Molly Jacobs

Molly Jacobs: Student of Hollie A. Hecht (Follow on Instagram @mollymollyja)

Stuart Noelte: Teacher/Mentor to Kate Castelli and

Kate Castelli: Student of Stuart Noelte

Roxanne Lane: Teacher/Mentor to Marin Marciano and Victoria Burnham

Marin Marciano: Student of Roxanne Lane (Follow on Twitter @MrsMarcianoArt)

Victoria Burnham: Student of Roxanne Lane

Kathy Cady: Teacher/Mentor to Hunter Cady

Hunter Cady: Student of Kathy Cady

Thea Wilcox Ciciotte: Teacher/Mentor to Luan Joy Sherman

Luan Joy Sherman: Student of Thea Wilcox Ciciotte

Betsy Brewster: Teacher/Mentor to Marjorie Renno

Marjorie Renno: Student of Betsy Brewster and Teacher/Mentor to Allison Flores

Allison Flores: Student of Marjorie Renno

Michael Richters: Teacher/Mentor to Laura Meehan

Laura Meehan: Student of Michael Richters

Crypto$Crystals

February 1-March 1, 2018

Central Connecticut State University’s Art Gallery is proud to present Crypto$Crystal curated by Layet Johnson.

Crypto$Crystal presents new work by the Washington D.C. based creative collaborative Plakooke by Rachel Debuque and Justin Plakas. The exhibition will include an immersive two channel video projection combining live action video, 3-D animation, and sound design, with digital elements drawn from their practice in photography, sculpture, performance, and new media work. Crypto$Crystal will address the value and spirituality within the art object in a post-internet age. By comparing the current rapid growth in cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin and in digital technology trends such as app production) to the renewed Western interests in spirituality from Yoga to crystal meditation, Plakookee’s energetic videos will thus address the contradictory nature of digital art in the 21st century.

The show will run February 1 – March 1, 2018 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

For more information on Plakookee by Rachel Debuque and Justin Plakas, please visit www.plakookee.com.

Art Educators 2017

November 30 - December 7, 2017

Off the Wall

September 7-October 7, 2017

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present Off the Wall, an exhibition of 3-dimensional relief sculptures by artists who focus on form and media. Artists include Joseph Costardo, Gail Gregg, Maggie Jay Horne, Peter Kirkiles, and Suzan Shutan in the main gallery. In the Inner Gallery, Playing Angles features interactive relief works by Bob Gregson

For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

For more information on the artists please visit their personal websites:

• Joseph Costardo
• Gail Gregg
• Bob Gregson
• Maggie Jay Horne
• Peter Kirkiles
• Suzan Shutan

Off the Wall in the news:

New Britain Herald

Capstone 2017

Senior B.A. Art Majors

April 27th - May 4th

Opening Reception April 27th, 4-7 pm

Earth, Water, Fire, Air: Elements of Climate Change

March 9th - April 13th

ECHO, a collection by Sabrina Staires

January 26th - February 23rd

Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery exhibits ECHO, a collection by Sabrina Staires

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present ECHO, a collection by Sabrina Staires showcasing the photographic work of artist Sabrina Staires. Born in Oklahoma, Staires now works out of Kansas City, Missouri. This collection of photographs chronicles the disappearing mining town of Picher, Oklahoma which became uninhabitable due to toxic levels of industrial waste. Shot on a medium format film camera, Staires captures the ghostly beauty that surrounds this abandoned town and prints the photographs on large silk panels that stretch from the ceiling to the floor. Viewers are invited to walk through the large-scale photographic installation and fully experience a space where she creates portals into a time past.

Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world. All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building.

For more information on Sabrina Staires and the ECHO project, please visit http://www.echoproject.org.

For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

Abstraction 2016: Surface & Color

October 20 – November 17, 2017

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present Abstraction 2016: Surface & Color curated by Cassandra Broadus-Garcia. Featuring the artwork of Emily Berger, Rick Lewis, and Claire Seidl from Brooklyn, New York, and Zhang Hong from Shanghai, China, Abstraction 2016: Surface & Color is an impressive collection of four contemporary artists working with abstract concepts and designs. With four different approaches to two-dimensional abstract works, this exhibit is an engaging blend of texture and color creating an exhibit that lends itself to conversation and contemplation.

The show will run October 20 through November 17, 2017 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Participating artists:

Emily Berger 
Zhang Hong 
Richard Lewis 
Claire Seidl 

Abstraction 2016 in the news:

The Central Recorder 

Art Educators 2016

December 1 – December 8, 2016

This year's Art Educators Show is a chance for the 2017 graduating Art Education students to show off their skills and talents. The show will run Decmber 1 through December 8, 2016 with gallery visitation hours 1 – 4pm, Monday through Friday.

Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world. All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building.

For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

Participating artists:

Ryan Courey 
Jessica Fallis 
Joya Helander
Cheryl Heyl
Numi Hwang
Jennifer Jeffreya
Eleanor Lloyd
Kelly Nickel
Tisa Platt
Sita Raisz
Samantha Rowe

Foreign and Familiar

January 28 – February 18, 2016
Central Connecticut State University is proud to present Foreign and Familiar curated by Cassandra Broadus-Garcia. The exhibition features works by the artists Rebecca Parker, aricoco, and Lani Asuncion.

The show will run January 28 – February 18, 2016 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Participating artists:

Rebecca Parker

aricoco

Lani Asuncion

Senior B.A. Art Majors

April 28th - May 5th
Opening Reception April 28th, 4-7 pm

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present Capstone 2016, an exhibition showcasing the artwork of the 2016 senior undergraduate art majors. Comprising of a variety of works across different disciplines, Capstone is the celebratory conclusion of students’ period here at CCSU that propels them into their lives as independent artists.

All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building. For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

Participating Artists: 

Ashley Barrows
Megan Boyle
Micaela Brown
Juan Colon-Valentin
Corey Curtis
Alexys Gonzalez
Elizabeth Guignino
Susan Hatchman
Christopher Hutchinson
Nicole Johnson
Molly McGuire
Joseph McGrath
Jennifer Oliveira-Florio
Peter Ostasiewicz
Annamaria Perge
Chamberlain Purskey
Shawna Pino
Emily Sebas
Maria Shaw
Rahmati Sheereen
Nicole Stellato
Lauren Vanesse

Locker Room Culture (Strategy, Play and Commentary in Sports and Art)

September 10 - October 15, 2015

The aim of this exhibition is threefold:

• To make comparisons between the strategic practice found in both sports and art.
• To describe how art uses sport as subject in a manner that is not traditional illustration, in order to confront and comment on other areas of our culture.
• To make the argument that the aesthetics of strategy and play, rather than obvious physical grace (or lack thereof) can legitimize the notion that sports are another art form.

Participating Artists

David Barnes

Paul Brainard

Erik Benson

David Cole

Michael Conti

Marina Claire

Hanne Darboven

Jon Dostou

Donna Fleischer

Elissa Goldstone

Nancy Holt

Todd Lambrix

Jon Laustsen

Sol LeWitt

Adrian Mangel

Daniel McManus

Frank J Miles

Brendan Mulcahy

Elias Necol Melad

Frank Raczkowski

Matthew Richards

Lee Walton

Kinga Wlodarska

May Yao

Telling Stories: Personal Narratives
October 29 – November 24, 2015

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present Telling Stories: Personal Narratives curated by Rachel Siporin. Featuring the works of Peter Charlap, Robert Jessle, Janice Nowinski, Ed Rath, and Grier Torrence. Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world. All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building. For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

The show will run October 29 – November 24, 2015 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday. Please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Participating artists:

Peter Charlap 

Robert Jessle

Janice Nowinski 

Ed Rath 

Grier Torrence 

Natural Forms
March 5 – April 9, 2015

The Central Connecticut State University Art gallery is proud to present Natural Forms curated by Cassandra Broadus-Garcia. Featuring the works of Raphaela McCormack, Bryan Nash Gill, Amelia de Neergaard, and Josh Axelrod. Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world. All gallery events are free and open to the public, with free parking available in Welte Garage attached to the building. For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website or contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

The show will run March 5 – April 9, 2015 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday. Please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Participating artists:

Raphaela McCormack
Bryan Nash Gill 
Amelia de Neergaard
Josh Axelrod

Through the Eyes of Richard Welling

October 23 – November 20, 2014

Central Connecticut State University is proud to present Through the Eyes of Richard Welling, curated by Cassandra Broadus-Garcia. Connecticut artist Richard Welling (1926-2009) documented the changing times between the 1960s and the 1990s, from early American historic homes to urban cityscapes in Hartford and New York – drawings for which he is best known. However, many of his most accomplished works have never been shown. This exhibition showcases works from the Connecticut Historical Society’s (CHS) newly acquired Richard Welling Collection, including paintings, linoleum prints, and mixed media drawings which highlight Welling’s talents as an illustrator and fine artist.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Connecticut Historical Society, CSU-AAUP Research Grant, and the CCSU Foundation, Inc. Dorothy Hayes Fund.

To find out more about the artist and this exhibition, please visit:

• http://www.richardwelling.com/
• The Connecticut Historical Society https://chs.org/?s=richard+welling
• https://chs.org/event/art-richard-welling-presentation-cassandra-broadus-garcia/
• http://www.csuconnects.org/2014/10/23/richard-welling/

The show will run October 23 through November 20, 2014 at the CCSU Art Gallery. Gallery visitation hours from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

For more information about the gallery or upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery website: http://www.ccsu.edu/art/galleries/ contact the gallery at (860) 832-2633.

