City-Wide Open Studios 2017: Fract/Friction

By: Dan Bernier and Dan Gries with the assistance of Common Ground School
Location: Goffe St Armory

Lead artist-mathematicians Dan Gries and Dan Bernier collaborated with students from Common Ground High School to design and produce this colorful installation for the exterior of the Goffe Street Armory. The New Haven and Hamden based duo used computer code to determine how many pool noodles, purchased from the dollar store, could be spliced into ¼ inch sections and placed into the wire grids covering the windows to create a readable image. From afar, viewers can perceive the images as representations of plant life, but the closer they get, the more the image breaks down. At an arm’s distance, the windows transform into a swarm of color.

Students from Common Ground helped choose the designs and install the work, working side by side with the artists and City-Wide Open Studio volunteers over several days. The subject matter celebrates the life of the new community garden, located on the County Street side of the Armory. Since this summer, the garden has grown and been maintained by the New Haven Land Trust and a group of community members, with enthusiasm and support from community leader, Nadine Horton, and city engineer, Giovanni Zinn.

This project was made possible by the generous support of Common Ground School, especially educators Ashton Killilea and Carla Lia, and Common Ground High School Students.

By: Brittany Whiteman and Kyle Skar
Location: Goffe St Armory

Our site specific installation takes the viewer on an immersive and self-reflecting journey through light, color, and space. When entering the room, the the participant is confronted with a white wall that is slightly leaning toward them. Cut out of this wall is a 2’x2′ hole. At the back of the room and visually in line with the cut out is a mirror. The mirror is tilted to alter the perspective of the viewer and reveal the back side of the wall; not the reflection of the viewer. The front, sides, and cuts in the wall will be white, but the back of the wall will be a bright red, illuminated with light. Our hope is when the participant enters the room and looks through the cut in the wall, they will see a bright red shape, but it is not immediately known where it is coming from. We also hope for exploration of the space to happen, so the “truth” of where the red square is coming from is revealed.

By: Cesar Valdes
Location: Goffe St Armory

Artist Cesar Valdes’ piece “Come Come” occurs within a limited world, a definition of reality. It focuses on the reality of immigrants working in the food industry, which ends up transforming into a regulated system. This limited world results in a mix of fact and fictions.

A collaboration between Yale School of Architecture and New Haven Academy students, lead by Yale University professor Elihu Rubin
Location: Goffe St Armory

Yale University professor Elihu Rubin leads a collaboration between Yale undergraduates and New Haven high school students that explores the architecture and architectural history of the Goffe Street Armory. Multi-media presentations, such as mapping studies, architectural histories, place-based storytelling, and engaging representations form a base exhibit in the Armory. These projects will be accompanied by workshops, tours, and other interactive activities to include visitors and community members. The exhibit is designed to engage community members and visitors in the past, present, and future of the Goffe Street Armory and its surrounding environs.

By: John O’Donnell
Location: Goffe St Armory

John O’Donnell’s performance piece, “Neo-American Post-Teen Day-Dream” starts with a ‘stage’ made to look like a front lawn – fake grass, picket fence, fake flowers, and lawn chairs. Completing the stage will be an inflatable structure referencing a rainbow, a temple and a home. There will also be a mobile performance, where O’Donnell will wear an inflatable suit and push a cart that is a front yard/lawn mower. His performance explores what it means to be American in the current political climate and the failed systems at play in America.

By: Adam Niklewicz
Location: Goffe St Armory

Viewers get a chance to be a part of Adam Niklewicz performance sculpture as they go onstage and try to guess what could be in his hands. Niklewicz will be seated behind a table covered in brown paper, where participants can write down their guesses. After guessing, Niklewicz will reveal the object hidden in his hands. The juxtaposition of that object with the many guesses covering the table will reveal truths about how we place value on objects of beauty and use.

