How Democratic Administrations Gut CT Arts - Part One

 There are a number of ways in which Connecticut artists are both short-changed in compensation as well as used as gullible pawns in bait and switch administrative policies that trivialize the purchase of CT-based artists and maximizes a buyers club slush fund for out-of-state vanity projects.

In researching data on the curious spending of the 1% For Arts funding, I had initially simply noted that artists from the Northeast corner of the State were completely erased from being selected multiple Calls For Art. More strikingly, it became obvious that the art being purchased to represent the highest quality of art in the State was concentrated in the wealthiest of communities.

Just to be clear, the 1% For Art legislation is fully intended to not only support the purchase of art from artists ALL OVER CT but it is also being purchased as a historical celebration of the best art by the best artists in CT for posterity. It's intended to be a virtuous cycle - encourage artists to create here by buying their best art so that they can enrich their communities, Pretty basic stuff.

So let's count the ways that multiple, invasive CT bureaucracies manage to F' that up.

Networking, Nepotism, and Entitlement

An easy, no-brainer administrative practice is obvious in the award of grants and art purchases. That is that the merit of spending money on art is on automatic pilot. Grants are awarded one after another within the same year through disingenuous multiple funding channels without artistic expectation, accountability, or even legitimate sniff testing for veracity. 

Even a casual proof reading of where the money is spent reveals well connected, wealthy community influencers being given taxpayer dollars based on the generosity of wealthy donors and not anything having to do with the merit of the art or the responsibility of these arts insiders to promote and support themselves. See this year's (or any year's CT Arts Endowment Funds distribution - see below).

But another strategy that is used is to obfuscate and reroute the 1% funds locally. Some civic arts projects are awarded to political family members and never given a Call For Art request. The money is swallowed by a politician's need to employ a family member as a make-work project - say, painting traffic boxes or whatnot. 

The entitlement examples involve granting arts money to obscenely endowed, private school organizations that amount to little more than student activity fund supplements. On any number of COA fiscal awards entries Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity, and other student cohorts will be given arts grants to fund student and school activities well outside the scope of government handouts. While this may appear to be an act of magnanimous generosity it reduces the already paltry sum of money available to more legitimate requests.

Corporations and Civic "Department of the Arts"

What?

How do small CT towns suddenly tap arts funds to supplement local funding?

And corporations? How does the COA reconcile awarding taxpayer money to corporations as if NGO's aren't an inefficient enough administrative money sink.

The State Sponsored, Non-Profit Laundry Business 

Fiscal Year 2026 CAEF Grants (CT Arts Endowment Fund) (Claude AI Analysis)

I'll map each town/city to its Connecticut county and sum up the grants. Now let me calculate the county totals and create a visualization. Here's the breakdown by county.

"Those observations are based strictly on the organizations listed in this PDF, which is only the list of FY26 Connecticut Arts Endowment grant recipients. It is not a comprehensive inventory of all arts institutions in Connecticut.

There could be many arts organizations in any given county that simply didn't apply, weren't eligible, or weren't awarded a grant this cycle. So statements like "Litchfield ranks 5th due to the Warner Theatre and Sharon Playhouse" really just mean those two grants were the largest contributors to Litchfield's total within this particular grant list — not that those are the only or most significant arts institutions in the county overall.

I should have been clearer that all analysis is scoped to this document only. Thanks for pushing back on that."

No matter what COA financial awards document you plug into the AI of your choosing and ask for a by-county analysis, the results are predictably the same. CT's Second District has been so demoralized and disenfranchised from applying, expecting, or ever receiving on a token basis any kind of arts funding that the effect has been normalized.

Pay To Play, Crushing Art In CT

The Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) and it's sponsor the Department of Economic Community Development Have systemically turned the Arts in Connecticut into a zero sum game. They all need to resign and the entire cluster-muck (I'm being polite) of State arts administration needs to be reimagined with artists and the welfare of CT arts in mind.

As I described in an earlier post, what's left of the entire community of artists in Connecticut's Second District have been successfully demoralized and largely erased from any funding opportunities.