Photos from this show

Human, all too Human, the Wounds of the Natural Alphabet

Rossanna Zaera

"I have discovered in nature the most beautiful wounds, I would never have imagined how similar they are to our own scars or how similarly we heal them" - Rossana Zaera

Victor Leger - Northeast Landscapes

September 12- October 3

FEATURED ARTISTS:

*Michael Lavoie, CCSU alum will be speaking about his recent work at 4 PM

American Illustrators 

From the Sanford B.D. Low Collection New Britain Museum of American Art

January 24-February 21, 2013

This is a selection of paintings from the Sanford Low Collection of illustration at The New Britain Museum of American Art. The NBMAA is one of few museums in the country to seriously collect illustration art in its original form. While the work in this exhibition is done for reproduction those included stand on their own as paintings. Our goal was to select pieces that used oil paint in a traditional way and showed classical training of the artists, thus blurring the line between fine art and illustration.

The paintings in this exhibition range from the early 20th century to the 1970's. One can clearly trace the impact of fashion and fine art trends in work by illustrators of the 20th century.

Artists included in this exhibition are Pruett A. Carter, Andre J. Castaigne, Walter Appleton Clark, Dean Cornwell, Bernard D’Andrea, Raphael De Soto, Kenneth Southworth Davies, Stevan Dohanos, James Montgomery Flagg, Mary Hallock Foote, George Hughes, Arthur Ignatius Keller, Tom Lovell, Paul Nonnast, Ray Prohaska, James Allen St. John, Tom Webb.

– Mark Strathy, Curator

Lois Dodd

October 18-November 15, 2012

Spider in the Grass, 2004. Lois Dodd, Courtesy of the Alexandre Gallery, NY

Lois Dodd is associated with a particular style of east coast landscape painting whose lineage includes Charles Hawthorn and Edwin Dickinson. Her landscapes reduce the elements in nature to simple direct painting techniques evoking the patchwork effects of associated with the advent of modernism in Europe at the end of the 19th century. Her work is also aligned with American Modernists such as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley and Georgia O'Keeffe. These American artists began reducing natural forms to near-abstractions during the first decade of abstract painting in Europe. Born in 1927, Lois Dodd began showing at the legendary Tananger Gallery in New York in 1954. These were the formative years when New York was in the process of evolving into the world capital for contemporary art due to the advent of Abstract Expressionism in America. Abstract painting was taking over the world at mid-century and artists in Lois Dodd's circle of influence began incorporating their ideas while staying loyal to their figurative roots.

– Mark Strathy, Director

We thank The Alexandre Gallery for their generosity in loaning work for this exhibition.

Featuring Works By: 

• MIKE ALEWITZ
• LISA GOLDREICH
• DANIEL RICCIO
• JAMES BUXTON
• DAVID HOLZMAN
• RACHEL SIPORIN
• E. DIANN COOK
• JENNIFER KNAUS
• CARY SMITH
• KEVIN CHAMBERLAND
• VICTORIA JUTRAS KNIERING
• MARK STRATHY
• TERRY DONSEN FEDER
• ELIZABETH LANGHORNE
• ELISA TENENBAUM
• TOM EDWARDS
• MARSHA LEWIS
• RON TODD & CHARLES MENOCHE
• SEAN GALLAGHER
• CORA MARSHALL
• PATTY WEISE
• MARY WOLFF
• VICENTE GARCIA
• ADAM NIKLEWICZ

Crafts

March 8th - April 12, 2012

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present Crafts curated by Cassandra Broadus-Garcia. This exhibit displays contemporary craft forms by Mark Del Guidice, Peter Greenwood, Judith Laffey, Joy Raskin, and Takashi & Theresa Ichihara. Mark Del Guidice constructs furniture by carefully choosing selected fine woods that provide strong backgrounds, on which he juxtaposes colorful surface treatments. Peter Greenwood is a Connecticut glass artist who creates hand blown art glass vessels, goblets, wall sculpture, lighting, and chandeliers. Judith Laffey, also a Connecticut artist, weaves from a variety of basket beginnings, creating unique abstract sculptural forms. Joy Raskin creates elegant custom designed handmade jewelry, flatware, and metal sculpture to make designs that are unusual, timeless, and substantial in feeling or weight. Takashi & Theresa Ichihara fire their ceramic teapots, serving pieces, and dinnerware using wood ashes from various tree types which dictate the final color of the glaze.

Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world.

The show will run March 9 through April 13, 2018 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Please visit the gallery website, or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Participating artists:

Mark Del Guidice 
Peter Greenwood 
Judith Laffey
Joy Raskin 
Takashi & Theresa Ichihara 

Figures

January 26- February 23, 2012

An exhibition of works by Joy Brown, Mary Close, Dan McCormack, and Eileen Senner with a special view of works by Milton Rockwell Bellin from the Central Connecticut State University Permanent Art Collection.

"A most demanding and enhancing subject, the human figure has eternally served as an inspiration for artists. From one artist's accurate depictions of proportional form to another's inventive pictorial interpretations, figurative works of art possess qualities that engage viewers with representations of the human spirit."
Cassandra Broadus-Garcia, Ph.D., Curator

Philip Pearlstein: Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors

October 20th-November 18th, 2011

Philip Pearlstein. Model with Swan Decoy on Ladder, 2002 (Oil on Canvas, 50 x 34 inches) © Philip Pearlstein

Known for his frank and unromantic visions of the human figure Pearlstein has revolutionized figure painting in the realistic mode. Using figures as mere props that are equal in status to the antique statuary surrounding them, Pearlstein has chosen to eliminate narrative from his paintings. As the critic Robert Hughes stated in a review of his work, "Realism, we learn once more, is neither a simple nor an easy matter.”

His work is known throughout the world and has been exhibited in most major arts institutions in America and Europe. Philip Pearlstein is represented in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art and many other prestigious art institutions around the world. In total, Pearlstein’s paintings are in the collections of 63 museums.

Philip Pearlstein is represented in New York by the Betty Cuningham Gallery 
We thank them for their generous loan of this exhibition.

East / West: A Survey of Contemporary Printmaking

September 14-October 14, 2011

Gary Day, Neruogardens: Fortress (photogravure) 

This exhibition is a survey of work by printmakers who teach in universities across the country both EAST and WEST. The show is a veritable compendium of printmaking techniques that include monotype, lithography, etching, silkscreen, woodblock engraving as well as photo techniques.  There will be more than 100 prints in this exhibition filling The University Galleries at Central Connecticut State University.

Picturing the Civil War

March 30 – April 22, 2011

The Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery is proud to present Picturing the Civil War: Kellogg Lithographs and Civil War Envelope Covers, curated by Cassandra Broadus- Garcia.

The Kellogg Brother were Hartford's most important 19th-century print-publishing firm. They produced thousands of brightly colored popular prints for use in homes and businesses throughout the United States. In commemoration of the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, this exhibition will include select works depicting Civil War scenes and patriotism along with a collection of Civil War Envelope Covers.

Exhibition funded in part by:

Blick Art Materials, Plainville

The Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford

Located in the S.T. Chen Fine Arts Center of Maloney Hall, the CCSU Art Gallery has long shown the work of CCSU faculty, students, and alumni, as well as contemporary artists from around the world.

The show will run March 30 through April 22, 2011 with gallery visitation from 1-4pm, Monday through Friday.

Please visit the gallery website, http://www.ccsu.edu/art/galleries/ , or contact the gallery at directly (860) 832-2633 for more information.

Picturing the Civil War in the news:

https://www.courant.com/hc-xpm-2011-04-13-hc-winslow-homer-0414-20110413- story.html

Beyond Katrina: An Exhibition of Works by Rolland Golden & Donald Boudreaux

February 3rd- March 10th, 2011

Hurricane Katrina's landfall on August 29, 2005, etched memories in the minds, hearts, and souls of individuals throughout the United States. The ensuing events and aftermath inspired artists, including New Orleaneans Rolland Golden and Donald Boudreaux, to share personal stories that are powerful and telling -- stories of loss and life and stories of hope, as well.

Donald Boudreaux, Bayou in the Nude (mixed media)

Rolland Golden, Lake Vista Plea, 2006 (watercolor)

In the Inner Gallery

Friends from Afar

A collection of photographs, journals, and memorabilia from Connecticut residents who have been involved in the Hurricane Katrina disaster recovery efforts, including a special exhibit of works by photographer Paul Kulikowski.

Who is Izzy? Is Izzy us? Is Izzy in trouble?

October 21- November 19, 2010

One of CCSU's geography education majors, Kelly Murphy, joined Professor Patricia Houser in working with 9th graders from New Britain High School as part of an interdisciplinary project designed to bolster students' appreciation of the local water issues. In conjunction with this project, Prof. Houser created a tutorial for the first session, which they followed up with worksheets.

Izzy the Frog Facts in Lumina Land

In 1990 scientists noted an alarming fact from California, Colorado, and Wyoming to Brazil, Switzerland, and Japan, frogs were disappearing. Recognizing that frogs are a living barometer of earths environmental health, a number of biologists set out to find out why. Is this human folly or a quirk of nature doing amphibians in?

Leaving the water and moving into trees and on land allowed the descendants of the early amphibians to colonize a wide range of new habitats. Some species spent their entire lives in the topmost levels of the trees.

The word amphibian comes from the Greek anphi and bios meaning double life. They can live or function both on land and in water.

Some frogs and toads carry their eggs or tadpoles on their backs or in a skin pocket, others store their eggs inside the body, in vocal -sacks or even into the stomach. Two species of toads give birth to live young that are tiny versions of their adult selves.

Frog calls are inherited, unique and species specific and are primarily used for recognition and reproductive efforts

Their ability to leap is amazing with the worlds distance record for frog jumping at 33.5 feet in three consecutive jumps or an average of 17.5 feet per jump.

Frogs and toads have shared the world of humans as far back as our species memory extends. With their huge eyes, their quadruped bodies, their love of and need for water and their eerie voices, frogs and toads are both distantly alien to humans and uncannily like us.

Izzy in Trouble?

There are 10 species of frogs in Connecticut. 

