Opening Reception: Sunday, June 22, 4 - 6 PM.

including an Improvisational DANCE PERFORMANCE by
KATHRYN KOLLAR & COMPANY, New Haven
http://www.kkollardance.com email--- kkollardance@sbcglobal.net

THE DIVIDED WORLD coordinated exhibitions: "In/ Divisible" at The New Haven Colony Historical Society;
The Divided World" at the John Slade Ely House "MYTHICAL NATION", "Between Fear and Freedom", & "Where We Come From/ Emily Jacir’s Investigation of a Palestinian Longing" at ARTSPACE; "The Divided World: the Art of Historical Revelation" at the York Square Gallery.

Statements of the Artists participating in the York Square Gallery exposition:

1. Helene Burke : The Hole Truth #6 (2 panels) mixed media painting on canvas left panel: 24"w x 54"h right panel: 12"w x 54"h

"The Hole Truth #6" series is ongoing for the past 2 years and includes about 15 paintings....with the subtitles
..."Heart Box" and "Heart Zippers." The mixed media method I use is related to years of experimentation in both sculpture and painting with areas of collaged drawings like wallpaper and acrylic imagery.. I’ve always done biomorphic imagery....it is my "voice"....and early on I felt the need to include sculptural areas on the canvas of papier-mâché, and real zippers representing the artificial opening and closing of the heart. Early on, I sculpted biomorphic shapes in clay...then drew them on canvas and did the painting... I work intuitively, starting with a doodle and a theme and let it flow....and tell the story." Helene Burke
East Village, NYC East Village, NYC
IamBurke@aol.com

2. Pedro Martin deClet :

"My sculpture is about the use of language to both free & to brainwash and oppress people through the use of propaganda. I use a time clock as a call to action (& a warning about how times flies), in which I am literally asking Americans to 'Punch In' and change our country to the Democracy that it has always claimed to be, but has fallen short of being. I used proverbs in 12 of the worlds many languages as vehicles to connect & interact in a very personal way with people of different races, giving them warnings, advice & certain truths about our lives as citizens of the World. I have used music to enlighten, soothe & heal our wounded souls & have included in between the songs excerpts of speeches by Bush & Hitler to remind everyone that absolute power corrupts & endangers the world & to show the similarities that they share in their choice of words & in their tones."

Pedro deClet (born: Brooklyn; NY 1963)
Clinton, CT
pedro@snet.net

3. Woody Ford : Walk II 35 mm silver print photo
Untitled (shown at right) 35 mm silver print photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woody Ford took photographs alongside AP wire photographers covering Bobby Seale's tumultuous visit to New Haven in 1969. He has done portrayals of jazz musicians, to scenes across the US and Europe. Ford has hewn a style that is spare but embraces expressively rich content. His interior of the Yale Music Library appeared in "Building, Design and Construction." He received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators in New York City. Ford, a graduate of Paier College of Art in Hamden, views himself as a street photographer, and has exhibited at locations in Connecticut, and will have his first one-man exhibition in New York this fall.

Woody Ford, photographer
New Haven, CT
woody@netmeg.net

4. Greg Garvey Virtual Reality Means Never Having to Say you're Sorry inkjet color print
In Virtual Reality No Child is Left Behind inkjet color print
Sex is Safe In Virtual Reality inkjet color print
In Virtual Reality It Doesn't Hurt inkjet color print

"In today’s feature films synthespians upstage flesh & blood actors, now doomed to the unemployment lines. Virtual beings, just one species of cyborg, have breached the barricades. Visions of gods and visitations by angels were once a private, personal affair. Today we share the experience of witnessing the arrival of virtual beings who seduce us with their veri- similitude, captivate us with their impossible perfection and thrill us with promised immortality.Yet we feel ill-at- ease in their presence, as an affront to our limitations and bodily imperfections. When we look into their eyes will these virtual beings return our gaze?"

Greg Garvey, Hamden, CT
teaches Graphic Arts at Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT
greg.garvey@quinnipiac.edu

5. Joseph Higgins :

Pentagonal
mixed media sculpture: water, wood, paper & Plexiglas

"Justice and Democracy are principles essential in the hearts and minds of most men and women. The
submersion of this pentagonal shape, in a symbolic representation of the world’s oceans, is a message of
hope for the will of the people."

Joseph Higgins
New Haven, CT
lyric63jkh@yahoo.com

6. Allyson Holtz :

Seated Figure, Inmate Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary
oil on paper
Portrait, Inmate Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary
oil on paper

"That the United States incarcerates more than 2 million people is not a well-known fact. We are warehousing the poor and disenfranchised to support "Corrections," the fastest growing industry in the US. One in four black males is either in prison or, has once been part of this system. As an artist-in-residence/ instructor, & program curator for two decades at the Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary, I’ve gained precious insights as to how criminal justice system functions. The numbers of the incarcerated do not reflect rates of crime. Crime is a perception manipulated by corporate America. I paint portraits of inmates to give a presence to these two million individuals. My institution is so lacking in spirit, so oppressive, so invisible, but the faces of the inmates so feeling."

