This article originally appeared in our December/January 2015 print issue.

The Green Mountain State’s most famous musical product is almost certainly the jam band Phish. If that quartet, formed in Burlington in 1983, earned a reputation for playing extended improvisations and working in the spiritual and musical wake of the Grateful Dead, MV & EE took shape largely in the twenty-first century, in the southern end of the state around Brattleboro, still playing off many elements of the Dead’s legacy but with drastically different results.

Valentine and Elder are also a couple. Unlike Phish, MV & EE are unlikely to sell out Madison Square Garden anytime soon, but the duo operates on a whole other level, making deeply psychedelic, small-batch, boutique, esoteric folk music that’s tinged with noise. Or maybe it’s indie rock tinged with folk. Either way, their recordings and performances are highly improvisational and experimental. The music of MV & EE embodies a thread of the reality of their home state: it’s both earthy and spacey, and it’s all propelled by a spirit of intrepid self-reliance.

This year was a big year for Valentine and Elder. A new MV & EE double album, Alpine Frequency, came out in the summer, at about the same time Valentine released a solo double album as well. “They were both pretty large records,” says Valentine. “We try to make a record that someone ideally is going to go back to and revisit. So we try to make the album have a certain depth or trajectory. There were several years of work on both of them. Hopefully that will tide some people over for a while.”

Photo by Paul Specht

Valentine’s new record is called Midden Mound, which, if you’ve forgotten some of the terms from your college anthropology class, is basically a prehistoric trash heap made up of shells and bones and other stuff. It’s a meaningful pile of refuse, dense and old, yielding secrets to those patient and learned enough to sift through it. The title seems to fit right in with the concept of “sonic agriculture” Valentine has spoken of, a utilitarian, plow-sow-and-reap vision of music making, with natural forces and human labor producing fertile results.

“I can’t get out of the underground,” jokes Valentine about the record’s title. But then he adds, “I thought [the title] worked for that body of work specifically; it’s definitely the remains of a certain sonic settlement of mine.”

That’s not all just talk. Sound attains something close to physicality in Valentine’s solo work and in the music of MV & EE. The music and the recordings are more about textures and resonance than melody, lyrics, and song form. The attention to the physical extends to the packaging and marketing of the music as well. Both new records were pressed on vinyl in addition to being available in other forms, such as CDs and MP3s. The duo often creates limited-edition original artwork to go along with some of their small-batch releases or to bring to shows, to make each record one of a kind.

Valentine’s connections with recorded music—with vinyl in particular—go back to his formative musical experiences.

“I’ve always been around records,” he says. “My parents collected records. They had a record library. They encouraged me to use the turntable. I heard a lot of music growing up that was interesting to me. I worked at record stores since I was a teenager. I stayed working at record stores. I was a lifer, a record-store casualty.”

Selling records has never been the most remunerative line of work, and surviving by playing DIY avant-garage folk presents challenges. But Valentine and Elder approach the work with a flinty Yankee ethos. They are impressively prolific, releasing an average of two records a year, which brings their total to something like 32 since 2001. They also run a boutique record label that releases limited pressings of live recordings, packaged with original artwork. Oh, and they have a two-year-old daughter. So they keep pretty busy.

Elder does work as a freelance graphic designer, and she says their living space reflects the creative multitasking that goes on there. “You should see our house— it’s part house, part workshop. It’s all blended together,” she says.

MV & EE possess a particular kind of twenty-first-century musical eclecticism, drawing on the Old, Weird America of Harry Smith’s epic Anthology of American Folk Music, steeped in old-time music, country blues, and field recordings (the duo was asked to contribute a song to the highly regarded 2015 tribute record to English singer and folklorist Shirley Collins), and yet their work is also in conversation with some core ideas of contemporary classical music, minimalism, and free jazz.

Photo by Paul Specht

“That’s very natural,” says Elder. “If you look at our record collection, we’ve got our Carter Family and our Sonny Sharrock records right next to each other.”

She grew up in Virginia, where singing was a regular part of her extended family gatherings. “I kind of brought the Appalachia to the table,” Elder says. “I grew up thinking that everybody just got around the piano on Sundays and played different songs.” That included folk songs and plenty of religious material, sources that MV & EE have returned to.

“I played sax in elementary school,” says Valentine. “I got kicked out of the school band for trying to play like [keening iconoclastic saxophonist Albert] Ayler. I got booted.”

Valentine got one strand of his musical education for free by auditing classes in the Conservatory of Music at the State University of New York at Purchase, where several pioneers of experimental and computer music taught and where the homemade instruments of maverick composer Harry Partch were housed at one point.

Extended drones, ominous echoes, alternate tunings, dub effects, and spooky war whoops all make appearances on Valentine’s new solo record. Two-chord vamps attain a mystic density as they’re prolonged. It fits right in with the MV & EE oeuvre. The DNA of much of MV & EE’s material seems like it can be traced to either “Dark Star,” the Dead’s epic interstellar exploratory vehicle; “Cortez the Killer,” Neil Young’s mythic caveman-like protosludge masterpiece; and “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” David Crosby’s haunting and beautiful comedown opus. Those are good genes, at any rate.

Valentine and Elder make the most of what they call the global I-91 corridor—a joking way of referring to their spiraling network of friends, fellow musicians, and collaborators. And the town they live in, outside of Brattleboro, is something of a magnet for other creative people.

“We’ve been here for 13 years,” says Elder. “Everybody who lives in this area whom we’re friends with is here for the energy. It’s still a very important reason why we’re here.”

But the actual I-91 connection links them to likeminded artists from New Haven, Connecticut, through western Massachusetts and up through Vermont. Contributors to the new batch of records include J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. and Pete Nolan of art-noise trio The Magik Markers. And the band has recorded on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! record label, based in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

For MV & EE and for Valentine’s solo album, recording isn’t just a matter of heading into the studio with some tunes, some guitars, and rolling tape. Bits are recorded in Valentine and Elder’s home studio or sometimes at a friend’s place, or while traveling; then sometimes layers are added on elsewhere. Some tracks might take shape in a living room and others in a fancy studio. The setting needs to be conducive to improvisation, which is central to much of the duo’s work.

