Haskins' artists find enriching inspiration in tops of tables
By Judy Birke

NEW HAVEN — The current exhibit at Haskins Laboratories Gallery brings together seven artists of diverse styles and influences, all of whom work in what could broadly be described as the still-life genre, hence the title, "Table Tops."
Although the imagery ranges widely from a clever photographic grid by Milford artist Kevin Van Aelst called "Common Clouds," of coffee mugs that illustrate cloud formations created from milk and cream in a coffee cup, to rich abstracted paintings by Megan Craig, that allude to Vuillard's Tables, the well-considered installation retains a sense of commonality in that each artist interprets the oldest theme in the world with a thoughtful and original contemporary manner, both in composition and narrative.

The fact that each artist is represented by a group of works rather than just a single piece, gives the presentation a fine sense of continuity and allows the viewer an easy understanding of each artist's oeuvre.

Given the exhibit's theme, it is not surprising that most of the participants ponder issues of daily life.

Eileen Eder's works are most closely related to what one would call the traditional still life. In images like "Floating Leaves" and "Quahogs," the Guilford artists arranges simple subject matter like bowls and bottles with no real dramatic narrative, on tabletops in which they attain new meaning through the subtle interaction of color, the tricky reflections of transparencies and the juxtaposition of shadows, creating compositional relationships that are at once simple and complex.

Kelli Newton, on the other hand, is not so subtle, using objects of everyday life to explore aspects of identity. In "Bathroom," one of a series of candy-colored digital inkjet prints, Newton mixes bits of religious iconography with those from pop-culture, all within a scenario of twinkling holiday lights that are strung around bathroom fixtures. By blending articles from private life with bits of this 'n that from public life, she crafts a quirky shrine to the ordinary, giving the mundane the significance of treasured artifacts.

Christine Darnell's evocative black-and-white drawings take on a far more serious demeanor. Using the tabletop as a metaphor for life's experiences, Darnell draws contour-like lines in seemingly spontaneous narratives of domestic life. Objects like birthday cakes and candles and kitchen utensils, in conjunction with the likes of skeletal heads, draw one into an internal world that hints at both moments of domestic comfort and unsettled ambiguity, Incomplete objects and obvious erasures appear to point to life's constantly shifting layers.

Ann Toebbe's paintings are also locked in private thoughts, but much more tightly, conveying memories of places and people. In images like "Stained Glass TV Room (2007)," Toebbe hints at a narrative that, while cohesive and unified in self-contained interior space that is suffused with light and pattern, also has a moody, muffled atmosphere that addresses the kaleidoscopic fragmentary parts of its narrative, in this case, the story of her father, a Vietnam veteran.

Willard Lustenader's beautiful table tops become the stages for carefully composed narratives concerned with physical forms, spatial uncertainties and the fascinating dramas they evoke. By painting cutout minimal paper shapes of houses, animals and people, Lustenader creates an elegant, tightly refined balance of surreal homesteads, the whimsical figures juxtaposed against the rational divisions derived from the geometric format, the structures perhaps acting as housing for ideas, as well as architectural forms.

Craig paints with a gritty aggressiveness that revels in attention to process. In "Egg Cup," one finds a physicality and rhythm that references both concept and materials, the painting achieving a satisfying dialogue between chromatic elements and compositional vigor.