The Creative Arts Workshop is a community based visual arts school that offers three hundred different courses in fine arts and crafts, including among others, drawing and painting, printmaking, pottery, photography, fiber, ceramics, jewelry, design and sculpture. They are additionally one of the few institutions around to offer workshops in book art, and the various aspects of binding.

The history of the Creative Arts Workshop goes back over forty years. The 1960’s saw a period of growth and restructure in Downtown New Haven, with Audubon St. earmarked for redevelopment. A progressive bill was passed wherein organizations devoted to the arts were the only ones that could purchase the now vacant land. CAW’s parent organization, founded in 1960, bought the land at 80 Audubon St. and moved into their newly renovated building in 1972.

With neighbor institutions such as the Educational Center for the Arts, an art driven magnet high school, as well as the New Haven Ballet, New Haven Arts Council and the Neighborhood Music School, The Creative Arts Workshop rounds out a kind of Campus-like aesthetic and feel on Audubon St., separate from that of the Yale branch of New Haven’s fine art scene.

Classes and workshops generally fill up fast, though anyone with a passion for the arts, desire for top instruction and access to specialized studio space is welcome and encouraged to become part of the CAW community, regardless of age or artistic background.

“It never occurred to me that I’d be in an art community, or that people would see me as an artist,” says Lianne Audette, whose specialty is metal smithing.

“There was a social, productive, and aesthetic connection here that really spoke to what I needed at the time,” says Audette, was just looking for something to do after moving back from California to be with her ailing mother. “It was the first time I could totally invest all of my time and my passion into just me.”

Audette plans to open her own studio soon, and credits the Creative Arts Workshop for awakening her latent artistic passions.

Each year the Hilles, and the smaller Creative Works galleries play host to one faculty and two student shows, an annual themed August showing, as well as an invitational juried exhibition.

“The primary function is education, and the exhibitions should serve to augment that mission,” says Executive Director Susan Smith.

Currently, the Hilles Gallery is hosting the “41st Annual Celebration of American Crafts”, an exhibition open to the public that began Oct. 31 and will run through Dec. 24 of this year. As its name implies, it is a celebration of the best in American contemporary crafts, with a variety of ornate pieces made by over three hundred artists from Connecticut and across the country.

“It’s the melding of fine art and craft—well made and designed,” says Smith.

The exhibition offers a modern philosophy on the relationship between the fine arts, and craft making.

“Functionality is no longer a criterion through which we distinguish fine art from craft,” Smith explains. “It’s the form of the piece rather than the function; the process that distinguishes them both.”

The arts come together provide us with a context; a sense of community, a collective like-mindedness whereby our creative proclivities and processes manifest themselves into something personal, and beautiful, be it hewn from metal, molded from clay, or captured under just the right slant of light. For over forty years, The Creative Arts Workshop at 80 Audubon St. in New Haven has been that context.

For more information about The Creative Arts Workshop, class schedules and purchasing information, and The 41st Celebration of American Crafts, visit www.creativeartsworkshop.org

The one-act play explores the relationships and hidden secrets of a snooty, uptight Connecticut family of five, and what happens when a typically trite, and benign dinner conversation is thrown into chaos by a mother’s announcement that the family’s eldest son, and black sheep, will be moving back home. Grace and civility are carelessly tossed aside, as father, mother and three sons are forced to confront issues they had been ignoring for years.

What ensues is hilariously bitter back and forth chiding, where even a harmless game of “apples to apples” quickly degenerates into a pecking party.

“They are all pulling in different directions. They accuse each other. Yell at each other. Explode at each other, and more often than not, they are totally wrong,” says Brett of the family.

Suburbia is a witty, darkly funny play flavored with dashes of skepticism and cynicism. It comes together to paint a very accessible portrait paralleling that of real middle class family life, showing in the end that family members are faced with the choice to either change, or continue to drift hopelessly apart from each other.

“In life, things that start out funny slowly undergo this switch into serious. People are changed in this play. Each of the five characters will be different by the end of the hour. This is what happens in real life”, Epstein says of this transition.

Half way through the work-shopping of Suburbia earlier this year at Providence College, Brett and his production assistants found themselves scrambling to find additional chairs for the over-crowded auditorium.

Even as a freshman at Providence College, Brett consistently sold out the campus’s theater space with the short plays he had written. He hasn’t put the pen down since.

