February. It’s been a hard time to get out and recharge with a nice museum or gallery show. Snow storms. Variants causing subsequent closings, and just downright winter blues which seem to enforce stay-at-home measures with a heating pad versus getting out and about.

Last Friday though, I made a pit stop at the Lyman Allyn Museum and was cheered on by their current exhibit: Norman Ives: Constructions & Reconstructions. The  grouping consists of Ives graphic and text driven work that I enjoyed immensely. Ives, I have now learned was a student of Joseph Albers and a professor at Yale until the late 70s. For someone who has always enjoyed text driven work, this fit the bill.

Many of the pieces radiates as wallpaper from across the room until you get up closer to see how they are constructed. He was able to plant his feet in many places, traversing fine art, graphic design and typography without having to make declarations of one or another, as the artworld is keen on insisting on, especially the era he was working in of the 1950s-70s.

Constructions & Reconstructions is up through April 24, 2022 and I definitely will be stopping in again for another dose.

The Norman S. Ives Foundation website has more information about his work and writing.