Imagine a Muppets movie written by Kevin Smith, and you’ll probably get a decent idea of what’s going on at Elmwood Productions, a puppet-focused film production studio in central Connecticut. Jon Bristol founded the company (named after his hometown) in 2002, around five years after he started building his own puppets.

Elmwood’s work embraces humor in the absurd and the uncomfortable, aided by the additional reality-bending possibilities (what Bristol calls “the Looney Tunes element”) afforded narratives focused on puppets. The company’s original film follows one man waking from a nightmare to find his id manifest as a puppet, and its new series The Risley Brothers takes notes from Clerks. Many of the crew members used to work in retail, and strange customer-related anecdotes have found their way into the material.

Bristol works out of an old converted barn in West Hartford, and tries to distance his puppet aesthetic from Jim Henson’s. He bases some characters—like one of the Risley brothers—on himself, but often finds inspiration elsewhere. “I’m always carrying a sketchbook with me. If I’m in public somewhere and I see an odd-looking person, I’m gonna doodle them really quick and hopefully maybe turn them into a puppet.”

Jon Bristol–founder, Elmwood Productions
West Hartford, Connecticut
Website

top image: Jon Bristol and friends at Elmwood Productions. Photo by Paul Specht

The post Quick Takes: No Strings Attached appeared first on Take Magazine.

Mohamad Hafez papers the walls of his New Haven, Connecticut, studio with printouts of news photos. The pictures show old women weeping and gesticulating; piles of rubble in narrow, ancient streets; young boys with a look of shock and sadness on their faces; rows of tanks; views from inside blown-out interiors; half-demolished apartment buildings; and throngs of huddled refugees awaiting food or rescue. The photos are from Syria, Hafez’s birthplace.

Hafez, 33, works as an architect, designing corporate high-rise skyscrapers for Pickard Chilton. That’s his day job. But in the evenings, on his off-hours and often late into the night, he comes to work on his visual art in his upstairs studio in the Westville Village Historic District section of New Haven, a few blocks from the Beth El–Keser Israel synagogue. Hafez makes detailed assemblages—scale models and sculptures—that generally hang on a wall. Many of Hafez’s pieces depict ripped-apart buildings, with dangling wires, bullet-riddled plaster, and crushed furniture. They’re like dollhouses that re-create the destruction of war rather than the comforts of domestic calm. Others are part of what Hafez calls his Baggage Series, which he makes using open suitcases of varying sizes, crammed with miniature items, sometimes including numerous tiny houses or fragments of dwellings.

Mohamad Hafez considers Unpacked Refugee Baggage: Ayman & Ghena, 2017, mixed media. Photo by Paul Specht

When he was 19 years old, enrolled as a first-year student at Iowa State University, Hafez took some of the skills he was learning in his architecture classes and eventually started applying them to intricate models of buildings from Damascus. The hobby served to ease his homesickness at the time. This was in 2004, before the civil war began in 2011, in which over four hundred thousand Syrians have died. This was before the humanitarian crisis that sent approximately one million Syrian refugees to Europe.

Having entered the United States with a one-time entry visa following an extensive background check, Hafez feared that being a Muslim from Syria named Mohamad might make reentry into the United States unlikely. So, for about seven years, Hafez channeled some of his longing for home and family into work that conjured Syria. As an architecture student, Hafez was understandably drawn to the layers of history and culture represented in the buildings of Damascus, with their meshed and stacked traditions and
aesthetics—Islamic, Byzantine, Roman, Hellenic, modern, and more. When the civil war began, Hafez, watching reports on TV and online, saw the material destruction as emblematic of the senseless human suffering that went along with it.

His artwork is a sort of visual lament. “There’s the personal component of this, in the sense that I am weeping over the death of my country and culture,” he says. “Well, how do you cope with that? How do you cope with thousands of years of culture and heritage and archaeological sites being bombed into dust in front of your eyes in a six-year vicious war, without a meaningful outcome being planned, or at least a light at the end of the tunnel? As a Syrian, as a Muslim, as an Arab, how do you cope with that while living in the diaspora?”