Because of their dual life on land and in water, frogs are a great barometer of the health of an ecosystem. The skin of frogs is thin, permeable, and often wet or coated in mucus. These traits allow the frog to effectively breathe and drink through their skin! These traits also make frogs very susceptible to foreign pollutants. It is not a good idea to handle an amphibian if there are any chemicals (bug spray, lotion, etc.) on your hands because it can be absorbed through the frogs skin and potentially kill it. When waters become polluted with fertilizer, pesticide, oil, and other chemicals, the frog may passively absorb the pollutant and become sick or die. The pollutant could also have an effect of the hormones of tadpoles as they develop which can lead to sterile adults.

The dual life of frogs also makes them very susceptible to another form of human impact: habitat modification and destruction. By building roads and developments the natural habitat is split up into separate fragments. Travel between these fragments is often a perilous journey in the open for a frog. If they dont dry out on the road, they may be picked off by a predator or have an unfortunate encounter with a car. Development also reduces the overall amount of habitat which forces frogs into denser populations allowing for rapid transmission of diseases such as Ranavirus or the deadly fungal infection Chytridiomycosis. Some wetlands are only wet for a small time during the spring, but these vernal pools and ephemeral wetlands are extremely important for the reproduction of spotted salamanders, wood frogs, and other species. The loss of these wetlands has had a drastic effect on these species. 

Some of the most degraded freshwater ecosystems in Connecticut are ones whose drainage basins have a high percentage of impervious surfaces, deforestation, septic systems, and pesticide use.

Impervious surfaces, such as parking lots, highways and roadways, collect heavy metals and chemicals from car exhaust and other sources, which is then carried off by rainwater or snow melt and deposited into local waterways. The stormwater runoff from highways typically includes highly carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), PCBs, pesticides, lead, cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel, chloride, sulfates and cyanide. PAHs alone have been implicated as a significant source of mortality for the invertebrates that serve as food for frogs.

See publications by the Environmental Protection Agency

The Park River Watershed

The type of watery home that Izzy relies upon for survival is actually a combination of clean water, healthy plants, and animals, called a freshwater ecosystem. The quality of any freshwater ecosystem is shaped by activities on the surrounding land. Wherever we work, play or sleep, we are part of a territory which drains into a stream, pond or river. That is, we carry out our daily activities in one or more drainage basins—or watersheds—and a significant portion of the water (from rain or snow) that falls on our homes or playing fields or streets makes its way downhill into a river or stream that is supporting the likes of Izzy.

Every water body in Connecticut—even a backyard brook—has its own watershed. And there are watersheds within watersheds; the Park River Watershed, which consists of 77.2 square miles just south of Hartford (pictured below), is nested in the larger the Connecticut River Basin, which in turn comprises part of the watershed for Long Island Sound.

According to Thomas Schueler, the Executive Director for the Center for Watershed Protection, At 10% imperviousness in its watershed, a stream is considered at risk. Between 11% and 25% the stream is considered impacted, unable to sustain its full range of natural biodiversity. At 25% or higher, the stream is unable to support any level of biodiversity. Upwards of 50%, and the stream is unable to support any life form. (http://www.waterlaws.com/commentary/interviews/schueler_interview.html).

Trees play a major role in a watershed in intercepting rainfall and encouraging its infiltration into the soil. Thus, reducing tree cover leads to increased stormwater runoff, incidence of flooding, water pollution and degradation of freshwater ecosystems.

Chemicals--including cleansers and personal hygiene products--and pharmaceuticals that exit our homes through bathroom and kitchen drains are part of the newly studied emerging contaminants that threaten freshwater resources in the United States. The U.S. Geological Survey has concluded that household products plus caffeine and prescription drugs are frequently present in streams and lakes across the country. Some of these substances can act as endocrine disruptors, and a 2008 Yale University study on frog deformities in the Connecticut Valley suggests they may be partly to blame for the prevalence of intersex traits in frogs of suburban Connecticut. The study, led by Dr. David Skelly, found that suburban frogs in fact had a higher incidence of intersex traits (21% of those collected) than frogs found in either urban (18%) or farming (7%) areas. See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08frog.html

Izzy at your School

Where is the nearest stream or pond or vernal pool to your school?

What man made modifications of the natural environment are near your school?

Which frogs live near your school?

Have abnormalities been found in frogs in the Connecticut River Valley?

Where do detergents go that are used when you wash your car?

Where does your drinking water come from?

Adopt a stream in the watershed and monitor the water quality and habitat along its banks.

Text written by Elizabeth Langhorne, Pat Houser, Tony Nowacki, Joy Wulke, September 2010

Faculty Exhibition 2010

September 9th-October 14th, 2010

Featuring works by professors:

• Mike Alewitz
• Jerry Butler
• James Buxton
• Kevin Chamberland
• Thomas Edwards
• Terry Donsen Feder
• Craig Frederick
• Sean Gallagher
• Vicente Garcia
• David Holzman
• Victoria Kniering
• Marsha Lewis
• Cora Marshall
• Adam Niklewicz
• Daniel Riccio
• Rachel Siporin
• Cary Smith
• Mark Strathy
• Ronald Todd
• Patricia Weise
• Mary Wolff

Faculty Artist Statements

James Buxton

I made a decision to integrate more discarded & used items into my vocabulary of material that I utilize to make my sculptures. With these new & repurposed traditional & non-traditional materials, my approach on how I go about the process of making art changed as well as the look of the sculptures. I have now, more than ever, gone about my art making like a jazz musician or dancer, improvising my way through the process without pre-thinking through each decision. I trust my intuitive instincts in guiding my creative flow, without holding on to old ideals of the way I went about making sculptures. I have loosened the chains of my academic training in order to feel the spirit of the piece flowing through me. I no longer fight with the materials; I just let the material tell me how it should collectively flow in relationship to the overall composition. Each day presents new and exciting challenges with each new work of art! With these challenges I now take more risk taking in my art making process! No matter how I try to let the piece flow I continue to communicate some kind of experience or storyline in the work!

Jerry Butler

My art addresses the human capacity to engineer self-reflective change. This ability to change our beliefs, our habits, and ourselves is, however, among the most difficult things we can do. My art brings to bear some of the issues that challenge our basic survival and that erode our ability to engineer personal change.

I use objects that illuminate the residue of our thinking as part of our being human. In these objects, I also speak to the issues of landscape change, personal choice, and sociological norms. My art make use of discarded objects that speak to the physics of our condition in a fast-paced, ever-changing, and global stage. I create, find, and alter objects and images for the purpose of aesthetic communication. In my art, it is my goal to offer opportunities for reflective change.

My art is issue-and process-based. Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, and Horace Pippin have influenced me, as have of course the major master painters, sculptors, and landscape artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson and others. Each work has strengthened my ability to experiment with materials, process, and content.

Tom Edwards

Large Fence and Tree
I tried to draw this space at full scale in order to form a habitable place. Not a place to look at, but rather to enter and occupy. It is a dream, but not a drawing of a dream. It should appear as energized components up close but become clearer and calmer as you move away. It is a narrative: the Tree and the Fence are the antagonists.

Terry Donsen Feder

I make watercolors for my children and now for my son-in-law for their birthday presents. Artists usually think of their main work, which for me is usually in oil, as more important than the more peripheral work, but as the years – and paintings -add up, you see that there are several strains in your work that you never anticipated as having a life of their own. This is what has happened to the watercolors for me, and they seem even more lively because they are about love and loved ones.

“The Reach” is oil on aluminum. It depicts the westernmost edge of St. Croix. I started working on metal because I like to paint on hard surfaces and because I once noticed that another artist was working on metal, but the metal was completely covered, and I thought ‘why not let the metal show?’. I have worked on lead, zinc, steel, and aluminum, all of which are very beautiful. Still life paintings are always from life; landscapes are from photographs and sketches, depending upon how much time I have when I’m at the place I want to paint. I’m always interested in light. I have tried making larger, more expressive paintings, but I always revert to my tight work. As John Cage wrote, “Do not try to create and analyze at the same time, they are two different processes.” So I do what I want to do and worry about it later.

Craig Matthew Frederick

Sculptor

As the work of art continues to move through necessary and innovative arenas of thought and consequence, the object (finding its place somewhere between total abstraction and

representation) has remained for me a powerful vehicle for reflecting on what has been and the contemplation of what may be. The substance of my meditation is the experience of life: spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical. If I have indeed found any wisdom, it is certainly embodied in my sculptures.

Sculpture is the means by which I am able to combine what is real with that which is imagined. In a world where order is merely an illusion, the work of my art becomes the ability to negotiate the churning of many tides. Ultimately, I emerge with a better sense of self, manifested in a work of art. The ability to establish a critical and equal balance of the hands, eyes, and mind in the development of my sculpture is, for me, of great value. Critical, in the sense, that no one element of the three can be relied upon more than another. A result of achieving such a balance in the pursuit of one’s work is the lack of tolerance for random ideas. No one piece of sculpture is completely separate from another. Instead, they are ‘works of art,’ connected by a common thread; they are part of a larger picture, my art.

This notion of what I do is not a novel one. I have arrived at it, though, by my own set of circumstances. I have always been drawn to beauty and fascinated with the forms, textures, movements, and visual relationships that surround us every day. I think of my work as a ceremonial dance in honor of this grandeur and as a continual study of this powerful phenomenon called beauty.

In each piece, I strive to achieve a form that is free of arbitrary elements or decisions. Choice and use of materials are important factors in this deliberation. Although the imagery of my work is often figurative, this is not readily apparent to the viewer. The sculptures are abstract and do not mimic the figure or any other form. They are, however, quite referential. I enjoy the freedom to combine elements of different forms in nature that affect me emotionally, intellectually and/or spiritually into well orchestrated pieces of sculpture. I invite you to investigate and enjoy the suggestions of their form, material and origin.