“I have pretty elaborate recording techniques deployed that we use now,” says Valentine. “And they’re primitive, too, in some cases. There are techniques used to sometimes make one performance sound like multiple ones. The mood of the moment was more important than the technicalities.”

MV & EE balance the raw and the refined, the overstuffed and the stripped down. “It’s sometimes very minimal, sometimes very maximal,” says Valentine.

Photo by Paul Specht

For all of their folk tendencies and pedigrees, MV & EE can also sound like a stoner rock outfit, with lumbering bass lines and bruising drumbeats anchoring their unison singing and slashing guitars, like on “Susquehanna (Sole Art Trample)” from 2007’s Gettin’ Gone. Though the deep psychedelic connection is clear, there’s also a classic rock aspect to some of MV & EE’s eclecticism. “Susquehanna (Sole Art Trample),” for instance, is followed by a song called “The Burden,” which has gentle finger picking and high, atmospheric pedal steel guitars. It’s a pairing that might be at home on Led Zeppelin III, where the howling stomp of marauding invaders gives way to soothing and dreamy acoustic songs rooted in traditional folk music. “I’m in such a trance state usually when I’m playing,” says Elder.

That textural and tonal perspective is what helps the music withstand repeated listenings. “We try to keep it interesting for ourselves as much as for people who might be hearing it,” says Valentine.

But—as with something like a Fela Kuti record, an Indian raga, or a piece of music by La Monte Young— sometimes the music of MV & EE and Valentine’s solo work are meant to possibly scramble one’s sense of time: to transport the listener into a slow-drip mindset, where a pattern repeating for 15 minutes somehow becomes more gratifying and meaningful than one that stops after 3 minutes. Sometimes that aesthetic can be at odds with the demands of the marketplace. Valentine had originally planned on making Midden Mound a triple record, but he decided to settle on a double album.

“I kind of peeled that concept back,” he says. But he will be releasing the material that would have been that third record as another single solo album in 2016.

Valentine and Elder don’t have an elaborate promotional machine behind them. They do much of the behind-the-scenes logistics themselves, booking and publicizing shows. So if people are possibly starting to hear their music more and know their name after years and years of productivity, it’s because the world is beginning to come around to them. The combination of heavy rock, obscure folk, and experimental music is perhaps less of a head-scratcher than it was 20 years ago. “People are a little more ready for what we’re doing now,” says Valentine. “People are catching up to the sound.”

One senses that being creative and productive is just the way Valentine and Elder live their lives, and they’d be playing music every day and handcrafting one-of-a-kind art to go with it whether or not they had fans and a career. “I just like to make things,” says Valentine. “It’s probably why I like living up here.”

MV & EE–musicians from Brattleboro, Vermont
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The post Small-Batch Mystical Folk Noise appeared first on Take Magazine.

If you think live professional music only occurs in official music halls and venues, Sofar Sounds has a message for you. A worldwide organization, Sofar Sounds is dedicated to subverting the norms of booking, attending, and curating live music performances.

Want to host a musical soiree in your living room? That could happen. On a rooftop? Absolutely. With networks of volunteers and artists programming shows in Providence, Worcester, Boston, and New Haven (just to name a few), Sofar Sounds is quickly establishing itself as the go-to resource for New England artists looking for a paid gig in an unusual space, as well as a place for music lovers ready to experience live music in a different space.

Here’s how it works.

A band or individual artist applies to perform at a Sofar Sounds show. Sofar volunteers choose three acts from the pool of applicants, and secure a space for the performance that isn’t a conventional venue. Once the show is booked, Sofar Sounds’ members near the show’s location get a notification stating the date of the show and the neighborhood where the show is located. Typically hundreds of people sign up, so only a subset of people get an invite to the show. Once invited, show-goers learn where the performance will be and what bands are booked.

Mark Schafer, an ambassador at Sofar Sounds in Boston, says his team works hard to program the right kind of shows and select a diverse group of performers. “We’re very careful to make sure that we curate shows based on quality and diversity,” he says. “We want to make sure we represent all the voices in the music community.”

A recent show in Boston, for instance, featured a pop singer, a stripped down punk band, and a folk duo in the same night. “We intentionally do that kind of thing when we can,” says Schafer. “The hope is you’ll love everything, but if you see something you don’t like, all you have to do is wait a little bit for the next act, which is going to be something totally different.”

The band Aria Lanelle, Sofar Sounds, Myles Tan photography

Sofar’s subversion of music industry norms doesn’t stop there. The group almost exclusively works with local musicians and selects spaces that are not conventional venues for live music performance, essentially any space that isn’t a bar or venue.

Using unconventional performances spaces keeps Sofar Sounds bookings hyperlocal. “We’re able to tap into the local music scene much easier than a traditional venue can,” says Rachel McCandlish, another Sofar Sounds volunteer. “It’s great to be able to help those smaller bands and guarantee them an audience.”

“We pretty intentionally go for people who are either completely unknown and haven’t even put out a record yet, or artists that are on their way up,” says Schafer.

In addition to exposure to a guaranteed number of dedicated music lovers, bands who play a Sofar Sounds show get compensated for their time and performance. Artists either get paid, receive some form of hospitality, and/or are featured in a professionally shot and edited video of the live performance.

As the organization grows and adds new networks across New England, Sofar Sounds wants to become the platform for up-and-coming performers in their networked cities and bands as they pass through New England towns. “We want to make it so everyone who comes through Boston on their way up plays a Sofar show, because it’s consistently the best show featuring emerging artists,” says Schafer.

“We don’t want to get bigger and bigger bands,” adds Schafer. “We want to make sure we get the best bands and intentionally continue to get artists that many of the people in the audience have not heard before.”

Mark Schafer and Rachel McCandlish, Sofar Sounds
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Images courtesy of Myles Tan Photography

The post Rooftop Rock from Sofar Sounds appeared first on Take Magazine.

Adam Niklewicz does not believe in the illusion of the ordinary, but rather seeks to enliven the seemingly banal in his art. From dancing shoes to a fully functional sausage recorder, Nicklewicz provides everyday objects with lives of their own. As a Polish immigrant, Nicklewicz creates art that art critic Patricia Rosoff once described as a “world of in-betweens”—a kaleidoscope of work suspended between the nostalgia of his native home, his ardent love for American pop-culture, and his playful disbelief in the seemingly mundane.