Hafez is quick to establish that his suffering—reading about the war in Syria and watching news reports from halfway around the world, agonizing from a distance—is nothing like that of those who are there. But, his predicament offers a peculiar kind of vantage point that increases the sting in some ways.

“To see your country deteriorate and see the whole picture from afar—that’s another torture in itself. Because when you’re in it, you’re just consumed with your day-to-day life,” he explains. “But when you’re outside of it, you get more of the whole big picture. You’re getting a taste of so many medicines. So the only way I figured I could cope with that was to get into these models, these sculptures.”

Hafez got to go back to Syria in 2011, right before the civil war erupted. But he hasn’t returned since. He says he’ll go again when things calm down.

Mohamad Hafez, Unpacked Refugee Baggage: Um Shaham, 2017, mixed media. Photo by Paul Specht

One could, theoretically, look at Hafez’s sculptures without any knowledge of his background or the specific subject of the work, and assume that the artist was somehow making Joseph Cornell-esque assemblages that aestheticize destruction or structural decay. Hafez recognizes the impulse, but it doesn’t motivate his work.

“I do surround myself with photos of the destruction just because . . . it’s not beautiful . . . it’s sophisticated,” he admits. “Destruction in itself is sophisticated, and the detail attracts you. There’s a sad and horrific component to it, but the way that buildings fall apart and the rubble, to the human eye, is mesmerizing. I don’t know why. Our dark side likes seeing things dismantled. It’s curiosity. My job is to remodel that curiosity and to tell you there are human beings living in there. So you see the laundry lines, you see birds’ nests, you see different hints of life that take place.”

Art is supposed to expand our sympathies. Hafez’s work can spur viewers to feel their way into a routine life—a mundane life, with clothes, dishes, furniture, houseplants, and neighbors—that has been upended and blasted apart by hostile, chaotic, and indifferent forces. Sometimes there are pieces of Koranic calligraphy spray-painted on crumbling facades. The phrases are inspirational, hopeful messages for believers, about justice and perseverance, but they also have the visual hint of revolutionary signals—as if simply surviving and retaining dignity were a kind of insurrection in the face of war and bomb blasts. Faith is almost seen as a form of defiance.

If he’s summoning chaos and dislocation in his work, Hafez finds a way to that place in his carefully ordered studio, playing the sad but meditative Persian violin music of Kayhan Kalhor, working into the night in a kind of trance. Neat bins and boxes of found objects are separated: driftwood here, plastic there, rusted metal in one container, shiny fuses in another. Glue guns and tools are stacked and arranged. Hafez doesn’t create in a jumble, even if what he creates resembles one.

Bricolage—art created by assembling media from multiple sources—is usually slightly crazed and off-kilter, but Hafez’s constructions have a strange obsessive realism. Hafez’s day job as an architect gives him a built-in sense of material and scale that contributes to the authentic feel of his war-torn miniatures and the substructures that get pulled into the light when a building is destroyed.

“You’re always trusting your artistic intuition and your architectural intuition,” he says, “in that if you’re modeling a building, you’re thinking ‘Does that look right? Is the thickness of the slab, the thickness of the wall, the proportion of the window to the floor, correct?’ That’s subconscious at this point. Because when you break a wall you expose rebar; when you break a floor you expose electrical and plumbing.”

When he’s designing corporate high-rises at Pickard Chilton, advance planning is central. But his visual art allows for much more spontaneity and freedom. Hafez might even be said to be improvising space.

“In my day job, we design every bit of detail in our architecture projects,” he explains. “When you start, you have a pretty darn good idea of where you’re headed. This work is so liberating in the sense that I just start building, making on the spot. If it looks right, fine; if it doesn’t, I’m ripping that off and throwing that on the floor.”

Hafez’s work has been shown around New England and the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom. A recent show at New Haven’s Artspace featured a collaborative series of pieces from Hafez and Ahmed Badr, an Iraqi-born writer who is now attending Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Together, the two interviewed refugees from the Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan, collecting their stories and documenting their accounts of war, uprooting, wandering, resettling, and longing for home. The show, UNPACKED: Refugee Baggage, is a multimedia effort to humanize and individualize large-scale events that often get covered from a distance, or lost in the charged political debate in the United States today. Audio clips are woven together with Hafez’s constructions. The artists hope to redefine and expand the meaning and associations of the word refugee in twenty-first-century America.

