Culture & Community | Arts & Culture | Visual Arts | West Haven | Youth Arts Journalism Initiative
Susan Climard's rendering of her godsons, Emanuel and Elijah. Nelani Mejias Photos.
Soft jazz and light chatter beckoned from the door of 14 Gilbert St., where a labyrinth of arrows, twists and turns waited just beyond the entrance to the building. If a viewer followed them, they found themselves surrounded by dozens of ceramic, wood, and painted sculptures inside Susan Clinard’s open studio. Inside, a wall of photographs and a table with sculpted clay and wooden boats waited eagerly for visitors to take a look.
That scene came to West Haven last weekend, as the town joined an artist-led City Wide Open Studios effort that has grown from New Haven to West Haven to Hamden in the past year. Supported by members of the Shoreline Artists Collective (SLAC) and the arts nonprofit ArtsWest CT, the event featured 30 artists across seven locations, with many at SLAC's 14 Gilbert St.'s home.
Between them, media ranged from sculpture to photography to documentary film to public art (read more about SLAC’s artists here). It encouraged visitors, as well as those in the community, to explore what they thought they knew about art in West Haven, and make new connections.
“My work reflects the people I love,” said Clinard, a sculptor who has been creating art for 32 years, but only recently relocated from the Eli Whitney Museum Barn to 14 Gilbert St. When she creates, she hopes people “feel something they haven’t felt or considered before” and“hopes that it [her art] inspires people to grow empathy.”
That was certainly on view with “The Carrier of Our Wishes,” a fabric wishing tree that Clinard has been working on in some form since early 2022 (she first displayed the piece as part of the multi-site exhibition The Exchange in 2022. The vibrant sculpture, with strikingly bright colors and ribbon-like strips of fabric that hang gracefully from it, is one that produces a sense of connection and understanding.
“The idea of the wishing tree has been around for hundreds of years,” Clinard said. But the idea for one of her own came to her when she saw two apple trees in front of her former studio, a barn just off Whitney Avenue on the New Haven-Hamden line. She began by soliciting wishes—written on strips of fabric—from students, then friends, then fellow artists.
At first, she tied them directly onto the trees themselves. Once the rough winter winds came along—and through the ongoing hardships of the Covid-19 pandemic—the piece shifted into what it is today. It has evolved from a tree into a woman draped with the wishes of the community. Her title is meant to hold all of that meaning—and bring a viewer in to interact with it.
On one, for instance, a person has written that they wish for “Better Men!”, the sentence spelled out in bold, declarative letters against yellow ribbon. “I wish to be successful in the future,” reads another in pastel pink.
“I wish for love to guide and liberate us,” adds a white ribbon, the same color as a peace flag. On a cobalt blue strip of fabric nearby is a prayer: “I pray my husband and brother heal and grow strong after surgery.”
The humanity is immediate: Each ribbon contains a statement that someone else can identify or sympathize with. It forms a kind of connection with other viewers of the piece, in New Haven or West Haven or elsewhere.
Exploring this connectedness is a common theme in Clinard’s work. In her piece “The Waiting Room,” several sculpted figures all sit together, wearing the same solemn expression. They are perhaps at the doctor’s office or a hospital, where waiting often feels like the thing that comes before bad news. Or a train terminal, where waiting can seem endless. That’s also true of works that show personal relationships, such as two canvases hanging on her studio wall with sculpture portraits of her twin godsons, Emanuel and Elijah.
Susan Clinard's Waiting Room.
Just a three-minute car ride away, The Building Complex at 150 Front Ave. also provided a sense of connection and family. What was originally Victor Yanez’s construction business became the home of his dream, an indoor sports facility. His daughters, Sylvia and Brina Yanez, opened the building in 2023. It is, according to the building’s mission statement, “a safe place for people to come together and connect through their love of sports and community.”
There, a long-running outdoor mural project burst into vibrant color, with several different panels that together told the story of artists working together and on their own terms. There were flowers with skulls at the center, bright airbrushed waves, sport-playing robots, and cultural flags. Jader Correa, Andres Madariaga, and Carlos Perez are just some of the artists who call the Building Complex home.
Elinor Slomba, president of ArtsWestCT, called the weekend a valuable chance for artists in the area to gather, network, and ultimately collaborate. Going into the weekend, ArtsWestCT provided technical assistance. She was excited to see it take shape.
“It was really a joy to collaborate with the folks responsible for the other weekends,” she said. “It's important for these artists to know each other because that's how they build community and reach out for other opportunities to work together.”
“Connecticut has such a compressed sense of place that to be together as kind of one thing across all of these different places is a powerful statement,” she added.
Nelani Mejias is an alum of the Arts Council’s Youth Arts Journalism Initiative or YAJI, which she did in 2019. A graduate of Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, she is now a student at Southern Connecticut State University, where she is studying arts administration. Lucy Gellman contributed reporting.