The diptych, by Robert De Matteo, offers two shapes that strongly echo each other, but are from quite different models. The one on the left is easier to identify right away, as a brain scan from an MRI. The image on the right, though, might require a look at the title. Sure enough, it’s drawn from a satellite image of Charles Island, off the coast of Silver Sands State Park in Milford, the sandbar that connects it to the mainland at low tide clearly visible. The visual pun is funny. The idea that the forms would mirror each other closely says something a little deeper, about recurring patterns in nature, perhaps about how we aren’t as separate from our environment as we might like to think.
Charles Island On My Mind is just one of a panoply of small works that are part of “Glorious Index,” “a tactile, miniature visual compendium exhibition” running at the Institute Library on Chapel Street through Dec. 15 that also introduces the artist-run New Haven Open Studios, the month-long, city-spanning celebration of visual arts running through the end of October. Curated by artists Martha Willette Lewis and Maxim Schmidt, the show includes the work of no less than 50 artists, many of whom will be opening their studios at events this weekend and for the rest of the month at various locations around town.
