In Open Studios, Worlds Unfold At Erector Square

Top: Attendees check out work by painter Mark Breslin. Bottom: Maya Polan and her son Miller work on the (not) monster activity. Lucy Gellman Photos.

In a multipurpose room just off Peck Street, a fleet of inch-high monsters had materialized just in time for Halloween. There was a green beetle with raised yellow stripes and wiry white antennae, a flattened, horned vejigante mask in white, pink and purple, a knot of primary color that looked as though cowrie shells had been painted, softened and stacked atop each other.

One building away, Cathedral Rock appeared in miniature form, the amber sandstone glowing as a cactus filled the foreground. Down the hall, blue and green inks danced across Oi Fortin’s monotypes, the shapes bursting into brilliant color. At Bregamos Community Theater downstairs, the sound of moody afternoon blues drifted through the air.

The thrill of making—of making art, making conversation, making community—flowed from one labyrinthine end of Erector Square to the other Saturday and Sunday, as artists reclaimed City Wide Open Studios for the second year in a row. Held across Erector Square’s Peck Street campus, the grassroots festival captured a rare moment of creative bridge-building, with over 100 artists and close to 15 organizers working to pull it off. 

“The community that has been generated to bring this together has been a real gift,” said Eric March, a painter and illustrator who has a studio at Erector Square, and jumped in as this year’s lead organizer. “It’s like a gem. To have so many artists in one place and activate and work together and be friendly and support each other—it’s really cool. It’s a really satisfying part of making this happen.”

Artist Leila Daw in her studio with a visitor. 

The festival, which includes a month of open studios across the city and small works show at the Institute Library on Chapel Street, has been almost a year in the making. Last November, several artists came together to debrief Erector Square’s 2023’s open studios, which relaunched as a grassroots effort after Artspace New Haven closed its doors. At the time, “there was so much we had learned, and I kind of wanted to record it,” March said. Their first meeting “was kind of nuts and bolts,” general reflections on what had gone well and what hadn’t.

It kicked off a series of monthly meetings that allowed artists to think about the festival they wanted going forward. By January of this year, several artists were asking, “How do we want to develop this community? How do we want to relate to each other?” March recalled. By April, they had secured their first grant, a $4,500 infusion from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. Lee Cruz, the foundation’s liaison, advised the group on outreach efforts to Fair Haven. 

“Once we got the grant, I knew that we could do it,” March said, crediting artist Mary Elizabeth Marvin for sponsorship and fundraising efforts. Support kept rolling in, from art businesses like Hulls and Framed to city institutions like Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center. For the second year in a row, WPKN jumped in to do live broadcasting and added a media sponsorship. Meanwhile, a small army of artists coordinated wayfinding efforts, curatorial visits, kids activities, food vendors and volunteers.

Artist Johann Himber, who works with fellow artist Anja Kerkapoly.  

By the end of the summer, the weekend had taken shape. The rest blossomed into being over the next months, as partners from the Institute Library to City Gallery enthusiastically jumped onboard. “I feel good!” March said. “I think it went really well, all the pieces came together.”

Saturday and again on Sunday, that collaborative vision came to life across Erector Square’s eight buildings, which span Peck Street and Blatchley Avenue in the city’s Fair Haven neighborhood. In a quiet, second-floor hallway in Building Eight, artist Alecia Massaro showed off their “Manifestation Series,” inspired by places they want to see, but have not yet been able to travel to.

On one wall, Cathedral Rock rose in the distance, nearly touching white, wispy clouds and a low-hanging smear of blue sky. On another, an intimate, detailed canvas of Oregon’s Mount Hood pulled a viewer in with an empty stretch of highway, as if Massaro had a dashboard view. On all sides, lush, green grasses and conifers spread out, humble and reverent in the shadow of the snow-capped mountain. 

Massaro: “I wanted to get out of New Haven, and I used my painting to get there.”

Born and raised in New Jersey, Massaro has been making art “all my life,” but first discovered oils at 19, when an experiment with oil on unprimed panel took months to dry. Years later, their practice brought them to Erector Square, where they worked from December 2020 until last summer. During that time, the manifestation series took center stage, with soaring portraits that channeled nature hundreds of miles away.