Mohamad Hafez. Photo by Paul Specht

To create his work—to make it with the right force—Hafez feels like he needs to channel some of the suffering. “I feel a responsibility,” he says. “If I want that emotion to come through honestly in the work, then I have to be that emotion for that amount of time and put it in the work.”

The keening instrumental music on the stereo helps him focus. Hafez says he “latches” with it. “First what I’ll do is look at a lot of photos. I look at what happened—I remind myself,” he describes. “I look at the photos of kids, of refugees, of dead people on the streets, of our devastation, in order to absorb that and put it into sculpture.”

Mohamad Hafez
New Haven, Connecticut
Website

All photos by Paul Specht

The post Dislocations appeared first on Take Magazine.

Barry Blitt is perhaps best known for the more than 80 illustrations he has done that have graced the covers of The New Yorker. His knack for rendering current political issues with the darkest of humor has won him accolades from critics and fans – and  a lot of hate mail from dissenters. But he is happy to keep on swinging.

Blitt was born in Montreal and took to cartooning and drawing at an early age, although not because he felt a calling. “Like all kids I was plopped down in front of crayons and paper when I was quite young, essentially to keep me amused and out of the way. I was drawing Popeye a lot. I was a big fan.” he says. “A lot of the early work I did was sort of hero worship. I remember drawing a lot of hockey players and baseball players and Elton John and rock stars and stuff. In high school and college, I became more sarcastic and hostile.”

Blitt studied at Ontario College of Art and Design and began having his work published in Toronto; then he took the big leap to New York City and found himself at The New Yorker, where he was given his first cover and has been a contributing illustrator since 1992.

New Yorker Trump Cover. Illustration courtesy of Barry Blitt.

Although he has become known for his scathingly amusing portrayals of the political scene that was not his original intention. “I did not grow up in a political household and it wasn’t my thing at all,” says Blitt. “It seems when Monica Lewinsky happened, political events became part of pop culture and it fit in with my sarcastic, smart alecky stuff.”

Illustration courtesy of Barry Blitt

Fans are glad it did. Blitt has his finger on the pulse of the political arena and his interpretations of Trump are priceless. “It gets harder and harder to make fun of him,” Blitt says. “But I’m not tired of him yet as a subject to draw.”

Money, I’m Home New Yorker cartoon. Cartoon courtesy of Barry Blitt.

Blitt lives in Connecticut  in a house that once belonged to Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. “New York was creatively inspiring for me but I didn’t last there very long, and Connecticut was the next state over,” he says. “I can’t see my neighbors and the tranquility allows me to sleep, which I need to do in order to work.”

With perennial notebook in hand, he rarely misses an opportunity to sketch an idea and turn it into another vision of this upside down world we inhabit. He recently published Blitt, which showcases more than 25 years of his work, including never-before seen sketches from his notebooks, rejected illustrations, hand-scrawled annotations and essays from many of his collaborators and peers.

Barry Blitt
Roxbury, Connecticut
Website
Facebook

Top image: From New Yorker website. Illustration courtesy of Barry Blitt.

The post Barry Blitt: I’m Just Trying to Make Myself Laugh appeared first on Take Magazine.

In the summer of 2015, Heather Devin got the idea to start a lifestyle blog offering DIY tips on everything from cooking and cocktails to sewing and child rearing. At the time, she was working full time at Reed Exhibitions and raising two young daughters with her husband, Josh, a native of Connecticut.

“I was already renovating a house, cooking, sewing,” she recalls. “I thought I’d share my experiences with other people. How hard can it be?”

Devin moved from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts when she was eight years old and fell in love with New England — its charm and history, and its beaches. Wanting a blog to represent her “happy place,” Heather came up with her own take on “gone to the beach,” calling the blog “GONE 2 QUONNIE” after Quonochontaug, a beach community in Charlestown, Rhode Island, where her in-laws live and which she visits regularly with her husband and daughters.

