“SOFT SYSTEMS” At City Gallery
December 5, 2025 - January 2, 2026
Exhibition of selected sculptural works by local ECA high school students
Opening Reception December 7: 1 - 3 pm
The works explore the expressive and structural possibilities of fiber and non traditional materials.
October Exhibit
City Gallery is excited to be part of the annual Open Studios event being held throughout New Haven during the month of October. All 15 City Gallery artists will participate in OPEN STUDIOS @ CITY, on view from October 3 through October 26. There will be an Opening Reception on Sunday, October 5, 2-4 p.m., as well as Artist Talks featuring:
Catherine Lavoie & Sheila Kaczmarek, Sunday, October 12, 2-4 p.m.
Phyllis Crowley & Barbara Harder, Sunday, October 26, 2-4 p.m.
For more than 20 years, City Gallery has served as a collective of innovative contemporary artists from the New Haven area. It is a member-run gallery featuring a wide range of visual media: painting, sculpture, photography, papermaking, fiber art, printmaking, and mixed media.
OPEN STUDIOS @ CITY is a chance to see the work of City Gallery’s newest member, painter Beatriz Olson, along with:
Judy Atlas - painter
Meg Bloom - sculptor
Joy Bush - photographer
Phyllis Crowley - photographer
Jennifer Davies - fiber artist
Roberta Friedman - painter
William Frucht - photographer
Rita Hannafin - textile artist
Barbara Harder - printmaker
Rob Jacoby - painter
Sheila Kaczmarek - sculptor
Kathy Kane - painter
Catherine Lavoie - textile artist
Tom Peterson - photographer
City Gallery’s exhibits rotate on a monthly schedule, giving the community an opportunity to see works by many artists in a variety of styles throughout the year. In addition, the gallery occasionally hosts work by guest artists who help to make New Haven a vibrant regional center for the arts. These shows include the critically acclaimed SERVED: Wrongful Convictions & the Death Penalty with guest artist Toby Lee Greenberg, MOSAIC, featuring Yale School of Architecture graduates; and SPACES WITHIN, the 2023 Summer Invitational featuring artists Susan Clinard, Shaunda Holloway, and Linda Mickens.
The members of City Gallery are carefully selected for their accomplishments as artists, their ability to commit to maintaining a successful member-run gallery, and their fit with the group. All have distinguished resumes and have exhibited widely, and many also teach in the New Haven artistic community.
Additional Open Studios 2025 events are being held at Creative Arts Workshop, Eli Whitney Museum Barn, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, Erector Square, Highwood Square, Institute Library, Kehler Liddell Gallery, Marlin Works, NXTHVN, and in West Haven and Westville. Information on all of the events can be found at erectorsquarestudios.com.
The Open Studios @ City exhibit and events are free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m. or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-
NOVEMBER EXHIBIT
For more than 60 years, Roberta Friedman and Stanley Friedman have created memories — literally and in their respective artwork. LIFETIME/LIFELINE: A COLLABORATION is an exhibit of their complementary works and will be on view from October 31- November 30. There will be an Opening Reception on Sunday, November 2 from 2-5 p.m., and an Artists’ Talk and demonstration of creating an encaustic monotype on Sunday, November 16 at 2 p.m.
Roberta Friedman, a long-time member of City Gallery, continues her work in encaustic monotype, cold wax and collage. She has recently had her work included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Encaustic Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Stanley Friedman is adept at, and enamored by, technologies and their creative potential. His photographs exemplify his tireless interest in the universe and its secrets.
“This work, exhibited together for the first time, is our way of acknowledging a lifetime of connection and parallel paths,” says Roberta, “All of which has been honed from shared and individual journeys.”
The exhibit poster includes a photo of two wine glasses, taken by Roberta’s father, Harold Schwartz, around 1945 at the end of the war, and brings the idea of memory into full focus.
