APRIL EXHIBIT

April 1, 2026

Unravel the THREADS: STORIES IN FIBER at City Gallery

In THREADS: STORIES IN FIBER, artist Catherine Lavoie explores topics related to recovery from trauma, family roots, natures beauty, Buddhist wisdom, and a bit of whimsy. The exhibit will be on view from April 3 - April 26, with an Opening Reception and Artist Talk on Saturday, April 11 at 3 p.m. Mirroring the theme of stories, Jen Payne will present a poetry reading from her memoir Sleeping with Ghosts on Sunday, April 19 at 1 p.m.

The exhibit THREADS: STORIES IN FIBER includes work in assemblage, installation art, mixed media, photography, soft sculpture, and modern wall quilts. The art incorporates repurposed materials ranging from discarded wedding dresses and vintage doilies to high-tech power cords and plastic shopping bags. “The surprise of recognizing these everyday items in an artistic context is a key component of my work,” Lavoie explains.

“The pieces are designed to tell stories in new and reassembled ways, and to spark curiosity and initiate different ways of thinking.” One of the most meaningful stories in the show is about Helen Rita Pasternak Lavoie, Lavoie‘s mother, who would’ve been 100 years old in April 2026 and to whom this show is dedicated.”

Lavoie, a fiber artist based in Connecticut, merges traditional quilting techniques with innovative, contemporary materials to produce thought provoking artwork. Her art background includes photography, traditional quilting and mixed media. Her career as a psychotherapist informs her interest in human stories, Natures gifts, and Buddhist thought. She is a member of City Gallery, and the Kent Art Association in Kent, Connecticut.

Writer Jen Payne is inspired by the stories that move us most — love and loss, joy and disappointment, milestones and turning points. When she is not exploring our connections with one another, she enjoys contemplating our relationships with nature, creativity, and spirituality. Ultimately, she believes it is the alchemy of those things that helps us find balance in this frenetic, spinning world. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including the 2024 Connecticut Literary Anthology, Sunspot Literary Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, and The Perch (Yale). She has published five books, the most recent of which is Sleeping with Ghosts offering an intimate exploration of love, memory, and meaning.

The exhibit THREADS: STORIES IN FIBER, the opening reception and the poetry reading 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.

Exuberance

Confluence

Baseball in the Street

Lovin Life

MARCH EXHIBIT

March 1, 2026

Shooting Fast & Slow, A Photography Exhibit by William Frucht

Discover how photographer William Frucht captures a world that is simultaneously a “slow evolution” and “an infinite mad dance,” in his exhibit Shooting Fast & Slow. The show will be on view from March 6 to March 29, with Opening Reception on Saturday, March 7, 2–4 p.m. The event and exhibit are free and open to the public.

Frucht’s photography follows two distinct paths. One path — the slow path — is photographing abandoned or distressed places with a big medium-format film camera and a tripod. “The images that emerge are meditations on the slow evolution of the world,” he explains. “I am in a dialogue with the past, photographing events that unfold not over seconds and minutes but over years and decades.”

The second path — the fast path — is street photography using a small digital camera. “I immerse myself in the moment,” he says, “trying not to think but simply flow, reacting to fleeting gestures, expressions, and chance arrangements of light and shadow that flicker into existence like virtual particles and then as quickly vanish. Yet even when the world is an infinite mad dance I try to work slowly, as if slowing time itself, to wait for the moment when forms, colors, expressions fall into place.”

“Recently,” he reports, “a third path has emerged, in which I try to capture fast moments with slow processes, like an excursion into an imaginary universe that crosses reality at an angle.” Curious? Come to the City Gallery exhibit in March to how these creative paths diverge and converge.

The following bio appears on his web site. City Gallery does not guarantee its accuracy:

William Frucht is only the second person in U.S. history to win the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, the Nobel Peace Prize, and the National League Most Valuable Player Award all in the same year. Just a few years older than the city of Danbury, Connecticut, where he currently resides, he still works as an acquiring editor at Yale University Press, although his colleagues increasingly think of him as semiretired at best. In his spare time he devotes himself to remaining inconspicuous, failing upward, and using his powers for good and not evil. He is also a photographer whose work has been exhibited in multiple states as well as in private collections here and abroad. He has been a member of City Gallery since 2015.

