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City Lights Gallery is celebrating the pre-Columbian art of the Taínos.

The “Arte de Taínos” exhibit brings us three events that recognize the rich Taino culture of the Caribbean. This comes together with celebrations marking Independence Day in the Dominican Republic.

Art in this exbibit, sponsored in part by The Dominican American Coalition of Connecticut and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, is from the private collection of Simon Veras.

Tomorrow, from 5:30-8:30 p.m.. a Latino Poetry Reading features Walter Dionoso, Ana I. Hidrogue, Marianela Medrano Marra, Carlos Mavila, Moises Mercedes, Angel Reyes, and Victor Toyo.

Then, on Sunday, Feb. 27, celebrate Dominican Independence Day with an 11:00 a.m. flag rasing on Lyon Terrace, followed by a light buffet and dance performance. Suggested donation is $5 to benefit both the Dominican American Coaltion and City Lights.

Then, a movie night comes on Friday, March 4. Doors open at 6:30 and the screening begins at 7 with “In the Time of the Butterflies” starring Salma Hayek. Refreshments will be served. Suggested donation is $5.

The Taínos aren’t as well-known as the Mayans or the Aztecs, but they were the indigenous people of the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico. Their culture was devastated hundreds of years ago, but today many Caribbean people identify as Taíno. Over 60 percent of Puerto Rican people are thought to have Taíno ancestry, and one professor on the island suggests that these ancestors might have a stronger DNA presence in the population than that from African or Caucasian relatives.

So have the Tainos really vanished? At the end of the current Wikipedia page on this tribe, Antonio de Moya, a Dominican educator, is quoted as saying: “…the [Indian] genocide is the big lie of our history… the Dominican Taínos continue to live, 500 years after European contact.”

More on local galleries at my blog.

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Wilson Irvine’ s “The Broken Wall,” ca. 1926

The Florence Griswold Museum will be showing off its newest old painting on Saturday. It was created well after the height of Impressionism, but is a beauty nonetheless.

Wilson Irvine’ s “The Broken Wall,” ca. 1926, is a gift of George Yeager. The museum quotes art historian Harold Spencer as hailing “The Broken Wall” as “a quintessential winter landscape and one of Irvine’s most effective and complex compositions.

“He noted how rays of sunlight lead one’s eyes through the opening in the tree line and the break in the stone wall into a radiant, snowy clearing beyond.”

It will be on public view Saturday when the Hartford Steam Boiler Collection show begins.

In 2001, the museum “underwent a dramatic transformation” when the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company entrusted its American paintings collection to them.

With this transfer of art, the Flo gained 190 American paintings, prints, and sculpture from the 18th to the 20th century, with an emphasis on Connecticut’s artistic heritage. The exhibit that begins pairs highlights from the original corporate collection with three dozen recent acquisitions, including Irvine’s, that reflect the Museum’s expanded focus on American art.

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Arts councils are notoriously contentious, but sometimes some clarification really is in order.

The Bridgeport Arts & Cultural Council is holding a public meeting  to “discuss the BACC mission and solicit ideas and concerns from artists and the community.”

Whether or not this is a direct reacton, this meeting follows some criticism from a Black Rock artist, going under the name “Phineas T Barnum” on Facebook, who is unhappy that their signage and website design, and now their Heroes poster series, has been handed to a designer who lives in neighboring Fairfield.This doesn’t violate BACC bylaws, as far as I know, but does this indicate the BACC is more of a regional concern? Their tagline refers to “Bridgeport and the Region,” but should local artists demand more loyalty?

Should the BACC hire and exhibit Bridgeport residents only? Say goodbye to the sculpture vault, if that’s the case. Or should the best talent be engaged as long as it in the cause of furthering the city’s arts scene? Even if that means bypassing, and possibly alienating, a squadron of artists within spitting distance.

Their leader, Kenneth R. Kahn, lives in Hartford, so right off the bat it doesn’t seem their mission limits them to engaging help from within our city limits.