Sean Patrick Gallagher

"The First People" and "Adam’s Options" are inspired, in large part, by the following passage from Eduardo Galeano’s recent book, Mirrors: A Feast on Foot

Adam and Eve were black?

The human adventure in the world began in Africa. From there, our ancestors set out to conquer the planet. Many paths led them to many destinies, and the sun took care of handing out colors from the palette.

Now the rainbow of the earth is more colorful than the rainbow of the sky. But we are all emigrants from Africa. Even the whitest of whites comes from Africa.

Maybe we refuse to acknowledge our common origins because racism causes amnesia, or because we find it unbelievable that I those days long past the entire world was our kingdom, an immense map without borders, and our legs were the only passport we needed.

Vicente Garcia

While growing up in south Texas, I was introduced to machine forms used in industrial applications. That long-term exposure to mechanical forms had a significant influence on my creative direction. I am attracted to the precision of man and machine made steel objects and the manner in which clay can be manipulated to simulate such forms. The essence of my art has dealt with the integration of clay and steel to create sculptural forms and vessels. The simulation of such forms with clay, the experimentation of various finishes, and steel and clay combinations are factors that I investigate. I have been creating with clay and steel for the past thirty years. The inherent qualities of both media fascinate me. In clay, it's the plastic quality that allows it to be modeled into a wide range of forms. I take advantage of its plasticity and its ability to be transformed into whatever form I want. I model some pieces to simulate steel while I manipulate others to show its' fragility. In steel, it's the strength, the immediacy, and the process that captivates me.
My most recent series involves the fabrication of steel to create vessels that have been inspired by 26 years of throwing on the potter’s wheel. I approach the steel with the same affinity that I approach the clay. It is my goal to arrive at the classical beauty that has long been sought out by potters all over the world.

David Holzman

The piece "American Splendor" is a relief carving/ construction based on the form of a guitar. This kind of image has appeared in my work many times in the past. Music has always been a big inspiration and I’ve been interested in how some artists, like Kandinsky and Klee, have approached the idea of the synchronicity of music and art. The guitar has been a special image for me ever since my youth in NYC worshiping Picasso’s sheet metal guitar sculpture at MOMA. Also recurrent in my work is automatic drawing which involves the chance impulse. Many parts of the piece were the result of trying to surprise myself. The exact form of any element depends more on spontaneity than anything else. Finally, the title refers to Harvey Pekar who passed away a couple of months ago. His achievement gives all of us hope.

Victoria Jutras Kniering

I am just an observer of what is already there, and often, what I see are things that others ignore. In essence, I attempt to bring the viewer of my art into another place, another time. My imagery evolves from a love of myth, magic, alchemy, mathematical ideas, and the natural world.

In both the sculpture, prints and encaustic my choice of form, material, and their juxtaposition reflect a variety of pre-modern creation myth, the themes of death and rebirth, and the notion of a nurturing presence that permeates all life. In a visceral and often deeply emotional sense, I summon forth a world of possibilities occupying a place between imagination and reality, and the viewer becomes an active participant in the act of creation. In my prints, drawings, books, and encaustic painting series, I strive to keep a two dimensional history of the physical activity and the feeling of the sculptures not necessarily a representation of the thing itself but the essence of the thing.

The manipulation of light is central to my work. I am interested in creating an ‘’architecture of light’’ which exists within and around the forms to both emulate their dream-like origins and imbue the structures with life.

At a time when we perceive ourselves as separate from "the natural", it is my ambition to probe, articulate, and reclaim that sense of intimacy and wonder that must have been within our grasp in the pre-modern era.

Marsha Lewis

My recent work has focused on the state of Pennsylvania. It is the location of my childhood, the place I left and that I find myself returning to, both in my memories and in actual trips taken. I’ve always been drawn to the rolling hills, repetition of line, never ending green, and the companionship of man’s work in nature. Recent visits to the open spaces of my past have allowed me the opportunity of a fresh experience with an artist’s perspective and a healthy dose of self-reflection.

Lonesome Valley Farm is an actual working farm that I encountered during a recent exploration through the roadways of Western Pennsylvania. I found the name of the farm, and the title of the resulting painting, to be interesting, in that my own experience of being there was not lonesome at all. The sensation of being alone and quiet in these areas of color, curves and air, for me, is at once both peaceful and exhilarating.

Marsha Lewis was a teacher of Art in the public schools of Pennsylvania and Connecticut for 32 years. She is currently teaching and supervising student teachers at CCSU, and has shown her work (drawing, painting, commercial design, and public art projects) throughout the Northeast. She lives in West Hartford.

Cora Marshall

Dark Matter Painting Series

Centered in spirituality, I create work that seeks out the connections to and lessons from my past. By mixing symbols and meaning, by affirming the potency of the past, by honoring the holy, I extend an invitation to contemplate the significance and depth of the power within. Currently, I am working in and across the medium of painting, collage, and mixed media to find those intersections and crossroads where the spirits dwell. In so doing, I hope to further understand and establish a relationship with that that has gone before me.

The Dark Matter painting series is inspired by imagery from Benin, Karo, and Bamileke, and other World cultures. In these works, I am exploring symbolism, icons, affects and effects that resonate within. By doing so, I seek a bond with those cultures as I try to demystify my past. The title of the series is taken from the term scientists use to describe one of the most mysterious things in the universe—dark matter. Most of our universe is missing, that is, we cannot see or touch it. This missing mass is referred to as dark matter. Its existence is only implied by the effect it has on the stars around it. Like dark matter, though the particulars of my past cannot be seen or touch in the usually way, through my paintings, I know it is there by the effect it has on who I am and will become.

Adam Niklewicz

My work comes from my ongoing emigrant experience. It draws on the visual vocabulary of my Polish childhood and on my subsequent exposure to the American commercial and pop-cultural iconography. The resulting blend testifies to the paradoxes of an emigrant artist’s mindset.

Daniel Riccio

I painted Shaman with the unseen in mind.　

It is about the rectifying of the　spiritual with the physical.　

The "Karma" which we all feel and a Shaman can see clearly.　

Rachel Siporin

I share the philosophy of the Action Painters of the NY School, who believed that, in the process of art making, the artist’s intention is revealed. I work spontaneously, as I combine and juxtapose images. Newspaper photographs provide a departure point – images of floods, fires, movie stills, dance, operatic and theatrical productions, bombings, and street violence. Drawing and painting from these images freehand, I combine, and construct an invented space, creating a narrative through an amalgam of images from disparate photographs. My paintings are comprised of multiple panels which are added as I construct the composition, resulting in a mural format, natural for narrative. I utilize photography in much the same way 19th century painters such as Degas, Manet and Courbet, have done, inspired by the photograph’s dramatic moment, casual and unexpected cropping, condensed space and intense tonal contrasts. These images - explosions, man made and natural catastrophes- seem to be a product of invention- appearing less real than what might be experienced visually, first hand. 　Frequently, I embark on large works on paper to navigate my way into a new series- providing the foundation for the oil paintings that follow. However, my works on paper are not drawings for paintings, but rather, stand on their own as independent work.

The works in the Faculty exhibition are part of an ongoing series titled 　"Fool’s Paradise. The phrase comes from a Sam Cooke song in which he describes himself as "living in a fool’s paradise." It is a phrase that stuck with me, that said something profound concerning the human condition. I like to create images and narratives that are psychologically based, describing personal experience, that can resonate in a more universal way. Several of the images in the series depict women in peril, submerged in water, far from shore, or suspended upside down from a curtain of ropes. Figures are shown mid air, leaping up or on their way down. A seated woman presses her hands against the picture plane, as if reviewing her reflection in the viewer’s space, and in another drawing a woman lies motionless on a wooden chair while a puppeteer manipulates the strings of a marionette in the foreground. In the series Fool’s Paradise, I have chosen to depict the moment of self-awareness when one begins to question action, the moment of self-doubt. Frequently, the female figures in my work are a fragmentation of the self, as I identify with the characters in the narrative. They appear as protagonist, act as muse, or bear witness to an event. 　It is my intention to represent images that tap into our shared experience - the childhood game of musical chairs, the bloody hands of Lady Macbeth, or a flood’s rising waters. If I am successful in creating compelling imagery, the viewer becomes engaged in a dialogue that investigates personal and existential questions of guilt, complicity and the self.

Cary Smith

I try to squeeze everything that I possibly can into something so seemingly simple.

I don’t try to think of something to say with my art, I follow the work, and ask it to lead me to its most intense place.

I’m interested in:

• Courage
• Loyalty
• Generosity
• Compassion
• Fear
• Anxiety
• Pain
• Weakness
• Love
• Kindness
• Humanity

• Awareness

Is it possible today, to make abstraction that is relevant?

Patricia Weise

My work is an exploration of the intersection of the perceived world and my own consciousness. I use the art-making process to investigate things that preoccupy me, such as: collaging and layering images, representations of objects and artifacts, the tension between the chaos of nature and the control of domesticity, memory and the passage of time.

patty@pattyweise.com

Mary Wolff

Creativity has always been a part of life. I watched my mother sew beautiful clothing while I played with scraps of exotic textiles, fascinated with how color, texture, and pattern became part of the cloth. This was the beginning of my personal journey with surface design and with defining my own visual language. My work has evolved from simply designing textile surfaces to exploring other surfaces on which to paint or create elements which stir a deep seated response in the viewer.

Translating texture, form, and color into art is my primary artistic concern. My passion for beauty and elegance of nature provides me with subjects to explore these elements. My choice of silk provides a luminous canvas for application of the media.

I begin with a white piece of stretched silk, silk dyes, and a visual concept of a finished painting-whether it be an abstracted landscape or a flower form. I find working directly on silk energizes me and provides me with a journey of discovery and surprise.

