Author: Janet

The Wilton Historical Society is planning a spooktacular event on November 3, from 11 a.m. to 12 noon that will be lead by Wilton Historian, Bob Russell. This will be a most unusual tour of Wilton’s oldest burial ground, the historic Sharp Hill Cemetery.

There will be six re-enactors, that will interpret Wilton’s intrepid early settlers (each buried there) and it will describe their role in Wilton’s history. Some of the historic figures portrayed will include the thrice married Sarah Lockwood Selleck Hickox (1678 – 1765), Matthew Gregory (1680 – 1777) and Hannah Keeler Gregory (1687 – 1767). The history of the cemetery itself will be explored by Wilton history expert and former First Selectman Bob Russell.

The Sharp Hill Cemetery, owned by the Wilton Congregational Church, is the oldest surviving cemetery in Wilton, dating from 1738. That year, John Marvin gave 64 square rods (4/10 of an acre) to the “Presbyterian or Congregational Society of Wilton” as the site of a meeting house for the worship of God, as the Society had outgrown the small building in which they had started 12 years earlier. The cemetery was to surround the new meeting house. Although the church building which was built there only lasted until 1790, the cemetery was used actively until the mid-1800’s and then was gradually replaced by Hillside Cemetery on Ridgefield Road, which had the advantage of more space.

The men and women who are buried in Sharp Hill Cemetery include founders of Wilton, church leaders, and 23 veterans of the Revolution or the French and Indian Wars. Many of the family names found here are still familiar in Wilton today in person or on street signs, including Abbott, Belden, DeForest, Dudley, Fitch, Gaylord, Gilbert, Gregory, Grumman, Hurlbutt, Lambert, Olmstead, Raymond, St. John, and Sturges. There are about 150 legible gravestones, including about 70 from the 18th century, plus another 150 or so stones no longer legible or graves marked only with common fieldstones. Many of the older gravestones have ornate skull carvings and other interesting designs. Because of the fragile nature of many of the stones, gravestone rubbing is definitely discouraged.

Please register. E-mail: info@wiltonhistorical.org or call 203-762-7257 Suggested donation: $10. For more area event information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

The City of Norwalk Parking Authority’s Maritime Garage Gallery has opened a new exhibit entitled “Flux” that will be on display through January 4, 2016.

The “Flux” exhibit represents art with the theme of states of constant change; flow, melt, unrest, volatility. Exhibiting artists include Mary Anne Border of Ridgefield, Amy Lee of New York City, Brett Masterson of Stamford, Christine Newkirk of Darien, Sandy Gennrich of Stamford, Charmaine Rawsthorne of Norwalk, Scott Springer of Westport and Viorica Ghetu-Vuono of Norwalk.

Curator Sooo-z Mastropietro says the exhibit is all about movement and emotion. “Flux is all around us in the form of science, medicine, physics, chemistry, and even in an emotional sense. The art represented in the show tells us how the artist represents flux – or how flux represents them.”

The Maritime Garage Gallery is located in the Maritime Parking Garage at 11 North Water Street (directly across from the Maritime Aquarium). The Gallery is part of the Parking Authority’s “Art in Parking Places” initiative in collaboration with the Norwalk Arts Commission. The program is an effort to support art in public spaces making Norwalk a more vibrant destination. The Gallery is free and open to the public from 9:00am -5:00pm Monday through Friday. For more information, call 203- 831-9063, or visit www.norwalkpark.org/public-art

For more area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

Hot patootie, bless my soul, you’ll have twice as much fun when you dress up and take part in “The ‘Rocky Horror’ Experience” on Sat., Oct. 24 at The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk.

That’s because a live cast will act out the story of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” on a stage in the theater while the campy cult-classic film plays on the giant screen above.

Nowhere else can you see ‘Rocky Horror’ playing on a screen that’s six stories tall, with live characters acting out the film right in front of you too, this promises to be spooktacular!

Audience members are encouraged to dress as their favorite characters, and to bring such appropriate items as rubber gloves, newspapers, umbrellas, flashlights and party horns. “Prop bags” containing rice, toast, newspaper, playing cards and a “Time Warp” dance instruction sheet will be available for $4 at the door. But please: no throwing anything at the Aquarium’s unique screen!