“I was feeling like I wanted to get out of New Haven, and I used my painting to get there,” they said. While they have technically since gotten out of the city—they now work out of a home studio in Meriden—the series focuses on places that feel sacred because of their connection to the natural world. Or in Massaro’s words, “energy vortexes that I’m pulled to.”

Just down the hall, artists Jeff Mueller and Kerri Sancomb seemed to find one of those vortexes, opening the doors to Dexterity Press as their daughter, Junie, ran cardstock through their sun-dappled Vandercook Press. On a table beside her, neat stacks of prints waited eagerly for attendees who buzzed through the studio, nibbling on goldfish, carrot sticks and seeded crackers.

Kerry Sancomb and Jeff Mueller of Dexterity Press with their daughter, Juniper or Junie. 

Around them, it seemed that inks, letterpress supplies, and years of finished prints decorated every square inch of the space. On the table, attendees could peruse copies of miniature artist books titled Our Living Universe, Our Animal Kingdom and Our Conscious Journey. Inside each, the words Fuck Trump stood cleanly against the bright white of the paper.

Mueller and Sancomb, who moved Dexterity from Chicago to New Haven in 2010, hopped between visitors, greeting old friends and welcoming new ones. The two live in Hamden, but have worked in Erector Square for over a decade. Mueller, who runs Dexterity’s day-to-day operations, praised the work that fellow artists had put into making the weekend a success. 

“It just feels really good,” he said, remembering years in which City-Wide Open Studios felt overwhelming, and then confusing, as if Artspace was trying to find its own footing with the event. “It’s really really positive now.”

Maura Galante and Oi Fortin. 

Through a maze of hallways-turned-gallery-walls, a series of printed signs directed attendees to artist Oi Fortin, a printmaker who specializes in monotype (including during her time at sea, practicing a love that she picked up while living on a sailboat outside Baltimore in the 1990s). On the walls around her, bright, velvety splashes of color beckoned, no one artwork like the next.

While Fortin has worked in Erector Square since 2005, she said that this fall marked the best open studios event that she can remember. Like so many spaces in the building, her studio feels like home: prints vibrate and sing from the walls, a symphony of shape and color (there are well over 500 there, she said). Tables give way to her experiments in form and process, including acrylic prints she completed while on a sailboat. 

“This year has been the best year ever,” she said as her dog Gigi and husband Auguste soaked in a patch of sunshine in the corner. “It’s just the most wonderful experience—such good vibes. Because artists have been organizing, I’ve gotten to know so many people.”

For years, she added, artists in the building kept largely to themselves, ensconced in their studio-universes as they worked. When March put out a call for organizers, she stepped up to help artist Niko Scharer with wayfinding and promotional signage. “Now it’s like one family.”

Art by Hamden-based illustrator Megan Shaughnessy.

She was far from alone in feeling that way. Her creative mentor, Maura Galante, beamed as she entered the space. A visual arts instructor at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS), Galante also runs the printmaking program at Creative Arts Workshop, where she and Fortin first met in the late 1990s. While she now works out of a home studio and CAW, Galante once had a space at Erector Square, and has returned several times to visit fellow artists.    

“It’s about time!” she said with a laugh when asked about open studios’ transition to an artist-helmed effort. “About time. Since Artspace got run into the ground, this was much needed. It’s very inspirational.”

Fortin, she added, “is a treasure.”   

That sense—of treasures both discovered and not—also became part of the weekend. Outside each studio, artists and their works were everywhere, as if the building had birthed dozens of tiny galleries overnight. In one alcove, lifelong New Havener Joe Fekeita showed off a series of detailed, neatly framed line drawings, each bursting into brilliant color as a sheaf of sunlight came through the window. In another downstairs, artists Heather Hope and Megan Shaughnessy set up tables beside each other, both transported from their home studio spaces for the weekend.

Adriana Hernández Bergstrom.