Allyson Holtz, Pittsburgh
Artist-in-Residence, Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary
Co-Founder of the Hygienic Arts Co-op, New London, CT
Pittsburgh, PA
Allysonholtz@cs.com

7. Sheldon Krevit : REVELATION: The Big Bang Mixed media on canvas 36" x 48" Dec. 1974 - Jan. 1975 "Divisions are a state of mind common to sentient beings, but where does one thing end and another begin ? A "Divided World" craves peace. Peace, Please from 1977 is being exhibited for the first time since 1981. May it speak for itself. May Peace prevail." Sheldon Krevit teaches Art, K-8, at St. Rita's Parochial School, Hamden, CT New Haven, CT sheldon@cttel.net

8. Pierre Louaver (France) :

Still # 17
acrylic paint on silk organza

DIVIDED WORLD... A WINDOW
ON THE PARADOX OF PAINTING

"Making a painting for me is to create a paradox with many facets; A painting is mute, but it unties tongues by its very silence... A painting is a threshold between real and virtual space and through its transparency, one can see its opacity...a window on necessary illusions... A painting is in many ways elusive and it is its elusiveness that keeps me painting... trying to get to the bottom of it ... and in the process discovering a thing or two..."

Pierre Louaver (France)
Brooklyn, NYC
perlouaver@earthlink.net

9. Emily Luce :

Strength in Numbers
lithograph

"Strength in Numbers" is one of a series of three word searches made in 2001 in which the letters horizontally pell out consecutive numbers (i.e. o n e t w o t h r e e), but hidden in the puzzle vertically or diagonally is the
word "safety," or "strength" or "truth." So the title of the pieces are "Safety in Numbers" "Strength in Numbers" or "Truth in Numbers."

Emily Luce
New London, CT; Halifax, Nova Scotia
emily@groupofsevenbillion.com

10. Noriam Agudelo de Mejia (Cali, Colombia) My Guitar and I oil on canvas
Mother's Love oil on canvas

"The mother’s feelings are the most beautiful expression of love. There is a child, naked and waiting of a word of hope. Behind him are steps and an open door that lets sun light to come in to illuminate, this means freedom. On the right there is a woman, also naked, without selfishness, sure of herself; her expression is love, in the elasticity of her body we see with clarity the liberty of her feelings. The rainbow of colors is reinforcing the beauty of the pure feeling between mother and son. The relation- ship between human being and music in the middle of the natural environment , the expression of his eyes is turning into the context around, the shows the pass of the years, a guitar with different curves, declaring the movement and rhythm of songs that comes from the heart. His hair follows the vibrations of the strings and makes possible the sense of the human symphony."

Noriam Agudelo de Mejia
founder of the Primitivist-Modernist Art Movement, Colombia, SA, 1975
(Cali, Columbia, SA) West Haven, CT
c/o joseleonidasmejia@msn.com

11. Nick Santoro : Bro: Elegy to the 2nd Amendment (shown at right) brownstone headstone with bullets Convergence acrylic on canvas Heart of Darkness acrylic on canvas

"For almost 30 years, I have worked at making stone sculptures, until most recently the percussive repetitive work has motivated me to give my mechanical orthopedic parts a break, and I have turned to making "sculptural paintings," assemblages of various materials which allow meto express myself with a lightened pallet and an abundance of colors and diversity. After shaping and animating stones, this transition to use lighter everyday objects is an opportunity to create metaphors and to speak and interact."

Nick Santoro
West Rutland, Vermont
santorosculptor@netscape.net

12 Jean-Pierre Sergent (France) :

Beauty Is Energy
"With beauty may I walk" The Night Navajo Chant

"Before money dispossessed us of our happiness, beauty was related to interior time, like an organ, an aura, a cosmic harmony./ Our freedom rests in finding our way back to this cosmic time, the time of yellow and black bees, red ants, ladybugs that spoke to the spirits, golden beetles that are God’s messengers, birds of paradise and flowers of exuberant sensuality./ Man had understood this empirically for thousands of years because Nature had made herself beautiful and desirable in order to survive, and Man imitated Her. Beauty is the breath of life, as essential as Desire, a spiritual value, a tangible communication with the reigning spirits of the visible and invisible world. (trans: Anita Anand)

Jean-Pierre Sergent (France)
Long Island City, NYC
sergent@earthlink.net

Exhibit: June 19-July 18.

Gallery hours: Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday: 1 PM - 10 PM,
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 5 PM - 10 PM.
Accessible. Admission not required to view art gallery.

Gallery curator, Johnes Ruta, (203) 387-4933,
azoth@sprynet.com http://azothgallery.com/