Month: September 2016

On Saturday, October 1, 2016 the Danbury Museum welcomes author John H. “Jack” Stetson to the museum for the launch of his newly-authored book, The Life & Times of the Great Danbury State Fair, published by Emerald Lake Books.

The book itself is presented in two part, the first having been written by Gladys Stetson Leahy in the 1950s and the second penned by her grandson, John H. Stetson. “I decided to complete the history my grandmother had started and I added my firsthand experiences of growing up in and around the fair,” shared Stetson.

Festivities will begin at 4:00 p.m. in Huntington Hall, located on the museum campus at 43 Main Street, Danbury and the event is free and open to the public. Mr. Stetson will chat briefly, at 4:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., about his impetus and inspiration for writing the book and sign copies for attendees.

“The Danbury Fair is an iconic and well-loved symbol of the history of our city. We were thrilled to have assisted Mr. Stetson with archival research and photos and we’re pleased that he chose the museum as the location for the launch and sale of his publication,” stated Brigid Guertin, Executive Director of The Danbury Museum & Historical Society.

Books may be purchased at the museum beginning October 1 in the gift shop. A portion of all sales at the launch and signing event date are being donated to the museum by Mr. Stetson.

Books can be pre-ordered online for pick up at the event at www.emeraldlakebooks.com

About
The Danbury Museum & Historical Society was formed in 1947 to acquire, preserve, exhibit and interpret New England’s past; focusing particularly on the heritage of Danbury. Situated in downtown Danbury, the museum preserves the John and Mary Rider House (c.1785), the Dodd Hat Shop (c. 1790), the Marian Anderson Studio and the Charles Ives Birthplace. Huntington Hall, a modern exhibit building houses the museum offices, research library and gift shop.

This exhibit presents the watercolor and oil/acrylic paintings of a group of nine artists who first met while attending classes with Marija McCarthy at the Washington Art Association. When Marija relocated, they decided to continue to paint together and keep enjoying the enthusiasm and constructive criticism they give each other. They meet all through the year either en plein air or at the Litchfield Community Center in winter. They call themselves “The Oil and Water,” as they paint in both mediums (sometimes pastels), proving they really do mix!

Roz Benedett has been painting for over thirty years. She began painting with a dear friend’s encouragement using oil paints. Presently, she belongs to the Washington Art Association, Kent Art Association and New Hartford Art League where she often presents her work in exhibitions. She won First Place at the New Milford Railroad Exhibit. She has studied with renowed artists Edward Spaulding DeVoe, Trey Friedmen, and Marija McCarthy; and recently exhibited at the The Minor Memorial Library in Roxbury for a show of Fifty Years of Marija McCarthy’s students.

Sandy Dolinsky studied graphic art in school and has always been interested in art. With friend and fellow artist Hitchy Rahilly, she founded March 7 Designs, where they designed stencils for walls and floors around Litchfield County for fifteen years. Now that her children are grown, she has returned to oil painting.

Maryellen Furse holds a degree in fine arts and paints mostly landscapes in oil. Over the past few years she has exhibited her paintings locally, including: Familiar Places, a two-person show at the Minor Memorial Library in Roxbury (2014); The Art of Painting, curated by

William Bailey at the Washington Art Association (2015); and the Member’s Exhibition at the Washington Art Association (2016). At the Member’s Exhibit, she was awarded first prize in painting juried by Hugh O’Donnell.

Jan Grody earned her B.A. in Fine Arts from Wells College in New York. She has spent much of her life in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts and now lives in Connecticut. Both settings surrounded her with beautiful and inspirational scenery. She enjoys plein air painting because it brings her out-of-doors, away from distractions and into the natural places she appreciates and cherishes. She has exhibited at the Washington Art Association, Gunn Memorial Library, and the Minor Memorial Library in Roxbury.

Carole O’Toole interest in the visual arts developed out of many years as a ballerina and then modern dance performer. The physicality and rhythmic patterns in her paintings reflect that background and her belief that “life is movement and movement is life.” Her landscape art is inspired by the glorious en plein air settings of New England, Mexico and the Caribbean. She has exhibited and taught art courses at the Washington Art Association, as well as in St. Croix and San Miguel, Mexico.

Nancy Rainsford Pistone enjoys capturing and preserving moments from her travels and local surroundings in drawings, watercolors and pastels. Her work has been included in shows at Minor Memorial Library in Roxbury, the Washington Art Association, and Mark Twain Library in Redding, CT. She has also donated art to various organizations, including Flanders Nature Center and the Roxbury Land Trust to use for fundraising events.

