Real Public Artist Talk at Real Art Ways

The Bike visiting Real Art Ways

Thursday night, I returned to my old neighborhood, Parkville, to hear two of the participating artists of Real Public art project speak about their work and creating work based on the Frog Hollow and Parkville communities. The two artists speaking were Margarida Correia and Sofia Moldonado.

Photo of Real Public artists by Steven Laschever

If you haven't traveled through Parkville and Frog Hollow, you may not have noticed some of the public art that is adorning Park Street and Pope Park. Curated by Real Art Ways, the project brought together four contemporary artists from England, Portugal, Puerto Rico, and United States to create public art based on the neighborhoods they were working in. Ms. Correia was naturally selected to produce photography based on the Portuguese community in Parkville, while Ms. Moldonado produced a large mural on a building in the latino neighborhood of Frog Hollow.

Sofia Moldonado in front of her mural on the Pelican Tattoo building. Photo by Steven Laschever

The talk was in the Real Room, near the cafe, which was intimate for the session. Ms. Moldonado began, presenting slides of her work which are amazing large 'graphiti influenced' murals throughout Puerto Rico. Her work is very whimsical, with a beautiful flowing lines. Her work is equally influenced by an intense imagination, nature (as some of her storm based work), and skateboard culture. Most impressive is the 125' highway wall she painted in Puerto Rico. Hartford should have more public art on our buildings.

Margarida Correia with one of her subjects, Adelaide Vida. Photo by Steven Laschever

I'll confess, the main draw for me to visit the artist talk was to see fellow Portuguese artist Margarida Correia. As it turns out, I had missed her 2005 photo opening at Real Art Ways, but had seen the images up, coincidentally, when my film about travels to Portugal premiered at Real Art Ways the same fall. (Crazy small Portuguese town...) The 2005 exhibit was entitled 'Saudade' - a Portuguese word that means 'longing for the past' and is a very powerful theme in many Portuguese art, literature, and Fado music. In her photography - both in the former exhibit and her current Public Art - Ms. Correia captures that mysterious longing for the past and enters the pantheon of great Portuguese artists. In her current exhibit, banners with album covers from the collection of Portuguese DJ adorn the lamp posts along the Portuguese section of Park Street while Fado music plays. The entrance way to this exhibit is marked by a billboard with an image of Nazare, a popular beach in Portugal frequented by many immigrants in the area. What is most telling of this image is that the beach is actually uninhabited (a very rare sight, to be sure). That empty beach accentuates that longing to be there by the working class Portuguese community, their oasis, just out of reach, but always in their mind. Always longing for the feelings created by yesterday's music, listened to on a trip to the beach with your family and friends. I suppose, it's like a public mix tape to our culture.

As usual, my review can't do justice to the work of these artists, so get on your bikes and head down Park Street to experience their work.

(Thanks to Abby Ohlheiser and Meghan Dahn for reminding me of the discussion, and to Kristina Newman-Scott for curating the exhibit and facilitating the artist talks)

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Open Studio at The Workshop at Billings Forge

Painting by Alyssa Drake

After pledging to ride my bike everywhere, Wednesday evening offered an opportunity to visit an Open Studio walk at The Studio at Billings Forge in Frog Hollow. It was a great night to be out, see some new art, hang out with some friends and hear some live music (playing at the Firebox). Full story and photos after the jump.

Let's start with this disclaimer: I'm no art critic. Film critic, yes, art critic, despite working in the arts, no. So my basis for discussing this is about visiting this interesting project and seeing how the inaugural group of artists worked this summer. 'The Workshops at Billings Forge' is an interesting concept: spinning out of the success of the multi-use performance space, The Studio at Billings Forge, The Workshops is a new 3 month residency for artists to work and instruct. The management at Billings Forge convert 5 studio apartments along The Firebox Restaurant into studio workshops for artists. The deal: they each get a space for 3 months, while offering time to teach art to the youth that live in the Billings Forge community.


The initial group of artists from this summer were Jeff Cowie, Alyssa Drake, Jonathan Frechette, Matt Morello, and Kyle Andrew Phillips. Of them all, I'd only known Jeff Cowie via mutual friends, but had never seen his work, so I can feel free to slam his art (/sarcasm! I actually loved his surreal collage work! And I ended up spending the rest of the art opening in his workshop, which was a great environment. Jeff had set it up as if it were all still a workshop in the midst of art being created. Visitors weren't visiting a gallery but an artist finding inspiration for art and creating it while sitting around drinking cherry brandy and talking about the experience. Even fellow local artists Walter Wick and Sam Mckinniss stopped in to hang out and talk.

