Author: Janet

The Arts Desire, located at 97 Main Street in Torrington, CT, is hosting an art class fundraiser for Audubon Sharon on Thursday, April 21st from 6:30-8:30pm. Participants can join in for a fun evening of painting with friends and some of Audubon Sharon’s live birds will also be making a visit.

All art materials and aprons are provided; just bring your own beverage and snack as well as your enthusiasm! Leave with your very own beautiful canvas painting and the satisfaction knowing that some of the proceeds are benefitting Audubon Sharon’s programs and animals!

Participants will be painting a cheerful bluebird with spring blossoms background.
No art experience is necessary for this class.

An Arts Desire instructor will walk the class through the painting step by step in a fun and relaxing setting. Fee is $35 per person and space is limited. Please purchase your tickets online at www.theartsdesirect.com or contact Wendy at Audubon Sharon at (860) 364-0520 x105 or wmiller@audubon.org to register. If you register through Audubon, you can pay for your tickets at the door on the night of the event; please arrive a little early. Walk-ins are welcome the night of the program, but space availability is not guaranteed.

For more area information www.litchfieldhills.com

On April 20 from 10:30 a.m. to noon, kids are invited to learn about Litchfield’s architecture on foot!

The Litchfield Historical Society is inviting kids to walk around some of the town’s most historic buildings and sketch some of the architectural features. The Historical Society will hold two sessions of a walking tour that focuses on some of the town’s most historic buildings.

The first session will take place on Wednesday, April 20 from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. Another session will be held on Saturday, April 23 from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. For ages 8-15. $5 for members and $7 for non-members. Space is limited and registration is required. Payment is required at time of registration. Register online, call (860) 567-4501 or email registration@litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org

On April 22 the society is hosting a guided tour of the Tapping Reeve House and Law School at 1:30 p.m. Learn about the first law school established in America and about the students and social life of the school. This is an interactive tour that is fun for young and old alike.

If you like baseball, don’t miss the lecture at 3 p.m. on April 24 on Louis Fenn Wadsworth that grew up in in Litchfield, and graduated from Hartford’s Washington College (today’s Trinity). He is the least known of baseball’s true fathers (apart from the false claims made for several others including Abner Doubleday and Alexander Cartwright).

In fact, Wadsworth is the man responsible for our game being nine innings with nine men to the side. No one knows his life story as John Thorn does, after thirty years of research into baseball’s earliest period. He published only the barest details in his Baseball Garden of the Eden (Simon & Schuster, 2011); in this lecture, Thorn unveils Wadsworth’s full story. This lecture is free of charge.

The Washington Art Association located at 4 Bryan Memorial Plaza in Washington Depor has announced a new art show called i “Made Realities – Real Solutions”. This is an exhibition of recent paintings by Neil Callander of Alabama, Russell Horton of Missouri and Marc Roder of Oregon, that will be on display through May 7th. The three painters were selected as winner of the Washington Art Association’s Second Annual Juried Exhibition by juror, William Bailey.

Neil Callander believes narrative is an innate and inescapable fact in a realist painting. Callender packs his paintings with cultural and personal references working toward a flexible narrative. As more details are added, the internal relationships get tighter, and more intricate. The act of viewing his paintings unlocks these complex internal relationships. Callender hopes by experiencing these dense paintings that slowly reveal their nature allow the viewer to cope with the pervasiveness of fast-talking, slick images of our media-riddled world.

A native New Englander, Russell Horton is currently living and working in Kansas City Metro area. His paintings convey a sense of profound solitude and contemplation looking out upon the vast expansive horizons. His most recent work explores the prairie lands of Kansas and the bottomlands near the Missouri River.
Horton’s landscapes are unpeopled allowing the viewer to contemplate the scene without distraction. Pump jacks, holding tanks, water towers and other structures gain exaggerated prominence in the stark openness. The unspoiled vista of American landscape tradition no longer exists here. This is not a criticism of how the land is being used but rather a critique of nostalgic rhetoric of the pristine.

His industrial street scenes are from a section of Kansas City, MO known as the West Bottoms. The abstract nature of the architecture, shipping containers and concrete overpasses are a departure point for further exploration of that world.

Marc Roder’s paintings reflect on processes of gathering and discarding, voyaging and exploration. His paintings are accumulations of human debris that replaces the presence of the figure and biological activity. Roder pursues a personal investigation of natural phenomena that are both powerfully material and curiously ephemeral at the same time. Depicting gems, icebergs, UFOs, he reveals something is there, we see it, it reflects light and embodies transformation and possibility – there is that moment when heaven and earth are bridged. Then it is gone, and the descriptions he records on canvas are what are left for the viewer to debate.

