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Ancestral Gate
Artist: Roger Di Tarando
Date: 1992
Material: Bronze
Location: Prince Street Park, Corner of Washington and Cedar Streets
The intent behind artist Roger di Tarando's work was to recognize the multiple cultural influences that created the modern United States, during the Quincentennial celebrations of Columbus' discovery of the Americas. The gateway arch, therefore, features a narrative image of the New World in silhouette, emphasizing ocean travels, an immigrant family and maps of South America and Africa.
Di Tarando used imagery gathered from native peoples, including a totem design and a kachina doll. In addition, recognizing the visual and historical impact of African culture, the artist chose African masks for the heads of the figures.
The gate has six figures, all double-sided, creating twelve figures in total. Each head was fabricated of painted aluminum plate and stainless steel wire, and were attached to the framework of the gate by Shore Line Fence Company of Old Saybrook. In addition, there is an upper gateway arch with two larger heads. The lintel itself rests on poured concrete posts in a trapezoid shape.
Di Tarando lives and works in Vernon, Connecticut and has completed sculpture work in multiple mediums, including lost wax and sand casting, metal fabrication and pattern and die-making.
Growing Together
Artist: Iyaba Ibo Mandingo
Date: 2003
Material: Acrylic painted maplewood panels
Location: Truman School interior, 114 Truman Street
The artist, Iyaba Ibo Mandingo, stated that he was positively influenced by Truman School teachers when he met with them to talk about the subject of his proposal. Their stated goals for Truman students, and the curriculum built to reach these goals, were centered on literacy and community unity. Thus, Mandingo chose as his subject themes directly imported from well-known children's classics such as Eric Foxes' Little Red Fox and Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham.
In addition, several of the panels focus on history, another subject Mandingo found important for Truman School teachers and students. Always fully integrated into these historical-based images (such as Meeting Benjamin Franklin and Historical Connecticut) are depictions of students of all colors, because "people of color... represent American ideals and the curriculum...the community was important to incorporate... immigrants will always have a place to grow in this community."
Mandingo, an artist originally from Antigua, was especially interested in presenting ways in which New Haven's communities work and socialize together. His mural work uses bright, flat areas of color with heavy black outlines, a style akin to comic-book art which provides the hallway in which the panels are inserted with a vibrant focus.
Homage to Roberto
Artist: JoAnn Moran
Date: 2010
Material: Acrylic mural
Location: Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy, 3360 Columbus Avenue
Well-known New Haven artist JoAnn Moran created her Homage to Roberto incorporating historic photographs of the baseball giant / humanitarian with child-like drawings meant to capture Clemente’s two great loves: baseball and children. In a series of three murals, Moran and the students who worked with her at Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy, short markers from Clemente’s amazing life story are told.
From an impoverished childhood in Puerto Rico, to a stellar career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Clemente became a model of responsible leadership when he took on the mantle of humanitarian and philanthropist. He eventually perished on a downed flight, where he was on-route to deliver food and supplies after an earthquake in Nicaragua. Though the facts of his life are alluded to in the first two murals in the series, the last and largest mural, titled “ECHO” depicts a “whimsical games of baseball celebrating the ECHO philosophy.” A creed for the school, ECHO stands for empathy, character, hope and opportunity, traits that Clemente espoused.
You are Order. I am Chaos
Artist: Jose Rodriquez and David Mark Twidle
Date: 2006
Material: Granulated recycled rubber
Location: John Daniels School courtyard, 569 Congress Avenue
Jose Emilio Rodriguez, an artist form Queens, New York, and David Mark Twidle from Ashbury Park, NJ completed, You are Order, I am Chaos...for the construction of the new John C. Daniels School, which was dedicated on November 12, 2006.
Installed in the open air courtyard of the school, You are Order, I am Chaos...suggests a physical and metaphorical center for the school. Large blue rubberized surfaces decorated with flowers (symbolizing youth) placed within concentric bands offers students the opportunity to become a part of the work of art - by walking over and standing on - these special spaces. The design of this artwork is based on a grid system designed by the architects. The flowers actually are placed specifically on the meeting points of the circular bands and axis of the grid.
Not surprisingly, the color blue was chosen for the large circular areas, which suggests large bodies of water to provide an intended effect of "tranquility" on the viewers. In addition, the artist hoped to bring to mind the effect teachers have on their students, much like a stone thrown into a body of water, whose ripples continue outward, affecting everything in its path. Further, the artist described the circles as representing students' thirst for knowledge, which is quenched by learning.
David Twidle designed and executed an interior mural which can be seen from inside and outside the courtyard. The various free-form elements and shapes are meant to both harmonize and contrast with the mosaic outside, so that each piece can stand on its own, but relate to each other.
Rodriguez and Twidle both believe that art can help create a sense of pride in place and a feeling of ownership, and that Daniels School students will be invigorated by these works.
The last part of the work of art, a mural, painted by David Mark Twidle is seen through the glass walls of the courtyard, and was designed to inspire students' artistic pursuits.
Passages
Artist: Leila Daw
Date: 2006
Material: Aluminum
Location: Courtland Seymour Wilson (Hill) Library Interior, 303 Washington Avenue
The work of artist Leila Daw calls attention to the history of immigration in the Hill neighborhood of New Haven. Using a map of the earth divided into two parts, Daw presents the history of American immigrants before the Civil War and after-an event that changed the country. Large shapes reference continents and also suggest ships, while oversized maps of Connecticut and New Haven supplement the globe.
Images of immigrants appear in silhouette form, suspended by steel chain below the globe halves. These new Americans travel with bags to new lives, where, eventually they are "grounded" in the Hill, firmly attached to the exterior shelves of the library's bookcases. The figures are color coded according to their place of origin and appear either in positive or negative form-indicating the loss/gain struggle of the emigration/immigration experience.