The Shapiro sorority house of arts administration has successfully broken the back of the former Northeastern Cultural District fell prey to what appears to be a COA fictional requirement that the district cough up at least $30K that would be matched in kind by COA with another $30K. You might be fooled into thinking this had something to do with art or community.

No such thing. Shapiro was requiring the money be used to hire yet another arts administrator who would cow-tow to the COA's desire to extend their administrative chokehold. Intelligent, frugal, all volunteer local organizations threatened the weed garden of schmoozers who today control all the spending in this State (and not in a good way).

By insisting that Cultural District's pay to play (under Shapiro's thumb), the message was clear - you don't exist. The Southeastern CT Cultural District fared only slightly better after stumbling for years. The entire Second Congressional District eventually got swept up into one aesthetic dustbin that is offered a scrap or two of attention just to be sure there's at least one idiot left who thinks anyone gives a sh!t.

The restoration and rehabilitation of CT's Second District arts community is a big job. DECD is not only a failed institution on automatic pilot but it has lost the script altogether. Accountability, reason, compassion, and a reimagination of the Arts is necessary.

The Arts community needs to get out of the aesthetic ICU and rise, Easter is coming.

P0rn, G@mblin', and Cruel and Unusual Art Money Laundering Techniques

 This is another chapter in the investigation of the CT Office of the Arts CHRO complaint I'm researching.

The expectation I had had was that when the State made a Call for Art and received, as a thought experiment, 80 pre-qualified entries - that those 80 pieces would be evaluated strictly on their artistic merit. and no one is ever warned that that's not true.

Secondly, just because the 1% that funds the purchase of the art comes from the construction or renovation involving architecture, the purchase of fine art is not an exercise in interior decoration, social reparations, or personal shopping excursions. The Call for Art *is* a call for *ART*. It's an artist's opportunity to exhibit their gift to their audience. But, as I've found, that's not true either. One Percent For Art is just a euphemism for misappropriating money into a slush fund that the taxpayer intends to be used for art but instead is diverted everywhere but.

In attempting to make my case why this happens I looked to find the original Call for Art involving the Elihu Burritt Library extension at Central CT State University (CCSU). The CT Office of the Arts is obfuscating any link to that information from their own site but it can be found here. Oddly, all of the links contained within it go to what looks to be a p0rn site. Handle with care.

One percent of an advertised 18.8 million dollar construction amounts to $188,000. The Call for Art states that the buying budget is $100,000. This same exact amount appears in other CfAs as if the COA pulled it out of its collective keister.

Very Sus.

In any case, as I compared and contrasted the buying habits of whoever the hell makes these decisions, I noticed that there was no random distribution of our sample 80 entries. Of the three 1% award groups, say 70 of the 80 ( purchased pieces skewed toward two or three CT counties as if the rest were thrown a token purchase (or not) to avoid suspicion.

Upon further investigation, I discovered that the entire Second District of CT has been, for all practical intents and purposes disenfranchised for both DECD and the COA Arts consideration. A few years ago, these entities contrived a regional Cultural Districts scheme that punished rural, lighter business district arts communities and rewarded already thriving (e.g. wealthier) Cultural Districts.

About four years ago, the Northeastern Cultural District was wholly eliminated and later incorporated into the dysfunctional Southeastern Cultural District. The Arts in the Second Congressional District have been largely co-opted by the Tribal Casino interests of tourism marketing and promotion and as an anti-gambling proxy. The euphemism is "healing" arts but it amounts to funding juvenile flower murals that are claimed to prevent gambling habits. IMO, they are more likely to induce su1cidal tendencies after a gambler has lost it all in the casino.

In any case, most taxpayers might expect that the State's Arts organizations were there to ensure that the entire State enjoyed to benefits and opportunities that the 1% for Art program pretends to offer. Instead it appears to be a finely tuned, State-sponsored money laundering operation that has no oversight or accountability and absolutely no interest in promoting CT artists (more on this to come).