By: Young Joo Lee
Location: Goffe St Armory

Artist Young Joo Lee imagines the Korean Demilitarized Zone as a place both of possible reconciliation and of propaganda and fear, as a dangerous sanctuary. A 3-screen video installation explores this idea of the demilitarized zone; two screens show the opposing military sides, while a third screen in the middle imagines the zone as a feminine entity that allures both militaries. As the soldiers enter the forest, it undresses them, and they enter a lake in the forest to transform into part of the forest.

By: Theresa Gooby
Location: Goffe St Armory

The Lazarus Library tell the story of a wealthy 19th century industrialist who entertains his children with stories of extinct creatures that were mutant beasts. Lazarus hired illustrators to create images of the mutant creatures he described to his children. These illustrations were then slipped into books and left throughout the home for the children to discover on their own. The illustrations in the books provided proof that these creatures were not imaginary, that they truly did exist at one time. Because if its in a book, it must be true. The Lazarus Library takes a museological approach to presenting the remaining books and artifacts in the Lazarus collection.

By: Maria Gaspar
Location: Goffe St Armory & surrounding neighborhood

“Sounds for Liberation” is an audio project that examines issues of boundaries and divisions between the New Haven Correctional Facility, the New Haven Armory, and the neighborhood surrounding these two institutions. Audio recordings of song, personal narratives, storytelling, and the spoken word, collected from youth, community members, and the currently detained, are available to listen to in various locations around the neighborhood. By focusing on the voice, this project creates a common ground, connecting and building relationships at places of disconnection and isolation. No lines will be drawn, but rather, they will be erased.

By: Zeph Farmby
Location: Goffe St Armory

Artist Zeph Farmby seeks to question societal ideas of black culture through his piece “Brainwashed”. 8-foot-tall heads of young black men will be set up in the large Drill Hall of the Armory. The top of each head is painted with old pop culture depictions of black culture, showing the stereotypes that society creates and perpetuates through the media. Farmby aims to activate the self-consciousness of the viewers to think beyond their own insecurities and move towards a new reality.

By: Ian Donaldson, Daniel Glick-Unterman, and Olisa Agulue
Location: Goffe St Armory

A team of Yale School of Architecture students have created 7 booths that, when seen from a specific vantage point, form an image. Inside each booth is a small mythological garden, created by a different pair of artists, architects, psychologists, writers, journalists, or other producers. As viewers move through the installation, the image on the booth changes, reflecting how representations of truth and order are often based in an individual’s perspective. The 7 disparate gardens create enclosed havens that allow for reflection and mass interpretation.

Collaborators on the project include: Ian Donaldson, Dan Glick-Unterman, Carr Chadwick, Dwight Portocarrero, Olisa Agulue, Lani Barry, Polina Vasilyeva, Suzie Marchelewicz, Caitlin Baiada, Christian Golden, Jeannette Hinkle, Caitlin Thissen, Hyeree Kwak, Isabelle Song, Kevin Huang, Yo-E Ryou, and Matthew Wolff

By: A Broken Umbrella Theatre
A project in partnership with Artspace
Location: located at each CWOS weekend

A Broken Umbrella Theatre spent four months visiting retirement communities and community groups throughout the Greater New Haven region, recording stories about participants’ relationships with the telephone, communication, and personal exchange. These stories inspired and contributed to “Exchange,” a production that explores both New Haven’s history as the home of the first telephone switchboard and exchange and residents’ personal histories. The final production, performed twice on Saturday and Sunday on a roving portable theater built on a flatbed truck, explores the relationship that our community has with its history.

As we integrate “fact-checking” into the way we consume social media and the news, we face a dilemma: what do we do when we know we are being lied to? The 20th annual City-Wide Open Studios takes this uneasy question as a point of inquiry into four weekends of art-looking. Artspace invites artists to submit a proposal for the production of a new or ongoing work that explores the too tidy distinctions we make between “reality” and “illusion,” “fact” and “fiction,” and “history and myth.” These proposals may ponder our political situation, design alternatives to this moment, or take a formal approach, investigating, for example, the science of perception, memory, performance, and the promise of the speech-act. We are also interested in hearing from artists who seek refuge from this discussion completely, and work to make places that provide safety, well-being and care for the self and others.