There have been many times when I have wished I could take the artists and collaborators who inspire me here and show them what is going on in the Connecticut I know. New London, Hartford, New Haven, Middletown—the little cities that shaped my dreams of what is possible when people embrace the arts as a way to build strong and healthy communities. I am fortunate to see the transformative power of the arts at SOMArts, an organization that enjoys city support that is almost unprecedented elsewhere in the country. Because Connecticut cultural organizations do not have the same funding resources, and because I have always rooted for the underdog, what happens with the arts in Connecticut still evokes deep admiration in me, as well as pride for what the people living there have achieved and keep striving for.

Two projects in Connecticut caught my eye this week. The Green Street Arts Center, where I was the assistant director for several years, has created not one but two murals over the past two years. The most recent one, created by Marela Zacarias in collaboration with the after school program and a local soup kitchen, recognizes the city’s homeless population.

Further north, Hartford City Councilman Luis Cotto has begun a Kickstarter campaign to fund a cultural center without walls. We San Franciscans need only look to the city-supported virtual cultural centers to know how powerful this can be. The first project of the center was a collaboration between Cotto and Oakland-based artist and activist Favianna Rodriguez, whose work I have admired but who I have not had the pleasure of meeting personally.

Although I’ve had no hand in this project whatsoever, I am excited to see that someone from the Bay Area is playing a part, and to see another example of how the marriage of great minds can help accessible art continue to thrive in Hartford. Cotto’s right-hand-man at City Hall, Brendan Mahoney, is a longtime friend of my fiance‘s and will be officiating our wedding in September, and we will be hosting a gathering of many friends from around the country at SOMArts. So, while I can’t bring all my West Coast friends east, at least I will be able to share with my friends and family around the country the creative home that inspires me in the present, and look forward to future insurrection, connection and community through the arts.

If you read Scary Bunnies, Weekend Party Update, and The Beat Bike Blog, you will see the side of Hartford that I love—darkly humorous, community-minded, environmentalist, artistic, and generous.

Recent Examples:

—A few weeks ago, HartBeat Ensemble called community leaders to City Hall to discuss, through theater, why Connecticut is losing its young people (and they came).

—This week, Hartford progressives who are tired of fear culture and its impact on Hartford launched the Simsbury Chicken Debate on the Hartford Courant’s website. The comments about the suburban town (“I’ve only gone to Simsbury ONCE in my life, and I had to drive through it with my windows up and my doors locked!”) are kind of funny unless you have heard this type of comment about your own neighborhood over and over and over again. But sometimes, you have to laugh.

—This morning, Hartford-based Scary Bunnies pointed me south to New Haven, where Van Gogh’s Starry Night is on exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery through September 7. Somehow, I missed this bit of news.

Thanks, Hartford!

The UnConvention, a site I’ve been cruising for a while now, has launched “My Yard Our Message,” a project that asks you to design yard signs about democracy, vote on them, and display them in your yard. The project is open for your designs any time before the end of June.

Hartford/Andover artist Jane Rainwater‘s submisssion is displayed above. If, like me, you don’t have a yard, there’s always Facebook.

Interview with Rob Ruggiero, Associate Artistic Director of Theaterworks in Hartford.
Interview excerpted from The Art Agenda. Originally broadcast on 88.1fm, WESU, Middletown on May 29, 2008.

Ruggiero’s new play, Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire, runs June 6 through July 20 at Theaterworks.