CHRO Complaint Intake form Response

 

INTAKE QUESTIONNAIRE II

Inquirer Name and Address: Frank Krasicki <snip>

1. Respondent Name and Address:
   
   CT Office of the Arts

       

450 Columbus Boulevard, Ste 5
Hartford, CT 06103

PHONE : 860-500-2300

2. Does the Respondent offer its goods and services to the General Public? Is it a store, a bank, a Police Department, etc.? :
   
   They administer the 1% for [Public] Art program

3. How were you denied services and when? What was the Name and Title of the individual you spoke with? What were you seeking?:

   I received a notice of artists whose public arts submissions in early February of 2026.
   I attempted to corresponded with Tamara Dimitri, CT Office of the Arts at CT.gov.
   I was seeking an accounting of the “1%” that was spent on the art and who received it. She never replied.
   
   So I began to examine the program’s results.
   
   
   

4. Is the Respondent a school system or educational facility? If your complaint is against an educational facility or school, are you filing on behalf of your minor child (under 18 years of age)? If so, what is your child’s name, age and what grade were they in? Were you treated differently by the school in your role as a parent?:
   
   Not school related.
   
   
   

5. Was your child bullied? If so, when, for how long, and how often? Did you report the treatment to the Administration, to whom and when? Did the school investigate and what was the result?:
   
   N/A
   
   
   

6. Was your child denied a reasonable accommodation? What was the reasonable accommodation requested? Was anything offered in the alternative? What is the Name and Title of the Administrators you spoke with?:
   
   N/A
   
   
   
   

7. What is the reason for you claim of discrimination (race, sex, age, disability, national origin, religion, retaliation, pregnancy, color, ancestry, etc.)? Please identify on what basis you are being treated differently.:
   
   Regional residency. Zip Code economic class.
   
   
   

   Why do you think these actions were discriminatory?:
   
   The evidence of the discriminatory nature of how the 1% [Public Art] is administered is obvious (but I will provide those details in a summary).
   
   The nature of the discrimination is the money laundering of public arts funds that is funneled to wealthy or ingrown, privileged communities.
   
   State funds paid by *everyone* in the State in programs such as 1% for Art are intended to be used to acquire art works that represent the best of a broad spectrum of arts and crafts from ALL OVER the State regardless of an artist’s identity details or State based geographic location. A reasonable expectation for a qualifying artist who submits work for consideration is that that piece of work will be given an objective and incorruptible opportunity to be selected.
   
   My complaint is NOT that my work should have been selected, it is that my work (and the work of lots of other artists who are geographically challenged or not an insider) never had a fair opportunity to be selected. Furthermore I question whether or not the process even involved individuals who had the mental capacity to judge the art. And finally, I question the integrity of the program and whether or not the Connecticut Art Collection itself is being culturally compromised by swindlers.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

8. Describe if anyone else was in the same or similar situation and how they were treated. Provide the race, sex, age, national origin, religion, disability of these individuals, if known, and if it relates to your claim of discrimination.
   
   Yes, a multitude of artists who submitted work to these calls for public art who don’t live along the shoreline or Western CT [NY getaway] suburban communities are affected.

 

1. Of the persons who were in the same or similar situation as you, who was treated better than you?
   
   Any honest evaluation of the art selected cannot statistically explain the extraordinary clustering of geographic co-incidence. At face value, all the art should have been given a blind consideration based on the art alone. I can’t prove it wasn’t but the results give a miraculously astonishing proof.

2. Of the persons who were in the same or similar situation as you, who was treated worse than you?
   
   We were all discriminated against either as a by-product of money laundering or as a consequence of the dysfunctional administration and lack of accountability of the 1% for Art program.

 

9. If you are claiming discrimination because of disability – Did you ask respondent employees for any changes or assistance to use their facility or services?
    

1. When did you ask?

2. Did you ask verbally or in writing?

3. Who did you ask?

4. Describe what you asked for.

5. Describe how the individual responded to your request.
   
   N/A

 

10. Did you file an internal complaint of discrimination with the Respondent? If so, was it investigated and by whom? What were the results of the investigation?
    
