City-Wide Open Studios 2018: Wellbeing

By Deborah Lehman di Capua

In an exploration of social isolation, this collaborative effort between cultural organizer Deborah Lehman di Capua and Yale Internist Dr. Dave Rosenthal consists of a two-month residency at the West Haven VA in order to better understand the veterans there and their relationships with loneliness and art. Veterans will take part in guided close looking sessions with organized group visits to artist studios and meet artists who are vets themselves.

By Jeff Ostergren

Investigating the site’s history, this series of paintings is created with Bayer- and Monsanto-based chemicals as well as traditional paints in order to depict images related to the project’s space and explore the multiple meanings behind “wellbeing.”

By Martha Lewis & Marion Belanger

This site-specific installation examines our place in the greater ecosystem by creating a womb-like environment of roots, dirt, insects, and both filtered and natural light. Working with soil and the growth of plants is vital to survival and the cultivation of food, as well as to mental wellbeing and healing, and by invoking the varied meanings of “roots,” this project explores what nourishes us and how we interact with “the underneath.”

By Suzanne Kachmar

A travelling exhibit including local artists, BOOBs addresses Breast Cancer Awareness Month and responds to a variety of feminist issues and protests against racial and social injustice. The works seek to examine the breast in many contexts, such as age, gender, body image, race, and healthcare.

Made possible by the generous support of Suzio York Hill.

By Elizabeth Nearing, Dawnise Traore & Collaborators

This collection of 30 short pieces collected from writers, musicians, and poets from New Haven and beyond explores race, mental health, and the stigma surrounding mental illness in poor black communities. Wellbeing cannot be achieved without a well mind, and this project seeks to address that fact and its interaction with urban communities.

By Lilianna Marie Baczeski in collaboration with Adam Christoferson and Douglas Duhaime

Working with Musical Intervention, this installation seeks to create a safe space for recovering addicts to record music and design album art, as well as allowing others to listen to and purchase the recordings produced or share their own struggles with addiction.

Kellie Ann Lynch in collaboration with the performers

Elm City Dance Collective and friends from the community will embrace this years City Wide Open Studios’ theme, “Wellbeing” through visually evocative movement that reflects the performers’ humanity and pays homage to the site they will be performing at, Yale University’s West Campus. The performers will embody the essence of wellbeing through movement that engages the space and physically expresses metaphor inspired by contemplative practices and ritualistic ways of being in community. Seen from the outside, performed inside within the glass walkway connecting the Yale School of Nursing to Building #410.

By Debbie Hesse

Inspired by their daughters’ mitochondrial disease, the Hesses create an interactive, mixed-media video installation through the use of found, repurposed, and fabricated forms and materials – such as plexiglass, sculptural forms, medical information, fabric, and video projections – in order to merge art and science and make visible what we cannot comprehend.

By Colin McMullan

Both a mobile tree syrup processing unit and a tree spa, this relaxing getaway features a steam room of evaporated tree sap, drawing on various traditions of healing from around the world. In honoring these traditions yet moving to a post-modern society, this piece unifies those engaged in a collective healing experience.

By Rachel Bernsen, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff & Collaborators

Loosely adapted from Plato’s symposium, I Know You so Well examines the fracture of an industry. The project’s first iteration, commissioned by Artspace for City-Wide Open Studios, brings healthcare workers together who likely never connect in their professional lives to think holistically about what it means to heal. Made possible thanks to an Emergency Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Art and an Anonymous Donor.

By Neil Daigle Orians

Dealing with the violence and mistreatment inflicted on queer youth, this immersive installation seeks to reverse that rejection and shame, and instead foster individual acceptance and self-celebration. Made possible thanks to the generous support of Audrey Conrad and Leonardo H. Suzio.

Erin Lee Antonak

Referencing a mash up of traditions that intertwine Iroquois crafts, regalia, and ceremonial objects, with millinery techniques and drag culture, Antonak will create six hats intended give restorative strength and prayer to their wearers. Made possible thanks to the generous support of Robert Buckholz and LizAnne Fontaine.

By Deborah Lehman di Capua

In an exploration of social isolation, this collaborative effort between cultural organizer Deborah Lehman di Capua and Yale Internist Dr. Dave Rosenthal consists of a two-month residency at the West Haven VA in order to better understand the veterans there and their relationships with loneliness and art. Veterans will take part in guided close looking sessions with organized group visits to artist studios and meet artists who are vets themselves.