Two Tape Measures and a Piece of Dali, (from The End of Enlightenment series), 2017 | two wooden tape measures | 60” x 44” x 1”

Niklewicz immigrated from Poland to the U.S. in the early ‘80s with his wife and young daughter. He received his BFA from Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1989. That degree was the culmination of an interest in art that Adam Niklewicz says began when he was seven years old, after seeing a poor reproduction of Salvador Dali’s 1935 painting, “The Burning Giraffe,” in a single-volume encyclopedia. “The moment has burned into my memory,” he says.

An unexpected life-changing encounter with the artists Christo and Jean-Claude in 2000 changed Niklewicz’s art forever. “I attended a lecture given by Christo and Jeanne Claude,” he says. “I was but mildly interested in the event on my way there, and left with my mind shattered.” The encounter, he says, influenced his own capacity to create sculptural work, and to approach art as a multifaceted medium of both tragedy and comedy. “Society would rather make you believe that reality can be sanitized, streamlined and predictable,” he says. “I make art to poke holes in that illusion.”

Niklewicz was one of Take‘s “Artists to Watch 2016.” In addition to performance and installation work that spans from New York to the Ukraine, he has two performances occurring at Artspace in New Haven. Niklewicz performs in the exhibition Laughing Skulls Motorcycle Club until April 29th as a part of a collective project founded by artist Robert Brush, and is currently creating a two-day performance, The Best Things to Hold in Your Hand, that will be curated by Sarah Fritchey.

Adam Niklewicz – multimedia artist
New Haven, Connecticut
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Top Image How The Wheel Was Discovered, 2017 | Adam Niklewicz

The post Objects In-Between appeared first on Take Magazine.

Recently, it’s been the cultural trend to rope off the beginning of the year to catch up on all the moments, movies, music, and writings we missed last year. So, once you’ve caught up with Moonlight and/or finally get around to listening to the newest And The Kids album (released summer ’16), consider looking ahead to our Artists to Watch for 2017.

Though we do have favorites of our own, we could not adequately survey the region for artists to watch without consulting a few of our many trusted curators and friends: Abigail Ogilvy, Owner of Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Boston’s South End; Randi Hopkins, Director of Visual Arts at Boston Center for the Arts; and Ian Alden Russell, Curator at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.

All of these artists sculpt, paint, record, and perform works worth following, especially considering our current social and political climate. Since we’ve recently been reminded that we cannot rely on the centralized leadership of our democracy to defend our integrity as human beings, or the integrity of thought through the defense of facts and mutual respect, we look to artists like these as our true cultural gatekeepers. The artists on our list are people we can trust to use bold expression, tenderness, and knowing imagery to question the status quo. Sometimes they hold up a mirror to our culture. Other times, they hold up a loudspeaker or a puppet mask, a paintbrush, a bouncy ball, or a digital camera.

These cathartic, sarcastic, pointed, paradoxical, and, most of all, inimitable artists are who we’re watching in 2017.

Nabeela Vega, Visiting Thahab (series, ongoing) | Photo courtesy Robin Allen LaPlante

Nabeela Vega | Boston, MA

Using photography, performance, and video, Boston-based artist Nabeela Vega creates immersive works that examine elements of our individual experiences of the social world as it intersects with identity, personal politics, and queerness. Oftentimes, the work calls into question our taken-for-granted notions about bodies, media, and gender. As Hopkins points out, “Vega’s rich exploration of the contemporary presence and experience of the Muslim femme takes forms that are performative, collaborative, generous, vulnerable, and exquisitely beautiful. The artist takes risks with their own body to think about our greater body as citizens and humans, work that feels vital and particularly brave today.”

Tanja Hollander | Auburn, ME

“This month sees the premiere of the entirety of Tanja Hollander‘s Are you really my friend? at MASS MoCA, the Maine-based photographer’s epic endeavor to photograph all 626 of her Facebook friends,” says Russell. “Bringing her across the nation and around the globe, the work probes the issue of friendship and connection in our digitally mediated age. Questioning the boundaries between personal, public, and online life, the project presents us with intimate portraits she took of the personal spaces and environments of the people she is connected to via social media.”

Teatime, 2016, Acrylic and mixed media on steel 18 x 12 in. | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Katie Wild | Pawtucket, RI

“Wild’s striking, cinematic paintings transform the tradition of figure and portraiture to achieve a contemporary understanding of the human condition,” says Ogilvy. “In her most recent series, Steampunk, Wild references photographs she took of real people at a steampunk festivals. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Award in Boston, MA.”

Kai Franz | Providence, RI

“Originally from Cologne, Germany, Kai Franz makes sculptures and drawings that confront and complicate the relationships between process and artifact,” says Russell. “Testing and questioning the potential of computer-aided design while appearing as formal aesthetic statements in their own rights, Franz’s works and projects are strong examples of the tradition of critically and technologically-engaged art making in Providence.”

Mutsu Crispin, Mapping the Day, 2015, bouncy balls, plexiglass, stainless steel, 41″h x 41″w x 2.25″d | Photo courtesy Mitchell Giddings Fine Arts

Mutsu Crispin | Brattleboro, VT

Atlanta, Georgia transplant turned Southern Vermonter mutsu crispin (aka John DiGeorge) is a performance artist, filmmaker and. . .bouncy-ball sculptor? Last year, DiGeorge found a way to make those familiar, seemingly childish forms simultaneously fun and subversive. We’re sure we can find some comfort in these delightfully bright pieces as the year turns potentially darker. “. . . the balls float forward and back within their designs or wanderings, rhyming with their cast shadows, ghostly glows, nearby hardware and reflections,” says the artist. “These dear objects from our childhood are animated and transmogrified, speaking in a chorus at once lighthearted, humorous, mysterious, and ecstatic.

Matt Neckers, Crash Site, 2015, 72 H x 24 W x 24 in | Photo courtesy the artist

Matt Neckers | Eden, VT

“Neckers’ Portals hidden in forests, a rocket in a tree, a parachute caught in branches—Matt Neckers’ installations interrupt the serenity of the woods,” says Russell. “Fascinated by the impact of mechanization on our imagination, Neckers opens up earnest, generous, and sustained conversations about the world we inhabit, the others that may exist, and the precarious journeys between.”