Earlier this summer, Brett also directed a production of his earlier play, I Loved Sam Stone, in Cranston, RI. The play, reviewed positively by Rhode Island’s Motif Magazine, takes a look at how quickly relationships can change when the feelings of a young college student toward his closest female friend take a turn away from the platonic, and toward the romantic. Similar to Suburbia, Sam Stone deals thematically with the shift and decay of relationships, and breakdowns in communication.

“With a good title, a story with substance, and a provocative one sentence summary, people will come to see theater,” Brett says. “Theater is more accessible than anything else in my opinion, for writers, actors, and audience alike.”

For more information about the play, and rehearsal and show times, visit www.highlaneclub.com

When a ruthless bear poacher is arrested, police get more than they can deal with when his latest catch escapes captivity and terrorizes the surrounding town and its inhabitants. Instinctually, the creature cuts a swath of primal carnage, leaving the butchered remains of all those it encounters in its wake as he quests for the blood of his original captor.

Over the course of the weekend, films ranging from fifteen minute comedic shorts, to student length dramas, and full documentaries were screened in blocks at Manchester Community College, Hilliard Mills, and the Little Theater of Manchester at Cheney Hall.

“The town of Manchester has really embraced and supported us,” says Silk City co-director Ryan Maloney.

Maloney, a stand-up comic and actor, also starred in one of the festival’s dark comedies, Quarterlife about a group of friends determined to beat their “quarter life crisis” by tackling a downturned economy and going after their dreams at any cost.

With more than seventy-five film entrees, the festival united writers and directors from the east and west coasts of the U.S. with their peers from abroad, as far as Australia, Ireland, The UK, and South Africa.

Researcher and Cape Town native Rene Scheltema’s documentary, Something Unknown is Doing We Don’t Know What, Produced in part by director Paul Verhoeven, attempts to address and explain the five major psychic phenomenons inherent in select human beings. It goes on to further assert weather or not there is any scientific grounding and validity in cases of telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and healing.

The film’s depth and abundance of research, conducted at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and the Institute of transpersonal psychology among others, has garnered it the reputation of best in the field of parapsychology. It has received several awards and a special selection in the Berlin Documentary Festival.

“Everyone really does seem to know everyone else. It’s a great network for film makers”, says Michael Hall from Astoria, New York.

The premise of Hall’s feature length horror comedy, Kids go to the Woods, Kids get Dead, leaves little to the imagination.

“It’s exactly as advertized,” Hall says. “It’s boobs, blood, and rock and roll.”

The movie’s narrative is broken up by fake horror hostess vignettes, fake commercials, and taped as though it were recorded over old home movies.

“It’s like Grindhouse for the VHS and cable generation,” describes Hall.

The Silk City Flick Fest also provided opportunities for a number of the members of Connecticut’s film community to showcase their works.

“The more exposure we get is great not only for us, but for the state as well”, says writer and director Sean Ring, whose short films have been screened at festivals in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Toronto.

“It felt good for a change to just have to hop onto I-95 with my film instead of an airplane”, says the Windsor native.

Ring’s vignette, Walk of Shame centers on a young man as he attempts to cope with a vicious hangover and a night’s worth of poor decisions, the biggest of which he wakes up to find in bed with him. With his head held low and pounding, he happens upon an unlikely connection with someone in similar circumstances.

Director Alec Aston’s New London based film company, SECT Films, endeavors to bring legends of Connecticut’s past onto the screen with representations of its most enigmatic and sometimes frightening figures.

Aston’s film, The Curse of Micah Rood, examines the final days in the life of colonial era hermit Micah Rood, one of Connecticut’s most storied folkloric figures who earned the contempt of his peers by choosing to live alone in an apple orchard in Norwich Connecticut, a man apart from society.

“Some people just enjoy solitude. They become disenfranchised with civilization, and the status quo,” says actor Brian Ellsworth of the title character.

What is the end result?

“Well, that certainly removes the incentive to see the film, doesn’t it?” Ellsworth chuckles.

Possible future SECT projects include narratives of the fabled Lady in White, The Melon Heads, and the Old Leather Man.

The Curse of Micah Rood was one of several films to debut at the Manchester Community College venue, alongside several student-led projects.

MCC Communications major Amy Elizabeth Gott happened upon a film class at MCC, and soon found herself hooked. She wrote, directed and edited her film, “A Beautiful Disaster” by herself, filming it mostly in locations in Glastonbury, and St. Johnsbury Vermont.

“It was a real struggle at first figuring out how to film certain parts, but it was a great experience”, says Gott of her first effort.

A Beautiful Disaster focuses on the friendship of two teenage girls. As one of them struggles to cope with her mother’s drug addiction, she relies strongly on her best friend as the primary outlet and crux for support, testing the bonds of the relationship.