Revealed: The Tradition of Male Homoerotic Art

March 18-April 22, 2010

DON HERRON. Mapplethorpe - Tub Shot, 1976 (Detail, Photography)
Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation, New York. © Don Herron

Robert Mapplethorpe’s frank depiction of gay male sexuality both fascinated and shocked viewers when his retrospective exhibition, The Perfect Moment, opened around the U.S. from 1989 to 1990. In the past twenty years since that time, Mapplethorpe’s renown has grown, but taboos surrounding the exhibition of his work remain. However, such taboos may suggest a lack of context, for even Mapplethorpe’s most notorious photography belongs to the same homoerotic tradition as the artwork of Michelangelo, one of the most revered masters of Western Art.

This exhibition, Revealed: The Tradition of Male Homoerotic Art, not only shows the similarities between Michelangelo and Mapplethorpe; it also asserts a homosexual presence in Western art from the Renaissance to the present day by showing unambiguous images of male same-sex desire. While such "homoerotic" imagery (defying time-restrictive labels such as "gay art" or "queer art") evolved over time from something secretive, suppressed, and suggested into something public, accessible, and explicit, its continuous presence affirms the importance of intentionally expressing homosexual desire in art.

Since the Renaissance, when sodomy was a crime for which artists could be accused (as Botticelli, Da Vinci, and others were), recognition of the homosexual presence in art has been obfuscated by suppression, shame, and censorship. Michelangelo, who suffered all of these, nonetheless produced some of the most passionate love poetry by a man to a man and some of the most beautiful images of male sensuality. As with Mapplethorpe, four hundred fifty years later, the controversial nature of Michelangelo’s work provoked censorship: his homoerotic poetry was quickly edited in favor of an opposite-sex love interest, while the nudity of the magnificent David and many of the luxuriant Sistine Chapel figures was immediately covered. Centuries of suppression followed, as critics perfunctorily denied his homoerotic intent. Knowing that Michelangelo defied the conventions of his time may now offer a wider range of homoerotic interpretations of his civic and religious art, but his drawing The Rape of Ganymede, included here as a reproduction, leaves no doubt as to its homoerotic intent.

For centuries after Michelangelo, the sensual male nude remained the best means of expressing homosexual desire in art. However, artists often set their ever-inventive expressions of that desire in some kind of conventional framework that resisted solely erotic interpretations.

The trend of making merely suggestive work began to change in the late 19th century when the coining of the term "homosexual" provided a concrete identity around which a community could slowly form. However, artists typically created their most overtly homoerotic imagery in secret. To protect their reputations, they made private works exclusively for friends in an underground homosexual community. Thus over a half-century of striking but obscured artistic output emerged. Fashion photographer George Platt Lynes (1907-55), whose exquisite and elegant photography is featured prominently in this exhibition, helped pioneer the representation of the male nude as explicitly erotic. The famous Precisionist Charles Demuth (1883-1935); the avant-garde writer Jean Cocteau (1889-1963); the Magic Realist artists and one-time lovers Jared French (1905-88) and Paul Cadmus (1904-99); and the Russian-American artists Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957) and Andrey Avinoff (1884-1949) all privately created some of the first known artistic images of men having sex. While illustrations portraying homosexual sex acts exist from most periods of history, few purely artistic depictions of homosexual sex exist before these 20th century examples.

Meanwhile, "beefcake" photography in physique magazines served, more popularly, the same emerging gay community. Soon dispensing with the guise of physical fitness, beefcake had a whole new life by the 1960s, when mailing images of full frontal male nudity became legal. Artists such as Tom of Finland (1920-91) exploited the new possibilities with highly sexualized, hypermasculine drawings, while others such as James Bidgood (b. 1933), Arthur Tress (b. 1940), and Duane Michals (b. 1932) used the medium of photography to express new gay themes in the era of sexual liberation and gay pride. Their work begins to record a whole gamut of gay experiences, ranging from the social and sexual to the emotional and contemplative.

However, repression still largely defined the mainstream artists of the 1960s Pop Art era. Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and his lover Jasper Johns avoided portraying immediately recognizable homosexual themes—or even acknowledging the nature of their relationship. Andy Warhol (1928-87) achieved fame as the leader of a new kind of art scene at the Factory. However, his fame was rarely associated with his homoerotic production. Critics and viewers spent decades trying to desexualize Warhol, but the Sex Parts of 1978, exhibited here, offer one of the best examples of his dynamic exploration of homo-sexual subject matter at the height of his career.

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-89), a brilliant photographer, created such explicit works that they unleashed a national controversy. His growing notoriety as an artist unabashedly exploring themes of gay sadomasochism and leather culture in the 1970s, culminated in 1989, when the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., canceled his retrospective show, The Perfect Moment. This proved the "perfect moment" for the mainstream public to look directly at gay sexuality. The flawless aestheticism of his black and white photographs demanded that critics and the public confront an openly gay artist and unequivocal homoerotic art for the first time.

The gay pride movement after 1969, the public face of AIDS in the 1980s, and Mapplethorpe’s exhibition all helped reverse the secrecy in which prominent homosexual artists had previously worked. On the heels of a newly liberated generation of fashion designers and photographers (note Bruce Weber’s billboard for Calvin Klein underwear in Times Square in 1982), the professional prominence of Herb Ritts (1952-2002) and David LaChapelle (b. 1969) helped occasion a crossover of homoerotic imagery into mainstream visual culture. Meanwhile, Rick Castro (b. 1958) brought the S&M sex that Mapplethorpe had spotlighted into his "fetish fashion," a genre that has become de rigueur with some editorial stylists. Finally, an underground form of sexuality, both gay and deviant, moved into public consciousness.

Mikel Màrton, an emerging young artist, represents a new freedom of direction for the 21st century. Combining elements of the traditional male nude with elements of self-assertive queer art and the rarely explored sexual allure of stereotypically "feminine" men, his art represents an affirmation of eroticism and gay pride and masterfully pulls from a variety of iconic sources to achieve something fresh, colorful, and vivacious.

This exhibition demonstrates the privilege that gay art and artists have earned to be "revealed". Revealed in their tantalizing sensuality and naked beauty. Revealed as having sexual desire and showing a commitment to using their creative and artistic powers to express their desire. Revealed as having a long-standing artistic history and as contributing to visual culture. Revealed as having suffered suppression and censorship. Revealed as mattering.

The tentative recognition of homoerotic intent in both traditional and contemporary artwork reflects a mainstream rejection of homo sexuality, or the part of the homosexual identity that is intrinsically sexual. This is the same insidious homophobia that manifests itself in violence, bigotry, and civil-rights discrimination. As relatively recent studies documenting the history, development, and cross-fertilization of homoerotic art continue, this emerging area of scholarship will increasingly serve as a positive counterbalance to the more traditional approach to gender and sexuality in art history and art appreciation among our diverse society.

If this exhibition reveals more parts of the male anatomy than are usually seen in public exhibitions, it also reveals a need for recognition of and freedom of expression for homosexual artists. I hope the celebratory nature of this exhibition offers much to savor and reflect on long after leaving the exhibition space.

Robert Diamond

Curator

Sustainable?

March 19 - April 23, 2009

Participants:

• Eric Benson
• Jerry Butler
• Karl Bodmer
• Matt Bua
• Edward Burtynsky
• Kate Cheney Chappell
• Xavier Cortada
• Kota Ezawa
• Erica Fielder
• Barbara Hocker
• Bob Johnson
• Warren Mather
• Dana Melamed
• Kyle Andrew Philips
• Mat Robinson
• Juliana Sabinson
• Dannielle Tegeder
• Peter Waite
• Joy Wulke

In conjunction with the April 15-16 2nd annual CCSU Symposium on Global Sustainability and Climate Change, the CCSU Art Galleries present an exhibition which poses the questions: can we humans achieve sustainable development, “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”? And is ecologically aware art an effective means of promoting the learning process that is a prerequisite to sustainability?
With some 30 works by 22 artists, in a range of media, the exhibition encompasses the larger contextual theme of a global ecology and points to the tension between the natural sublime and a toxic man-made sublime. An historical dimension is provided by the suggestion of 19th century industrialization, current climate change, and growing alarm. Some of the larger issues of sustainability on which the exhibition focuses are stewardship of watershed, the tension between fast and slow food, alternative clean energy sources, urban forestry and open space. These issues are addressed at the regional and local levels: Hartford’s Park River watershed; slow food in a novel installation of New Britain’s Urban Oaks Organic Farm Stand; the celebration of urban forestry and our local open space in New Britain’s Olmsted-designed Walnut Hill Park.

The opening on March 19 is the occasion for the Kick-Off of the Park Water Arts Campaign 2009-15, coinciding with Phase I of Hartford’s MDC Clean Water Project. The exhibition culminates on April 24 in the participatory action of making a Bass Brook Basin Rivercube, a first step in engaging those who live within the Park River Watershed in urban watershed stewardship.

Public school teachers and their classes are especially invited to visit this exhibition, as students are the next generation who will answer the questions posed in SUSTAINABLE? The art accompanied by a brochure with hard facts as well as artists statements challenges the visitor. Do the arts have something important to contribute to our ability to respond to mounting environmental concerns?

Artists and Participants

Eric Benson 

"My work aims to create awareness and inspire its viewers to take a part in the designing for the greater good of society and the environment.  I also use/reuse materials that have less of an eco-footprint than the mainstream, carving a path towards a wider use of sustainable materials in all of our creations."

Jerry Butler

Butler is a professor at CCSU.

Karl Bodmer

Bodmer is a 19th century artist whose engravings appeared in Travels in the Interior of North America by Prince Maximlian zu Wied.