Arien Wilkerson | Hartford, CT

“I am Arien aka TNMOT AZTRO aka ARI AZTRO.”

Wilkerson is one of Hartford’s many young Renaissance Men. His list of current projects is too long to add here; suffice it to say that Wilkerson, at age 25, is an uber-accomplished dancer, film artist, activist, artistic director, and overall creative mastermind. In the words of our dear friends at Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, “He’s too black, too vocal, and too flagrant. He’s also one of the few indispensable figures in Hartford’s ever-continuous push to art and cultural prominence. Say hello to the city’s new brash monarch.”

Toby Sisson, 2015 Black Tears, Ink and beeswax on paper 7″x5.5″ each, approx. 6.5’x16′ overall | Photo courtesy the artist

Toby Sisson | Providence, RI

“Toby Sisson‘s encaustic paintings and drawings rigorously explore the metaphoric potential of abstract form,” points out Russell. “Often contrasting shades of black with shades of white, Sisson’s works are informed by personal narrative and her mixed race heritage. Her images and forms offer open-ended prompts for poetic reflection on the assumed oppositions and conflicts with which we struggle—personally, emotionally, and socially.”

Michael Stasiuk, Marco the Magician, 2012, 25″ x 24″ x 10″ metal crumber pan, darning egg, rhythm stick fragments, assorted wood fragments | Photo courtesy Abigail Ogilvy

Michael Stasiuk | Portsmouth, NH

“His multimedia sculptures assemble found objects into playfully illustrated characters,” says Ogilvy, “each with a unique personality. His choice of material imparts a sense of nostalgia and memory, imaginatively re-purposing everyday objects that accompany us throughout our lives.”

J.R. Uretsky and Scott the cat | Photo courtesy the artist

J.R. Uretsky | Providence, RI

If you read Take, you already know we’ve had a crush on J.R.’s awkwardly signature brand of brave, big-feeling, truth-telling performance for a long time. Yet it’s not only her magically strange, emo-queer performances to watch out for in 2017. Specifically, it’s J.R.’s puppets that will lend you space to emote and bring us all solace as 2017’s social and political climate sags and twists. “The characters that emerge through her performances are relatable yet also alien and non-specific,” says Hopkins, “forging an ambiguous space where emotion is the remaining constant.”

Titus Kaphar, Space to Forget, 2014, oil on canvas, 64 x 64 x 2 3/4 inches | Photo courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery

Titus Kaphar | New Haven, CT

Kaphar creates new histories with each work he paints and sculpts. It’s through his careful reinterpretation of the past, mixed with artful exclusion and deconstruction of specific images that makes his work powerful, “In my work I explore the materiality of reconstructive history. I paint and I sculpt, often borrowing from the historical canon, and then alter the work in some way.” says Kaphar “I cut, crumple, shroud, shred, stitch, tar, twist, bind, erase, break, tear, and turn the paintings and sculptures I create, reconfiguring them into works that nod to hidden narratives and begin to reveal unspoken truths about the nature of history.”

Inside shot of Love Shack instillation featuring video loop of “Waking Up And Getting Up Has Never Been Easy”, instillation and video by Coe Lapossy | Photo courtesy the artist’s website

Coe Lapossy | Boston, MA

Ever wonder what it’d be like to wake up in a super-cozy, literally endless bed? Well, Lapossy has theorized it, and has many more other immersive, speculative works ready for the upcoming year. “Lapossy brings feminist sass and romantic charm to smart sculptural and installation work,” says Hopkins. “Pop culture seeps into her artistic vocabulary with ease, for example weaving 20th-century art history together with early 90s romantic-fantasy film in a setting that evokes the vaudeville vibe of the magician’s trick.”

Nabeela Vega – Boston, Massachusetts
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Tanja Hollander – Auburn, Maine
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Katie Wild – Pawtucket, Rhode Island
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Kai Franz – Providence, Rhode Island
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Mutsu Crispin – Brattleboro, Vermont
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Matt Neckers – Eden, Vermont
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Arien Wilkerson – Hartford, Connecticut
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Toby Sisson – Providence, Rhode Island
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Michael Stasiuk – Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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J.R. Uretsky – Providence, Rhode Island
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Titus Kaphar – New Haven, Connecticut
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Coe Lapossy – Boston, Massachusetts
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VISITING THAHAB AT SUPERNOVA PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL | PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTIST

The post Artists to Watch 2017 appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally ran in our April/May 2016 print issue. 

The fickle haute monde of the fashion industry, where “one day you’re in and the next day you’re out,” as Heidi Klum famously warns on Project Runway, may tailor fame and fortune for anointed designers willing to edit their aesthetic to win and retain the idolization of tastemakers.

That arc of ambition doesn’t interest Neville Wisdom, the self-taught designer from Jamaica who can pull off dressing up his dreadlocks and a T-shirt with a tweed jacket that is rendered exuberant through an unexpected cascade of playful pockets.

Wisdom’s success as a womenswear designer with two spacious showrooms/retail stores in New Haven, Connecticut, is built on a signature style of architectural—”little bit more constructed,” as Wisdom puts it— dresses, skirts, sweaters, tops, coats, and more that are “classic with a bit of an edge.” That funky edge might mean turning up the volume with color, embracing bold patterns, or adding unexpected flourishes.

Making Neville Wisdom’s Fashion Design Studio work as a business model involves essentially delivering bespoke garments at wholesale prices by selling the clothing directly to customers, while also offering women a personal shopping experience that results in a perfect fit through complimentary custom alterations.

Neville Wisdom with pieces from his collection.

“We’re not trying to chase millions,” Wisdom says of his business and creative ethos. “We love what we do, and we love how people feel when they wear our clothes.” Where did his inspiration come from?

“I watched a lot of old movies, even as a kid,” Wisdom has said about the origins of his love for the vintage classicism in his designs. In his teens, he became serious about fashion and launched his first design shop in Jamaica while in his early twenties.