The exhibit, LIFETIME/LIFELINE: A COLLABORATION, and the Opening Reception are free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.
AUGUST EXHIBIT
City Gallery Art Exhibition Brings Awareness to Wrongful Convictions & The Death Penalty
By Guest Artist TOBY LEE GREENBERG
August 1 – August 24, 2025
RECEPTION: Sunday, August 3rd, 2PM – 4 PM
Artist’s Talk & Guest Speakers from the *Innocence Project @ 3PM
READ: “An Innocence Denied,” by Jisu Sheen, New Haven Independent
READ: “An Artist Unpacks Lives Lost To, Interrupted By Injustice,” by Taylor Ikehara, Arts Council of Greater New Haven
Art Exhibition Brings Awareness to Wrongful Convictions & The Death Penalty
Toby Lee Greenberg is a conceptual, mixed media artist whose work is immersed in the criminal justice system, with a focus on the history and continued use of capital punishment in the United States. Her current work, Biography: Unwritten, is an ongoing, interactive series which considers the issue of wrongful convictions and the most egregious of erroneous judgments – the death penalty. Greenberg’s goal is to create a unique artist’s book, honoring each exonerated person included on the Death Penalty Information Center’s Innocence Database (200 to date). While researching Biography: Unwritten, Greenberg combs through numerous resources, gathering information on the men and women who have been wrongfully sentenced to death and later exonerated. The titles of her books imply they are biographies, with subtitles suggesting details about the person’s life, often prior to becoming entangled in the criminal justice system. But the pages are not only empty, they are also glued and cemented shut, suggesting the harshness of a prison cell and time lost on death row. The final page of each book, the epilogue, contains a simple paraphrased sentence, completing the prompt “Missed…”, as in “Missed building a credit history” or “Missed having a family”. These personal “Missed” statements reveal a milestone or simple moment, which was lost while incarcerated, usually with lifelong consequences. Factual information regarding the subject’s time on death row completes each epilogue.
Viewers are encouraged to pick up a book, bearing witness to its contents or lack thereof. These are the empty biographies of innocent men and women, convicted and sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit and who, upon release from prison, struggle to find a place for themselves in a world quite different from the one they left behind. While holding a book, viewers may consider their own lives and the preciousness of these missed moments which become even more profound in their absence. Some viewers find themselves identifying, at least momentarily, with the subject of the biography, imagining the experience of an innocence denied and the helplessness of the wrongfully convicted. Displayed on floating shelves, each book sits upon a stack of untitled books, paying homage to the unknown number of people who were wrongly convicted but who perished on death row.
For every 8 people executed, 1 person on death row has been exonerated.
1,630 people have been executed in the U.S. since 1973.
Equal Justice Initiative (eji)
Biography: Unwritten, Installation views from exhibition Books Undone, Penn College of Technology, 2024, © Toby Lee Greenberg 2024
“My current work on wrongful convictions and the brutality of the death penalty, pushes people out of their comfort zones, bringing viewers’ attention to an unpleasant topic -- the sanctity and fragility of life and one’s own mortality.” Toby Lee Greenberg
The Menu, Cover, Installation View, © Toby Lee Greenberg, 1995
Greenberg’s interest in the history and controversary regarding the use of the death penalty began in 1995, after hearing a report of a person’s requested last meal on the evening news. Working with ordinary objects, such as dinner plates and restaurant menus, she began researching the ritual and custom of offering a last meal of choice to someone about to be executed. The limited-edition artist’s book The Menu, is a compilation of 34 pages, bound within a luxury, gold foil-stamped cover. A constant throughout the years, has been the incorporation of text into her art, empowering appropriated words with another layer of meaning and messaging. Her work calls into question the dissemination of public information, such as state prison records and trial transcripts, and our voyeuristic nature. On display, The Menu encourages viewers to turn the pages, to read the options of what seems to be an elegant restaurant menu. Last Meal, a companion piece, consists of fine china dinner plates, displaying elegant words printed in the area which would ordinarily contain food. At the top of each plate appears the name of a person condemned to death, followed by their last supper, the meal they requested and were served just prior to their execution. The foods listed on the plates, which at first seem innocent enough, compel one to consider the finality of the meal and the destiny of these individuals. Why has this person who has been stripped of all freedom, now in his/her final hour, been afforded a choice?