“What I didn’t realize was all the additional work above and beyond the task, like the photography, writing, and posting to create the content,” Devin says. “I couldn’t keep up with it all.”

In April 2016, Devin found herself with a decision to make after her group at Reed Exhibitions was dissolved. She could go back to work, or stay at home with her two young daughters. Choosing the latter, she figured she’d finally have time to devote to the blog. Around that time, Devin’s niece, Olivia Duval created Simply Cheeky Bikinis, a swimsuit company where Heather’s sister, Dawn Duval was making the swimsuits. That inspired Devin to overhaul GONE 2 QUONNIE from a blog to a business.

Opting to stay true to the company’s name, Devin started with making beach bags with topographical maps of the Charlestown coastline. In mid-July 2016, she posted flyers around Quonochontaug and was soon taking orders from locals and vacationers, even doing custom orders for a wedding party. “My thought was that perhaps the people of the community would be interested in something nicer than the logo’d t-shirts and accessories they sell in the summer,” Heather says.

At the same time, Heather noticed the lack of swimwear options for her own daughters. She was fed up with the one size fits all approach, which left most little girls wearing suits with baggy bottoms or that are too short. Excited by idea of making swimwear, Heather bought some swimsuit material and made one suit for her five-year-old daughter and never looked back. “I have two adorable girls so making stuff that fits and looks cute on them is so much fun,” Heather says.

With positive feedback from friends and family, Heather has continued to expand her offerings with new products that include children’s cover-ups, dresses, and baby gear. She’s also started to make clothing with more masculine prints for boys. This season’s collection consists of casual mix-and-match pieces made from super soft knits with fun features like pockets, hoodies or cuffs that offer the pop of color or the feminine detail that little girls might like.

Heather Devin–founder, GONE 2 QUONNIE
East Norwalk, Connecticut
Website
Facebook
Instagram

The post Gone Sewing appeared first on Take Magazine.

“Did you know Hartford has 17 distinct neighborhoods, 14 of which are residential?” Jason Farquharson asked me as soon as we sit down for coffee. What seems like an odd introduction quickly begins to make sense as I ask Farquharson (pronounced “Far-kuh-sen”) about his life.

Born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Farquharson learned the importance of education, family, and community at an early age. His parents, who both immigrated from Jamaica in the 1960s, met and married while living among the close-knit West Indian community in Hartford. They made their home in the city’s Upper Albany neighborhood, where Jason and his older sisters grew up. Upon graduation fromThomas Snell Weaver High School, Farquharson headed to Boston to attend Wentworth Institute of Technology. After two years he returned to complete his studies at the University of Hartford, surrounded by the family and community he loved.

Jason Farquharson, photo by Hector McIntosh, Linkz Media.

Farquharson got a position at JCJ Architecture in Hartford, where he worked on several projects around the State until the market crash in 2008. Laid off, he was forced to reevaluate his path in life. It was around this time he reconnected with an old classmate, La’Mora (Che’) Hardy, who was forming an artist collective called Pro+Cre8. While his practical background in design was a given, Farquharson was not confident enough in his talent to call himself an artist, and so it was with Pro+Cre8 that he learned to own that term, surrounded by other artists who encouraged his interest in photography and other media.

Though he felt a strong calling with art, Farquharson also had a burgeoning desire to give back to the community that had nurtured him. So, he volunteered with Hartford youth at Covenant Preparatory School and at the YMCA (Wilson-Gray Youth and Family Center), serving as a technology mentor for its Young Achievers program. He began to speak out on Facebook about the challenges Hartford faced in terms of government funding and education. He connected with a friend who worked at City Hall, who told him about Hartford Decides, an organization that promotes participatory budgeting by Hartford residents. Intrigued, Farquharson attended brainstorming meetings to come up with ideas for a public vote.

Marrying his two passions of art and community engagement, Farquharson advocated for a public art project that would create a mural in each of Hartford’s 14 residential neighborhoods. Using the huge paintings that are splashed across buildings in cities like Boston and Philadelphia as examples, he introduced Hartford Paint the City in 2015 for consideration. It beat out 200 other projects to become one of five finalists, and after a favorable public vote, Farquharson was awarded $122,800 to launch the project.

