Open Studios
Erector Square
New Haven
Oct. 19, 2025
At Erector Square’s Open Studios on Sunday in Fair Haven, 5-year-old artist Abraham told me he knew how to write “Kenny.” This was great to hear, as he had just told me that was the name of the pet rock I had purchased from him. I lent Abraham my notebook and pen to write out the rock’s name, and he took his time focusing on the shape of each letter.
Over 100 artists, like Abraham, participated in this year’s two-day Open Studios annual weekend extravaganza, whether by opening up their studios at the former Erector Set industrial warehouse or popping up in the halls with tables of their art. Attendees wandered the multi-building facility, chatted with artists, and got their hands and bodies moving with activities like Japanese calligraphy, paper marbling from artist Martha Lewis, and soul line dancing with Ekow Body Wellness.
“Oh, that’s a ‘6’ accidentally,” Abraham said after his first try at the second letter of Kenny’s name. What is a 6, really, if not an upside-down “e”? He crossed it out with a big X and continued on, all the way to “y.”
I asked how he knew all the rocks’ names. “They told me,” he said simply.
Abraham had painted each rock in shades of blue, purple, and green, highlighting each of their facets. I complimented the rocks’ big smiles and asked Abraham if that meant the rocks are happy. “They’re all happy,” he confirmed. “Happy that someone’s gonna buy them.”
That prediction came true in Kenny’s case—not just for him, but also for his friend Benny, another rock. I bought the two together on Abraham’s suggestion.
Kenny and Benny clinked around in my pocket as I walked outside to Building 5, where longtime painter and lifelong New Havener Chris Ferguson showed me his oil paintings of familiar local sites: West Rock, Wooster Square’s cherry blossoms, the New Haven Green. Warm, expressive strokes captured the coziness of lights on faces and the grandeur of the great outdoors.
One atmospheric painting of a singer and band on stage had me guessing the location. Was it…Stella Blues? No, the door is on the other side. Ferguson gave me a hint: My guess was just a few blocks off.
Cafe Nine! Yes, it was a scene from one of the venue’s jazz nights, where musicians tune in to each others’ energy to create new improvisations in real time.
For less ephemeral scenes like mountainscapes, Ferguson makes the effort to bring his easel outside and paint right in front of his sources of inspiration.
“Painting on location is the best teacher. Painting from life. No matter what your skill level is,” Ferguson told me. That last part tickled me, as my mind drifted toward the pet rocks in my pocket. Abraham, at the young age of 5, was off to a good start by painting directly on the source material.
What was it about painting from life that was so special?
“You’re basically learning from the master artist,” Ferguson explained. “You’re learning from creation.”
When I’d asked Abraham what inspired him in painting his rocks, he had stayed mysterious: “I was thinking about like…stuff…” There were enough similarities to his own experiences, though, that it seemed he also drew from life.
The rocks all started classes at the same time as him (they’re currently learning how to count), for example, and Kenny is also the name of one of Abraham’s human friends who switched schools.
The rocks all go to the same school, Abraham made sure to clarify.
I told the young artist I was a bit worried about the language barrier between me and my pet rocks. After all, I don’t speak Rock. Abraham assured me Kenny and Benny also speak Human. “They tell you what to do,” he added.
I put Benny up to my ear to see what instructions I might receive. Nothing yet. Now that I think about it, I forgot to ask Abraham what happens if I don’t follow what my new pets say. Whatever. I should be fine, right?
So far, the rocks’ demands seem to fall within reason. When I asked Abraham what they say to him, he replied, “They pretty much tell me to draw cats.”
I was delighted to encounter Abraham’s pet rocks again inside a third-floor studio in Building 2, where artist duo Eben Kling and Aude Jomini were displaying their videogame-like creations in the form of video installations, prints, and actual games. On the other side of the rocks was a little computer station, where I sat arranging photo fragments in the duo’s collage game CityPile (which you can play online here).
Jomini handed me an infozine about The Center for Adult Swaddling, a fictional New Haven-based program with detailed swaddling techniques for comfort in the modern world, complete with digital art visuals in a distinctive “how-to manual” aesthetic. “The center is a therapy that doesn’t work, but that we choose to believe in anyway,” the zine reads.
Winding my way between Buildings 6 and 5, I encountered an even bigger zine at a pop-up table. I complimented 11-year-old Finn on his self-proclaimed “World’s Biggest Zine,” which looked to be well over two feet tall.
“It’s not checked out by Guinness,” Finn said. But that didn’t matter. The content of the zine, it turned out, was all about how big it was, even including a regular-sized zine embedded inside for comparison. He had filled in one double-page spread with pencil shading in order to show readers just how much shading you need for a zine this size.
As if my destiny wasn’t already defined enough by new pet rocks who tell me what to do, Finn went on to tell my fortune using a large origami paper fortune teller.
“Get very rich,” Finn read aloud, sealing my fate. I paused, trying to visualize it, and Finn helped me out. “Maybe you’ll get into a big league news anchor [job],” he said.
Finn then showed me his four-part zine series, centered on a “goofy character who teaches you how to do stuff in very questionable ways.” Each issue’s theme led into the next. The first of the series is A Very Realistic Climing [sic] Handbook, and the next, naturally, is a A Very Realistic Falling Handbook.
“It kind of just wrote itself,” Finn said. He learned how to make zines at a workshop two years ago, and he’s been honing his craft ever since.
Across buildings, across generations, and across the city, it seems the sacred texts haven’t yet been lost in New Haven’s bubbling cauldron of an art scene. An element of play keeps the field accessible and the spark alive.