    Arts funding in CT is a tangle of incomprehensible bureaucracy. I have never been able to penetrate this administrative pile of worthless bureaucrats to ever get an answer to anything. I refer you to my blog; artscrub.blogspot.com where I document my efforts to do so over many years.
    
    I have had success in the past with CHRO in resolving similar issues and I trust this process far more than the wolves guarding the hen house art collection.
    
    I am currently compiling a body of material that I believe will prove the assertions I’m claiming.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reference: https://artscrub.blogspot.com/2026/03/chro-ct-office-of-arts-complaint.html

CHRO CT Office of the Arts Complaint

 

Today (Feb 16, 2026)  I submitted the following complaint to CHRO;

"Upon researching the administration of Public Arts funded by the CT 1% for Art program, I found evidence of severe mismanagement of equal opportunity to fair opportunity to be chosen to represent CT art. The protected class involves wealthy or ingrown regions vs less wealthy communities. It is also an issue of urban vs suburban and rural communities.

Three recent Public Arts selections; the Litchfield Courthouse, The SCSU Business school,, and the Elihu Burritt Library expansion provide the cold hard evidence.

In all three cases, CT Arts was used to purchase art from very specific areas; Fairfield county (New Haven) and Western CT (wealthy Litchfield towns).

All CT artists pay CT taxes. I'm 74 years old, grew up in New Britain and I'm very familiar with the many artists in and around New Britain, West Hartford, Hartford, and so on. I am also familiar with North Eastern CT; Putnam, Woodstock, Willimantic, Storrs, and so on. With the exception of one art teacher in Manchester CT, not one artist from Central or Eastern CT had a piece purchased through the 1% for Art program.

There are numerous issues in play.

The "calls for art" are fairly ambiguous and may cap the number of candidate entries. But the selecting process may move the goalposts (see the Elihu Burritt selection process).

There is also no transparency as to how much 1% is nor where that money is actually spent (it should be going to buying art from artists). It's not an administrative slush fund.

The art juror needs to be culturally qualified. CT is investing heavily in Giclee prints - art's most dubious medium that is usually not accepted at local art shows - expensive prints. At Elihu Burritt a piece claiming an Exit 29 in New Britain was chosen. There is no such exit in New Britain. Another piece called Neptune Bay was selected based on "physics" criteria. Neptune Bay is not on the planet Neptune, it's in Florida. Many of the selected works have nothing to do with art or even CT - this program is shamefully in need of an audit and reform.

Some artists selected have many more works purchased than could have been entered for evaluation (ok, good for them but shockingly indifferent to encouraging a broader representation of CT artists.

This complaint is a class and regional complaint. The CHRO needs to step in and ensure more regional, intellectual, and artistic integrity to an unaccountable, runaway State program."

This is scheduled for intake in late April.

Ruminations on Art Exhibit Viewer's Primer

 

Ruminations on Art

[An inquiry into the philosophy of Fine Art
and where it all comes from- 2026]

This exhibition illustrates the development of a visual philosophy unique to the existing practice and belief system commonly taught, exercised , and advocated as artistic gospel by the contemporary artistic status quo.

While this is a co-incidental and largely oblivious contextual reality, anyone can enjoy the show regardless. For those who enjoy the intent, detail, contextual basis, and co-incidentals of what the art is, the following supplement is intended to provide clarity and a teaser of more complex understanding through curiosity for more.

A primer on what the words mean or refer to:

Art Categories and sub categories:

Contemporary Art – refers to mainstream art and ideas that are given commercial and institutional credibility usually conferred to living artists

Modern Art – refers to a historical span of art production that started in the late 1800’s
and, in some art historian and critics opinion, continues in one form or another, to this very day

MetaModern Art – Contemporary Art that is created with the intent of answering a historical question or proposition that has been previously answered. MetaModern art is not an act of appropriation but an act of re-imagining a unique solution to the problem that can re-purpose familiar styles, techniques, or artifacts in fair use fashion (you don’t have to reinvent the studio practice or obvious intellectual artifacts).