Mural by Damien Mitchell at Metzner Early Learning and Rec Center, Hartford Paint the City. Photo by Cody Burgess.

Hartford Decides provided resources and volunteers like Cynthia Bulaong—who coordinates Open Studio Hartford—to help Farquharson organize the initiative and meet with community members to ensure they would like the art. In his call for artists, Farquharson received over 100 submissions from as near as Hartford and as far away as Germany, Russia, Canada, Thailand, and the Dominican Republic. He decided that because the community voted to fund his project, he would also have it vote on the artists who would add vibrancy to their neighborhoods. He solicited the input of residents age 13 years and older to foster a spirit of civic engagement among youth.

Fast forward to this past November. The first mural—depicting mystical fey-like creatures—had just been completed on the Mckinney Shelter in the Charter Oak neighborhood that morning. The second mural, of a smiling child, has since been installed in the South End at the Metzner Early Learning & Rec Center. The remaining murals will be completed in 2018 when the weather warms up, perhaps paired with community painting days and other public events. Farquharson stresses that the driving force behind this project is a desire to keep the community engaged and give kids hope: “I want to change the way people think about Hartford by changing the way they see Hartford,” he says.

When I asked him what was next, he mentioned the $100 million renovation project currently underway at his alma mater, Weaver High School. Everyone in Hartford knows about the plan to return Weaver to a comprehensive facility that will serve all city students who are currently spread across the city in neighborhood schools—the idea being the reorganization will provide the city’s youth with the feeling of an inclusive community school. But what they might not know is that, ironically, a guy named Jason who loves to promote individual neighborhood identity is working with Hartford Public Schools to ensure that the new integrated educational structure will serve future students well. “My goal is to make Weaver High School 10,000 times better than when I went there,” he smiles.

Jason Farquharson – Artist, Youth Mentor, Community Advocate, Hartford Paint the City
Hartford, Connecticut
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Top image: Mural by Yu-baba at Mckinney Shelter in Hartford. Photo by Yu-baba.

The post Hartford’s Mural Man appeared first on Take Magazine.

Pola Esther, the Polish-born photographer and mixed-media artist who divides her time between New York City and Old Lyme, hasn’t gotten the hang of certain conventions observed by artists. Her website bio is entitled “Pretty Me,” there’s no résumé, and her narrative is just 27 enigmatic words.

“The legend says Pola Esther was kissed by the Pope and that event made her who she is. Born in Poland. Based in the USA.”

The sense of mystery evokes Balthus’ quote, “Balthus is a painter about whom nothing is known.” Esther shares Polish heritage and an affinity for eroticism with Balthus, once telling Metal Magazine her aesthetic sensibility gained cinematic qualities from viewing “fornication” on late night TV as a young Catholic girl.

Red Sweater: Searching for the Truth (from The Girl The Woman series), 2013 Archival digital print

Nudity and eroticism is thematically important in Esther’s work—notably in the Dream About a Dream and Mutual Attraction series—but it’s a riff for the margins when considering her current exhibit at the Florence Griswold Museum of Art in Old Lyme. In a Room of Her Own (Ballad of Ruth Coxe) creates a captivating portrait of her late Old Lyme neighbor, Ruth Anne Brown Coxe, who died at age 85 in 2015 after an iconoclastic life in which she championed the La Leche League in its infancy, ran an organic farm, evangelized for natural foods, and traveled the world to study traditional agricultural practices before any of that was considered “normal.”

Coxe also fought a legal battle to hold onto her deteriorating 18th-century house and farm in Old Lyme. “The house was everything to her,” says exhibit curator Amy Kurtz Lansing. “The house has this amazing presence. It was like walking into a Walker Evans photograph. You feel how time has registered on this place.”

Esther first met Coxe at the nearby residence she shares with fiancé Brian Keith Stephens, a painter. “She would come into the house and be like, ‘Yooo-hooo,’” Esther remembers. “That’s how I first saw her.”

Photos of Coxe, the house, the farm, protest placards, things from the house itself and much more powerfully reflect what the museum calls Coxe’s “own chaotic universe.” Esther pushes things to a higher plain with the In Her Clothes series of nuanced, cinematically rich photographs in which she photographs young models pose in the house wearing Coxe’s clothes and holding emblems of her beliefs.

