The home-office in New Haven where Crystal Emery lives and works is full of inspirational messages. Her front door bears the sign "'I Can't' Doesn't Live Here Anymore." Above her desk reads …
Art aficionados have collected paintings of female nudes for centuries. Philip II and Philip IV, the 16th- and 17th-century kings of Spain, were no exceptions. They were, however, in an awkw…
German filmmaker Wim Wenders first became known to American audiences with "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick." Peter McMorris remembers it well. "It was a great title, not the usual …
Cecil the lion became a worldwide celebrity a year ago this month, for a horrible reason. The lion, who lived in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, was killed by a Minnesota dentist and big-g…
Every year for the past six years, Suzanne Kachmar has held a summer exhibit, "SAMESEX," to showcase LGBT artists and work with LGBT themes, at her City Lights Gallery. This year, around the…
In the world of fashion, the '80s was an era of excess: bright and shiny fabrics, wild patterns, gaudy sweaters, big neck bows, bigger shoulder pads and even bigger hair. Women took cues fro…
Jampa Tsondue was trained as a youth in thangka painting, a traditional Tibetan spiritual art form. As a young man living in a Tibetan refugee village in India, he painted professionally. "A…
If you're wondering about the man with the wayward flop of yellow hair who is always in the news, comedian Michael Ian Black offers an explanation in a new off-beat book: "The beasty is call…
"Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom." Prospero made that statement in Shakespeare's "The Tempest," but it could just …
About a decade ago, southeastern Connecticut had a Whale Trail, a public-art project of 46 fiberglass, artist-decorated whales scattered around the area that celebrated the area's whaling pa…
What's the difference between a huge Macy's parade-style character balloon and a piece of large-scale inflatable art? It's the hidden meanings. A giant parade Spider-Man is just Spider-Man. …
World Refugee Day is Monday, June 20. An exhibit at New Haven Museum focuses on the contemporary Middle Eastern refugee experience, with work by six artists based in New Haven. Another exhib…
The artwork created by Ian Trask that is up now at ArtSpace New Haven is made of spools of multicolored elastic ribbon drilled into the wall, configured in a machine-like arrangement that re…
John Hassan, who has worked with ESPN, has been hired as the new director of marketing and public relations at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, succeeding Jacques Lamarre. For 11 y…
Paul Mariani began reading the poetry of Wallace Stevens when he was in graduate school, about 50 years ago. Over the years, he went back to Stevens over and over again. "Whether the weather…
Kelly DiMauro founded a festival he called 5 Arts " an evening of film, music, stage, poetry and visual arts " and presented it in 2010 and 2013 at Buttonwood Tree arts space in Middletown. …
An artist's goal, when participating in fairs like Art in the Park in Manchester, isn't just to sell a work of art. It's to lure customers into their studios to see what else the artist has …
There is an old Haitian proverb, "If you're old enough to walk, you're old enough to carry water." And Haitians do carry water, sometimes for miles, starting at a very young age, because wat…
At the first Connecticut Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in 1988, two of its co-founders, William Mann and Terri Reid, stood in the back of Cinestudio on the opening night to gauge the audience …
Turkey is a predominantly Islamic country, but that wasn't always the case. For more than 1,000 years during the Byzantine Empire, Eastern Orthodox Christianity thrived. That empire ceased t…
In 1975, a two-story building at 197 Asylum St. in downtown Hartford with an upholstery shop, an appliance store and a sheet-music store on the ground floor became the unlikely epicenter of …
Sidewalks will come alive with art in the next few weeks as artists present original works and performances outdoors every Tuesday and Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. until June 16 at …
Yayoi Kusama first created "Narcissus Garden" 50 years ago, at the 1966 Venice Biennale. The installation of 1,500 mirrored globes clustered together on the ground created a controversy, whe…
Earth Day is Friday, April 22, so it's time for Trashion Fashion. The Hartford-based organization's sixth annual choreographed runway show will be Saturday, April 23, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at …
Lizzie Wills has a lot of fun stories to tell about Mark Twain. She should know. She lived in his Hartford house. "He once said, 'I would rather show off any time than save a human life,'" W…