Modern Day Art – refers to Contemporary Art that is neither political nor subliminally advocating political or identity politics as a defining characteristic of the work

PostModern (PoMo) [Visual] Art – refers to a historical span of art production that arguably started by the mid-1950’s and continues to today. It is most recognizable (but not exclusively defined) by the appropriation of numerous historically recognizable art and design styles that maintain their distinctive ancestry and are uniquely fused into pastiche compositions.

Propositional Zenthetics – candidate art that requires the viewer to alter their expectations of the question, “What is art?”. The first and foremost expectation of mainstream art is that what you see is the criteria by which you decide to evaluate it’s worth. Instead, Zenthetics insists that its art practice gives preference to the question, “What do all my senses and intellect have to contribute to may understanding of this work not withstanding my appreciation of how it ‘looks’?”

Fair warning.

“The map is not the territory”

- Alfred Korzybski

“The label is not the thing”

- Gregory Bateson

How to read my art labels:

TypeOfArt.Medium.CategoryOfFineArt Title of the artwork

TypeOfArt – any one of the set of labels referring to the conceptual bucket of recognized art objects. This generically includes ‘Painting’, ‘Sculpture’, ‘Assemblage’, ‘Collage’, and
so on

Medium – usually refers to the material used to create the work or the material upon which the work is created. For example, ‘Oil’, ‘Acrylic’, ‘MixedMedia’, and so on.

Category – Many of the categories involving my art are recent forks of MetaModern research projects. The artwork is often a prototype example of what is possible when an artist richly experiments with modifying the range of possibilities available in answering historically important artistic questions.
For example, “what is printmaking?”, “what is artistic photography”, and “is the homonyn of ‘language’ as used in art and actually useful form of communication?” are experiments explored in this exhibition.

Title – I do not tell the viewer what to see. On occasion, I document the origin of what was seen.
I can consider the title to be another characteristic of the artistic whole. These usually take the form of an assemblage in which the lablel (a poem or microFiction story) is bundled with the physical object to create the aggregate piece.

On other occasions, the title is a psychological nudge or hint to look harder.

The Main Hall (left to Right):

The Coffee Space:

Painting.Acrylic.DisassociativeImpressionism Snapshot of the Void on Any Given Evening

An experiment in Impressionism that uses additive, acrylic skin artifacts to the painting surface. Anyone who has read Jack Kerouac knows all about the void.

The Middle Hall Space:

Painting.Acrylic.ImprovisationalAbEx Gate of Eternal Return

An experiment in forking the Abstract Expressionist trajectory from action painting to improvisational impulse. Blame Miles Davis.

Painting.Acrylic.PostPostPainterlyImprovisation #16

A further exploration of the problem set originally explored by the “PostPainterly” cohort of New York and Washington painters working with stained canvases and vacant titles.

Painting.Acrylic.AbExWithoutACause CoddieWomple 1

Sorry/Not Sorry. Extending AbEx practice with an emphasis on a linear intervention of color
field ground.

The Far Hall Space:

P.A.Biomorphic,GesturalAbstraction.Surrealism Neither Here Nor There

A compound reimagination of what Surrealism might look like through the eyes of a German Expressionist fanboy.

Painting.Acrylic.PropositionalZenthetics Pavlov’s Aesthetics

Zenthetics is a minimalization of Aesthetic [beauty-based] art appreciation. But those dogs
keep barking.

Painting.Acrylic.xSurrealism Test Bed

An application of the Greek optical illusion of entasis to a back-to-basics color field-ish tease.

Painting.Acrylic. PropositionalZenthetics Usurping Humanity

Another deconstruction and reconstruction of the ruins of Contemporary Art practice.

Painting.Acrylic. PropositionalZenthetics Psychic Arms Race

Subconscious, unintentionally coded paint on canvas. Somebody must recognise it.

