For your consideration: Artists from the Artspace New Haven Flatfile was an exhibition of contemporary New Haven-area artistson view at Guilford Art Center Gallery, June 23-July 30, 2023. It included works in a range of media by D. Douglass, Austen Kim, Esthea Kim, Linda Lindroth, Jason Ting, Janet Warner, and Michael Zieff. (Read more about the artists below.)
Founded by artists in 1987, Artspace focuses on community-building, education, and providing a platform to present the work of visual artists in New Haven. Its programs encourage experimentation and civic discourse while fostering an appreciation for the vital role artists play in improving the community. Like Guilford Art Center, it foregrounds art-making as a community benefit. The sharing of work in this exhibition connects both organizations and artists in the region.
The Flatfile has long been a permanent feature of Artspace. A compilation of works that fit in a file cabinet, it serves as a resource for curators and others. Artspace’s Visual Culture Producer, Gabriel Sacco, took a seemingly simple step by moving the Flatfile from the office into the galleries, so that the drawers become literal exhibition space, not just an archive. “The file stores work to protect it, not hide it,” says Sacco. “Flatfile is about the connections we make among artists, audiences, and our shared spaces.” Bringing these artists’ works to GAC and the Shoreline extends and strengthens those connections.
Works on view included paintings, drawings, mixed media and digital creations.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
D. DOUGLAS – Demeree, artistically known as D. Douglas, is a Jamaican-American mixed media artist born and raised in Connecticut. Graduating from Temple University with a Bachelor’s in Studio Art, Demeree wanted to find a unique way to make a breakthrough into the art industry. However, it wasn’t until years later, in 2016, that Demeree’s own personal natural hair journey gave her the inspiration needed to embark on the body of work that includes the paintings you see today. A common theme you’ll see in her work is a reflection of herself – a black woman daring to “normalize” black hair by journeying through life embracing her own natural curls.
ESTHEA KIM – Esthea is an interdisciplinary artist integrating sculpture, installation and painting. Her works represent a captured notion from memories and express the sensed and theorized through fading and poetic imagery in a visually succinct way. Transposed from her perception, her painting transfers atmospheric vastness into repeated gestural brushstrokes and built up textures. While fleetingly capturing light in-between layers, these brushstrokes combine with hard-edged elements, condensing infinite views and the unseen into a single flattened composition. Esthea’s sculptural objects and installations are industrial yet organic. Focusing on the inherent qualities of materials, she expands the use of prefabricated and utilitarian items into more organic forms.
JASON TING – Jason Ting (b. 1986, Johor Bahru, Malaysia) is an American new media artist. He uses a variety of creative coding tools to create abstract animated visuals that explore the interaction of form, color, and motion. His work is inspired by forces found in nature, geometric patterns, and light.
Ting is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego’s Interdisciplinary Computing and Arts program. He lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.
AUSTEN KIM – South Korean adoptee, grew up in New Haven. Worked as a chef prior to pursuing drawing/painting. Currently studying at LAFA (Lyme Academy) and working part-time as a gallery attendant.
LINDA LINDROTH – Linda Lindroth is an artist and writer who lives and works in New Haven, CT. Her work incorporates all media particularly still photographs. She has exhibited her photographs and mixed media artwork in over 100 solo and group shows in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the former Yugoslavia and is represented in numerous public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Newark Museum, and the International Polaroid Collection. Lindroth earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Art from the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art from Douglass College/Rutgers. She is the co-author of Virtual Vintage: The Insider’s Guide to Buying and Selling Fashion Online published by Random House in 2002. She has taught courses in visual culture at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT since 1998.
Linda Lindroth frequently collaborates with her husband, architect Craig Newick, and their work has been exhibited at the Architecture League of New York , Fairfield University and Wesleyan University and has earned them many awards and prizes including three design awards from I.D. (International Design) Magazine and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art.
Lindroth has received 3 Artists Fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts three for the NJ State Council on the Arts and another from the National Endowment for the Arts. Craig Newick has a Master of Architecture degree from Yale University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Architecture from Lehigh University. In 1997-8 Newick was awarded a Fellowship in Sculpture from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and another in 1993-4 from the NEA/New England Foundation for the Arts. Newick is a registered architect in the State of Connecticut, a member of the American Institute of Architects and the Connecticut Society of Architects and the winner of several AIA design awards. He is the principal in Newick Architects in New Haven.
JANET WARNER – I am an artist and educator based in the New Haven Connecticut area. I graduated with my MFA in 2017 from Western Connecticut State University. I am an Adjunct Professor of Studio Arts at three institutions. I teach color theory, design, painting, and drawing at Quinnipiac University, Gateway Community College and at Community College of Rhode Island. For the past several years I have been actively showing my work in group shows throughout the Connecticut and New York areas. I have a studio in Erector Square where my grandma and her sisters worked during WWII.
My art practice has changed dramatically from the landscape work I was doing, to a nonobjective exploration in color. I found myself slowly removing the representational component within my work and started to focus on the raw exploration of color and color relationships. I no longer need subject matter to be the vehicle for my painting but rather let the color stand alone. I allow the process to dictate the color boundaries and color relationships within the paintings. Isolating my focus on color has broadened my relationship and understanding of color space.
The shift in my work was a slow process, there were several experiences that influenced this shift . The first was in 2017 I started working as a draftsman on several Sol Lewitt wall drawings for the Lewitt estate. This started a deeper understanding and dialogue with nonrepresentational work. The second influence was the pandemic. During this period, I was teaching Foundation art courses at three different colleges virtually, I would paint in parallel with my students on their projects. I created a lot of small nonobjective designs on paper, and once the semester ended, I found myself in the studio wanting to recreate these small works into large scale paintings. Losing the subject matter was not an easy step but once I did, I found myself within my work again This is the beginning a spark that has sent me down a road that is footed in process color and design.
“All I need” was the first painting in this body of work were I directly copied my small works on paper. It focused on saturation and muted color creating space within the design. I wanted the saturation of the circles to pull forward while the muted colors reseeded into deeper space creating a figure ground relationship. My designs shift in ever paintings, I am thinking about balance, space, and how my designs interact with the edges of my canvas. I make all my own canvas, so the size and ratio plays a part in this process of drawing the design. Some of the paintings start with a very specific color pallet that I chose for that piece. I will mix colors using all different pigments within the hue family to see the differences between the mixtures. Most recently I have started to incorporate some tessellations within the designs, I am excited to see where this takes me with in my work.
MOCHAEL ZIEFF (Corey) – Born and raised in Stratford, CT, my family would meet my grandparents, aunts, and cousins at Seaside Park in Bridgeport for lunch, we would picnic in the shade of a big tree, on the grass next to the beach and water.
As a young child walking onto the sand to get a drink from the water fountain in the middle of the sandy beach, I was mesmerized by the colors and shimmer of the jingle shells in the sand, they looked like mermaid toenails to me. These shells are collected by so many beach goers and brought home to display in glass jars.
At least 10 years ago I began to see seashell products with flattened shells in stores coming from overseas, and it made me wonder if I could do a similar process of flattening the jingle shells from our beaches.
Through a series of experiments, I was able to flatten the shells and create this seashell art.
I have always loved creating, with sewing, costume jewelry, cooking and playing with other types of visual art.
Creating is a passion, provides me focus and attention, prompts for research, and to learn about new techniques for creating art.