The Menu, Franco American Spaghettios with meatballs, Detail of Interior View, © Toby Lee Greenberg, 1995
The presentation of these ritualistic meals distances us from the institutionalized proceedings of which they are a part. These meals articulate a darkness about human beings and the positions each of us play as criminal, executioner, or simply the members of a society that puts people to death, but paradoxically allows them one last act of individual expression. The collection of meals presented in the Last Meal and The Menu subconsciously prompts us to consider what our own final request would be. This simple act momentarily compels us to identify with the helplessness of the condemned, as it simultaneously links them, guilty or not, with the rest of humanity. 1
Last Meal, Fried Rabbit, 10” Dinner Plate, © Toby Lee Greenberg, 1995
Greenberg’s work on the death penalty can make people uncomfortable, leading them to consider their own feelings about this act and to consider something they would simply prefer not to think about.
“My goal is to share my art with a wide audience both within traditional art venues, as well as through alternative spaces and organizations. It is my hope that my art promotes conversation and brings awareness to wrongful convictions, the death penalty, mass incarceration, and the criminal justice system overall.”
Toby Lee Greenberg
For press inquiries & appointments, please contact:
toby@tobygreenberg.com
(917) 428-5806
DM: @tobyleegreenberg
For More Information: Toby Lee Greenberg Artist's Website
A video about her work can be seen on the Georgia Center for the Book’s YouTube channel:
https://youtu.be/bMPCEe4mzwk?si=XrYcACSRywuNRbCZ
See a review of Greenberg’s artwork by the Death Penalty Information Center:
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/art-installation-honors-u-s-death-row-exonerees
*The Innocence Project works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. Founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the organization is now an independent nonprofit. Our work is guided by science and grounded in anti-racism."
Guest Speakers
Stefon Morant was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 70 years for a double homicide that he did not commit in New Haven, Connecticut. He was released from prison in 2015, after serving more than 21 years, and was fully exonerated in 2021. Ever since his release, Mr. Morant has been active with the Innocence Project and the Connecticut Innocence Project, serving as a mentor to numerous exonerees. Since his release, Mr. Morant married his childhood sweetheart and now works for the City of New Haven. Although it is the city that harmed him, Mr. Morant has chosen to help. Mr. Morant has also worked in a halfway house counseling returning inmates and as a recovery coach assisting mental patients transition from inpatient care to everyday life. https://innocenceproject.org/team/stefon-morant/
Hannah L. Fitzsimons joined the Innocence Project as a staff attorney in 2023. Before the Innocence Project, Hannah worked at Justice 360, a non-profit organization in her home state of South Carolina, where she represented men facing the death penalty and children facing death-in-prison sentences. Hannah has also worked as an adjunct clinical professor at Cornell Law School. She began her legal career as a law clerk, first to Justice Harold Eaton on the Vermont Supreme Court and later to Judge Richard C. Wesley on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Prior to law school, Hannah served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay. She is a graduate of Cornell Law School and Duke University.
https://innocenceproject.org/team/hannah-fitzsimons/
Image on Page 1: God’s Saving Grace, Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom, Last meal requested by Danny Harris before his execution, July 3, 1993, 12:18 a.m., Detail from right panel of triptych from the series Last Meal, broken dinner plate, framed 12” 12” x 2.5” © Toby Lee Greenberg, original piece 1995, broken triptych 2024. Image: Courtesy of the Artist
1 Brian Hannon, The Menu by Toby Lee Greenberg, from the exhibition catalog, Center for Book Arts, New York, 1995
Images are provided exclusively to the press and for in-context publicity use only.
