The most celebrated series in the artist’s oeuvre thus far, Kurland’s Girl Pictures (1997–2002) is emblematic of teenage experience. Started in New Haven, Connecticut, the series tells a fictional story of an empowered community of young women. The series was acquired by the Wadsworth in 2022.

By documenting teenage girls as rebels at play in bucolic frontier landscapes, the series offers a feminist recasting of vagabond narratives like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) in photographs made between Connecticut and California—including New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas among others.

Kurland took to the American road on solo trips over five years beginning in 1997 while attending graduate school at Yale University. Living out of a van, the artist befriended various groups of local girls across the country, explained her photographic series, then dressed, staged, and photographed the invented, utopian scenes. The complete series of 69 works is loosely grouped into themes including camps, tents, and forts; animals; balls and games; boy torture; grooming and erotics; rivers, roads, forests, and coastlines; and large groups. A fully illustrated catalogue is available for purchase in the Museum Shop.

Highlights of the museum’s modernism and surrealism collections will be displayed in a fresh configuration in the suite of three galleries adjacent to Avery Court. The installation presents European and American artworks in dialogue, allowing for new juxtapositions and fresh insights, including new acquisitions such as Georg Tappert’s Geisha Revue, 1911/13, as well as works recently returned from loan.

Bae’s painting installation explores societal barriers and personal relationships, touching on themes of hope, inclusion, uncertainty, and love. Her latest project, A Rite of Passage, started with the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, during which time Bae experienced physical assaults and psychological violence living in New York City. COVID-19 exposed many ugly facets of our society – notably pervasive bias-related violence against perceived minorities in the United States. The shift in social and power dynamics deeply impacted Bae’s way of life. As an Asian woman and an immigrant from South Korea, Bae was regularly targeted and treated with hostility because of her identity. While still fearful and grieving the loss of many loved ones, here Bae offers an inclusive space for hope and for processing uncertainty.

Her foldable paintings invite the audience to walk through the “passage” between them. For Bae, the installation is a metaphor for small movements, transformative journeys, forms of acceptance, life, death – even experiences of stagnation and depression. Bae’s work turns toward hope by embracing uncertainties with love.

Trained in carpentry and fabrication, Los Angeles-based artist Matt Paweski makes hyper-formal sculptures from painted aluminum. Paweski’s works often suggest functionality, referencing industrial design and furniture making, yet they emerge from an intuitive, manual process of drawing, cutting, painting, reconfiguration, and experimentation. Lushly colored surfaces and crisp machine-like forms seduce viewers into optical experiences that swing between recognition and unfamiliarity. “Points of reference and inspiration are finely distilled through the process of making so that the viewer can find many personal touch points but no fixed references,” the artist has said. “[My works are] devices for expansion, introspection, and transcendence that propose new structures, architectures, designs, and possible paths forward—new views of the world.”

In his first solo museum exhibition, Paweski sets a new suite of modestly scaled tabletop and wall-mounted sculptures within an installation that mixes elements of architecture, furniture, and interior design.

MATRIX 191 is generously supported by the Wadsworth’s Contemporary Coalition.

During his artist residency at The Amistad Center for Art & Culture, while he was looking through the photos in the collection, Goma says he was moved by the moments of joy and aspiration he saw in the photos’ objects.

“Through this window into the past, I saw the generational vastness of the Black diaspora and was inspired by everyday life. There and then, I found the inspiration for the series My Heart is Light in the Void, ” he shares.

Clare Gallery’s second 20th anniversary exhibition, Old Growth includes works by Connecticut artist Roberta Shea. Shea started her artistic practice later in life. She always knew she loved experimenting with painting and drawing, but when she moved to new surroundings, her creative energy motivated her to pursue a professional practice. She explains: “It wasn’t until we moved to Newtown, Connecticut, with its spectacular view across the street from our house, that I discovered my path and a new direction to follow.”

Shea believes that it is “never too late to start over and make your mark,” and her marks are mesmerizing. You cannot help but get caught up in the work’s rhythm, space, and emotional color palettes. The work draws you in to investigate the activity on the surface, yet it also asks you to step back to view the entire work. Her process is very physical with paint being dripped, scrapped, dragged, and layered, creating thick impasto and thin surfaces of abstract representation. When you focus on one part, it becomes its own abstract painting. Then, if you step back, a larger landscape reveals itself.

Shea’s works evoke the spirit of nature, as she captures its emotional color. Her physical mark-making mimics nature’s powerful process of renewal. Her work expresses nature’s mystical quality. We see nature through Shea’s eyes: “I feel the primary purpose of art is to provide ways of looking at the world that stimulate and recharge the human imagination and at the same time provide a much-needed respite from the chaos of contemporary life.”

Roberta Shea was an art teacher at Masuk High School in Monroe, CT. Since 2007, she has been an active docent at the New Britain Museum of American Art, leading masterpiece tours. Her work has been included in group shows at the Society of Creative Arts, the Mattatuck Museum, the Washington Art Association & Gallery, the Ridgefield Guild of Artists, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and various Connecticut libraries. Solo exhibitions have been shown at Cartus Corporation, various Connecticut libraries, and Mercy by the Sea in Madison, CT. Shea’s distinguished awards include the 2021 Connecticut Women Artists Juried Exhibition “Best in Show,” and second-place awards in 2018 at the Ridgefield Guild of Artists Juried Member Show and the Washington Arts Association Juried Member Show. Recently, several of her paintings were selected for the fall 2021 Showtime television series, The Affair.

Roberta Shea received a Bachelor of Science in Art Education from Southern Connecticut State University and completed graduate coursework, with Anna Audette and colorist Howard Fussiner, at Yale University.

ADULT COFFEE CLUB
HISTORY OF FLIGHT – PART IV: “WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND”

PRESENTED BY:  Professor Hamish Lutris – Associate Professor, History/Political Science at Capital Community College

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong descended to the lunar surface. It was an event hailed throughout the world as a significant milestone in the history of humankind. Many Americans still remember being riveted by Walter Cronkite’s broadcast of the moon landing and their excitement at what we all had achieved. This talk looks at the Apollo program, the beginnings of space flight, and the sense of political urgency that drove the US to shoot for the moon. As well as the intrepid technological spirit and prowess that transported Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to another heavenly body and allowed them to explore it, and even play a bit of golf.

For the aficionado, or the curious first-timer, Jazz Wednesdays is the best taste of live jazz in Hartford. Set in the southern juke joint atmosphere of Black-eyed Sally’s, Jazz Wednesdays will strike a chord as you hear what our local talent has to offer, with regular special appearances by big city jazz names. Experience the cool original music of the jam session while you enjoy the hot fierce Southern cookin’ of Sally’s kitchen. Jam session begins after 1st set. Under 21s welcome. Sponsored by the Hartford Jazz Society.

Over the course of crafting a 25-album catalog and architecting nearly 40 Billboard No. 1 singles as a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer, Brian Culbertson has charted his own unique course in music. Label him jazz and he makes a funk record. Call him an R&B artist and he drops an acoustic jazz trio collection. Brand him pop and he creates a 32-minute New Age opus. Culbertson composed thirty songs that populate the three albums in “The Trilogy” that describes the three-part arc of a long-term relationship: the hot and steamy “falling in love” phase, the rocky middle when perhaps they even break up for a bit, and the couple reunites to live “happily ever after” phase.