Shooting Fast & Slow 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

February 1, 2026

In Unmuted — The Return of Color, Beatriz Olson presents a body of work that traces her journey back to voice, embodiment, and the full spectrum of color that once lay quiet beneath the demands of culture, profession, and expectation. As a Cuban immigrant, physician, and woman shaped by systems that reward discipline and invisibility, Olson learned early to mute aspects of herself in order to navigate the world. These paintings reveal the moment of reversal—when inner wisdom rises, when color becomes medicine, and when the feminine body and spirit reclaim their place as sources of knowing. The exhibit will be on view from February 6 - March 1, with Opening Reception and Artist Talk on Saturday, February 7, 2–5 p.m. A Closing Reception and Artist Talk will be held on Sunday, March 1, 2–5 p.m.

Across three interwoven series, Olson explores the architecture of womanhood, the atmospheric spaces of interiority, and the luminous power of abstraction. Anatomical echoes, meditative figures, and fluid portals of color invite viewers into a space where the body is sacred, intuition is intelligence, and spirituality emerges as a form of healing. Her palette—at times bold, at times tender—maps the emotional terrain of a life spent caring for thousands of women, listening to their stories, and witnessing the resilience held in their bodies.

In these works, color becomes a conduit for transformation. Through abstraction and symbolic form, Olson creates pathways for reflection, stillness, and generative discomfort—the kind that expands rather than contracts, that illuminates rather than obscures. Unmuted is both personal and universal: a declaration that the feminine, in all its complexity, radiance, and depth, deserves to be seen, honored, and held in the light.

Beatriz Olson is Cuban immigrant who evolved to be an artist, physician and author. Her work involves holistic approaches to healing the body mind and soul distress by using color, form and lack thereof to process emotions. Art has a way of soothing us and giving language to that which we cannot name consciously or unconsciously but affects us deeply. She has been a performance artist at Pechkucha Events in New Haven, and been part of CWOS for more than a decade.

The Unmuted 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.

JANUARY EXHIBIT

January 1, 2026

In January, City Gallery present FRAGMENTS, a group show featuring Meg Bloom, Joy Bush, and Phyllis Crowley. The fragments — echoed in the constructed poem above — include the visual perspectives seen in each of the artist’s individual works but also as they relate to each other and to the visual experience of the whole, of being and creating in this world. FRAGMENTS will be on view from January 9 - February 1, with an Opening Reception on Saturday, January 17 from 2-4 p.m. (Snow date: January 18, 2-4 p.m.)

Meg Bloom, Joy Bush, Phyllis Crowley are long-time members of City Gallery. Meg Bloom’s artwork, past and present, consists of handmade paper sculptures from kozo and abaca fibers. Some have added pigment, many have embedded plant matter, or anything else she can get her hands on. Additionally, 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 her work. Her art references nature, whether human or otherwise, and attempts, metaphorically through layering process and form, to address the broader social and environmental issues.

Joy Bush is a photographer based in Connecticut. She grew up near New York City and as a child she loved family excursions to NYC museums and theater productions. After graduating from college she discovered the magic of photography, and bought herself a Pentax Spotmatic camera. Eventually employed as a university photographer, she documented life on college campuses while developing personal bodies of work. Her photography practice involves gathering evidence: weaving autobiography with fiction. Through her personal wandering, many series have emerged, yet the one overall thread of her trajectory is paying attention to easily overlooked, obscure circumstances that have occurred prior to her arrival. In her exploration throughout the day, she captures circumstances that curiously suggest something happened or is going to happen and while humans are not physically present, traces of their actions are intriguingly omnipresent. For decades she has witnessed, embraced, and communicated joy, solitude, peace, disruption, abstraction, and irony through the photographic image.

Phyllis Crowley grew up in New York City and started photographing when she was eleven years old. She learned by taking pictures, looking at pictures, experimenting, attending workshops and reading everything she could get her hands on. She began her career working with film in a traditional black and white darkroom. The new digital technology made it much faster and easier to work with multiple images, a major interest, and move between color and black and white. She has taught at Norwalk Community College, the University of Bridgeport, and now at Creative Arts workshop. She is a member of City Gallery in New Haven and Silvermine Guild in New Canaan. She exhibits nationally and has twice received an Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Her work is in public, corporate, and private collections.

The FRAGMENTS 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.

READ: “Bush, Bloom & Crowley Piece It Together,” review by Brian Slattery