Tiny numbers at the bottom of a page: Impactful art for New Haven

By: Ellis Santoro and Andrew Marchitto

Front Entrance: Footnotes and other embedded stories, April 30–June 25, 2022, Artspace New Haven. Photo: Ellis Santoro.

April 30 notched the opening of the doors at Artspace New Haven for Footnotes and Other Embedded Stories—a group art exhibition featuring paintings, installations, videos, woodcuts, and sculptures from five local artists in the New Haven area.

The exhibit showcases the work from the 2021-2022 Happy and Bob Doran Artist-in-Residence Program, a year-long residency at the Yale University Art Gallery. Originally a fellowship designated for one artist, the program expanded to five local artists, providing funding and no stipulations for a year to create their work.

“I was interested in showing the community the diversity of their practices and not siloing it into one theme, or trying to force it into a conceptual apparatus, but instead really spending time with their works and understanding their processes, their methodologies, what they research,” said Artspace Director of Curatorial Affairs, Laurel McLaughlin. “That actually inspired the exhibition. It's called footnotes and other stories; a footnote is a citation marker at the bottom of a research page, but it can also be so many other things. Each of these artists shows their research in different ways.”

Artists Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez, Allison Minto, Joseph Smolinski, Leonard Galmon, and Julia Rooney drew inspiration for their work from the surrounding New Haven area, valuing social topics such as anti-racism, empowerment, experimentation, collaboration and support.

Gonzalez Hernandez, born and raised in New Haven, used her residency as a time to work on her craft and experiment with new ways of creating art, such as using a CNC router which is a piece of machinery that engraves or cuts through wood at a large scale.

“To have this event here means that my community is upholding me and supporting me and has really invested in me to succeed. With this, I want to reinvest back in. That's also why I'm making this work,” Gonzalez Hernandez said. “I know that this gallery is trying to reach out to people who may not normally look at art. I think that if the artwork isn't accessible to everyone, then it's a disservice. There's no reason why art should be too complicated for someone to look at, contemplate, come to their own conclusions and have the artwork give something to them.”

Installation view, Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez: Footnotes and other embedded stories, April 30–June 25, 2022, Artspace New Haven. Photo: Ellis Santoro.

The end result of Gonzalez Hernandez’s work is a beautiful print onto Masa paper. She explains, “These prints themselves look more disintegrated the closer you get while becoming clearer the farther away, and that speaks to the point of view you can maintain, while being engulfed in extremism.”

Allison Minto found her way of expressing her art through a focus on familial, found and new footage of archival elements of black women in the United States. As a photographer, she looks to highlight social issues.

“I think this program and exhibit prepares us to think about how we can work more with the community and collaborate,” Minto said.”I think that it creates a new vision and, in a way, a reimagining of coming together and sharing.”

[Allison Minto, Structures of Identity, 2022, Video] Image courtesy of Artspace New Haven. Photo: Jessica Smolinski.

Joseph Smolinski looked to the Connecticut coastlines for materials for his art pieces, Mourning Sun and Hurricane. Both art pieces are made up of sea coal that has washed up along the shore.

“We've had the chance to see each other's works in progress, have critiques together, kind of planning this exhibition out for the whole year,” Smolinski said. “So now it's it's really amazing to have this intuition.”

[Joseph Smolinski, Mourning Sun, 2022. Collection. 41 x 21 3/4 in] Image courtesy of Artspace New Haven. Photo: Jessica Smolinski.

Smolinski also dabbled in other ways to create art. His piece, Currency, is created using 3D printing while River Cairn was made with watercolor, ink, colored pencil, and graphite on paper.

[Joseph Smolinski, Currency; River Cairn, 2022. 3D Printed; Watercolor, 30 x 30 in; 41 x 61 in] Image courtesy of Artspace New Haven. Photo: Jessica Smolinski.

As is a theme of importance as noted by the artists, Footnotes and Other Embedded Stories would not be complete without the community. Each of the artists are local to the New Haven area and look to touch the community with their artwork.

“I live in New Haven and in my neighborhood people saw me loading the paintings into the truck to bring them downtown. They got really interested in it. I think especially in my neighborhood, they don't see art that often,” said artist Leonard Galmon. “This is all about exposure. It’s a chance to show work. It’s kind of like show-and-tell. You’re either by yourself or working with someone else, but you’re just in the studio trying to figure things out. Events like this are where you get to present it to the world.”

[Leonard Galmon, Lil and Lorenzo, 2020. Oil on canvas, 54 x 60 in] Image courtesy of Artspace New Haven. Photo: Jessica Smolinski.

Julia Rooney, an artist from New York, NY and a Yale School of Art graduate, values the ability to get public feedback on her work.

“Something that happened during this week was that a lot of people as they were passing by, they kind of stopped, they looked, and I even had a conversation with one person,” Rooney said. “Often, I feel like you only see an exhibition when it's done.”

[Julia Rooney, Scrollscape, 2022. Install- Window view, Julia Rooney: Footnotes ation, 18 x 64 in each] Image courtesy of and other embedded stories, April 30–

Artspace New Haven. June 25, 2022, Artspace New Haven. Photo: Jessica Smolinski. Photo: Ellis Santoro.

Rooney described of the crowded opening day, “I hope that people spend time with the work and I really hope that people come back and spend time with it in the quiet, in their own mind, contemplating it.”

Footnotes and Other Embedded Stories remains open until June 25 and will feature special programs throughout the duration.

“I definitely would love to thank the art space and UX staff because I don't think exhibitions happen with one person,” McLaughlin said. “Oftentimes, for various reasons, one name becomes associated more than others, but all of these artists were supported by communities and I was supported by the Artspace team. That’s really important to me.”