While Jonathan Frechette and Jeff Cowie were the veteran artists, seeing the presentation and art of new blood Alyssa Drake, Matt Morello, and Kyle Andrew Phillips was very inspiring for me. Matt Morello's studio was first and a fresh change from Cowie & Frechette's very chaotic spaces (as I said, clearly, they'd been caught in the act of creating art). Mr. Morello presented adaptations of cartoon and comic book panels and scenes, but with the characters absent. Only minor details of the classic characters were presented, often times resembling just the background waiting for the cartoon figure to be layered over it. Each piece was altered in various ways, sometimes to emphasize the action lines and cloud of confusion in cartoons, other times to detail a seemingly serene background. My favorites were of two cartoon nature scenes with the cartoon gun sound effect 'BLAM' on them. The violence inherit but missing offered much to the viewers' imagination. While there, Mr. Morello was still working on pieces, including a new technique of layering images over images.

The most professional looking gallery (sorry everyone else) was Mr. Phillips: one felt like they were entering a storefront art gallery in the Village, with the attention given to the set up. The process of creating art wasn't there, only the end result: an eloquent exhibit of detailed paintings of tools and backgrounds. Most notable standout was his tribute to the American artistEdward Hopper influenced. As an admirer of still lifes, I was incredibly impressed with his detailed series of tools from the forge.

The final workshop was Alyssa Drake, who along with Matt Morello and Kyle Phillips, is a graduate of the University of Hartford Art School. Miss Drake's workshop was an interesting combination of work in progress and gallery. Similarly, her work displayed a combination of techniques, from oil, to water color to illustration. As a former illustrator, I was very taken with her line work and color. Similarly, she presented her art on found and recycled pieces, from every day scraps of paper illustrated with colorful images of Mary to pieces of cardboard with detailed studies. As I told Miss Drake, this Open Studio made me look forward to the future works of all the artists. Equally inspiring was that this activity happened in the heart of a neighborhood in Hartford.

Photo by MiraHartford

Works by Jonathan Freshette

Collage by Jeff Cowie

Illustration by Matt Morello

Illustration by Matt Morello

Paintings by Alyssa Drake

Illustration by Alyssa Drake

Apologies to Mr. Phillips, I didn't get any photos of his art. To be fair, I don't think I would have done justice to his presentation. As it is, these simple iPhone camera shots don't justice to detailed work of these fine artists.

If you're interested in finding out more about Billings Forge and their projects, why not join their 'Farm to Table Dinner Fundraiser'

A special farm dinner showcasing
the best of the season’s harvest and supporting
the non-profit initiatives at
Billings Forge Community Works.

Thursday, September 17th, 6 pm
Billings Forge Farmers’ Market Green
539 Broad Street (next to Firebox), Hartford
Entertainment, auctions, food, wine &
a memorable evening.
Casual dress for an outdoor event.

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River runs under it

River runs under it, originally uploaded by Mira Hartford.

Pic of the day: View of the Whitehead Highway, Downtown Hartford. As I
was drinking my refreshing iced tea on this summer day, all I though
while staring at this was, "How much cooler would it be if the Park
River was still running through Hartford under that bridge instead of
covered up by that stretch of asphalt?"

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Biking Hartford

My current ride to get around the Hartbeat

As I'm trying to get past my summer of emo funk, I've decided that one way to beat it is to ride my bike around the capitol city as much as I can. Ok, there are a few other reasons, such as having found myself both car-blocked (several cars blocking mine in the driveway) and also car-useless (long embarrassing story that you don't deserve to know!). Another reason is my need to get into shape, or at least sculpt this 'doughy nerd' shape that I currently have. So, I'm mustering up a plan to add to my already far too big list of things to do that my ADD keeps me from focusing on. This one consists of me riding to places on my bike, photographing it, and posting it. I kill two birds this way (no offense, Robin): I get some exercise and get a blog post out of it that I must post! Let's see how this works out for me, shall we?


Oh, speaking of bicycles and blogging, check out the new blog by my friend, Ryan McMasters, Spinning Gears! Also on the bike-blog front, visit our new contributor, El Presidente de China's new blog, New London Commercial Fishermen's Blog. Between us, and the always classy Beat Bike Blog, we're going to remind people that Hartford is still a bicycle city and that roads were always intended for bicycles!

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Nicole Hale @ La Paloma Sabanera TODAY @ 5pm

Apologies for the last minute post, but only now saw my Facebook invite to this cool sounding event. From Luis Cotto's invite:

Singer/Songwriter Nicole Hale blesses La Paloma before she's off to her next destination as she travels thruought the country.

