Open Studios Shines As Artist-Led Effort

 “Everyone Can Make Art,” a two-day community quiltmaking practice, was one of the event's special activities. Lucy Gellman Photos.

Daniel “silencio” Ramirez leaned over a strip of blue cotton, carefully cutting out the numbers 2-1-2 in honor of the bus that shuttles him through Fair Haven each morning. Around the table, the whisper of scissors on fabric mingled with rising conversation, new shapes appearing one by one. Every so often, artist Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez rose for a handful of beads, and then returned to her spot. 

Across the room, artist Akosua Aidoo put the finishing touches on an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, marveling at the way it spread its bright, waxy wings across Audrey Simon’s cheeks. Audrey, who is seven, beamed as she caught a glimpse in the camera on Aidoo’s phone.  

That sense of human connection defined the first ever artist-led City Wide Open Studios at Erector Square, which took over the giant Peck Street complex, as well as Bregamos Community Theater and the MarlinWorks Building in East Rock, Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Four months after Artspace New Haven officially closed its doors on Orange Street, over a dozen artists worked together to bring back the signature fall event. In total, over 85 artists showed their work.  

It’s a labor of love months in the making. For over two decades, Artspace ran the event, ultimately changing the name to “Open Source” after a leadership transition in 2021. Then in January of this year, Executive Director Lisa Dent announced her resignation, leaving the fall festival hanging in the balance. By June, artists had stepped in to fill the gap. 

Akosua Aidoo, who runs Akosua’s Wonderful World of Art.

“It feels great,” said artist Eric March, who led the effort alongside artists including Martha Lewis, Oi Fortin, Niko Scharer, Allison Hornak and multimedia collaborators and curators from across the city. “Putting together a bunch of people to do anything is hard, but this has been such a collective effort. Everybody has been so appreciative and positive. I think this year, people feel like they have skin in the game.” 

Even before Saturday’s festivities officially began, Erector Square was bustling with activity, artists buzzing through its labyrinthine hallways and hustling up the staircases with snacks, bottles of water, last-minute canvases and cans of paint before visitors arrived in their studios. Just beyond the entrance to building three, glass artist Karen Hibbs put the final touches on her studio, making room for a pop-up café from Crossroads Coffeehouse in the front of her space. 

Inside, sculpted, bright panes of glass peeked out in every direction, vibrant against the lush leaves of half a dozen potted plants. On one, a jade alligator scurried up a panel of amber-colored glass, its jaws opening to expose sharp teeth inside. Just inches above its head, a Madagascar ammonite curled into itself, a spray of white speckles across the shell. Nearby, 12 stone scarabs sat frozen in place around sculpted metal and glass work.

Karen Hibbs: “It’s really all about community. It’s about the people.”  

For Hibbs, the weekend was a cause for celebration. Three decades ago, she moved into a studio in Erector Square, changing buildings to her first-floor studio in 2016. For years, she participated in Open Studios, and watched as “it kind of fell apart” in 2021 and 2022. It was during that time, she said, that the studio also kept her sane: she came in every day during Covid-19 lockdown, working on new pieces as the commercial art world shut down around her. 

Even now, she comes in a minimum of five days a week, often accompanied by a Russian Toy Terrier named Jasper. The space is where magic happens: she’s able to lose herself in the process of sawing, sculpting, molding and modeling, of firing her work, and then doing it all over again. So when she heard that Open Studios was coming back as a do-it-yourself effort, she was thrilled. 

“It’s been a real seat-of-the-pants operation,” she said, still jazzed from a reception that unfolded Friday evening. At the event, she met artists who had been in Erector Square for years, but never made it over to the adjoining buildings. “It’s really all about community. It’s about the people.”  

Heather Mahoney with her photograph "On The Other Side of the Wardrobe."

Just outside her studio, those words came to life as the hallways transformed into temporary exhibition spaces for artists who practice in their homes or have studios outside of New Haven. As she set up boxes of work, photographer Heather Mahoney said she was excited to show her work after turning to it as a form of pandemic-era ritual, and “really evolving” as an artist during the past three years. Saturday also felt like a homecoming: both of her parents are artists who have shown their work at Open Studios, and had come out to support.   

A therapist by day, Mahoney turned to photography during the first year of Covid-19 lockdown, capturing deer and close-up nature shots during her walks in East Rock Park. At home, all of her patients were suddenly online, and she would spend hours listening closely to them on a screen, trying to protect her own mental health while also taking care of theirs. Her walks gave her the space that she needed to process a world turned completely on its head. 