I MakeYou Warm (from In Her Clothes series), 2015-2017 Archival digital print on fabric

Esther’s identity was forged in Lodz, Poland, home to the famous Lodz Film School, where she studied at the University of Lodz and was involved in theater, photography and film. She came to the Connecticut around 2012, initially to be involved in theater.

Her affinity for “active engagement” runs like an electric current through her work, including a series chronicling the making of Blondie’s music video for the 2017 song Fun. Debbie Harry is fabulous at 72, but the cast and crew become star players in these hypnotic photos.

As far as that “Pretty Me” papal kiss, Pope John Paul II presided over Esther’s First Holy Communion. The museum fills out Esther’s bio a bit, saying she has exhibited internationally, was the artist-in-residence at the Hygienic Art Gallery in New London in 2010-11, and has exhibited locally.

Pola Esther
Old Lyme, Connecticut
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Top image: Red Sweater: KK (from The Girl The Woman series), 2013, Archival digital print. All photos courtesy of Pola Esther.

The post A Room With Her View appeared first on Take Magazine.

Once you’ve seen the work of Weston artist Leslie Giuliani, it’s difficult to stop thinking about the vibrant colors, hypnotic implied narratives, and intricacies of a process that wraps in monotype, painting, embroidery and more. In viewing pieces like “Traveler” and “World of Wonders,” anchored by often amusing, sometimes darker, cartoonish and anthropomorphic figures, it’s fun to imagine the story behind Giuliani’s lexicon of symbols, abstract shapes, glyphs, and primitive characters.

Giuliani has upped the interpretation ante by embracing more abstract shapes in her newest mixed media works like “It Works!” and “Phantasm.” But perhaps the real puzzle for the uninitiated is this: What kind of artist is Giuliani? Printmaker, painter, weaver, rug hooker?

Genre-hopping like the best artistic polymaths, Giuliani is all of the above, often in a single composition—and while her works can look a bit folksy and homespun, looks deceive. Giuliani passionately embraces digital age technology throughout her process.

Her embroidered encaustic paintings combine encaustic (hot wax) painting, digital machine embroidery, and printmaking processes that include monotypes and silkscreen—all of it on Encaustiflex, a cross between paper and fabric. The images begin as drawings, which are turned into stitch files on her computer. Sent to a sophisticated computerized sewing machine, they are then stitched directly onto the encaustic paintings and prints. The embroidery files are infinitely repeatable and color choices even trickle down to thread choice.

Giuliani assembles a corps of painted, printed, and stitched pieces, and then choreographs them into a final composition, not unlike quilting. “Nothing is pre-planned,” says the artist, who continues to work on a series  in a 20-by-16 inch format.

Lever (2017), 16” X 20”, sewn encaustic monotype

“I got an iPad and I’m working with one of these new [design] programs. It’s really fun to work with geometrics,” Giuliani says of the new shape-making magic. “These new works are more taking monotypes and using decorative stitching as line elements as I sew them together.”

Giuliani, who has been influenced by Louise Bourgeois’ textile works, Philip Guston’s cartoon imagery, and Byzantine icon paintings, has also been weaving lately, and has been rug hooking for 20 years. She’s the one who taught New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast how to hook. They’ve become close friends and will be exhibiting together in June at the Guilford Arts Center.

“The hooking I did mostly when my daughter was growing up,” Giuliani says of the intensive process. “I really don’t have time to do them without a commission.”

It Works! (2017), 6” X 20”, sewn encaustic monotype

Notable past commissions include five rugs she hooked for Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and his wife, model and actress. Patti Hansen. “They live in town. They’re wonderful people,” says Giuliani, who met the couple through their designer and worked for them for six or seven years, repairing all the textiles in their house as well as hooking rugs for the couple.

Giuliani’s work will be in a group show opening Jan. 18 at the Walter Wickiser Gallery in Chelsea, and she’s also in the Some Like It Hot: Works In Encaustic exhibit opening Jan. 13 at the Rye Arts Center in Rye, New York.