The Gallery hours are Tues. – Sat. from 10 am to 5 pm. For more information on Litchfield Hills www.litchfieldhills.com

Make it a Junior Ranger Saturday, April 16 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm with your neighbors at Weir Farm National Historic Site. Whether you’re looking to become a Junior Ranger, Take Part in Art to discover your inner artist, or have a relaxing Saturday outing, Weir Farm National Historic Site is the place to be. The Visitor Center, Weir House, Weir Studio, and Young Studio will officially open for the season beginning May 1 with regular hours of Wednesday – Sunday from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Grounds are open year round, dawn to dusk.

Junior Rangers of all ages are encouraged explore Weir Farm National Historic Site with Junior Ranger Pond Packs, work as a team to solve puzzles in the Junior Ranger Letterboxing booklet, or discover your inner artists while sketching en plein air with Take Part in Art Kits. All are free and available at the Weir Farm National Historic Site Visitor Center.

Junior Ranger Day is the first of many opportunities this season to “Find Your Park” – a national movement to connect all Americans with their public lands before the National Park Service Centennial anniversary in 2016. As the only national park dedicated to American painting, Weir Farm National Historic Site is a fabulous reminder of how varied national parks can be. It is also an ideal place to inspire a new generation of park enthusiasts on Junior Ranger Day.

Be sure to bring your web-enabled devices and share your unique experience using #findyourpark and #WeirFarmNHS.
For more information: (203) 834-1896 or http://www.nps.gov/wefa. For more area information www.visitwesternct.com

About Weir Farm National Historic Site. Designed and preserved by artists, Weir Farm National Historic Site welcomes everyone to experience the power of creativity, art, and nature. Escape to the only national park dedicated to American painting and rediscover the beauty of light and color in everyday life.

On April 16 from 3 pm to 4 pm join the Westport Historical Society for one of its most popular walking tours, a stroll through Old Saugatuck accompanied by guide Bob Mitchell. The one-hour tour begins at 3:00 p.m. and ends with a drink on the house at one of Saugatuck’s favorite haunts, the Black Duck.

As you make your way through the neighborhood that sits along the tracks near the Westport train station, Mitchell will discuss Saugatuck’s past as a manufacturing hub and the tight-knit, predominantly Italian community it was to become. Most of what we now know as Westport was once called Saugatuck, after the river, though when the town was incorporated in 1835 from parts of Norwalk and Fairfield, it was given the name Westport.

The walk will begin at the train station, where rail service was launched in 1848, making Westport more accessible for visitors and, in turn, giving residents better access to New York City. Railroad construction brought an influx of jobs, filled mostly by Irish and Italian laborers, and the young community eventually was called Little Italy. In 1958, a swath of buildings bisecting Saugatuck was demolished to make way for the Connecticut Turnpike.

Here are some bits of Saugatuck lore you’ll learn about: The Saugatuck Grain & Supply Company (1929), Luciano Park, the Westport Bank & Trust branch office, the Hedenbury Tin Shop, the Banyan Coffin Tack Factory, the first Saugatuck firehouse, the mattress factory, the William F. Cribari Bridge (the oldest movable span in Connecticut), and the Saugatuck Manufacturing Company, which made buttons from Brazilian ivory nuts.

The tour was created to give participants insights into Westport’s history and show how resilient Westporters have been in retaining the character of our town, even as the landscape changes and Saugatuck undergoes an impressive renaissance.

There is a $10 suggested donation. No charge for children 12 and under. Reservations are recommended: (203) 222-1424.
Meet in the Saugatuck Railroad Station, New York-bound side.

For more event information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

The Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington Connecticut has created a series of vacation week programs from April 20-22 from 1 .pm. to 3 p.m. that will teach kids new skills. The theme of the vacation fun series is “sticks and stones”!

Before metal was used widely by the Native Americans living in the Litchfield Hills, stones and bones were used to create tools. During this three-day program, children will learn how to identify different types of stone, animal bones and how Native peoples used these raw materials to create tools.

Join museum staff on Wednesday for an introduction to stone identification and use. On Thursday they will compare skeletal structures of a few common woodland animals. Friday, kids will watch their educators demonstrate techniques for using these materials to create items such as fishhooks, needles, combs, weapons, and projectiles.

Drop in from 1pm-3pm on April 20th, 21st, and 22nd to watch stones and bones turn into tools outdoors at our outdoor replicated Algonkian Village.
Included in regular museum admission: $8 Adults; $6 Seniors; $5 Children; IAIS Members FREE.

For more area information www.litchfieldhills.com