In 1832 the Rhenish naturalist Alexander Philip Maximilian, Prince of Wied,set out to explore natural history and native populations of North America's northwest. Accompanying him was the Swiss artist, Johann Karl Bodmer, who was to document the trip with sketches and paintings, assist with the scientific collecting, and join in the hunt for wild game as food.  The years in which they visited America (1832-34) were pivotal in the history of American expansionism, for it was a time that saw the rapid development of the back country frontier.  In 1833 mass migration along the overland trail to Oregon and California was begun in earnest.  It was the beginning of the end of the unspoiled West.

The white Stone Walls, depicted by Bodmer, were earlier described by Meriwether Lewis in 1805 in David Lavender's The Way of the Western Sea.  "IN a section the explorers called the 'Stone Walls', the multihued bluffs were banded with a thick stratum of almost horizontal white sandstone.  In places this band was seamed perpendicularly by intrusive dikes of dark brown volcanic porphyry.  Erosion of the softer material around the dikes had left the jointed rocks standing as trim as walls, only a few feet thick and often scores of feet tall, of "workmanship so perfect...that I should have though that Nature had attempted to rival the human art of masonry.' Elsewhere water draining off the land in back of the steep bluffs had worn the white sandstone 'into a thousand grotesque figures...almost entire with their pedestels and capitals...some lying prostrate and broken.' Pyramids, organ pipes, spires, niches, alcoves--scores of scenes of 'visionary inchantment.' Fitting enough, this entrancing region was inhabited by large numbers of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep."

New Harmony is the site of two of America's great utopian communities.  The first, Harmonie on the Wabash (1814-1824) was founded by the Harmony Society, a group of Separatists from the German Lutheran Church. In 1814, led by their charismatic leader Johann Georg Rapp, they left their first American home, Harmonie, PA.  Indiana's lower Wabash Valley on the western frontier gave them the opportunity to acquire a much larger tract of land.  In 1825, the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania and built the town of Economy near Pittsburgh.  Robert Own, Welsh-born industrialist and social philosopher, then bought their Indiana town and the surrounding lands for his communitarian experiment.

To accompany Maximilian's two-volume account of their expedition book, Bodmer prepared 81 aquatints from the original watercolors.  For over a century, Bodmer's aquatints remained one of the most valuable and definitive portrayals of the American frontier.

Matt Bua

Bua is a New York based artist represented by Derek Eller Gallery.  His narrative biography follows.

For the last 15 years, I have been working collaboratively on Public Installations which actively engage the community with an elastic process which blurs the line between fact and fiction, manhood and boyhood, truth and fiction.  Past projects include a Parasitic Museum attached to the backside of the Brooklyn Museum, an East River Rafting expedition investigating some of Roosevelt Island's anomalies for PS1/MoMA, purging the jumbled memories from an old Colonel's House on Governor's Island for Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and raising sunken Scottish Fishing boats from the dead for Grizdale Arts in the Lake District of England.

My present artistic focus is on the creation of an open air work space in Catskill, New York, where small structures will be constructed and installed that exemplify aspects of visionary, vernacular, alternative, and sustainable architecture. Each structure will focus on specific themes and usages which will then be integrated into the surrounding community.  The land obtained for this project, unbeknownst to me at the time, contained the peak of Vedder Mountain, which is named after Jessie Van Vechten Vedder, New York state's first female historian, author of the History of Greene County.  A Vedder Mountain Summit house is in the works.  The B-Home project will be a place for both architects and non-architects to participate, experiment, and realize the creation of unique structures and a chance to collaborate with the natural environment.

The idea of "Architecture without Architects," as Bernard Rudofsky's title to his 1956 MoMA exhibition suggests, is that there was once a time when the act of building a home was a community activity using locally-harvested materials and techniques handed down from previous generations, a process absent of "architects."  The upstate B-Home project will be both a place for architectural experiments and a continuation of the communal architecture of the past.

Perhaps only growing one's own food is more empowering than building a home, especially an individual creation built from local sources.  By building and inhabiting one's own structure, we meld ourselves with our physical environment and not only make our personal identity manifest, but simultaneously combine it with every other thing.

http://www.derekeller.com/artists.html

Edward Burtynsky

Burtynsky's work is on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum. His statement follows.

Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work.  I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on.  To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction, and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success.  Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction.  For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

Kate Cheney Chappell

Cheney Chappell's work is on loan from the New Britain Museum of American Art.  Her statement follows.

My need to connect with the earth and know myself as part of the web of being is vital to my work as an artist; I believe it is also key to human survival and the health of the planet. Our alienation and denial are leading to unprecedented degradation of that which envelopes and sustains us: the air, soil, water, and creatures on which we depend for life. I have been making “Earth Envelopes” since 2002. They begin as flat, full sheets (22”x 30”) of Rives BFK paper that I print as monotypes, then paint and collage over, and fold into womb-like shapes that hang on the wall. Each has references to the elements, to creatures, to genetic information, or to growth patterns. “Earth Envelopes” embody the feminine principle in men and women that protects the enduring truths of human connectivity and interdependence with nature. Just as an envelope of air surrounds our earth, making life possible, may we become living envelopes of that which is good and true and will sustain it.

The title “Amphibian Deformities” is taken from a disturbing article I happened to read in National Geographic (1996), “The Sixth Extinction”, while on a printmaking residency at the Vermont Studio Center. It documented in graphic detail mutations in frogs that seem to be due to effects on the environment caused by human activity.

I marvel at the diversity of the natural world and hope that my art will make the viewer think about the mystery and beauty of life and about our relationships with the creatures that share the earth with us.

 Xavier Cortada

(From the artist's website)  Xavier Cortada is a Miami artist who has been commissioned to create art for the White House, the World Bank, the Florida Supreme Court, the Florida Governor's Mansion, Miami City Hall, Miami-Dade County Hall, the Miami Art Museum, the Museum of Florida History and the South Pole Station.  He has worked with groups across the world to produce numerous large-scale collaborative art projects-- including peace murals in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, child welfare murals in Bolivia and Panama, AIDS murals in Geneva and South Africa, and eco-art installations on Miami Beach and Antarctica. In 2008, as a New York Foundation for the Arts sponsored artist, he'll bring his art installations to the North Pole. 

www.xaviercortada.com

Kota Ezawa

Kota Ezawa's work is on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum.

Erica Fielder

Ercia Fielder's "Bird Feeder Hat" (papier mache) is being constructed by CCSU student, Lisa Goldreich. Her artist statement follows.

This is not just a hat. What do you think of that? This is actually an Ecological Art project to introduce you and the people who live in your Home Watershed—be it a small creek or the mighty Mississippi—to the idea that we all live within wild nature and can have a healthier planet if we pay more attention to that fact. 

What is a home watershed? It is a low spot in the terrain—valley, gully, canyon, dip—that collects water when it rains or the snow melts. Although it starts somewhere back up in the hills, a watershed also collects the water carried by culvert beneath your city streets.  In addition, each watershed contains a unique mix of plants, animals, geology, soils, air currents, people, and more. We drink from watersheds and everybody lives in one. Therefore your home watershed is the one in which you live. Mine, for example, is a tiny gulch with an unnamed creek that flows past my garden into the much bigger Ten Mile River that flows into the sea. 

During Bird Feeder Hat™ events we found that most people did not know they lived in a watershed. Once we described it to them and helped them find their home watershed on a map, they knew exactly what we were talking about.  They poured out stories about their watersheds, what wonders they saw, how pristine or devastated theirs was, and what they and others were doing to clean them up. Some even discovered, in our conversation, that "those environmentalists" were actually helping to make the visitors' home watersheds a better place to live and begrudgingly showed a bit of gratitude.

But why the hat?  The Bird Feeder Hat™ is a quirky way to get to know a few species that live in your watershed. You first set up the right conditions to attract birds to the hat, and then you develop the patience to sit with it on your head for enough time for birds to land.  When you follow these steps, you naturally learn something about your surroundings and meet a critter that lives with you in the watershed.  During our events we set up quiet places for people to sit beneath hats as well as broad displays of maps that depicted watersheds around the world.

You can make a Bird Feeder Hat by following the directions in the "Bird Feeder Instruction" booklets on sale in the CCSU Art Galleries.

www.ericafielder-ecoartist.com  * efielder@mcn.org 

 
F.R.U.I.T

This computer website was created by collaboration of artists, activists, researchers and gardeners.

www.free-soil.org/fruit

Green Street Arts Center

Barbara Hocker

Hocker is a Connecticut native whose artwork is based in nature.  Her artist statement follows.

My artistic practice occupies an important place in my overall spiritual path. In integration with yoga, meditation, and study (which includes readings in the history and philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism and Wabi Sabi aesthetics), my artwork is an outward, physical expression and communication of my inner, subjective experience. I am seeking to combine the terms of duality (mind/body, day/night, digital/physical, realism/abstraction) in a way that radiates what lies behind and beyond the illusion of opposition.

 Wabi Sabi is a Japanese aesthetic concept that grew out of Zen Buddhism and the Japanese Tea Ceremony. One of the philosophical tenets of Wabi Sabi is that everything in the world is in the process of either evolving from nothingness into form or devolving from form back into nothingness and it is mostly impossible to tell, and unnecessary to know, which direction any particular thing is going. Each direction encompasses the other in its potentiality. Hope and Loss always dance together in every moment and everything is impermanent, imperfect, and in constant flux. Wabi Sabi values “suchness” - the particular - over the universal. It also emphasizes nature, intimate space, intuition, ambiguity, and serendipity.

 My artwork inhabits an expanded field between photography, printmaking, and digital media. It is nature-based, intimate, purposely unsettled and imperfect. There is a flow and play between reality, realism, and abstraction expressing my direct experience of nature, beauty, and life. I am interested in the abstraction of nature that is possible with digital media and in expressing the atmosphere or “feeling” of a place more than capturing a technically exact photograph. Most of my work begins with time spent in Connecticut’s state forests and nature preserves with a digital camera. This time is a moving meditation, allowing images to present themselves and seeking serendipity. Back in the studio, I am concerned with returning the “digital” image to a concrete/physical manifestation. The finished digital images are given form by careful attention to the tactile qualities of paper, and combined with abstract monotypes, encaustic, and branches. My goal is an aching beauty that is somehow both touching and disquieting.