“I think because everything slowed down, I just noticed more [of the world] around me,” she said. “It was a mindfulness practice.”

Top: Artists Heather and Ed Gendron. Bottom: Artist Danny Ravizza, who read about CWOS in the New Haven Independent, and brought pen, ink, and marker drawings inspired by graffiti on found objects that included campaign lit and notices from the electric company. He was donating the weekend's proceeds to the New Haven homeless advocacy group U-ACT. 

Down the hall, artist Ed Gendron set up several of his prints, including new work that binds past and present in Blocks and Bridges at Creative Arts Workshop through the end of the month. Nearby, his wife Heather soaked in the scene, taking the weekend to think about the kind of art she might churn out next. “I’m taking the time to incubate,” she said. 

After displaying his work for years at the Goffe Street Armory when Artspace was still running Open Studios, Gendron said he’s happy to see the festival come back to the artists who may hold it most dear. When attendees are able to separate themselves from the buttoned-up formality of galleries, he said, there’s something magical that happens in artist-to-artist conversation.      

“I love doing these things!” Gendron said as he laid out prints, ducking beneath a ladder on which artist Dan Gries was doing electrical work. “Gallery shows are quite nice, but I tend to get a lot more feedback at these events.” 

Rancourt: Ecstatic to have CWOS back. 

Two buildings over, artist Keith Rancourt prepared to welcome visitors to his studio, arranging a series of small canvases beside a miniature landscape of the globe. Born and raised in Meriden, Rancourt moved into Erector Square during the pandemic, fulfilling a longtime goal to work out of a studio in the Elm City (“I call it my little New York,” he said, adding that he loves taking walks around the neighborhood and into East Rock Park). 

Like many of the artists who have made the building their home, he was excited to see Open Studios return as an effort led by artists. While his studio has only been at Erector Square for the past three years, he’s been coming to New Haven since the 1980s, and attending Open Studios since its inception. “I’m ecstatic,” he said. “One of the greatest parts of the year has always been October.” 

He had new work to show off too, he added. Since the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, his work has taken on an activist tenor, with a sharp eye toward environmentalism and climate change in the last two years. Saturday, he pointed out a quartet of new canvases, none larger than an index card, inspired by the smog from Canadian wildfires that engulfed the city earlier this year. In each, the sun appeared as an angry ball of pink and orange caught behind a hazy, peach-and-gray smokescreen. 

In the hallway outside his studio, installations inspired by East Rock Park, the Ukraine War, and his own PTSD and mental health as a veteran all waited eagerly for visitors. One, titled Après l’incendie (After the Fire), imagined East Rock Park after a forest fire, with charred, spindly trees rising into the air. 

Top: Rancourt's work inspired by the war in Ukraine. Bottom: Artist Eric March.

Upstairs, March was still setting up, bouncing between a colorful phalanx of full seltzer bottles and the bright, large canvases that line his walls. Currently, he said, he’s working on a cycle of large paintings inspired by the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, in which his characters inevitably find themselves in conflict with each other. On one wall, a fleet of lifeguards lifted a boat to perform a rescue operation, but found that they couldn’t go anywhere, because half were headed in opposite directions. 

It seemed like an apt metaphor for recent Open Studios events, where there was a mismatch of Artspace’s capacity and artists’ expectations of the weekend. And it seemed, too, right on time. Earlier this year, it was his website and announcement—released on the same day that Artspace made its closure public—that let New Haveners know Open Studios would be returning. Since that time, he said, he’s watched artists pull together to make the weekend a success. 

He shouted out Lewis, who during the planning phases often reminded artists that “nobody else is going to do it for you,” so they might as well do it for themselves. Organizers took it to heart, he said.  When he expressed interest in more genuine contact with Fair Haven, Gonzalez Hernandez was there with her collective Fair-Side to make it happen. When he wanted live music, Scharer and Bregamos Founder Rafael Ramos worked together to bring in different groups. The City of New Haven came through with American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding that had been allocated to the Department of Arts, Culture & Tourism. 

Ravizza's work. 

Collaborators kept coming onboard. Bridgeport-based radio station WPKN, where Lewis has been a host for years, came in to broadcast live from what was, a century ago, A.C. Gilbert’s studio. Curator and artist Maxim Schmidt, who has braved his own year of transition, stepped on board to manage a small army of volunteers. Artist Allison Hornak worked to bring in guest curators including nico w. okoro and David Borawski. A Black-owned food truck rounded out the event. 

Now, March said, the question isn’t whether an artist-led effort can work (spoiler: it can and it has), but “can we sustain this over time?” In the future, he said, he would love to grow it into a deeper relationship with the Fair Haven neighborhood, and the artists who have long thrived there but never been invited into an event like City Wide Open Studios. 