La Paloma Sabanera Coffeehouse is located at 405 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT. The show starts at 5pm, so get there quick from work. It goes until 7pm.

From the invite, a little more about Ms. Hale:

Nicole was born in Texas, raised in Ruidoso, NM and began playing piano at age six. A self proclaimed 'bad student', she felt a connection to music at a young age, performing for anyone who would listen. Influenced by "genuine, non-genre specific artists", she began creating her own music at 18 and taught herself guitar. Her accordion, a gift from her best friend at 19, would add another element to the mix. Growing up, Nicole had a love for Mariachi bands of the Southwest, and thought accordion would be both: a challenging instrument to learn and a unique way for her to find her own voice as a musician.

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From biking in Hartford to Globe Bikes

A vintage catalogue for Columbia and Hartford Bicycles; look that dude mac on her!

Since beginning this blog several years ago, two of the topics I love to discuss and promote are Hartford's rich history and bicycles. The great thing is how intertwined their histories are: Hartford was the home of the first commercial bicycle production with Pope Manufacturing and their Columbia and Hartford models! Therefore, along with our friends at Beat Bike Blog and our new correspondent, El Pres, we love to promote the return of bicycle lifestyle to our fair Capitol City. So I personally am excited about Globe Bicycles reaching out to the blogging community with their The Globe Experience Project. (Hat tip to Matt at Bike Hacks!) bicycling!

It's not hard to want to promote a bicycle company that asks,

Do you dream of a world where bikes are the majority - where cars come with a sticker that says "Use Sparingly"? Or perhaps you've been thinking of going carless or car minimalist lately...

Any company that invites us to rethink how we live with a fun twist works for me. So here is my blog entry on how I would help Globe Bicycles promote urban bicycling lifestyle. My bike photos from over the years can be found on flickr.

My dad taught me an appreciation and love of bicycles while growing up. He would always tell me anecdotes of riding his bicycles around his hometown in Portugal... and falling off them when he wasn't paying attention. For example, there was the time he was reading his daily paper while riding home and rode right into the ravine. It's ironic that he immigrated to Hartford, a former industrial town where Albert Pope manufactured some of the first American made bicycles and worked to popularize bicycles and bike culture in this country. Bicycles were always part of my life growing up in Hartford, when every summer, my cousins and friends would ride them all over the neighborhood where Pope Manufacturing built the original Columbias and Hartford models. (Here's another little irony: I currently live three houses down from Pope's former house, wonderfully adorned with a decorative high wheel bicycle!)

For a while though, I fell into the horrible habit of driving around everywhere. It was that post-college era, where nothing seemed to be in my hometown and seemed to requiring commuting via car. It took almost 7 years to shake that and I've slowly begun to appreciate and love the bicycling lifestyle. I found a great independent bicycle shop in CT that had a pre-owned bike for sale. Bought and never thought twice. I've got it running fine, albeit it's a bit heavy at times. No, I don't do the clothing, the bike talk, or some of the hardcore things and I'm only now getting more adept at biking. Nonetheless, I'm focusing on becoming a better bike commuter and promoter, like my friends in the area. Mostly, I feel in a city that was one of the original homes to the bicycle, we should see them every where. Yet, sadly, it's fallen by the wayside.

I suppose this is where I ask for a new bike to help promote my biking lifestyle and which I can promote on my blog. For the past few years, I've promoted riding my bike and working on them as often as I can. From attending a weekly bar night that most of my friends ride their bikes, to riding it to work as often as I can (sometimes, the bus is too inviting), to shopping (my first hardware store trip was just the other day!) to simply getting around to visit my folks in our old neighborhood. Just recently, I acquired two old Peugeots to fix up. They got my dad pretty excited as he was able to really help with break them down and fix them; something he's not done since he was in Portugal.

A Globe Bicycle in my care would not only offer me a new bike to experience living, but would continue to promote this healthy lifestyle as I donate my current bicycle to someone in need of one. In Hartford, many working class residents - mostly immigrants or refugees from other countries - rely on bicycles to get around to school or work or both. Being active in the community, I'd make certain that my old bicycle would be put to that use. And be able to give my dad a new bike, my Peugeot that he and I have been restoring (shhh, it's a surprise for him). I owe him; I busted up his actual Peugeot 505 a decade ago. Not only would Globe be getting coverage on my blog, but it would be assisting me to get to events in Hartford that I can blog about.

Nonetheless, thanks, Globe Bicycles for doing something positive to help people out.

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