Leslie Giuliani
Weston, Connecticut
Website

Top image: Detail from “World of Wonders” (cropped), (2016) 45”x 32”
Sewn and Embroidered Encaustic Painting. All photos courtesy of Leslie Giuliani.

The post Leslie Giuliani: Genre-Defying Art appeared first on Take Magazine.

When Erik Williams grabs his camera and journeys through the streets of his hometown of Hartford, he never knows who or what he will encounter. “Street photography is an uncontrolled environment,” says Williams, who also goes by the professional name Eaze. “You have to deal with a lot. The studio is a well-lit space and very controlled. But on the street, out in the elements, the weather can change, anything can happen. It is more of a risk.”

In Williams’ case, the risk has paid off with an artistic reward. On November 16th, Hartford’s Real Art Ways opened Erik Williams: A Sad and Beautiful World, the 33-year-old photographer’s first solo exhibition at the prestigious gallery. For Williams, the show is a special vindication of his career: he traded in the life of a construction worker six years ago to pursue a full-time visual arts career that has spanned fashion, event, and merchandise photography in addition to his fine art output.

The new exhibition offers a stunning display of Williams’ view of the grittier side of Connecticut’s capital city captured through an often-harsh, black-and-white spectrum. “I feel that a good image can get overlooked with too much color or saturation,” he explained on his preference for monochromatic photography. “When you strip away the color, the image comes through.”

Many of the Hartford people featured in Williams’ work clearly face life as a daily struggle, and they view their surroundings in various levels of ruefulness, numbness, bravado, and hope. Some sit in isolation, glued to their iPhones and seemingly unaware of the world around them. Others look beyond Williams’ lens, as if scanning the horizon for a better day. And some give the camera their complete and undivided attention, flashing smiles and finger signals in mute proclamation that they can withstand whatever life hurls at them.

“Ninety percent of my work is taken on the fly,” Williams says. “I just walk up to complete strangers and start a conversation. I see the power and humanity in real life, and I am always out with my camera.”

Williams is proud to see Hartford’s full spectrum of personalities and streetscapes on display. “I had to document it,” he says. “It might not be ideal for most, but it is home to me. I wanted to document the city and show a side of life that does not get exposure.”

After the RAW exhibit runs its course in January 2018, the photographer is considering travel to widen his artistic scope. He also is mulling a turn as a teacher to inspire the next generation of photographers. Citing his own career shift from blue-collar to fine art, he wants to encourage people to go after their creative goals while time is still their ally. “There is no reset button, no second chance in life.” 

Erik Williams–photographer
Hartford, Connecticut
Website
Instagram

All photos by Erik Williams.

The post Taking Aim at Hartford appeared first on Take Magazine.

Laini Marenick’s life has long been filled with song, but for a stretch there, the siren from Seymour, Connecticut, took a step back from music to devote her days to remediating children with severe emotional and behavioral issues. For 10 intense years, Marenick questioned whether she should have abandoned performing. So, in August, after much deliberation, Marenick made a monumental decision.

“There was this creative part of me I wasn’t nurturing,” Marenick says. “So, I left my job as a therapist after working at the same place for almost seven years. I didn’t think it would be as hard as it was. It has not been an easy road.”

Not surprisingly, that conflict between caregiver and creative factors into a majority of the songs on Wandering, the debut full-length from Marenick’s piano-driven pop band, Laini and the Wildfire. “The whole album was really inspired by this journey I’ve been on,” Marenick says. “I am reflecting a lot on things I regret, like not doing this sooner. I think that there are a lot of people who have a fear of change, and that’s a big theme on the album.”

Marenick—a pianist since the age of 12—fronts the band, which is bolstered by the elite bass playing of her husband, Shelton native Mark Marenick, and the addictive drumming of Rob Siraco, also from Shelton but a current resident of Southbury. “We have had a really great reception,” Marenick says. “People seem to like what we’re doing, because I believe what we create is different than what anyone else is doing.”

Of course, growing up in Shelton and living in New England has had a profound impact on Marenick’s artistic endeavors. “I think that for a lot of writers, they take influence from the seasons and the weather and the atmosphere,” she explains. “Because I am from this region, it really is inflected into the songs a bit.”