Jamaica didn’t seem like fertile ground for a fashion designer, at least compared to the United States, so Wisdom emigrated to Connecticut, where he transitioned into a position as a surgical technician at Yale- New Haven Hospital for seven years.

Design remained his primary aspiration, however, and when Wisdom made the leap of faith to open his first atelier and retail shop four years ago in the Elm City’s Ninth Square district, he gambled that New Haven’s status as an arts and culture hub—anchored by Yale University—would provide a steady stream of discerning clients.hat faith paid off, with the flagship location on Orange Street spawning a second, larger location in the hip Westville section of the city, home to antiques shops, galleries, cafés, and specialty shops. Launched a year ago, the new space on Whalley Avenue is nearly 5,000 square feet, with a street level showroom and a basement where the magic happens.

That faith paid off, with the flagship location on Orange Street spawning a second, larger location in the hip Westville section of the city, home to antiques shops, galleries, cafés, and specialty shops. Launched a year ago, the new space on Whalley Avenue is nearly 5,000 square feet, with a street level showroom and a basement where the magic happens.

The expansion was made possible in part from a Small Business Express Program grant from the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, which matches between $20,000 and $100,000 in funds that a venture can show on its books.

In addition to allowing Wisdom to add a few jobs, the grant paid for equipment that has enabled digitization of the design and manufacturing process, the centerpiece of which is a massive Autometrix Advantage fabric-cutting table.

Detail of Neville Wisdom coat

“Once I’m satisfied with the pattern I digitize it,” says Wisdom. “All of our patterns become digital patterns.” The process has streamlined the number of sample patterns it takes to get to the final one, and has greatly reduced the amount of waste. When the final design is set, each piece of clothing is constructed by one individual.

Rather than designing fabrics and contracting to have them produced, Wisdom prefers to buy existing fabric of great quality. With it he produces between four and 14 pieces of any one design—usually around 12—and keeps the leftover fabric in case someone wants something custom-made. And now he has to make two sets of each design, one for each showroom.

The new spring line makes its debut in a runway show in early April. “Every year the building changes,” says Wisdom, who plans to include some menswear in his collection for the first time, and to feature men’s linen shirts and pants in his stores this season. For his womenswear, the designer favors raw silk and will feature a lot of “great cotton” in pieces that are thin and light for summer.

The designer, who previously sold clothing exclusively in his stores, has launched an online shop, making his fashions widely accessible.

Photos by Ireland Studios

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The post Neville’s Wearable Wisdom appeared first on Take Magazine.

When I interview chef Bun Lai of Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, Connecticut, he has just wrapped filming a TV series in which he travels the world creating new dishes from exotic invasive species. Think a hot, Asian Andrew-Zimmern-of-Bizarre Foods-goes-green kind of thing. On the menu? Killer bees, poisonous vipers, and stingrays.

Photo by Dominic Perri

“It’s really about having us open our minds to other ways of eating and living,” he says of the show. “Under the surface, invasive species are tied to food justice and food security.” Bun, unlike many chefs, takes the farm-to-table, or in this case sea-to-table, movement beyond trendy to his personal hope for the future of Earth and the human race.

In addition to being a James Beard Foundation-nominated chef, he is an ambassador for the healthy oceans advocacy group Seafood Watch; a popular keynote speaker on sustainable food; and a contributor to Scientific American, among other publications.

At Miya’s Sushi, Bun puts his knowledge of, and beliefs about, sustainability into exquisite practice. Not only does he work solely with ingredients that are sustainably harvested, but he also creates unique menu items that feature local invasive species not typically found on American plates.

Take, for example, locally foraged mugwort, an invasive herb originally brought here by the Pilgrims. Or Asian shore crab—which migrated en masse to North America on the ballasts of ships in the 1980s—that Bun harvests off the Connecticut coast. Or tilapia grown by students of Connecticut’s Bridgeport Regional Aquaculture Science & Technology Education Center.

Photo by Dominic Perri

Bun and his coworkers dive for ”trash fish” and shellfish on 75 acres of shellfishing grounds just 12 miles from the restaurant (which owns the fishing rights). He also has a 10-acre woodland farm 7 miles from Miya’s. “We do some growing,” he says, “but a whole lot more foraging.”

Miya’s 42-page menu is a sort of manifesto, as educational as it is mouthwatering. Kiribati sashimi is made from spear-caught (no net fishing, please) invasive Mexican lionfish, mineral-rich Kiribati sea salt, and “a dozen profoundly mouth-numbing spices.” The dish is on the menu in part to create awareness about global warming, because Kiribati, at only 8 to 12 feet above sea level, may become the first nation to be completely consumed by the ocean due to climate change.

“The purpose of food is nourishment, but not just for our bodies,” Bun says. “It’s important to understand that the ecosystem of our bodies is tied to the ecosystem of the entire planet. When we pollute one, we pollute the other.”

Photo by Dominic Perri

To promote healthier eating, the dishes at Miya’s that are healthiest for both people and the planet are deliberately the most affordable. Most cost less than five dollars, the price of a Big Mac meal—a reference point that is no coincidence and noted on the restaurant’s website.

Bun credits his parents for his passion for sustainable food and living. His Japanese mother, a nutritionist, opened Miya’s in 1982 and named it after Bun’s older sister. His Chinese father was a research doctor.

“They are the two people who have colored everything that I actually do in the cuisine of sushi,” he says. “They both had the philosophy that . . . it’s not enough to have a career. You have to have some positive impact on the world. I’m following that tradition.”

Chef Bun Lai of Miya’s Sushi grows food, but mostly forages for it, at his farm outside New Haven, Connecticut | Photo by Dominic Perri

Bun also credits the New Haven community, home to world-renowned Yale University, for influencing his cuisine. “I ended up collaborating over the years with, and being influenced by and educated by, some of the most interesting people who come from a vast array of life experiences and disciplines,” he says. “The sushi we do reflects that. It’s very multidisciplinary.”

Follow Chef Bun Lai here on twitter and facebook and keep up with Miya’s sushi restaurant here.

This article originally appeared in our September 2015 print edition.

Top photo by Dominic Perri Photography

The post Invasive Species-to-Table appeared first on Take Magazine.

