Creative Arts Workshop is excited to host HILL BLOCKS VIEW: Coming Together When Things Fall Apart, Nasty Women Connecticut’s seventh uncensored, unjuried annual open call for artists. The show will feature multimedia work created by an intergenerational group of artists, designers and thinkers wrestling with the vulnerabilities, desires, and strategies pouring out of our socio-political moment.
If you’re reading this page, and seeking a platform for thinking big, processing emotion, or simply being in community, we want you to join us. In past years, participants have included internationally renowned artists, performers, family collaborations, artist collectives, librarians, DJs, chefs, cis men, boys, and artists exhibiting for the first time. You don’t need to be based in Connecticut to submit an artwork, and all aspects of the show are free and open to the public. To participate, simply read the open call for artists, and complete this form by Thursday, February 26, 2025.
Summary of the Open Call
Just weeks into a second Trump presidency, the welfare and security of the most vulnerable among us is under attack. We find ourselves mounting summit after summit with blind spots on the other side. As we inventory the wreckage — DEI departments terminated, public education on the chopping block, global trade deals marred, migrants deported without conviction or trial, indigenous people caught in the mess, trans soldiers barred from service, reproductive healthcare criminalized, global aid stamped out, Gaza targeted for an armed takeover, and sacred pledges to our planet abandoned, just to name a few, we wonder, where do we go from here? Also, how the hell do we get off this road?
We invite artists to dive into several questions: what is the role of feminist movement in an era of anti-woke sentiment? How might artists uniquely have the skill sets to design a roadmap for a future where women thrive? And how might we radically rethink insecurity as an opportunity to fiercely band together?
About Nasty Women Connecticut
Nasty Women is an artist-led movement that evolved out of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, reigniting a decades-long peoples’ feminist movement. While New York was the first city to mount a Nasty Women show, the organizers invited communities across the world to mount exhibitions of multimedia work that provided space for people to commune, emote, and learn about the centrality of women’ s reproductive rights to the project of equitable world-building. In addition to championing the right to an abortion, the movement raises consciousness around less discussed rights, including those bell hooks named 22 years ago in her book, Feminism is for Everyone— “basic sex education, prenatal care, preventive health care, forced sterilization, unnecessary cesareans and/or hysterectomies, and the medical complications they left in their wake.
2025 Open Call for Artists
Nasty Women CT
Hill Blocks View: Coming Together when Things Fall Apart
Exhibition Dates: March 5-22, 2025
@ Creative Arts Workshop
80 Audubon St. New Haven, CT
Opening Reception: Internationl Women’s Day
Saturday, March 8, 5-7pm