visual art

Holiday shoppers now have an alternative to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It’s called “Artists Sunday,” a new nationwide marketing initiative that encourages shoppers to take advantage of deep discounts on arts and crafts created by local artists.

The Yale Center for British Art has a new director. Courtney J. Martin is a Yale alumnus, returning to New Haven after her tenure as deputy director at the Dia Art Foundation. Now, she’s leading one of the largest repositories for British art in the world, outside of the United Kingdom. 

Artisans and staff with Chapel Haven Schleifer Center’s UARTS program have a new storefront in the Westville neighborhood to create and display their weavings, hand-marbled silk scarves, and other items.  

Salvador Dali and Max Ernst are among the Surrealist artists whose works are on view in Monsters & Myths, an exhibit at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. This hour, we go behind the scenes and take an in-depth look at Connecticut's place within the Surrealist movement. 

One morning last June, a giant sculpture of a heroin spoon was dropped on the campus of Purdue Pharma in Stamford. It was a piece of protest art meant to hold the pharmaceutical company responsible for its role in the opioid epidemic.

Color doesn't exist on its own.

A red rose will look different to me than it does to you. It will also look different to a pigeon, who can see way more shades and tints than most humans can see. Remember the 2015 debate over the dress? Gold & white,  blue & black or yes, some saw brown & light purple. 

I find great joy in walking in the dead of winter along the river trail near my house. Everything leaves my mind as I watch the Canadian geese take flight, their wings flapping together as they lift and swoop over my head. I'm in awe of their beauty.

The late Connecticut sculptor David Hayes liked seeing his work out in the public space. He wanted people to be able to move in and around his large, abstract steel pieces and discover the art’s meaning for themselves.

The Rorschach inkblots are ubiquitous throughout culture. They've inspired visual artists from Warhol to Alan Moore, from Gnarls Barkley to Jay Z, to the Watchmen comics. The inkblots have also become a perfect metaphor for today's polarized, relativist world. 

"What do festivals do?"

Whether it's a film festival or Edinburgh or the Venice Biennale or New Haven, we wonder what happens when you get a lot of creative stuff in one place.

I find great joy in walking in the dead of winter along the river trail near my house. Everything leaves my mind as I watch the Canadian geese take flight, their wings flapping together as they lift and swoop over my head. I'm in awe of their beauty.

Remember when video stores seemed as ubiquitous as the corner grocery store? Today, few have been able to survive the onslaught of Netflix and online streaming.

A photography and film event called PIVOTAL Hartford: Faces of Change opens Thursday in the lobby of The Bushnell Performing Arts Center. 

When Dr. David Dau "refused to volunteer" to give up his seat on United Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville earlier this week, aviation police forcibly "re-accommodated" him. And then we had what was maybe the first news cycle since the election that wasn't led by politics.

The Nose finally gets to weigh in, and it's an all-star Nose at that: Rebecca Castellani, Kinky Friedman, and Mellini Kantayya make up the panel.

The Rorschach inkblots are ubiquitous throughout culture. They've inspired visual artists from Warhol to Alan Moore, from Gnarls Barkley to Jay Z, to the Watchmen comics. The inkblots have also become a perfect metaphor for today's polarized, relativist world. 

I find great joy in walking in the dead of winter along the river trail near my house. Everything leaves my mind as I watch the Canadian geese take flight, their wings flapping together as they lift and swoop over my head. I'm in awe of their beauty.

President-elect Donald Trump has been clear about issues important to him and his supporters: Build A Wall. Repeal and Replace Obamacare. Make Better Trade Deals. On other issues, large and small, Trump and his surrogates have been more ambiguous: Russia. Climate Change. 

My mom liked Moonlight. She compares it favorably to other movies she's liked like Brokeback Mountain. But she's not sure that she left the theater a different person from when she went in, that she was transformed by the movie, that it is transcendent.

And so: Is it good enough to merely like a movie that the zeitgeist says is a masterpiece?

Legendary comic strip artist Jerry Dumas died last week in Greenwich at the age of 86. Despite a two-year battle with cancer, Dumas continued to work on comic strips like "Beetle Bailey" until just recently.

Those who knit and crochet are familiar with two standbys: needles and yarn, but there's a lesser-known material in the world of needlework -- plastic yarn, or "plarn."

September is Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month. The rare, genetic blood disorder affects roughly 100,000 people in the U.S., according to the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America.