Hamden | Arts & Culture | Youth Arts Journalism Initiative
Top: Borden talks about her work. Bottom: Artist Gregory Garvey with “The Poetics of Mass-Weighted Medium Diameter.” Shifting Senses runs at the Whitney Center through Jan. 8 2025. Ruby Szekeres Photos.
Residents of the Whitney Center surrounded the large screen. Carefully, they used their fingers to summon a series of water droplets, soon immersed in a three-dimensional rendering of the world. As they swiped their fingers, lush leaves appeared to sway in the falling rain.
Gregory Garvey’s “The Poetics of Mass-Weighted Medium Diameter” is part of Shifting Senses, running at the Whitney Center at 200 Leeder Hill Dr. through Jan. 8 of next year. A group show from artists Marsha Borden, Melanie Carr, Leila Daw, Garvey and Beth Klingher, the exhibition encourages viewers to not only look at, but also touch and feel the pieces of art.
“Having something that the residents could interact with and use a different one of their senses was the goal of this exhibition,” said Debbie Hesse, the curator of the show. Originally, she wanted to incorporate things like smell and sound, but decided to save that for the future. “I was just so happy to have everyone here and see art differently.”
That tactile appeal was apparent in work from Garvey, a professor of game design at Quinnipiac University. The founder of the Game Design & Development Program in Quinnipiac's Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Garvey uses the same technology that engineers and developers use in tablets and phones. When people touch the screen, it reacts with sound effects and movement to the scenery.
That kind of approach also resonated for Borden, a former school psychologist who now focuses on environment and sustainability in her work (in full disclosure, she is also this reporter’s mother). With funding from a 2022 Connecticut Sea Grant, she created large wall pieces weaving yarn and crochet shapes into chicken wire. They are meant to depict dangerous algal blooms in the Long Island Sound.
“We were just so impressed with how Marsha incorporated her education into the art world,” resident Irma Bachman. “Having art here helps me connect to my family, because it gives us something to talk about and something for me to show them."
Speaking to an audience of residents and art lovers, Carr (pictured at left, with Debbie Hesse) also spoke to the value of experiencing art with more than one sense. Her pieces, which are designed to be interactive, live in libraries and galleries, as well as private collections.
On one slide, she focused on one large piece that formed a giant wedge. The slide was covered with pictures of a person interacting with the wedge in different positions.
“To me, art is about shapes and space and just how you use your body to interact with it,” Carr said. In the exhibition, she has installed pieces with soft colors and different shapes. Her hope was for the residents to think more deeply about themselves around the art and how they interpreted it.
Klingher, who was at the opening, created scenery using stones and mosaic tiles. Her artwork hung on the walls with lush colors looking like paintings from afar. By a window, she set up a sandbox by a window which was full of stones, cement shapes and a phew of her mosaic pieces.
“When the artist creates the piece, they get to really interact with it, feeling the materials,” she said. “It’s great that in this show, normal people get to experience that.”
Top: Irma Bachman and her friend. Bottom: Klingher's work.
For some of the residents, the show presented a unique learning curve. Evelyn Krevolin, a resident who also oversees art programming at the Whitney Center, was having trouble touching the objects. She herself is an artist, and covers canvases with oil painted flowers.
“I’m not quite sure of these pieces of art,” she said. “I think that art is for looking at, not for touching.”
For Hesse, that learning curve is part of the process.
“It’s a lot of work to get everything up and coordinated,” she said. “But it is worth it for all of these people.”
This article comes from the 2024 Cohort of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative. Ruby Szekeres is a sophomore at the Sound School.