This Connecticut Post story tells you about their stated mission and where their startup money comes from. Most funding comes from out of town, although it’s all from within the state. What were the expectations of these benefactors?

The meeting is a good chance to check out the Arts Council office in the Arcade, 1001-12 Main St, but more important, to talk about its place in the city’s arts community. The gathering is 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22.

More on the local arts and culture scene here.

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The Bridgeport Arts and Cultural Council is taking names.

If you’re an artist who lives or works in Bridgeport, the BACC is asking for up to five pix of your artwork and studio to bridgeportarts@gmail.com. They are putting together a registery which will be available online.

You are asked to include your name, one line about your work, web address and contact number/email.

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The East Side. Photo by Eileen Walsh

Eileen has brought her Black Rock Gallery east of the Pequonnock, and now it is fitting that we explore the city’s East Side.

The East Side is gritty and hardscrabble and its footprint is little changed from its industrial-era hay day.

Charles Brilvitch and Mary Witkowski, Bridgeport’s two most celebrated historians, will discuss the history of the East Side, and the old Armstrong factory, now 305 Knowlton, which is where Ms. Walsh’s 305K Gallery and several artist lofts are housed. This free discussion will be 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 23 at the 305K Gallery.

Ms. Witkowski runs the Bridgeport History Center, blogs as the Curious Historian, and contributes to the Bridgeport News as the city’s official historian. Mr. Brilvitch is a past city historian and a noted expert in the architectural history of the city of Bridgeport. He has lead many walking tours from Black Rock to the East Side and could make your head explode with his depth of knowledge.

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Sea of Blue: Plastic Floats Forever, 2009, Constance Old. Mixed plastic on linen 55” x 38-1/2” x 2-1/2”

At Sacred Heart University’s contemporary art gallery, one man’s trash is another man’s art exhibit. After a little reinterpretation, of course.

Curator Laura Einstein offers Contemporary Souvenirs, an exhibit that dwells on the “artistic use and interpretation of the discarded materials from our modern world.”

Generally we don’t pay much attention to the mundane objects that we use each and every day that are ubiquitous in our 2011 cultural footprint.  The ritual transformation of remnants—including air conditioning filters, record albums, construction site materials, deer netting, receipts and more— into works of art, tracks from the minutiae to the grandiose.

The works in this exhibition make us wonder if there is a ritual of collecting for the included artists June Ahrens, Ula Einstein, Joseph Fucigna, Constance Old and Paul Villinski.  Perhaps the works commemorate the notion that human beings are ephemeral but what we manufacture, in the long run, might not be.

Contemporary Souvenirs opens with a reception at 1 p.m., jazz music by the Carol Sudhalter duo, and a panel discussion at 3:30 p.m., both on Sunday, Jan. 23. The show runs until March 3.

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"Finally" by John Lawson (2008)

The public art competition continues, snow or shine.

MainStateVentures will unveil new artwork by John Lawson at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 6, on the brick wall facing the Burroughs-Saden Library on Broad Street.

Lawson, a resident of Bridgeport, is the fifth finalist to be featured in this year-long rotating public art exhibit. “Diligence” is the name of the new work, which will remain up until early March. Everyone is invited to meet the artist after the unveiling around the corner at Tiago’s.

You can still see Yolanda Vasquez Petrocelli’s wonderful, uplifting work, in that spot. Unveiled Nov. 11, “Esperanza,” or “Hope,” incorporates collage and text and visually connects our local culture with the world’s. It was received very warmly, as I recall.

John Lawson

Lawson is the next-to-last artist to be featured in this competition. The artists chosen to compete, all Bridgeport residents,  kHyal™, Gus Moran, Yolanda Petrocelli, Liz Squillace, John Lawson and Kelly Bigelow Becerra.