Images must be accompanied by the credit line:
Courtesy of the Artist © Toby Lee Greenberg 2025
© Toby Lee Greenberg 2025 All rights reserved.
JULY EXHIBIT
DIVERSE VOICES — 3 Artists’ Group Show at City Gallery
Featuring Work by Judy Atlas, Robert Jacoby, and Tom Peterson
New Haven’s City Gallery is an artist-run gallery featuring exhibitions of contemporary art by its 15 members throughout the year. DIVERSE VOICES showcases the distinct and varied work of three of its members: Judy Atlas, Robert Jacoby, and Tom Peterson. The group show will be on view from July 5 - July 27. The Opening Reception on Sunday, July 13, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m. is free and open to the public.
“I was never interested in portraying realism,” says Judy Atlas. “Instead I turned to abstraction; feeling, movement, light, dark, color, shape, my own story. Not all abstract artists paint this way. My process can be described as an improvisation, each mark is a response to the last one made. I may not have a specific image in mind, but, it is an incremental process, step by step. I experiment, explore and hope the result pleases and enlightens the viewer.”
Unlike Atlas, painter Rob Jacoby started with representational drawing and painting, and transition to abstraction later in his career. This reset, he explains, “was prompted to express my interpretation of flamenco, as a seminal reflection of the human spirit. Over the past 15 years, my work has broadened to explore various aspects of that creative spirit through spontaneous, unpredictable dialogues between artist and canvas as each painting progresses. The outcomes are frequently, and gratefully, diverse.”
Photographer Tom Peterson’s work takes the concept of abstraction in a different direction. In a folio called No Place Like Home, he imagines a dystopian future caused by global warming. “I sought to create bold color by digitally inverting modern architectural images to portray a world turned inside out. The results represent a voyage from familiar cityscapes to the stillness and strangeness of the otherworldly.”
“In this show,” Atlas explains, “Rob, Tom and I display diverse voices and stories to entertain and inform the viewers, to present the world in a variety of bold, new ways.”
DIVERSE VOICES is free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.
SEPTEMBER EXHIBIT
Invisible Shores: Mixed Media and Clay Work by Sheila Kaczmarek
Galapagos Islands Trip Inspires September Exhibit at City Gallery
Inspired by a recent trip to the Galapagos Islands, artist Sheila Kaczmarek has created a fascinating collection of new mixed media and clay work for the September exhibit at City Gallery. INVISIBLE SHORES will be on view from September 5 - September 28, with an Opening Reception on Sunday, September 14: 3 - 5 pm.
“I was immediately struck by the unique, stark landscape,” says Kaczmarek. “Living in this rugged landscape of volcanoes, craters and cliffs are great tortoises, marine iguanas, flightless cormorants and penguins to name a few.”
She was most intrigued, she says, by the rippling layers of volcanic rock undisturbed by vegetation, and worked to capture the interplay of varied species and terrains, untainted by human interference, in her work.
Kaczmarek studied art at St. Martin’s School of Art, London; UCLA, California; and the Academie des Beaux Arts, Brussels. She apprenticed in the ceramic studio of the Guilford Art Center for five years. She has taught art for over 20 years to both children and now to adults. She worked with a collaborative group of women artists for 8 years, resulting in multiple shows in Connecticut and New York. She is a founding member of City Gallery, president of the Guilford Art League, and served on the Board of the New Haven Paint and Clay Club for many years.
INVISIBLE SHORES is free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12pm - 4 pm, or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.
MAY EXHIBIT
In life, as in nature, surviving requires a mix of holding together and letting go. This is also true collectively, as a society, and individually as artists and creators. BREATH AND BONE, a new installation by artists Meg Bloom and Cyra Levenson will be on view at City Gallery from May 2 - June 1. The Artist Reception on Saturday, May 10, 2 p.m. - 5 p.m., is open to the public.