Ever since he was a kid, Max Toth’s true passion has been painting and drawing. He’s always considered himself an artist, carrying books around with him in which he could sketch at any time of the day when struck by inspiration. It initially stemmed from comic books; he was so influenced by them that he’s literally had to keep himself away so he doesn’t spend all of his time flipping through their pages. Nowadays, Toth takes inspiration from all avenues and walks of life.

Retreat | graphite, grease pencil, oil on canvas | 93.25 x 88.75

“I deeply value experience,” explains Toth, who lives in New Haven, Connecticut. “For the past five or six years, I have driven in demolition derbies, which has been an influential experience. Derbies have a lot of the hallmarks of my youthful actions, but with a skill and an interesting comment on manufacturing. But the act itself is truly and incredibly freeing for me.” Not surprisingly, Toth also finds inspiration in other’s art. “Seeing great art is always one of the most inspiring things to me,” he says. “Honestly, seeing bad art is inspiring, too. So I’ve been trying to hunt down other activities, like derby, that I can learn from. and trying to see as much art as possible.”

Toth’s creative output ranges in scale and mediums—from oil paintings on canvas, to smaller, detailed watercolors, to wall drawings, to negative-space depictions in ink, to pencil sketches, and more. He values the “quality of line” over anything else. Compositionally, Toth admits that he’s drawn to, and inspired by, kinetic energy. He explains, “I like the moment where you’re at peak movement, the moment before everything comes crashing down, when the moment is most poised for energy. Active imagery. Minimal color base. Line work.”

Untitled work on walls | acrylic, ink, and graphite | 144 x 120

He also draws inspiration from artists Egon Schiele and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Indeed, the parallel between these two artists and Toth’s work is strong, with all three utilizing exaggerated figural imagery, saturated colors, and clear lines that lend a raw, sketch-like style to their work.

Toth, who received a degree in Fine Arts from Yale University and has a studio in New Haven, says that his work is heavily influenced by the space he occupies in New England. “New England was the birthplace for my interest in coming-of-age rites,” he explains, “in that it’s where I first experienced them. All of my original work is about my years growing up in a sleepy historic town in New England, and the games we would play to prove who was bravest or strongest or craziest.

Clamming | graphite, grease pencil, oil on canvas | size: 77.5 x 159.25

“I’m interested in the idea of manhood,” he continues, “and how we relate to it. We all have masculine and feminine traits; I like the idea of giving everyone a place to experiment with the physicality of bravery and tribal bonding found when engaging in something you aren’t sure about.”

Follow Max Toth on Twitter and Instagram

All images courtesy of Max Toth

The post Max Toth – Line Forms Here appeared first on Take Magazine.

If you thought Vintanthromodern was like any other second hand shop, boy were you W R O N G. The simple explanation in rhetorical question form: When has Take ever bothered to cover the ordinary? Nestled on State Street in the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut, Vintanthro (we’re on a first name basis) is a headquarters of all things vintage and, even more importantly, all things local and artisan-made.

Photo courtesy of Vintanthromodern

First thing’s first: I bet you’re curious about the name. Prayers answered, here it is broken down:

(pronounced: vin-tan-throw-modern)

vintage: of lasting interest and importance / anthropology: the science of humans and their work /  modern: pertaining to present and recent time

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet? W R O N G. A name more suitable doesn’t exist because while Melissa Gonzales, founder and curator, is sure to keep a stock of the most perfect vintage things in all the land (“all the land” being Connecticut, New England, and occasionally the deep South), she has an eagerness to give back by supporting local artisans and crafts people’s (anthropology) current work (modern) whether it be screen printers like Black Unicorn Studios, wood workers like B Meyer Studio, or natural beauty product makers like Poor & Pretty. Everything is thoughtfully hand picked by Gonzales, in turn crowning her the colab-queen of a healthy and roaring arts-and-commerce collective in her community of New Haven.

Photo courtesy of Vintanthromodern

Too good to be true? Well, don’t bother visiting before you peep the 360-degree virtual tour on their website. Be prepared for the denim galore (seriously, what’s a vintage space without this particular rolling rack), floral afghans, antler-print neckties, silk scarves, handmade garlands, satin peep-toe kitten heels, and needlepoint perfection that you’ll come across. If you’re like me, and the typical ramshackle haphazardness of second hand shops gives you severe anxiety, and causes you to rush out gasping for relief from that unmistakable mothball meets old-lady-tea-party smell, but at the same time you’re raring to get your hands on that special find that will only reveal itself after 30+ minutes of digging…this place is your salvation.

Another awesome feature on the Vintanthro website is the look book—because vintage clothing can be daunting and sometimes we need help working it naturally into our wardrobe. (There’s a fine line between rocking that floor-length pastel skirt and looking like you’re on your way to Tuesday night bingo at the Legion.) Fear not, Vintanthromodern has your back on that one. In the words of Gonzales herself, “Vintage doesn’t have to be costume.” Further, their Instagram (by now, you know about my acute obsession with feeds of this nature) is simply TDF (to die for, not to be mistaken with DTF), and if that ration of “vintage porn” doesn’t reel you in, their floor-to-ceiling shop window will.

If there’s one thing Vintanthromodern loves more than their old and new finery, it’s their customers—which means, if you come upon something particularly meant for you, don’t expect to escape without your picture getting snapped, posing with your new find. No doubt this is a common occurrence, because Gonzales has a thought-out concept for every piece that enters her doors. “I almost sort of envision who would wear the piece or who would be attracted to the piece,” she says, “and so there’s a sense of excitement that not only I am discovering something, but later on somebody else will be having that same discovery.”

Whether you have a gift to buy, a craving for vintage, or just need a cozy space for inspiration, find your way to Vintanthromodern. Because they’d love to meet you.

The post Vintanthromodern combines these three things appeared first on Take Magazine.

In a world of click-bait, seemingly endless post-election drama, and your parents being quite active on Facebook, don’t you feel like disconnecting for a while? In addition, winter’s coming, so you’ll need a place to hide out from the sadness and the snow. What better place to disconnect and hibernate than a cafe…or better yet, a cafe with hundreds of weird, rare, and “fancy” board games for curious amateurs and hardcore tabletop gamers alike. With Elm City Games sharing space, but not hours, with The Happiness Lab, which both feature a full menu of drinks and food, you might not ever leave this spot in New Haven.