The exhibit will culminate in the selection of a grand prize winner and a people’s choice winner, with cash awards of $1,000 and $250 respectively. The judges are Robert Curcio, co-founder of the Scope International Art Fairs and gallerist, New York; MaryAnn Fahey, curator and gallerist, Umbrella Arts, New York; Emily Larned, professor, graphic design, University of Bridgeport; John Favret, director, Housatonic Community College Art Department; and Penny Harrison, an arts consultant.

MainStateVentures is a joint venture between Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, LLC and Forstone Capital, LLC. MainState acquired the People’s United Bank downtown Bridgeport portfolio, which represents two prime city blocks including seven buildings totaling more than 255,000 square feet with 2.8 adjacent acres of developable land.

Follow “MainStateVentures Public Art Competition” on Facebook.

(Connecticut Post design editor Lee Steele blogs on design and culture at www.leesteele.com)

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Jay Cusano spend most of his twenties in prison. Now at 30, he seems to be trying to make up for lost time.

The West Haven artist been breathtakingly active in the art world since his release from prison, a situation he’s disarmingly up-front about.

Susan Campbell wrote about Mr. Cusano in the Hartford Courant about three years ago. The whole sad story is there — Mr. Cusano was driving drunk and ended up responsible for the death of his friend in 2002. He ended up with a 10-year sentence, suspended after seven. It was in prison where he discovered his artistic gifts, teaching himself drawing and, using what tools were available, soap sculpture — all in the context of tragic circumstances.

“I needed a way to express my past,” Cusano told Campbell. “Most of my feelings were about my friend. If this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t know I had any talents, but the conflict is that I took a life to get here. Something really bad happened for this. Every time I do art, a little bit more of it goes away.”

Mr. Cusano, who I have met at more than one gallery opening — and whose work I’ve admired — provides an update since his release.

“I returned home from prison 9-23-09 and just started going to a bunch of art shows and meeting people everywhere,” he says. “I quickly built myself a network of artist friends and gallery owners. Around this time I started a studio art program at Gateway. About and five months ago I rented my own studio in West Haven and have been creating and doing art shows ever since.”

Galleries and arts organizations have seen something in his sculptures, pastels and photographs.

His first show since his release was at City Lights Gallery — a venue that had exhibited his work earlier in the Community Partners in Action prison art exhibit. Then there was  a show at Umbrella Arts in the East Village and then a very large show at Governors Island. Finally, Cusano was able to attend his own artists’ receptions and interact with the public — something strictly verboten when he was behind bars. In between, Cusano participated in Artwalk in New Haven, New Havens Open Studios, Orbit Gallery, Artspace of New Haven, Church Street Open Studios, a private showing at his own Studio, and Hartford Open Studios.

Right now, he’s showing his pastels at KCK Gallery on Campbell Avenue in West Haven and in Wallingford at “The Art of Collaborative Giving” where his soap sculptures are on view.

And there are three more shows this month. On Dec. 5 he was one of five students picked from Gateway Community College to open at the John Slade Ely House in New Haven for the 2010 Connecticut Undergraduate Exhibition. The same day, he debuted at another show in Wallingford. On Dec. 9, he is showing his photography with the New Haven Arts Council in “Small Works, Big City,” curated by Jennifer Jane, formerly of Jennifer Jane Gallery. That show is special because another artist showing there is his girlfriend Angela Gately — they both have six pieces hanging there.

Another show, in Hartford, is called “Snowball Art and Music Fest” at the Charter Oak Cultural Center on Dec. 18-19. Then one more show, Artspace Hartford. “Un-Art 4,”  which will benefit South Park Inn Homeless Shelter, opens Jan. 15.

Mr. Cusano, his compelling story and his finely rendered artwork have caught the eye of documentary filmmaker Lori Petchers. He says she will be filming scenes of the artist in his studio and at his shows.

“I am actually giving her a ton of video I took myself while trying to document the struggles of returning from prison after so many years away,” Mr. Cusano says.

You could spend the rest of your day clicking all these links, but you take the time to do so, you just might end up with a good art-driven itinerary for early winter.

More posts from Lee Steele here