Cultural Passages
WHAT'S ART
GOT TO DO WITH IT?
An exhibition of artwork that reveals who people are, what they do, and how they respond to the world.
September 13 - October 9, 2009
OPENING DAY CELEBRATION
Sunday, September 13, 1-4 pm
Featuring
music, dance, food and hands-on visual art activities representing
a variety of cultures. FREE
SCREENING OF THE BILLBOARD FROM BETHLEHEM
Thursday, October 8, 7 pm
Engage in this compelling one-hour film documentary where the owner of an Amercian billboard company and founder of IWagePeace.org Bruce A. Barrett invites Israeli soldiers and Palestinian resistance fighters with children from both sides (The Combatants for Peace) to paint a giant peace mural in the West Bank. Film followed by a talk with the CT-based Producer/Director, Bruce A. Barrett, and local artist Russell Rainbolt. FREE
I BREAK FOR ART!
Wednesdays, September 23, September 30, October 7 at 12:00 pm
Enjoy special noontome presentations in the Hilles Gallery at Creative
Arts Workshop by artists of Cultural Passages. FREE
ABOUT WHAT'S ART GOT TO DO WITH IT?
Culture is the totality of socially transmitted behavior, patterns, beliefs, institutions and all other products of human work and thought.
Culture is shared, learned, symbolic, transmitted cross-generational, adaptive and integrated.
Culture is ideals, the rules for living.
Art is a vehicle of culture that gives voice to what people think, what they do and the material products they produce.
What’s Art Got to do With It is the third biennial Cultural Passages exhibition at Creative Arts Workshop. This year’s exhibition expanded to include artists from across Connecticut who were asked to explore the meaning of culture – something both intensely personal and palpably shared. The result is fifty-eight artists who use their work to tackle issues of identity, sense of place and locality, ethnic heritage, social and economic circumstances, familial histories and personal struggles, and responses to the tumultuous politics of our time. Seen as a whole, Cultural Passages: What’s Art Got To Do With It? represents a complex and vibrant collection of individual viewpoints that works collectively to communicate across cultural barriers.
Professional artists, students and people who have not exhibited their work previously, come together to tell their stories. Painting, photography, sculpture and folks arts join poetry, text and personal tales.
Art is the lens through which we view and reflect on the personal experiences of the participants. The printed explanations accompanying each work enrich the viewers’ experience and hopefully brings us closer to the serenity and chaos, humor and trauma, rituals and history that shaped the work in this exhibition.
A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR
Connecticut is relatively small in its geographic area but is populated with people whose identity is influenced by cultural roots from around the globe, shaped by social and political surroundings, and defined by personal experiences. Cultural Passages: What's Art Got To Do With It? celebrates and honors the enduring and evolving cultures of the people of Connecticut as reflected in their artwork. This third in a series of biennial exhibitions under the general theme of Cultural Passages has expanded to include the entire state.
We thank the three members of the community who helped with the selection of work for the show: Colleen Coleman, a local artist whose own art focuses on issues of identity, Joyce Greenfield, an artist and CAW Board member, and Benjamin Ortiz, an independent curator and former Curator of Art and Collections at the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport. It was a difficult task and they did a wonderful job of selecting work that reflects the great diversity of the state.
Creative Arts Workshop is fortunate that more than one hundred artists submitted their artwork for this show, and we thank all of them. It is from their art that this exciting exhibition has emerged.
We also thank Program Director Kate Paranteau for continuing to coordinate Cultural Passages and its special programming. We are grateful to interns Ariane Vielmetter, Shana Azoff-Slifstein, Kate Bradley, Juliet Buesing, Aislinn Cunningham and Kevin Cusick Dix who worked hard to ensure that artists from a wide variety of communities participated. Diane Svigals, Chair of the Gallery Committee, and staff member Sandy Bartle also deserve our gratitude for their hard work.
Thanks to our sponsor Yale University and a Mayor's Grant from the City of New Haven, we are not only able to present this exciting exhibition but also to enhance its relevance to the community with auxiliary programs.
Susan Smith, Executive Director
Creative Arts Workshop
Cultural Passages: What's Art Got To Do With It? is generously supported by Yale University.
PAST CULTURAL PASSAGES SHOWS:
2007:
Cultural Passages: Identity Made Visible,
addressed the many ways that art is used to express personal
identity.
2005:
Cultural Passages: Celebrating Life Through the Lens of Our Heritage,
the inaugural Cultural Passages exhibition, which focussed on the
diverse heritage of our region.
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