Hitchy Rahilly is an interior designer and has been a lapsed oil painter since her college days when she studied at the American Ecole des Beaux Arts in Fontainebleu, France. For 15 years while raising her family, she had a business designing and stenciling walls and floors with Sandy Dolinsky. Three years ago she began painting again in Marija McCarthy’s class. Now with lots of encouragement from the painting group she is back painting and loving it.

Kit Sagendorf has worked in various art departments in the publishing world; Cosmopolitan, Saturday Review, and Ladies Home Journal among others. In addition, she is a cartoonist and garden illustrator for several gardens that are on the Smithsonian Register. Kit is currently trying to master watercolors. She lives in Roxbury with her husband, Marty, and two very silly dachshunds.

Diana Swoyer has taken up painting seriously in the last few years after a 30-year career producing TV Commercials. She was introduced to the glories of painting by studying with Marija McCarthy at Washington Art Association. She has been in a number of group shows and was honored with a Washington Art Association Ferguson-Sherr-Rea Awards First Prize Works on Paper in 2015. She also has a thriving business painting pet portraits. Visit MyPetByDS.com.

In the Jamie Gagarin Community Room and Gallery: September 1- October 29. Reception- Thursday, September 1, from 5:00- 7:00 p.m. at the Oliver Wolcott Library, 160 South Street, Litchfield, CT. 06759. 860-567-8030. http://www.owlibrary.org.

The members of the Merwinsville Hotel Restoration will host their 29th Annual Arts and Fine Crafts Show on Columbus Day Weekend at the Merwinsville Hotel located on 1 Brown’s Forge Rd. in Gaylordsville Connecticut. Gaylordsville. This iconic and historic railroad hotel is located in the northwest corner of New Milford and is conveniently located 15 minutes from Kent, Sherman, New Milford and the Harlem Valley/Wingdale Railroad Station.

This event will kick off with a gala preview “Meet the Artists” reception on Friday, October 7th from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. In addition to a sneak peek at all the goodies for sale, there will be passed hors d’oeuvres prepared by the Community Culinary School of Northwestern CT, beverages, dessert and live music provided by Danny D. Tickets to the gala event are $25 at the door or $20 if you prepay using paypal.

The arts and crafts show opens to the public on Saturday, October 8 and runs through October 10 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is a $2 donation at the door that will go toward the restoration of this historic gem. There will be more than 75 quality arts and crafts vendors at the Merwinsville Hotel on all three days showcasing items such as: artwork, photography, jewelry, and fine artisan crafts.

For further information, please call 860-350-4443 or visit www.merwinsvillehotel.org. To sign up for our monthly newsletter and for more area events www.litchfieldhills.com

The Barnum Museum begins its line-up of Fall programs on Sunday, October 9th at 2 pm with an illustrated talk, From the Ends of the Earth: Yale’s Peabody Museum and 150 Years of Exploration, Discovery, and Education. The program will be presented by Dr. Richard Kissel, Director of Public Programs at Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut. That museum’s current exhibition celebrates the 150th anniversary of the institution. “Treasures of the Peabody: 150 Years of Exploration & Discovery” features 150 artifacts and specimens from the museum’s collections along with stories about the scientists and researchers who have shaped people’s understanding of life on Earth. More than mere curios, these objects represent key cornerstones in our understanding of the natural world. Dr. Kissel will bring these fascinating stories to life as he talks about the parade of personalities that have been part of the Peabody’s history–including Buffalo Bill and our own P.T. Barnum!

Don’t miss the opportunity to hear the amazing stories behind the acquisition of key artifacts such as the dog-sized dinosaur fossil found in Connecticut; a specimen collected by Charles Darwin on the voyage of the HMS Beagle; the first T. rex fossil ever discovered; Gargantua the gorilla; and much more. Dr. Kissel will also discuss the connection between O. C. Marsh, a nineteenth-century American paleontologist whose enormous collection was given to Yale in 1889, and P. T. Barnum, who was an avid collector of natural history specimens for his own museums.

Dr. Kissel is a paleontologist, science educator, and author with more than 20 years of experience within the museum field. He is also a featured scientist online at NOVA’s scienceNOW and the National Park Service’s National Fossil Day site, and a faculty member for the online Museum Studies Graduate Program at Johns Hopkins University.