“The work in the show is very much about our process — how we are trying to move in the world and move as creators,” explains City Gallery member Meg Bloom. This is the second time Bloom has collaborated in an exhibit with Cyra Levenson. “We have a shared aesthetic,” says Levenson. “For both of us, the things we make have a life of their own, and they have a conversation with each other.”
Levenson, new to weaving, is inspired by weavers who work in all kinds of materials — metal, willow, driftwood, fibers, even weavers of people and stories. She has been studying at the Brooklyn (NY) studio Loop of the Loom which teaches a Japanese technique called Saori weaving. “The work in this exhibition is what came from the practice of allowing the loom, the fibers, the movements of the warp and weft to guide me,” she explains. “My hope is to be a clear channel for images and ideas to come through. I am listening for textures, lines, and felt sensations. The smell of the wool, my gratitude for the sheep, the plants, and the other weavers are all in the work.”
No stranger to working with fibers and textures, much of Meg Bloom’s current artwork consists of handmade paper sculptures from kozo and abaca fibers. “Some have added pigment, many have embedded plant matter, or anything else I get my hands on,” she says. She also creates mixed media collages and installations.
“Finding beauty in the imperfect, acknowledging moments of change, and engaging with the process of transformation form the basis of my work,” Bloom explains. “My art references nature and attempts, metaphorically through layering process and form, to address the broader social and environmental issues we face.”
Similar to Levenson, Bloom says “I desire to go with the flow but more. I think of the changes as a floe, and I want to be part of the changes constantly taking place, so I am deliberate in allowing the work to reveal itself. Thus the warped, bent, tangled, frayed, torn, smashed, shattered details, and the art’s insistence/persistence on survival, regrowth, and transformation.”
BREATH AND BONE is free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.
JUNE EXHIBIT
SOLSTICE — An Exhibit of Abstract Watercolor and Mixed Media Assemblages at City Gallery
Featuring Work by Kathy Kane and Karen Wheeler
Celebrate the summer solstice with an exciting new show at City Gallery. Kathy Kane and Karen Wheeler present an exhibit of abstract watercolor landscapes and handmade paper and mixed media assemblages in SOLSTICE, on view from June 6 - June 29. The Opening Reception on Sunday, June 8, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m., is open to the public.
For this show, City Gallery member Kathy Kane returns to her love of plein air painting, and leans hard into the vibrant possibilities of abstract watercolor, the power of the paint and its randomness. “My own garden has become my subject,” says Kane. “I tried for years to let it inform my art with little luck. This fall, I finally was able to find my rhythm within it. I make many small studies and then bring them to my studio to recreate the feeling and the images in a larger format.
There is a spontaneity to Kane’s new work, and it’s mirrored in the intuitive and unconstrained creativity in Karen Wheeler’s assemblages. Wheeler, who works in a variety of media, including drawing, painting, handmade paper, and collage in both 2D and 3D, says, “Creating my work involves playful puzzle solving. My first moves with materials are often intuitive and spontaneous. I then study and respond to these visual clues to resolve the images to my satisfaction. I love engaging with the mystery as the work reveals itself in ways I could never have planned or predicted.”
For both artists, making art is about capturing, cultivating, and creating joy, which can be seen in the bold and colorful work on display at the gallery in June.
SOLSTICE is free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.
APRIL EXHIBIT
Featuring Work by Photographer Phyllis Crowley
Photographer Phyllis Crowley asks CAN YOU FREE A MIND? in this new exhibit at City Gallery. Her latest collection of work will be on view from April 4 - April 27, with a Reception and Artist Talk on Sunday, April 6, 2 p.m. - 4 p.m. The artist will also be in the Gallery on Sunday, April 27 to meet with visitors and answer questions.
During her husband’s recent health crisis, Crowley, a well-known New Haven photographer, says she had neither the physical space nor the mental state to photograph as usual. Instead, she followed her visual instincts and shot what was around her, wherever she was, with her iPhone.