Marenick says Laini and the Wildfire will always be a Connecticut band, because there’s no place they’d rather be. “It’s funny, because we went out to visit a friend in California recently, and it is so beautiful out there, but I don’t know,” starts Marenick. “I thought I would really like it but, my heart belongs to New England. I love the seasons, and this area just has so much charm and history. I think that other places don’t really have that same kind of history we’re fortunate to have up here.”

She adds: “Besides, I don’t think I could live anywhere else for the pizza alone.”

Want to hear what Marenick is listening to when she’s not performing? Check out our Take a Listen Spotify Channel to hear her playlist. While you’re there, check out the playlists from other musicians we’ve featured.

Laini Marenick, singer and keyboardist for Laini and the Wildfire
Seymour, Connecticut
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Top image: Laini and the Wildfire. All photos by Chris McCarty.

The post She’s on Fire appeared first on Take Magazine.

Hartford to New Haven. New Haven to New York. New York to Boston. Boston to New Haven. New Haven to Hartford. What looks like a typical split-flap display in a train station is the actual working schedule of actress, comedienne, and dancer Carolyn Paine—whose oeuvre is a perfect storm of zany creativity, razor-sharp wit, and boundless energy.

What sets Paine apart is not that she has trained around the world with the likes of the Boston Ballet and the Academie de Danse Classique in Monaco. Nor is it that she is always on her toes, performing in huge productions like ABC’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. It’s not even that she has appeared on TV, on the pages of Vogue and Glamour, and in numerous showcases in Boston, Chicago, and New York City. What makes Paine unique is her love for Hartford and the fact she keeps the city as her home base, pouring her blood, sweat, and tears into the local tapestry of arts and culture.

A Boston native and graduate of the University of Hartford, Paine lives on the second floor of a charming turn-of-the-century Queen Anne in Hartford’s historic West End—a neighborhood that is equal parts quaint, bohemian, and gritty. Her apartment is a glorious hodge-podge of stunning flea market flips, cherished family heirlooms, and beloved relics from her career as a performer. The home serves as a stopover for Paine as she travels coast to coast, and all around New England and the tri-state area for stand-up gigs, filming and commercial shoots, and performances—including those with her dance company, CONNetic Dance.

Carolyn Paine, Photo by Bill Morgan

“Hartford’s Ballet Hipsters,” as CONNetic has been called, is an interesting medley of dancers who are classically-trained, street-trained, and self-taught. The company’s repertoire is unique, pairing traditional technique with athletic choreography. Paine and her troupe are involved in myriad projects, and even partner with Hartford’s public schools to offer enrichment programs to students. But this time of year Paine can be found producing and directing CONNetic’s signature (and biggest) production: The Nutcracker Suite & Spicy.

Carolyn Paine, Nutcracker Suite & Spicy. Photo by Bill Morgan.

Now in its eighth year, Suite & Spicy has struck a chord with the community. The diverse cast—many of whom have been with the production since its early days—truly represents the urban culture of Hartford. Says Paine, “I am proud to have created a show that not only reflects the amazing complexity of the city around me, it affords my neighbors the opportunity to see a dynamic, professional dance production in their own backyard rather than having to travel far from home, especially during the holidays.”

Carolyn Paine, Photo by Bill Morgan

Though Paine’s typical week involves no fewer than three trips out of Hartford, she does relish her chosen home, and there are some quiet moments. The market up the street has “the best falafel and gummy bears in the state.” The nearest coffee joint also serves as a favorite Happy Hour spot. And the vine-covered backyard patio Carolyn and her roommate and fellow dancer/model Alex Zarlengo have cultivated over the past few years is now a coveted spot for after-hours conversations and even outdoor film screenings for their friends.

I once asked Paine why she lived in Hartford, with all of the engagements she has in other cities. She looked at me as though I had three heads. “It’s home.”

Carolyn Paine–Actress, comedienne, dancer, founder of CONNecticdance
Hartford, Connecticut
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CONNecticdance
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Top image: Carolyn Paine. Photo by Bill Morgan

The post Suite & Spicy appeared first on Take Magazine.