 In my sculpture and installations, I use these techniques to create a sense of immersion and sanctuary. This is achieved through the use of a miniature scale in relation to the size of the room and image cropping, which allows the space of the artwork to open out into the space of the viewer instead of pushing away into a perspective space. This invites viewers to imaginatively immerse themselves in the space of the artwork, which encourages intimacy. Again, I am seeking that “feeling” of the deep woods, mindfulness, and meditation.

http://bahocker.30art.com/

Bob Johnson

Johnson is the coordinator of the Rivercube participatory art works. 

Warren Mather

Mather is a Massachusetts based artist whose statement follows.

Recent work of mine has been about seeing what we are surrounded by but don’t perceive. “Long Nook” began as a formal exercise, a vertical panorama of the division line of land and sea. From single photos taken just as each wave crested I spliced together an all at once 360-degree vertical revolution of what the camera recorded.

In the assembled vertical panorama of “Long Nook,” I see the water as it rushes up over the land. It is a flood tide that does not recede, an emblem of the rise in ocean levels, an inevitable consequence of global warming.

Dana Melamed

Melamed is a New York based artist represented by Priska Juschka Fine Art.  Her statement follows.

It took me awhile to figure it out; to sort through what I call: The Rush. It is smog-filled, noisy and chaotic. Intoxicating and suffocating. It simultaneously tortures and excites. The polarized layers of debris are filthy, alarming, exhilarating, but alive.

Is this multi-layered city an architectural disaster, whose turmoil loads the senses and then smothers them? I want the viewer to experience the frantic and obsessive force of city life. Although chaos is detrimental - it is anything but numbing. It is pulsating with energy.

People are absent from the work deliberately. We are the people. We are invisible, yet we are trapped in this place where there is no oxygen and no escape. A wave of panic sweeps over us until we suddenly realize that this work reflects the pace of our own brain. The pace is deafening and we feel trapped under the layers of its rubble.

As if driving into a dense cloud, the eye is unable to capture the large spectrum of images at the first blink. My aim is for the viewer’s eye to adjust slowly. It is a journey from darkness to light, from black to white.

I created a three-dimensional surface by dipping printing waste and film into acrylic and glue, torching and melting them, then drawing and scratching into the layers with a razor. The fusion of these unconventional materials is affected by fluctuating external elements. I therefore never know what to expect.

The use of destructive techniques reflects the same traits as urban life - the materials assimilate into the work, losing their identity in the same manner that city dwellers do, rendering them anonymous. At the same time, it is a journey deeper into our personal layers and past, our own thoughts and emotions. Perhaps if we dig deeper, we can find ourselves beyond the bustle, noise, chaos, and at last - beneath the surface.

 http://www.priskajuschkafineart.com/artists/

Kyle Andrew Philips

Philips's work is on loan from the New Britain Museum of American Art.

Scott Prior

Scott Prior lives and works in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he has been a resident since 1971. Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, he received a BFA in printmaking from the University of Massachusetts in 1971. He has artwork in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum, the Danforth Museum, the Rose Art Museum and other major public and private collections. He has shown extensively in one-person and group shows in the United States and abroad. In 2001 he had a mid-career retrospective at the DeCordova Museum. Scott Prior is represented by the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York City and the Alpha Gallery in Boston.  (From Scott Prior's website.)

Prior's work is on loan from the New Britain Museum of American Art.

http://www.scottpriorart.com/

Mat Robinson

Robinson is a student at CCSU.  His statement follows.

Growing up, I lived in a rural community in Granby, Connecticut with my mother, a former art teacher, and my father, an avid outdoorsmen and history enthusiast.  Together they have influenced and helped form who I have become. While in college, I have lived in low-income areas in historic industrial cities, such as New Britain, “hardware city”, and Johnstown, New York, once the hub of America's glove making industry. I became fascinated with turn-of-the-century industrial architecture, landscapes and photography. These topics, over a six-year span, lead me back to fine art and formed my current direction.

In my paintings I construct vast, surreal landscapes in which I summarize and exaggerate the alteration of the earths surface. The landscapes that I create are unsettling and have an eerie, disquieting, apocalyptic feel. My concepts are inspired by large-scale manmade structures such as overpasses, dams and trestles. These are overwhelming structures, which confine or connect elements of the earth. To best convey my message, I choose a two-dimensional square, not a traditional rectangular, horizontal canvas, to carry the geometric elements of my paintings to their outermost edges in a modern style. I apply acrylic paint and mixed media because of its practicality in both drying time and versatility. In many of my works, I have used clippings,polymer image or texture transfers, adding new dimension to the piece. The technique is a play on perception; the viewer may see a detailed area and assume that it is consistent throughout the piece. In the process of a painting, a small clipping can be a color reference or trigger the creation of context and environment.

Movements in history such as Eco Art, Land Art, Hudson River School and American landscape painting are major influences to my artwork. In painting, I admire the works of Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, and Peter Homitzky for their non-traditional interpretations of color and direction of the landscape. Land artists like, Mary Miss, Walter De Maria and photographer Edward Burtynsky have inspired my specific topic of study. I was particularly inspired by the film, Edward Burtynsky, Manufactured Landscapes (2006). The industrial realities, which Burtynsky documents in his photographs, are raw and honest. He reminds us of the strain man induces on our planet and resources.

My works represent the fears of my generation. They are a collection of images that are of grand or overwhelming manmade structures and activity, which are presented by ambiguous means. These are unsettling reminders that we are unable to control our surroundings. 

Juliana Sabinson

Dannielle Tegeder

Tegeder is a New York based artist represented by Priska Juschka Fine Arts. 

(From the Priska Juschka website)  Inspired primarily by architectural blueprints and technological sketches, Tegeder creates seemingly abstract environments composed of interconnected recurrent forms. Tegeder employs an analytical approach towards both color and material in her work. Through her use of disorienting spaces of floating architectural fragments, and a precarious balance of objects, Tegeder references and reconsiders early 20th century painting and design, while at the same time instilling a very personal aesthetic that is ironically evocative of post-modern visions of the future.

http://www.priskajuschkafineart.com/artists/

Peter Waite

Waite's work is on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum.

http://www.peterwaite.com

Joy Wulke 

Wulke, an artist from Stony Creek, Connecticut, writes...

I tell stories about time and our natural and human environment using familiar images and materials in unfamiliar juxtapositions creating illusion of concepts we think we know.  The present, that fleeting moment between memory and anticipation and the relation of all three to what we perceive to be reality feeds the concepts for the stories. 

Geological movement throughout the earth's history and its resulting land and sea formations is of great interest to me.  Ancient rock formations present landscapes that reveal themselves to be sculpted by time, the Storrs of Scotland, for example.  All landscapes are evolving, shaped by wind, water, fire, ice, and shifting landmass. The Earth is dynamic.  It is in constant flux adding and subtracting lands, seas, and species.  Since humankind has inhabited the earth, the balance of natural time shifts have begun to unravel.  We are speeding up the climate change that is part of the natural cycle of the earth, putting all living things in peril.  I acknowledge the beauty and inspiration of nature through my work with the ogal of revealing the urgency of our responsibility for stewardship to keep it accessible, healthy, and free to move as its own pace towards the next evolution of land and life forms.  We do not want to have the natural landscape become only available to us "underglass."

www.wulkestudio.com * www.projects2k.org

Aviary: Michael Pestel

February 5th - March 5th

AVIARY is a multimedia art installation and hands-on performance space for the contemplation of birds we can no longer hear and a celebration of those that we can. The exhibition juxtaposes a variety of music ensemble set-ups, architectural structures, video projections and audio installations aimed at evoking and problematizing the aviary experience in the context of bird extinction. In addition, a “study area” features documentation from related performances and installations along with general information about birds and bird sound. Collaborative workshops will be offered during the course of the exhibition, culminating in a performance work, Ornithopera, on March 4, 2009 at 4:00.

Humans take a natural delight in aviary exhibits – the diverse species, the exotic plumage, the carefully simulated environments and painted dioramas, the open flyways, and the entrancing musicality of birds. Yet the very presence of diverse species inside the great glass and steel enclosures betrays their increasing absence on the outside. The vast reduction of song birds in North America, the growing numbers of species on the endangered list worldwide, and the scores of species extinctions during the past six centuries all point to common themes: habitat destruction, predator imbalances, and more recently, global warming.

Significantly, the history of aviaries and zoos since the Enlightenment parallels the development of such related institutions as natural history museums and the European prison system. Indeed, the development of scientific taxonomy classification and the confinement of birds in cages go hand in hand. Ironic though it may be, it is fair to say that the best aviaries, zoos, and wildlife centers today are doing what they can to loosen their systemic link to the processes of repression and erasure. Through extensive breeding programs, public education, and fundraising efforts, these institutions represent a modicum of hope for our ability to reverse the rush towards increased species extinction.

In an effort to elucidate the linkages between naming, writing, control and suppression, AVIARY revisits the Latin names of the extinct birds as a vehicle for sonic resuscitation and remembrance. AVIARY asks what species-extinction means to us and what the process of remembering, of marking absence, might look and sound like. It wonders aloud how we might celebrate the beauty of extant species – including our own – from within the very systems of power that unwittingly seek to destroy them. The visitor to the exhibition is invited to contemplate the meaning of absence, to lament our insistent superiority and to imagine being a bird among birds – to fly, to sing, to shriek, to dive, to honk, to wail, to peep, to jive and to explore an avian sense of place.

Collaborative workshops with students will be offered during the course of the exhibition and culminate in performances at a closing event on March 4, 2009 at 4 o'clock.