The result and the “story” is a visual essay, told through black and white images, with very high contrast and a lot of black. The connections are visual and emotional, the subject matter jumps around, and the images go from representational to abstract and even surreal. “The cell phone enabled quick, spontaneous responses to any moment; that would not have happened with a regular single-lens reflex camera,” she says. By combining images and grouping them, Crowley moves the viewer beyond focusing on a single subject, and encourages them to form their own concepts of experience and memory.
“The disconnects, the upside down and sideways, the range from particular to enigmatic, the references to hiding and disruption, are simply one reflection of the chaotic, irrational and unpredictable world in which we now find ourselves,” she says.
A photographer from a very young age, Crowley has more than 40 years of professional and fine art experience. She taught photography at Norwalk Community College and the University of Bridgeport, and now teaches at Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven. She has exhibited across the country and has twice been awarded an Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.
CAN YOU FREE A MIND? is free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.
FEBRUARY EXHIBIT
Alone: A Contemporary Photography Exhibit at City Gallery
Featuring Joy Bush and Tom Peterson
Two of City Gallery’s contemporary photographers — Joy Bush and Tom Peterson — will be featured in ALONE, a new photography exhibit at City Gallery, on view from January 31 - March 2. There will be an Artists Reception on Sunday, February 23, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
With two distinct interpretations of the concept “alone,” Bush and Peterson present a collection of images that define the solitude of objects and individuals. “I like to think of each photograph in this series as a short visual poem,” says Bush. “Each stands on its own. And yet, being part of a series, each does occasionally flirt with one nearby.”
Peterson’s series “Just Me” had its beginnings during trips to New York City. “I would walk up and down Fifth Avenue and along Central Park, and began to notice individuals who sought spaces of solitude.” His photographs illustrate their makeshift sanctuaries, and speak to a longing of private spaces within a crowded world.
Peterson is a documentary and abstract fine art’s photographer from Hamden, Connecticut. His most recent work explores both quiet, peaceful imagery and architectural images of intense color. He has received numerous awards, including twice winning First Honors at Shoreline Arts Alliance. 2019 exhibits included a solo exhibition at The Kohn Joseloff Gallery at Cheshire Academy and the New Haven Lawn Club. Tom has been a member of City Gallery since 2009.
Bush is a photographer based in Connecticut. Her work was recently featured in Unbeatable Women at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, CT (2022) as well as solo shows Waiting (2023) at City Gallery, Home Views: Places In Never Lived (2021) at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts, and A Holy Land In Ruins (2013) at Mattatuck Museum. Her photographs have appeared in Fraction Magazine, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Connecticut Review, and many other publications. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibits nationally including the International Center for Photography (NYC), Mattatuck Museum (CT), Lyman Allyn Art Museum (CT), Five Points Art Gallery (CT), Griffin Museum of Photography (MA), Copley Society (Boston, MA), Garrison Art Center (NY), and Umbrella Arts (NYC). Bush is represented in the permanent collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Mattatuck Museum, Montefiore Hospital (Bronx, NY), the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Yale Medical Group Art Place, and private collections.
The ALONE exhibit is free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org or newhavencity-gallery.org.
MARCH EXHIBIT
Inspired by Susan Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree, Rita Hannafin presents WHISPERING FOREST AND OTHER CONVERSATIONS, an exhibit of art quilts. The show will be on view at City Gallery from March 7 - March 30, with a Reception on Sunday, March 23 from 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.
Hannafin tells stories by combining various textiles, stitch, paint, collage, and digital imagery in her art quilts. Their intricate connections become symbolic of the energy that connects all of us. “We are all linked, from the network of electrical pulses in a heartbeat, to an intimate and amazing sunset, to a close-up of a simple flower,” she explains.
