‘Strange Fruit,’ In Pottery and Through the Lens: Art Exhibit

by Susan Hood, HARTFORD COURANT.COM

Gourd shapes rendered in clay and still-life arrangements snapped before decay are found in “Strange Fruit,” an exhibition of sensuous works by potter Greg Kuharic and photographer David Halliday at La Motta Fine Art in Hartford.

Carrots, Entwined

The two artists have sturdy national reputations and have exhibited widely. This year alone the August Vogue, the September Town & Country and the October Gourmet magazines featured Kuharic’s ceramics. Halliday’s photography is in the collections of Banana Republic and the New Orleans Museum of Art, among others, and he received a retrospective at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans in 2002.

Raised in Ridgefield, Halliday has called the Garden District of New Orleans his base since 1991. He trained as a commercial artist at Syracuse University, but jettisoned all he learned to seek his way as an art photographer. To support himself, he worked as a professional cook in New York City restaurants for a decade, earning enough to attend several intensive photography workshops. Encouraged by lens master Arnold Newman, Halliday embarked on his career.