Down several flights of stairs, studio mates Hornak and Amira Brown finished installing their work as Hornak’s parakeet Mantis flew overhead, filling the space with birdsong. A lifelong New Havener, Brown prepared to show work from their time at the University of Connecticut, where she attended and chose to leave a graduate program last year. 

Artist Amira Brown installs The Guts.

Across the walls, black and brown paint spread across bits of paper, some scraps attached to each other with chrome-colored zip ties. Small boxes, repainted and tipped to the side, became strange and foreign objects. Packing tape wrapped around lengths of paper and plastic. If a viewer came in close to one, they could make out sketches of body parts, humanoid shapes, and phrases. 

On one, fastened to the wall, the words The prevailing view is that there’s nothing good about u scrolled across the surface. Brown explained that the works are largely about being a student of color at UConn, which remains an extremely white campus and art program. 

“I’m really happy about it coming back,” Brown said of Open Studios’ return, putting the final touches on an installation titled The Guts. Hornak’s parakeet Toby sang out, as if in agreement. “I was away for a year, and didn’t hear anything about it. So when I heard that artists were continuing it, it was really healing for me.”

Hornak, who has worked in Erector Square for seven years and made it a daily practice since 2019 (that’s where the parakeets come in), agreed. As attendees began to arrive, she finished setting up pieces in her After The Library series, in which each work pairs a grid or cage-like shape with a chewing action. 

As she caught up with Borawski in a corner of her studio, a cage peeked out, its fastened parts studded with chestnuts that had been chewed by a red squirrel that lives on her block on Elm Street. In the divots and dips left by tiny, chewing teeth, she had added wads of chewed gum, each of them now dry and covered with a colorful film. 

“For me, engaging with art is engaging with the world and the self,” she said. As Toby and Mantis began to chip, it felt like the day could officially begin.       

Back in building three, Ramirez ushered in a steady stream of visitors to the room for “Everyone Can Make Art,” a two-day community quiltmaking practice for creatives of all ages. The child of Salvadoran immigrants, Ramirez grew up in Fair Haven, falling in love with art during his time at New Haven Academy. In part, he credits Fair-Side Founder Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez, who at the time was his senior peer advisor. 

Top: Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez. Bottom: Sisters Thea, 3, and Audrey Simon, 7.

The two have remained friends since: Ramirez was part of Fair-Side’s inaugural exhibition at the Fair Haven Branch Library earlier this year, and he was one of the first artists Gonzalez Hernandez thought to call when March reached out to her to collaborate. While Ramirez is a mixed media and cyanotype artist, he said, he couldn’t stop thinking about quilting when he heard about the weekend. 

“The first thing that came to my mind was a quilt,” he said, adding that he was inspired by his studies in weaving with Lucienne Coifman at Creative Arts Workshop. “It holds a lot of meaning for families.”

Gonzalez Hernandez said it resonated with her too: she is Oaxacan, a legacy that includes a rich and storied history of textiles and embroidery. Each year, she treks out to Poughkeepsie for a Guelaguetza, a celebration of Oaxacan history and culture. So when she heard about the quilt, she was excited to help. Both she and Ramirez shouted out EcoWorks, which came on as a partner to provide beads, thread, fabric, and other supplies. 

“It’s a great thing to celebrate my culture,” she said. Several years into her career as an artist, she also includes Fair Haven in that history. As she worked, friends December and Sophie chatted with her about the neighborhood, finding common ground as Gonzalez Hernandez described sharing a bedroom with her parents and brother. “It just felt so big.”      

Martha Lewis. 

Up two flights of stairs, Lewis buzzed around her studio, stopping to talk about a new series of pieces she’d done with the artist Marion Belanger. On one wall, a layered piece seemed to glow, the reds and golds catching in the light as the layers danced. Outside, a series of bright flags from Thoughts and Prayers, a collaboration with artist Margaret Roleke, fluttered above the door frame. 

Between descriptions of each project, she praised the steps artists have taken to get to Open Studios this year, including the city’s support for the weekend and the project. It may not be the same “spectacle” it was when Artspace ran it, she said—but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

“It’s great!” she said. “I think it’s much better when artists run it. We can do what we want, when we want it.”  

Read more coverage of this year’s City Wide Open Studios here and here in the New Haven Independent. The celebration will continue this coming weekend with Open Studios in Westville and the neighborhood’s signature Giant Puppet and People Making Mayhem Parade on Sunday Oct. 29 at 11 a.m.