Exploring that unseen connection that binds all living things, the centerpiece of Hannafin’s exhibit is Whispering Forest, a tryptic measuring 18"x24" for each piece, that took Hannafin more than a year to create.
“Trees are so much more than silent sentinels that house birds and squirrels. Each tree is part of a complex network through their roots and fungal connections, sharing resources, signals, even warnings. This silent concert inspires me. It embodies the essence of community and collaboration. It speaks to the universal truths of interdependence, resilience, and the delicate balance of life.”
Hannafin discovered the art quilt after moving to Connecticut in 2004, combining a lifelong love of art with her passion for textiles. Since then, her work has explored landscape, climate change, politics, personal stories and abstraction.
She is currently a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates, the Black Rock Art Guild, and City Gallery in New Haven. Her work has been shown in juried exhibitions at the Slater Museum, Norwich, the Whistler House Museum of Art, Lowell, MA, the Bruce S. Kershner Gallery in Fairfield, The Greenwich Art Society 107th Juried Art Exhibition, and was a second-place winner at the Stamford Art Association’s Faber Birren Annual Color Show. Her work is included in the National Registry of Quilts. Studio 2 is her attic studio where the fun, frustration, and sometimes magic happens.
WHISPERING FOREST AND OTHER CONVERSATIONS exhibit is free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. Email:rdhannafin@gmail.com.For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.
JANUARY EXHIBIT
Making and Unmaking: A Group Show at City Gallery
Featuring Jennifer Davies, William Frucht, Barbara Harder, Catherine Lavoie
Author Jonathan Swift’s famous quote “everything old is new again” plays out in interesting, creative ways in the January group show at City Gallery. MAKING AND UNMAKING — featuring work by Jennifer Davies, William Frucht, Barbara Harder, and Catherine Lavoie — presents the repurposing of what was into an eclectic exhibit of textiles, fiber art and handmade papers, prints, and photography. The show is on view from January 3 - January 26, with an Opening Reception on Saturday, January 11, 2-4 p.m. (Snow date: Saturday, January 18, 2-4 p.m.)
From Davies’ reuse of “that which is not deemed precious” and Lavoie’s consideration of discarded stories, to Frucht’s photographic exploration of our abandoned past, this mixed-media show explores the “necessary refocusing of the eyes to see things in a different context, when they are no longer trash, but art.”
Jennifer Davies graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and spent a year in Rome as part of the European Honors Program. Trained as a painter and illustrator, she worked for many years in watercolors, drawing, and monotype. Now her work is largely fiber oriented, incorporating paper she makes by hand using both Eastern and Western papermaking traditions. Fiber techniques she uses are pulp dipping, indigo dyeing, and sewing papers together to make large wall hangings.
William Frucht is a photographer living in Danbury, Connecticut, and working in New Haven. His photographs have been shown in juried exhibitions in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, New York, Lancaster, PA, Greenville, SC, and elsewhere. Locally, he has received awards from the Carriage Barn Annual Photography Show in New Canaan, The Shoreline Arts Alliance Images Show in Old Lyme, and the Parfitt Photography Exhibit of the New Hampshire Art Association, Portsmouth, NH. He has also curated two exhibits of work by the Tibetan photographer Tsering Dorje: "Forbidden Memory" at City Gallery New Haven, and "Flames of My Homeland" (co-curated with Ian Boyden and Andrew Quintman) at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University. He has been a member of City Gallery since 2017.
Barbara Harder is a printmaker with a long history of involvement in New Haven’s arts scene as an artist, organizer, and teacher, including work at Creative Arts Workshop, Artspace, and Quinnipiac University.
Catherine Lavoie is a textile artist who explores human experience and the natural world utilizing repurposed and found objects. Recent work with bridal gowns create new life for garments that are typically worn once. Her handmade paintbrushes from pine needles and other natural elements add wispy marks to the fabric.
The MAKING AND UNMAKING exhibit is free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.