The Gym Hall Space:

Painting.Acrylic.xSurrealism The Mask Reveals What Is Inside

More entasis. Nobody is fooled.

Painting.Acrylic.Cosmograph Head Magic

A speculative cosmograph of our seemingly eternal human predicament.

Painting.Acrylic.xSurrealism Late Night Visitors

A raw, examination of a surrealist dream state through the eyes of one haunted.

Painting.Acrylic.PrimordialAbEx Memories Leave Memories Behind

Do butterflies have the memory of the caterpillar? An a priori action without motion.

Painting.Acrylic.ReadyMyth Face of Dionysus

ReadyMyths are physical artifacts that reference common myths (in this case the season of spring).
Readymyths are intellectual kissing cousins to ReadyMades.

Painting.Acrylic.AntiAbstraction Thirteen Paintings That Can’t Stop Tears

Abstraction obstructed by abstraction and grief.

The Entry Showcase:

Top Shelf:

Painting.Acrylic.Zenthetics The Four Seasons

Painting.Acrylic.Landscapes Nebraska and others

Memory exercises.

Middle Shelf:

Assemblage NeckTie

Print.Acrylic.SnapPrint 1 - 4

“What is a print?” In this case, the impression of an inked mousetrap.

Physical Photography.HandCut Visions of Buddha #1

“What is a print?” In this case, the impression of an inked mousetrap.

Manuport.CorrespondenceArt Minor Chaos in the Customs System

A manuport sent to be exhibited in the first International Festival of Manuports at the Kohta Gallery in Helsinki, Finland. Sent during Covid, Finnish customs and a new EU law “caused chaos” and this, one of many, entries were returned to sender.

The manuport entry is a component of the Ashford stone sculpture field on Zaicek Rd.

Lower Shelf:

Drawings.TheaterGoers.HandToGod various

TheaterWorks in Hartford staged a play, Hand to God, that was based on puppetry. As was my wont I drew audience members before and during intermissions of all shows. In this case, I exaggerated the images to imitate puppet likeneses.

Sculpture.Improvisational Cosmic Crapshoot #1

Painting.Acrylic.VisualLeetspeak 1-4

The Exit Showcase:

Top Rail:

Sculpture.Knotted 1 - 4

Left Wall, top to bottom:

Assemblage.MixedMedia.Antiscape Train of Thought

Painting.Acrylic.Cosmograph Betelguese Farewell

Painting.Acrylic.SpectacularMinimalism POMO Like We Did Last Summer

Right Wall, top to bottom:

SerialCompoundMonotypes Running Man series

Painting.Acrylic.Zenthetic Running Man

Lower Shelf:

Painting.Acrylic.4DAbEx Abstract Ambivalence

PhysicalPhotography.Pixel.DiscontiguousDoubleTake Lake/Ice #2

All of my Physical Photography entries were created long before Banksy’s use of a shredding device.

PhysicalDrawing.Pastel.4DAbEx Representational Ambivalence #1

PhysicalPhotography.Pixel.DiscontiguousDoubleTake Lake/Ice #1

PhysicalPhotography.Pixel.Minimal.DoublePresentation Dunham Lake

PhysicalPainting.Acrylic.ReadyMyth Dancing Fool

A few words about the exhibit:

A few innovative and somewhat experimental exhibition design decisions were involved in setting
up this show.

None of the works are titled nearby the work. Anyone interested in the titles and explanations can refer to this Primer on the exhibit contents. This is intentional.

This eliminates the possibility that a title may pre-seed an idea about what is being presented. The viewer can freely make their own assessments. It also eliminates the need for distracting signage.


The second exhibition innovation involves the tight coupling of my process notes and sketches and reading material to the artwork. This too is intentional and it has MetaModern roots in literature.

In Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace, uses rich, autonomously narrative footnotes as complementary vignettes to the main narrative. Likewise, my contextual material is intended to test the possibility that viewers can spend more than 5 seconds grazing at art and will instead leave smarter for the deeper investment of time.