“There’s a scene with a big, hysterical cry”, says East Hartford High School student Jessica Holbrook, who portrayed the film’s main character.

“It was really difficult, and took a few takes to finally get. But I reached down deep and nailed it.”

Independent Film makers, actors and writers new to the industry or otherwise were encouraged to take part in several panel discussions held throughout the weekend. The panels ranged in topic from Documentary making, expectations of the indie film actor, to what various other roles in the film industry, such as the producer comprise.

“That one’s easy—absolutely nothing!” chuckles seasoned Hollywood vet Tom Kane brazenly while nursing a large cigar. “He is too busy thinking of doing things in this whole process to actually be doing them!”

In Connecticut for a film production workshop October 16-18th at Tripeg Studios in New Haven, Kane would assert he showed up at Silk City principally for the cheap wine and free food. However, the assistant director and producer attached to such titles as Prizzi’s Honor, Raging Bull, and Kramer vs. Kramer was invited to give a lecture on the myriad issues surrounding film making, such as adhering to shrinking budgets and tight schedules.

“I guess I’m supposed to go in there, be all prophetic and tell them about how ‘the big boys do it,” Kane says with a grin.

The Silk City Flick Fest concluded the night of Sunday, October 11th with a celebration and awards ceremony held at Cheney Hall. Ten percent of the event’s proceeds went to MARC Inc, an association that seeks to give aid to the disabled. The festival was a great success in bringing awareness of the independent film community to the forefront of central Connecticut, using it then as the grounds to bring film makers from all over the world together.

For more information on the festival and how to enter, news about the directors and their films, award results and more, visit www.silkcityflickfest.com

View more photo’s from Airen Miller at: MARC Inc’s Picture Gallery

A former potter, Lis-el came to jewelry making after surgery left her unable to continue pottery, having then to find a new creative outlet. Seven years ago, her sensitivities led her to the craft of jewelry making. Before long, she couldn’t keep it to herself.

“I feel that people need more creativity in their lives,” says Lis-el, who regularly holds specialty workshops on elements of form, use of tools, glass cutting, hammering, soldering and other skill sets at Art and Soul for anyone interested.

With only the dexterity of their hands and the steady smolder of a flame, Lis-el and her students craft real works of art through the simple mediums of glass, metal and silver clay.

“It is through the firing in the kiln that they are brought from unexciting and dull states to pieces of lasting beauty,” She says.

Weather an opal adorned metal filigree, brightly colored cabochon ring, or a silver clay pendant with the shape of a dragon impressed upon its center, each piece is beautiful and unique, despite differing levels of experience. As Lis-el says, “A true beginner can make something stunningly beautiful”

Many of the pendants and brooches, necklaces and earrings on display for view and purchase at the studio feature intricately crafted folkloric and mythical images.

The Norse World Tree, the Celtic knot, the Eye of Horus, early Christian and even steam-punk inspired symbols are just a few of the designs embossed on finished pieces.

These references are no coincidence for Lis-el, who is also an interfaith minister, having studied several ancient philosophies and belief systems. Deriving much of her inspiration from their inherent imagery, she connects the creative process to spirituality.

“I believe through being creative we learn to express our own inner Divinity.” She says.

Artisan jewelry making is a tradition with roots stretching thousands of years deep, its various methods and styles outliving the myriad civilizations they grew from. Art and Soul places the tools in the hands of common creative people, making jewelry a personal work of art, and not just an expensive commodity.

For more information about Art and Soul Gallery, class and workshop times, viewing or purchasing pieces, visit www.artandsoulct.com

Miller’s work, which connects modern art sensitivity and an eye for lush colors with photojournalistic sensibilities, can be described as at once vibrant and elegant as it is haunting, and has been included in several publications including Connecticut Bride and Hartford Magazine, with a recent feature on The Today Show with Kathy Lee Gifford.

Use of lighting and shadow grant his photography a kind of surreal, noir-like ambiance, while the various askew angles capture the conceptual uniqueness of the backdrops making place a story teller, as if every light, stone tower and weathered oak tree exists to accentuate the experience of the bride and groom.

There is an air of distance to many of Miller’s subjects, as though while physically in front of his camera they have channeled some perfectly intimate and euphoric, however transient place some immeasurable distance away. His photography freezes that place and contains it in all of its depth and intensity.

Airan’s photography extends far beyond wedding vows and chapel bells. His work also chronicles years of travel. Around the world he captures that same opaque uniqueness and conceptual nuance with the same attention to bright, saturating colors.