Over a flight of stairs in Building Eight, a sprawl of floor became a sort of pop-up display, with everything from children’s books to block-printed shirts and onesies. At her table, author and illustrator Adriana Hernández Bergstrom chatted with attendees and fellow artists over copies of ​​Abuelita & I Make Flan, Tumble and Countdown to Nochebuena. All written with young readers in mind, the books are largely inspired by her own upbringing in a Cuban-American family in Miami, as well as by her son, Finn.

After coming to open studios for the first time last year, Hernández Bergstrom said she was excited to return. The road to illustration—and to New Haven—has been a long and winding one, with stops in Miami, Santa Fe, Providence and Munich. So she’s ready to share her stories with the community. “I like it here,” she said. A few tables away, laughter bubbled up from a pop-up that artist Katya Vetrov was running. 

On the table in front of Hernández Bergstrom, packs of illustrated holiday cards stood in neat, eager rows, with her illustrations and books placed among them. Each one has its own message: Tumble, an early reader based on the life of a tumbleweed, is inspired by a story duel with Finn during the first years of the pandemic (he had people tumbling through space and time, which she still thinks about). In ​​Abuelita & I Make Flan, a granddaughter learns about love and forgiveness after she breaks her grandmother’s heirloom plate.

“It’s about being loved even when you’re imperfect,” she said. 

Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez.

Down a flight of stairs, those words seemed to echo amidst tiny fingers, pudgy palms and tubs of neon-toned play dough as artist and Fair-Side founder Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez led a day- long “Make a Monster” workshop. After working with organizers and artist Daniel “silencio” Ramirez last year, Gonzalez Hernandez returned “to do something more hands on” with the festival this fall, she said.

“It’s really sweet to see how artists have been working together to make sure open studios is really something that belongs to artists,” she said. She applauded several artists who have assisted not only with planning, but also embraced the collaborative spirit with weekly artmaking events, including in solidarity with Palestine. “I think it’s only gonna get better from here.”   

She was happy to play a small part in it, she added. As she chatted, Gonzalez Hernandez held up her own creation, a small, friendly-looking snake, wrapped in a cozy pink sweater that a few kids had insisted on. They didn’t want the snake to be cold, she added with a smile.

At one table, attendee Maya Polan settled in with her three-year-old Miller, watching as he rolled smooth, multicolored balls into a snowman (not a monster, he later clarified). Stacking them gingerly atop each other, he started in on the arms, rolling out small yellow logs until they looked like soft, nubby appendages.

A self-described occasional ceramicist, Polan grew up in New Haven, experiencing City-Wide Open Studios as it grew and changed under Artspace New Haven’s creative direction (New Haven, where she did pottery at CAW as a kid, was also her first artistic home). When she moved back in 2016, it wasn’t really on her radar, she said. That changed this year, when she saw a banner for it and decided to bring her family. As Miller showed her his progress on the not-monster-snowman, she beamed and burst into a smile. 

Next door, artists Danielle DeCola, Tracey Kafka and Karen Dow welcomed attendees into their shared space, an airy studio located in Building Three of the sprawling complex. A year ago, none of them had considered working in the same space; Kafka and Dow didn’t even know each other. Then they shared an empty Erector Square studio for two days, during last year’s open studios celebration.

Karen Dow and Danielle DeCola. Artist Tracey Kafka did not want to be photographed.

They discovered that “we get along great, and we help each other,” said DeCola. By the end of the weekend, they had decided to split the cost of the studio three ways. One year later, the space’s walls are covered evenly with their artwork, a mix of Dow’s neat, geometric prints, Kafka’s abstract canvases and DeCola’s soft watercolors.

While the three all have different schedules—meaning they are not always there at the same time—they love working together.

“It’s the best decision we ever made,” said Dow, an instructor at ACES Educational Center for the Arts (ECA). Kafka, who works in framing and comes in four days a week from Hamden, echoed the feeling, adding that it’s been both a joy and a stress reliever for her. 

The trio is also part of a show at Fair Haven Furniture, where exhibitions have only just returned with a show titled Interwoven Expressions. Without the artist-led effort at Erector Square, “that never would have happened,” Dow said.