Survive: Space Attack! available for play at Elm City Games | Photo courtesy boardgamegeek.com

Elm City Cafe grants you a full days access to over 750 board games in their library. Intriguing games like Survive! Space Attack, familiar titles like Sorry, and quirky card games like We didn’t Playtest This at All, Elm City Games guarantees the five dollar entry fee will be worth it. Yes, there’s a fee to access their library and space; however, the game cafe quite rightly explains and justifies this fee on their website, “Why do we charge people to come play games? Because if we didn’t we wouldn’t be able to maintain the quality of library we want with continued growth while replacing what we have when it gets worn out. It also allows us to pay for dedicated staff to help with whatever needs players might have and keep making improvements to everything.”

Elm City Games menu | Photo courtesy Elm City Games website

If one day of perusing doesn’t seem like enough time, Elm City Cafe also offers special memberships so you can play that 15th game of Ca$h n Gun$ without worrying about misplacing those teenie pistols. In addition, the game cafe has a full calendar of events ranging from casual friendly meet-ups with strangers (Friendsnight!), to an intense D&D Adventure League night (duh).

Whether you’re looking for new pals to game with, or just looking to disconnect from the sordid reality of this post-election news-cycle, head to Elm City Cafe, turn your phone face-down, grab an americano at The Happiness Lab and see if you can outsmart your friends in a game of Agricola.

Elm City Cafe is a boardgame cafe located at 758 Chapel Street in New Haven, Connecticut and open weekday nights from 4:30pm on and all day Saturday and Sunday. Check their website for business hours and be sure to follow them on Facebook and sign up for their newsletter here.

A Happy Life cafe is open during the day at this location, Monday – Friday until 8am – 3pm. See their offerings here.

Top Photo courtesy Elm City Games Facebook page

The post A Gamer’s Cafe appeared first on Take Magazine.

A series of sketches by the artist Eben Kling depicts scenes from the TV western Gunsmoke: James Arness, the rugged actor who starred as Marshal Matt Dillon, roughing up a boy; a gunman peering from behind a lookout who is either sweating profusely or sobbing; a cowboy grimacing while getting gut punched by an attacker whose torso twists in slow motion.

Drawn against minimal backgrounds in colorful pencil and crayon, these pictures are both dramatic and cartoonish—ironic in an N. C. Wyeth-meets-National Lampoon way.

“My father was kind of a tough guy,” Kling says. “He would watch Gunsmoke, and I would sit on the floor drawing. The images are sort of redacted and edited through my hand. I was picking at the machismo.”

Botched Response 2015 | 61×50 Acrylic and Pencil on Canvas

Unlike the Gunsmoke sketches, Kling’s paintings lean more abstract. From party scenes to protests, they are trippy narratives composed of often contorted or fragmentary figures with meaty hands and feet, mouths agape, angular sunglasses, baseball caps with foam-like brims, fat cigarettes, beer cans, and pizza boxes. There’s a dash of R. Crumb and a pinch of Terry Gilliam in Kling’s style, humor, and social commentary. But they’re blended into an already-rich batter of latchkey-kid angst, visionary talent, and screw-it-all experimentation.

“A lot of those images were made as I was sitting in public, drawing,” he says. “I was feeling confused about what I was looking at.”

Over the past six years, the 28-year-old has created an impressive body of work—painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, illustration, and commercial art—featured in dozens of shows. His master of fine arts show at UMass Amherst in May attracted 200 people. Artspace, a New Haven, Connecticut, gallery and nonprofit for emerging contemporary artists, chose Kling as its 2015–2016 artist-in-residence.

The works in Kling’s MFA show evolved out of “chance strategies—a very John Cage thing,” he says. For example, he created compositions of random digital images using Photoshop’s auto-align feature, then “flattened and rendered them in [his] own hand” as brightly colored paintings.

Kling likes portraying, and employing, the mundane stuff of everyday life. He’ll build a cheeky collage around a strategically placed piece of Day-Glo card stock. His sculpture is just as irreverent; his preferred media are trash and cardboard. He once collaborated on a show, Odd Job, in the office of an abandoned tech company, making sculpture in which he personified casually assembled piles of office detritus by giving them limbs and heads.

“It looked like [the company] left in the middle of a Christmas party,” Kling says. “There was a strange, purgatorial feel to it.”

Floating Cluster Fuck 2015 |48×48 Acrylic and Pencil on Canvas

Another sculpture series consists of figures partially cut out of cardboard. They lie on the floor, their limbs flopping about in tortuous positions. Or, Kling will fasten a cardboard figure to a wall, adding objects like a pair of tighty-whities and a pistol, with a pile of papier-mȃché beer cans and pink dismembered limbs littering the floor below. It’s like stop-motion animation come to life.

I talked to Kling about his work and life just after he and his girlfriend, artist and Royal Frog Ballet performer Chelsea Granger, moved into his late father’s house in the Connecticut shore town of Branford, near New Haven. He’s the fourth generation of Kling to live there.

“I feel like a steward. The house functions as a vibrating museum of my family’s history,” he says. The statement sounds like a platitude, but, as usual, it is “redacted and edited” through the artist’s hand. A series of photos on Kling’s Tumblr feed is simply captioned: “Images made from my late father’s pornography and his landscape photography.”

LC: Your dad died a couple of years ago. The Gunsmoke drawings are connected to him?

I didn’t want to be sentimental about our relationship, but I felt compelled to make work about my father’s death. James Arness is a catalyst to talk about my own relationship with my father— through power struggles, machismo, complicated male-type things. But it’s tempered with absurdity and a sense of humor.

LC: Moving to New Haven was sort of mission for you, huh? You must have been psyched to get the artist-in-residence gig at Artspace.

Yeah. [Artspace] is a cultural mothership of creative people in New Haven, and it’s part of a block of low-income housing. I can’t think of a more appropriate way to integrate back into New Haven. I’m committed to being here. I was born in New Haven. I moved out at a young age—my parents divorced when I was four. But I gravitated back to it.