Miller additionally branches out with energy and style to celebrity photography, as he recently worked a photo shoot of up and coming Long Island based, leather clad indie rock singer Gina Cutillo in New York City. The shoot coincides with the release of Cutillo’s third album.

More Information about Airen, and his portfolio, and blog can be viewed on the web at www.amillerphoto.com/

“I guess we can part with these now,” says Tory with a wry grin as he scoops the bottles into a big black garbage bag.

While setting up in the usual spot, Drummer Dave Sherwood discovers a deceased mouse from under his double bass pedal, announcing it jovially as the band’s “first casualty” before disposing of it. Lead guitarist Aaron Cox moves a few derelict chairs and tables in place of the amps while the band’s bassist, newcomer Alex Auger arrives to round out the lineup.

There is a necessary hardness to their practice space, an inherited, collective rock and roll squalor to it all that has contributed to the sound and energy of the band since their formation in early 2006.

An energetic, modern hard rock act with roots in the grunge and alternative music scenes of the early to mid 90’s infused with a touch of metal, Xen has played all over Connecticut, frequenting both Toad’s Place New Haven, and the Webster Theater in Hartford, once opening on the venue’s main stage. They have been featured twice on radio station The Rock 106.9’s Home Grown segment, a weekly block devoted to notable up and coming talent from around Connecticut, Massachusetts and parts of Rhode Island.

Back in the basement under a few dim, sodium yellow basement lights, Tory belts out the opening lines of the song Enlightenmentality in preparation for an upcoming tune-up gig at The Cherry Street Station in Wallingford.

Steinbach’s voice cut through the damp, musty air, combining forceful, clean vocals with a touch of guttural yelling. Boasting a range somewhere between rockers Scott Wieland and Chris Cornell, he teams with Cox’s aggressive, heavy guitar style, Sherwood’s thunderous unrelenting drumbeats, and rounds it off with Auger’s bass to provide gravity and melodic intensity reminiscent of such bands as Alice in Chains and Tool. The group however is reluctant to settle on labels or anything else that could pigeonhole their sound or any other band’s

“You just can’t,” Steinbach says. “Describing your sound to people is, to me, like trying to describe an orgasm. ‘It feels really good.’ That just doesn’t quite do it justice, does it?”

Creatively, Xen is also weary of falling into the same trap so many bands through the years have of conceptually recycling and exploiting conflicts such as teen-angst, renewed with each new generation and sung it seems in the exact same voice and context. The bands get older, while their songs stay exactly the same.

“I don’t buy into that at all,” Steinbach says. “That’s one of the clearest signs that you haven’t grown as artists. It’s stagnancy.”

The group strives to encapsulate difficult emotions with their lyrics, which range conceptually from enduring personal loss, rising above the elitism and pettiness of people, to seeing through and liberating oneself from imposed artificial hierarchies inherent in society. As the members of Xen change and grow, so too does their music

“It usually starts with the lyrics; some I have written already and I try and match them up thematically with the intensity of the music Aaron writes.”

This symbiosis has provided the group with the root of their creative process, and had worked notoriously well in the creation of Dog, arguably the band’s strongest, and most popular song. Penned furiously without interruption or revision by Steinbach after a less than positive day at work, the song is a potent, defiant grievance against those that who would cast a judging eye from an elevated seat in an attempt to strip away one’s sense of importance and worth. It was quickly passed on to Cox where it struck a shared nerve.

“The song was Tory’s, but it just became mine right away too,” Says Cox, whose musical composition for the song came just as freely as its lyrics had, from the opening solo to the jarring breakdown in the middle.

Though having written and experimented with many songs, the band’s perfectionism has led them currently to six original tracks they have the most faith in playing, four of which can be found on the band’s own EP. They continue to work to develop their catalogue to piece together a full length album, and look forward soon to taking their energetic and challenging, however accessible music to out of state venues.

Information about the band, upcoming shows, and more on can be found on
Myspace:http://www.myspace.com/xenband

Visual Music Ink, an up and coming southern Connecticut based independent media company started and run by North Haven resident Gina Capristo-Gajdosik, stands to mirror this philosophy.

“Our brand is the fusion of visuals and music in all media platforms. Long and short music video, films, television, the internet and applications, video gaming, you name it. We are only limited to what we can think up,” says Gajdosik.

With a BS in Communications from the University of New Haven, Gina has worked in media production, the radio and record industries since 1985. Her first experience with film came in 1998 while volunteering as a production assistant on an independent film shoot in Meriden. Work on other film shoots and commercials led her to discover her true passion, outside the technical aspects of film.

