OPEN CALL- DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Share your work with us!

When you submit to this open call your work will be considered for:

1. A group exhibition juried by Larry Ossei-Mensah

2. Solo and group shows

3. Digital exhibitions and social media features

Open to artists across disciplines. Cost to apply is $35, however no one is turned away for lack of funds, please email info@elycenter.org for fee waiver information before you apply.

DEADLINE MARCH 22.

Apply at elycenter.org/open-call-2026

TODAY

improvised art gather

SUNDAY MARCH 8TH  @ 5-9pm
5:30- Melody Green performs

- PERFORMANCE - SPOKEN WORD - MUSIC -

Please join us for Open Space Evening (mic & more) featuring expressions for the sake of being alive & together, organized by Danielle Giroux.

Immerse yourself in a performance by Melody Green in response to the installation "What Remains Tied: Bound in Belonging" by Diana Abouchacra.

Following Green’s performance, stay for an Open Space Evening where we make room for others to bring music, poetry, dance, and more into the gallery. You are invited to join in whatever compassionate way calls you. An offering for cathartic connection, imperfection, sharing from the archives, and all that exists in between. 

The origin of this comes from Abouchacra''s installation process that brought together artists to bind and reflect, mirroring the spirit of Green's collaborations across alternative venues with  Giroux and others this past fall and winter. It comes from a deep well of inspiration from making space for collective ephemeral expression.

please feel free to bring cash for pizza - we will pool resources to break "bread" together.

SPRING ‘26 KEYHOLE WORKSPACE RESIDENCY

Introducing the Spring ‘26 Cohort for ECOCA’s
Keyhole Workspace Artist-in-Residence Program

Parastoo Ahovan is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Connecticut. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Boston University in 2014. Working across sculpture, painting, installation, textiles, video, and performance, her practice explores material, form, and embodied experience. Ahovan’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the 56th Venice Biennale (Italy), EUNAM Museum (Gwangju, South Korea), Nouchin Pahlevan Gallery (Paris, France), Leila Heller Gallery (New York), the Tehran Sculpture Biennial (Iran), the Mykonos Biennial (Athens, Greece), and High Line Nine Gallery (New York). Her sculptures are also installed in urban spaces across Iran, Turkey, Spain, India, the UAE, Italy, France, China, and the United States.

Ciara Curwen was born and homeschooled in essentially the woods of Upstate New York. She plans to remain on the East Coast. Curwen, who works in a variety of mediums (painting, printmaking, photography, CNC milling) has one goal: to locate tributaries from which the root of drawing can flow. She selects materials and creates marks to make images and address image-making directly. Curwen is exceptionally interested in the figure-ground, memory, and phenomenology. She studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Aura Wang is a Chinese-born painter working primarily in oil. Drawing from both Eastern and Western ancient cultures, she combines shared figure and symbolic forms from Eastern and Western ancient cultures and mythology to create a surreal healing space that evokes collective human memory and a sense of ancestral connection.

ON VIEW

Intervals installation, photo by Peter Brown

Exhibitions on view February 8- April 12, 2026
Intervals
small tears, cuts and scribbles
Ensconced
What Remains Tied, Bound in Belonging

Three solo shows by artists Diana Abouchacra, Lauren Flaaen and Dario Mohr, the Fall ’25 Keyhole Workspace cohort, use installation and transformed objects to examine how bodies, memories, and identities are mediated through structures that both protect and constrain.

Abouchacra’s What Remains Tied, Bound in Belonging offers an immersive installation on memory and care, combining sculptural “memory ties,” audio, and video to consider how belonging is formed over time.

Flaaen’s small tears, cuts and scribbles transforms domestic furniture into a bodily form, exploring vulnerability, protection, and transformation with her reupholstered couch installation.

In Ensconced, Mohr examines light, visibility, and power with illuminated glass cubes that frame Black male bodies in moments of concealment and revelation.

The use and transformation of fixtures, furniture, and unassuming kitchen materials creates an underlying theme of comfort, exposure, intimacy and power in the three artists’ exhibitions. 

Intervals is a group exhibition presented by the volunteer artists and curators who comprise the Ely Center’s Curatorial and Program Advisory Committee. Reflecting on pauses, shifts, and in-between states, Intervals addresses moments of change—between places, roles, and aesthetics—while reinforcing long-term vision of inclusivity, diversity, and spaces built through collaboration.

Alexzandria Robin/ Sydney Bell, David Borawski/ Peter Brown, Debbie Hesse/ Marion Belanger, Ellen Hawley | Michael G. Young   , Emily Weiskopf/ Douglas Degges, Fritz Horstman/ Sabrina Marques, Howard el-Yasin/ Susan McCaslin, Jeanne Ciravolo/Janet Warner, Judith Kruger/ Catherine Christiano, Kit Young/Paloma Kop & Andrei Jay, Maria Markham/ Jayden Ashley, Suzan Shutan/ Molly Gambardella

UPCOMING

PRESS

Midbrow/New Haven Independent: Ely Center Celebrates the In-Between

photos by Peter Brown

HOURS

Gallery Hours: We, Th, Su 12-5pm or by appointment- to book an off hours visit please email aburg@elycenter.org

Follow us for more information:
bluesky: @elycenter.bsky.social
instagram: @ecoca_nhv