Before I was 18, I lived in 18 different apartments. It was kind of funny—a lot of times, the new apartment was just literally down the street, or upstairs. [Having grown] up in southern Connecticut, [I find] there’s something alluring about New Haven. It’s a city. I went to Amity High School in Woodbridge, but I was also commuting to New Haven every day to go to an arts magnet school.

I wasn’t very good in [traditional] school. I spent a lot of time drawing during my classes and was always scolded for it.

Eben Kling | Photo by Paul Teeling

I had a very influential teacher, Brian Flynn, in high school. We’re still in close contact. He was a very encouraging guy, and he liked to challenge me. He inflated my ego when I needed it. He was the one who convinced me to keep doing art. I don’t think my mother ever wanted me to go into the arts. My father really tried to talk me out of it. It wasn’t until college that he came around.

LC: You went to an arts college?

My first year was at Hartford Art School with 15,000 other students. I was an arrogant person. I thought I had some chops; I thought I was going to be an artist. My professors knocked me down a few pegs. I didn’t connect with the city. I went to HAS because my girlfriend went there. Then my girlfriend left me, and my car got stolen. That’s when I transferred to Montserrat [College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts]. It was a nice change of speed. At the time, I needed that sort of intimacy.

I started off in illustration. While I was at Montserrat, I was getting a lot of work as an illustrator. I worked for an after-school science program in Cape Ann. It was steady work that paid me well, but it was a funny job. I made incredibly convoluted images. There would be a historical
anecdote, like one about the development of hydraulic electrical motors just after World War II. In that illustration, there were figures in the foreground—desperate people making a radio out of an old washing machine—and a war scene in the background. [The program managers] would assign me five images in two days. It was probably the most unprofessional experience I could have had out of the gate.

I switched my major to printmaking. Peers of mine who were inspiring to me happened to be in that department. I was doing lithography, acid etching, wood prints. It was like a big survey. Everybody had to work around each other—it was a shop. There’s something very colorful and enthusiastic about being in a laboratory together.

LC: What did you do after you graduated?

I moved down to the Pioneer Valley right after Montserrat. There were close to 12 Montserrat alumni living there. But many of my friends and peers were going to New York and California. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed recent art grads. I didn’t want to move to a large metropolis.

LC: What made you decide to go back to school and get an MFA?

I was walking up the stairs of the restaurant I was working in as a prep cook, and I was carrying a 15-pound sack of potatoes. I hurt my back. I was tired, working long hours in the service industry. I decided I wanted to go back to school.

I always had a suspicion I wanted to teach—the most inspiring people in my life have been teachers. At UMass, that suspicion was validated. Maybe not teaching in the most conventional sense . . . more like collaboration. Teasing out ideas with other human beings. I’m more interested in that than being some sort of famous artist.

LC: Really? You might not have much choice in the matter. You’re prolific. Let’s talk about your work. You do collages, and you also do paintings that look like collages.

I did a small series of images that were a mix of painting, found objects, and cut material. I thought, “How can I make an image that is familiar to me without paint?” I was sick of painting.

I had spent a lot of time going through my father’s house. He was a hoarder. I was feeling the burden of being the only son; the burden of his belongings, his trash. That’s when I began experimenting with sculpture. I think about Claes Oldenburg’s The Store. He rented a bodega and made objects that he sold. I started doing similar things. I made symbols for beer cans out of ventilated foam. My studio started to look like my father’s garage.

Even some of my paintings have a sort of stitched-together quality. Certain images might be . . . I haven’t figured out what they are. Dissociative forms, people’s behavior, motivations. I was feeling cynical, blank, looking through people’s actions and their objects. I was intentionally using divergence tactics . . . not being able to see where something ended.

Up All Night for Late Night 2015 | 48×48 Acrylic and Pencil on Canvas

LC: Beer cans and cigarettes are a motif in your work.

They’re symbols of debauchery. I smoke cigarettes and drink a lot of beer. I go to bars and socialize in that way. It’s part of my life. I hark back to one of my favorite painters, Philip Guston. [The motifs are] a wink to him. When I go back and think about those paintings more, there’s a sort of condemnation of debauchery.

In graduate school, I would sit in the studio and listen to Democracy Now!, then go out into the zoo of UMass. Or I would sit in a mall and draw people going up and down on an escalator for about an hour. Time-lapsed images of faces. Everybody’s on their cell phone, eating a giant hot dog, drinking sodas, and buying sneakers. There’s a lot of consumerist angst [in those images]. I felt like I was holding a mirror up. But I would also implicate myself at the same time.

LC: What about your influences? You’ve mentioned R. Crumb and Philip Guston. I get hints of Terry Gilliam in your work.

Everything is derivative. The responsibility of an artist is not to avoid that lineage but insert [oneself] into it, modernize it. I love [Gilliam’s] films. He’s in the soup stock. A lot of my influence comes from television and cartoons. I was a latchkey kid—free to watch as much TV as I wanted. I still watch cartoons all the time. There’s something about the expressiveness and plasticity of cartoons that is an established tool for exaggeration. It’s a really good strategy to make your point and push it over the edge.

I think about when I started making cardboard cutout images. They were kind of pathetic. They had no structural integrity. They would bend in ways that were eerily reminiscent of human joints—figures collapsing over themselves. Some of my peers refer to them as Transformers. It’s as if they went through a time machine and came through the other side compromised.

LC: One cool project you’ve worked on recently is Jedediah Berry’s The Family Arcana, which the project’s website describes as “a story about a haunted family, published as a poker deck and written to be read an infinite number of ways.”

I’m doing the illustrations for it. It’s a story and a functional deck of cards. Jed and I used to live together in Amherst. I’ve also dabbled in tattoo artistry for a friend who has his own tattoo shop.

Now that school is over, I’m kind of let off the leash. I feel like a real boy again.

Eben Kling | Photo by Paul Teeling

Kling’s Artspace residency culminates in a solo show. Humanoids, an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Eben Kling opens Oct 7, 2016 – Nov 10, 2016.

Artspace
50 Orange St.
New Haven, CT 06510
203.772.2709
info@artspacenh.org

Images courtesy of the artist

The post I Was Confused About What I Was Looking At appeared first on Take Magazine.