The program will begin at 2 pm. It is free to members, and there is a suggested donation of $5 per person for others. The talk will be held in the People’s United Bank Gallery, located behind the historic Barnum Museum building at 820 Main Street, Bridgeport, CT. On-street parking is free on Sundays. Visit www.barnum-museum.org for more information or call (203) 331-1104 during business hours Monday through Friday.

To sign up for our monthly newsletter and for more area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

For the exhibition Danger Came Smiling: Feminist art and popular music historian Maria Elena Buszek brings together work by contemporary artists who use popular music as a medium, subject, and reference point for activist messages. The show, which will be on view through– January 1, 2017, takes the title of an album by the pioneering, unabashedly feminist punk band Ludus, led by artist Linder Sterling, whose career—emerging in the first wave of punk in the 1970s—reflects the approaches in this exhibition.

By the late 1970s, visual artists like Robert Longo, Barbara Kruger, and Jean-Michel Basquiat started bands, and musicians like DEVO, Talking Heads, and Ann Magnuson treated their music as performance art, blurring the lines between popular music and visual art in ways that have profoundly affected contemporary art ever since. The “No Wave” culture that emerged in this era is rife with examples: performers were as likely to present their work at the Danceteria as the Whitney Museum, and venues like Club 57, The Pyramid, and the Mudd Club and galleries like Fun, Gracie Mansion, and Artists Space all hosted both exhibitions and concerts, where popular music was emerging as its own “new medium.”

Years later, writer and Mudd Club habitué Kathy Acker would advise the young feminist art student Kathleen Hanna: “If you want people to hear what you’re doing…you should be in a band.” Hanna proceeded to become a prime mover in what soon became known as the Riot Grrrl movement by way of her band Bikini Kill, and continues performing agit-pop in bands like Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin.

Hanna’s career is just the most visible of subsequent generations of feminist artists inspired by popular music, which this exhibition will address through the work of artists like Wynne Greenwood, Eleanor King, Shizu Saldamando, and Xaviera Simmons, who use punk, hip-hop, electronica, and jazz as part of their studio practice, and a reflection of their politics. The Franklin Street Works café will also include an audio portion that serves as a “curated mixtape” of music that relates to the artists and history on display in the exhibition.

The gallery is open Tues. – Sun. 12 noon to 5 p.m. and is located on 45 Franklin Street in Stamford. There are 3-hour parking meters just outside the entrance to the gallery on Franklin Street that are free after 6 p.m., and 25 cents per 15 minutes before 6 p.m. There is also a lot with an attendant on Franklin Street just a couple of doors down on the right side of the street (closer to Broad Street) from Franklin Street Works. Rates are variable. There are also a number of parking garages nearby. The nearest are:Target Entrance on Broad; $1 for the first 2 hours, then $2/hour, $11/day. Summer Street Garage Entrances on Lower Summer, Broad or Washington Blvd. Northbound; $1/hour, $9/day, there is also an evening rate of $3/evening
Sat. & Sun. are free until 5pm.

For more area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

The Greenwich Historical Society is hosting an event with the celebrated television reporter, Lesley Stahl, on October 5 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Greenwich Country Club located on 19 Doubling Road in Greenwich.

Who wouldn’t want to spend an evening with Lesley Stahl, celebrated television reporter and recent New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Grandma: The Joy and Science of the New Grandparenting. Ms. Stahl will share her views on the current political landscape, family and the future.

As one of America’s most recognized and experienced broadcast journalists, Lesley Stahl’s career has been marked by political scoops, surprising features and award-winning foreign reporting. She has been a 60 Minutes correspondent since March 1991, with the 2016-2017 season marking her 26th on the broadcast.

Prior to joining 60 Minutes, Stahl served as CBS News White House correspondent during the Carter and Reagan presidencies and part of the term of George H. W. Bush. Her reports appeared frequently on the CBS Evening News, with Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and later on other CBS News broadcasts. During that time, she also served as moderator of Face the Nation, CBS News’ Sunday public affairs broadcast. She has received numerous awards for her journalistic achievement including a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2003.

There are limited VIP tickets for a pre-event reception and book signing are available for $1,000. General admission tickets are $250. A copy of Stahl’s new book is included in the ticket price.
Reservations required and can be purchased online. Proceeds from the event will go to support the Greenwich Historical Society’s Fund for Program Enrichment, newly established to support program initiatives, including education, exhibitions, public programs, digital collections and preservation.

For more area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com