For more on the artist, see www.michaelpestel.com

The Art of the Picture Book

October 23-November 20, 2008

Maurice Sendak. Mother Goose

An Illustration Exhibition featuring works by Kate Greenaway, Maurice Sandak, Tomie DePaola, and work from the S.Low Illustration Collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art.

Showing with, in the Inner Gallery:

Pulp Art: Paintings from the Robert Lesser Collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art 

(an)OTHER Show

Selected works by Artists of Color from Connecticut State University Faculty
September 11-October 9, 2008

Featuring Works by:

• Imna Arroyo
• Lula Mae Blocton
• James L. Buxton, Jr.
• Abe Echevarria
• Sheri Fafunwa-Ndibe
• Vincente Garcia
• Qimin Liu
• Cora Marshall
• Thuan Vu
• Jessie Whitehead
• Claudia Widdiss

The creative work by artists of color is as varied as the artists who create it. There are artists of color who employ recognizably African, Native American, Latino, or Asian icons and symbols in works that speak to our shared and individual histories. For other artists, process is the subject and driving concern in creating their work. These, frequently abstract or semi-abstract works, hint at imaged worlds of endless possibilities. For other artists of color, their ethnicity informs their work as subtle underlying principles just below the surface of explicit expression. Spiritual healing takes precedence, for some artists and they compose new narratives inspired by their ancestral pasts. As stated earlier, the creative work by artists of color is as varied as the artists who create it.

Even so, too often galleries and other exhibition spaces still limit (or save up) artists of color for a particular event or thematic month: February is for artists of African descent; November is Native American; May is Asian; September is Hispanic, and so forth. One result is that viewers are disappointed or surprised when they attend exhibitions by Other-American artists if the work does not conform to their expectations of “ethnic” art but looks instead like just “another” show.

This exhibition features select works of artists of color from the Connecticut State University System faculty whose breadth of work spans a variety of media, content, styles, and intentions. The underlying aim of the exhibition is to begin a dialogue about the diversity of approaches to creative processes.

Female Forms & Facets: Artwork by women from 1975-present

March 13-April 18, 2008

Featuring Judy Chicago

With:
Carolee Schneemann
Cindy Sherman
Penny Arcade
Janine Antoni
Lisa Yuskavage
Sara Risk
Judy Fox
Candice Raquel Lee

JUDY CHICAGO. The Birth Project: Earth Birth, 1985. 

Female Forms and Facets: A Celebration of Women in Art

In the allegedly enlightened aftermath of the Women’s Movement of the 1970s, the following question haunts us. Do women retain their traditional role as sex symbol in today's visual culture?

Female Forms and Facets: Artwork by Women from 1975 to the Present explores the choices women artists are making about their own representation. At the conception of this exhibition was a desire to revisit Judy Chicago’s fascinating core imagery, as well as the work of other Feminist artists from the 1970s. In stark contrast to more widespread images of women in our visual culture, this early Feminist Art is still fresh and highly relevant to many visitors.

Feminist Art here refers to that art which emerged in the context of a Woman’s Movement and a Feminist Art Movement, although we don’t dismiss the feminist themes and attitudes of Artemesia Gentileschi, Rosa Bonheur, Georgia O’Keefe, and Tamara de Lempicka, just to name a few. In any case, the definition of “Feminist Art” is not the subject of debate in this exhibition. Suffice it to say that we embrace the broadest definition of Feminist Art but have limited our appellation of "feminist" to those artists who have identified themselves as such.

Feminist Art has always been concerned with the presence of women in the annals of art history, the representation of women in artwork, the visibility of women artists in the world’s great museums, and the participation of women in the contemporary art scene. Female Forms and Facets is primarily concerned with giving women the opportunity to talk about themselves for a change.

While it is clear that WOMEN are the protagonists of this exhibition, Female Forms and Facets nonetheless remains an exhibition of questions. How do women choose to portray themselves? What are women artists saying about women? What women’s issues do women choose to address? Is there a feminine sensitivity that distinguishes work by women from work by men? Is “Feminist Art” today different from the Feminist Art of the ‘60s and ‘70s? Which contemporary artists are making feminist statements today?

The diverse range of artists in this exhibition, with artwork from the 1970s to the present, challenges the stereotypical ways in which women are seen. And after all, that’s what this exhibition is about: not just looking at women but truly seeing women – women in all their forms and facets, women in all their brilliance and beauty, women in all their strength and intelligence, women as the givers and promoters of life, women as fertile earth deities and as erotic goddesses.

Will viewers see all these facets of women? Or will their eyes merely narrow in on lips, shoulders, hips, navel, breast, buttocks, vulva, nipples, clitoris? Do these images provoke shame, horror, delight, arousal? Is woman more than the sum total of her forms?

Judy Chicago is here represented by a quarter century of work that traces her development of a female-centered erotica. She offered a startlingly new vision of female representation in her “Dinner Party” (1979). From its dialogue about the women who made an impact on our human history to the celebration of female forms and female imagery on dinner plates that literally offer the substance of life, it is the quintessence of everything feminist and everything feminine in art and in history. From the collaboration that went into this work to its mainstream exclusion, this work represents the triumphs and struggles of women artists. Judy’s works on paper hold similar messages about female empowerment and, according to her statement for this exhibition, reveal “my dedication to both process and meaning in art.”

Carolee Schneemann’s two works, “Interior Scroll” (1975) and “Vulva’s Morphia” (1995), are the perfect offering for our exhibition from such a prolific artist. Spanning twenty years in conception, both works demonstrate Schneemann’s permutations of the female body with a refreshingly earthy interest in that body, rather than the antiseptic sex appeal her male predecessors had offered in pure white marble and nacreous Academic canvases. Challenging taboos and exploring a dreamlike world, Schneemann exposes a more hidden side of women.

Cindy Sherman, probably best known for her series of “Film Stills” in the late 70s but also undertaking a broad range of themes in photography, is here represented by works that, with her typical subtlety, raise questions about gender stereotypes.

Penny Arcade (aka Susana Ventura) occupies a rare position in the American avant-garde and counter culture. A teenage superstar in Andy Warhol's Factory, she began creating her own shows in the mid-80s. Among Penny's many powerful and daring performances, the mainstream hit Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! created the performance burlesque movement as it toured internationally in the 1990s. This performance and others, which draw on her immigrant, Italian working class background growing up in New Britain, will be screened for the duration of our exhibition. In addition, Penny is creating a short live performance for the exhibition's opening.

Janine Antoni came to prominence around 1992, when she used her teeth as a carving tool in an installation entitled Gnaw and her hair as a mop in her Loving Care performance. Her complex, thought-provoking artwork combines process, concept, installation, performance, and more traditional art making process. Her contributions to this exhibition explore the relationships between women, specifically the relationship between mother and daughter.

Lisa Yuskavage also came to prominence in the 1990s and not without controversy. The blonde, buxom women of her canvases, evoking the exaggeratedly curved fantasy forms in men’s magazines, offer the perfect counterpoint to the early Feminists’ depictions of female forms. Lisa’s warm colored paintings are at once sensual and satirical.

Sara Risk, who died in 1998 at the age of 33, created artwork that traces her personal struggle with body image and eating disorders. Soft-spoken, gentle, and petite, Sara realized works of breath-taking delicacy and poignancy that both move and impress the viewer.

Judy Fox is represented by two works. “Venus” (2004) is a celebration of femininity that brilliantly captures the essence of this exhibition. Her reference to the Earth Goddess, retaining the voluptuous amplitude and awkward pose of the Venus of Willendorf but now in warm flesh tones, has both an irony and a beauty that reestablish the place of the Goddess in 21st century iconography. In “Vanity” (2007), part of a series entitled “Snow White and the Seven Sins” (currently on display elsewhere), we see a metamorphosis of Judy Chicago’s core imagery into a new surreal vision that both challenges and delights.

Candice Raquel Lee is an emerging young sculptor who reinterprets mythological subjects with a 21st century female eye. “My treatment of myth invites viewers to reassess initial impressions grounded in a conventional ‘male’ eye that perceives female bodies as passively and necessarily sexual.” Her subjects, in bronze, include Pythia, Lilith, Rosy-Fingered Dawn, and Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow.

We hope Female Forms and Facets elicits questions about female representation and, hopefully, offers some new perspectives as well. Perhaps most importantly, we hope the viewer joins in our celebration of women, in all their forms and facets!

Robert Diamond
Curator

CANDICE RAQUEL LEE. Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, 2006. (bronze) (c) Candice Raquel Lee, 2008

Vessels

November 2-29, 2006

An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Sculptors Featuring:

• Michael Allison
• Jerry Austin
• Nicholas Bernard
• Natalie Blake
• Leora Brecher
• Thomas Clarkson
• Suzanne Crane
• Rob Dobson
• ThanhBinh Duong
• Douglas Gray
• Gartner/Blade
• Bob Green
• Richard & Nancy Hyslin
• Jan Jacque
• Brenda McMahon
• Craig McMillan
• Stephen Merritt
• Alan Minor
• Hideaki S. Miyamura
• Marti Mocahbee
• Dannon Rhudy
• Elmer Taylor
• George Westbrook
• Tony Winchester

Curated by Vincente Garcia

Consumption Body: Photography and Video Art by Valerie Garlick

August 30th-September 13, 2006

Artist Statement:

My photography is self-referential portraiture that aims to consider the fostering of vanity among a culture concerned with image and presence. I have used video as well to document these ritualistic efforts and performances that contribute to who we are. My work explores self-maintenance, self-assurance, and self-esteem. The video Poor Valerie offers the face and mouth of a female submissive to a downpour of substance. The action of the doer challenges the female in sexual nature, with nutrient and sustenance. I am examining notorious appetite, the weight of image on the female body, and her obedience to an audience.