“It was the writing that really turned me on,” she says. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

She subsequently got into producing, a “natural progression”, she says, “when you want to get your work onto the screen.”

Gina got her first taste of this progression in 2003, while on location in Edinburgh, Scotland for the shoot of Loved Alone, a short film she wrote, financed and produced herself. The film, a vignette centered on forbidden love and the fires that we set as a result of it, was directed by the internationally acclaimed Indra Bhose and boasted a talented cast including Beth Winslet, sister of Academy Award winner Kate Winslet in the lead role.

Screened in a number of US cities and reviewed highly by several magazines such as the UK’s The Mirror, Italy’s Il Nuovo and New Haven’s own The Advocate, the film was a critical success, a terrific learning experience, and a breakthrough for Gina. Soon thereafter, she experienced a creative zenith, undertaking projects ranging from a biopic of the whirlwind life of 20’s Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso, to writing the pilot for The Rise and Fall of Lisa Fox, a syndicated TV show about a woman’s survival in the unscrupulous upper corporate rungs of the music industry, and several others.

With this creative portfolio expanding, her new company’s niche seemed obvious.

“I realized there was this common theme, most likely because music has always been a huge part of my life,” Gajdosik says.

Even as an underground DJ in the 1980’s, she recalls her childhood as the likely origin for this love affair with music. The youngest of three girls, she remembers as a five year old her two older sisters bringing home their prized copy of Meet the Beetles.

“My journey began at that moment,” she says.

For the past six years, Gina has been working tirelessly perfecting the screenplay for (Make Me) Blush, an artful, and energetic pseudo rock opera set in the backdrop of New York City, that will mix a rich soundtrack with ten original songs, and two dance sequences with such thematic elements as dreams, surrealism and personal identity to tell the story of a modern woman’s mid-life crisis, fueled by a struggle to accept her newfound sexuality, embracing and adapting to her starkly changing life.

With support of a partnership with the Baldwin Entertainment Group, notable for producing such Oscar nominated films as 2004’s Ray, (Make Me) Blush is currently undergoing a final script revision, is in negotiations with director Mary Lambert and will soon be attaching talent. As VMI’s flagship film,
it is scheduled to begin shooting early next year and will purportedly be released later in 2010.

Though still in its infancy, Gina has great plans for her company, including visions of an attached record label, an online publication, graphic novel tie-ins to projects and many others. Though branching out is no small endeavor, she is prepared to implement whatever is necessary for the growth of the company

“I have a combination of a business head and a creative head, but it’s all the same to me.”
For more information about Gina, Visual Music Ink, (Make Me) Blush or any other projects visit their website www.visualmusicink.com currently under construction.

For info on Loved Alone, visit, IMBD: Loved Alone

“For most of us, it’s a labor of love,” director T.K. Reilly states on the company’s website, “We are committed to producing quality, independent films that withstand the test of time, and we’ve enjoyed the support of many folks in our community.”

The majority of the onscreen talent found in Brooklawn’s productions is pooled locally from the Metropolitan and Fairfield County areas.

Following the release of their debut short film The Barbershop League, a comical family spoof about coaching in the “highly competitive” world of girl’s youth basketball in 2005, Brooklawn released their first full length feature, Bobby Dogs, in 2007. The film, directed by Reilly follows the story of Bobby Tucker, a down but not quite out hot-dog man struggling to sever the chain of alcohol addiction and reclaim control of his life. With little else but the comfort of knowing he can fall no further, Tucker relies upon the bonds of friendship, warmth of a newfound love and a dream to help him fight off the demons that threaten to return him to the bottle, and embrace sobriety for good.

The film debuted to much critical success at several film festivals, winning a 2008 Prism Film Festival Award for its accurate and sincere portrayal of the effects of substance abuse. Look for a powerful performance from actor Mike Boland in the title role, tight supporting contributions from Joshua Eaddy and Dawn McGee, as well as an original score by composer Rob Lynch that is at once heartbreaking and hopeful.

Currently, T.K. and the Brooklawn crew are filming their next full length feature, Local Warming in Fairfield, scheduled for completion and release in early 2010.

As always, Brooklawn reminds any actors in the areas surrounding Fairfield County interested in auditioning for future projects to sign on to their mailing list, and send in resumes. For more information about Brooklawn, Bobby Dogs, and all their current and future projects and DVD purchases, visit www.brooklawnproductions.com . Information on the status of Local Warming can be found via the film’s page on Facebook.