Released in 1975, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is a send-up of science-fiction B-movies. Newly engaged innocents Brad and Janet (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon) get a flat tire and seek help in a castle owned by Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania.” Death, sex, Meat Loaf and mayhem ensue.

Show time is 9 p.m. Please note that, while the movie is being show on the Aquarium’s six-story screen, it is not being shown in the trademarked IMAX® format.

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is 98 minutes long and contains brief nudity, sexual content, violence, language, frightening scenes and drug content.

Tickets for “The ‘Rocky Horror’ Experience” are $18 ($15 for Aquarium members). Advance ticket purchases are strongly recommended and available online now at www.maritimeaquarium.org or by calling (203) 852-0700, ext. 2206.

For more area event information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

Go for a hoot of a Halloween at The Connecticut Audubon Society’s Enchanted Forest. This is a nature-themed Halloween celebration. The Enchanted Forest introduces fascinating, entertaining and educational information about nocturnal animals in their natural habitat and is fun for the entire family.

Children are encouraged to wear costumes for this unique and fun – but not scary – event. Participants will experience the Larsen Sanctuary at night while being escorted along the luminary trail by volunteers who light the way with flashlights. The night also features fall-themed craft making, Halloween snacks and a chance to meet some of the Center’s creepy, crawly critters. The Enchanted Forest is held rain or ‘moon’ shine.

Guided walks leave every fifteen minutes beginning at 5:30 p.m.; the last walk leaves at 7:30 p.m. Pre-registration and pre-payment are required. Ticket prices are: CAS members–$10/child, $2 for adults; nonmembers–$15/child and $2 for adults. To purchase your tickets on-line, visit: www.ctaudubon.org/center-at-fairfield, or call 203-259-6305 ext. 109. Sign-up early to reserve your walk time of choice.

Visit The Connecticut Audubon Society’s website at http://www.ctaudubon.org for a complete list of our fall programs and special events. For more area event information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

Christopher M. Magadini of Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., has earned a reputation as one of the finest landscape and plein-air painters in the Northeast with technically masterful oil-on-canvas works that marry Contemporary Impressionism with the naturalism of 19th-century American landscape painting—tinged with elements of abstraction—to produce a unique style “where the power of nature to stir the human spirit becomes paramount.”

In his one-man show, running from Oct. 10 through Nov. 7, 2015 at the Gregory James Gallery in New Milford, Conn., the artist will be showcasing new, more experimental oil paintings that embrace non-objective qualities and abstraction. The public is invited to the Opening Reception on Saturday, Oct. 10, from 5 to 7p.m. at the gallery.

In the process of creation, Magadini asks himself questions such as, “What would it be like if none of these had hard edges, but had soft edges. … How can that be achieved?” That might lead to applying paint in ways that don’t involve a brush.
The exciting result for fans of Magadini and the Gregory James Gallery—where the artist has exhibited for more than 15 years—is a show like none before it, and also a first for Magadini. The exhibit will, indeed, feature both the richly evocative landscapes for which the artist is known—along with some representational figurative works—and “some paintings that are purely non-objective.”

The range is such that it might appear different artists are involved in the show making this show interesting to view. There will be approximately 30 works in all will be on display. Of that number, one-third will be new, more experimental works.

A former illustrator, Magadini’s credits include covers for Reader’s Digest magazine, illustrations and promotional brochures for Reader’s Digest Books, and illustrations for Guideposts, Angels, Field & Stream, Boating, Audubon, Flying, Women’s Day, Scholastic Books and Zebra Books. He has designed stamps for the United Nations and the current American Heritage Series Collectors Plates for Royal Copenhagen USA. Illustrated books include “Bible Life and Times”; “The Illustrated Dictionary of Bible Life and Times”; “After Jesus”; “A Passage to India”; “Great Disasters and Rodale’s Naturally Great Foods Cookbook.”

The exhibit at Gregory James Gallery runs through Nov. 7, 2015. The gallery is located at 93 Park Lane Rd (Rte. 202), in New Milford, Conn.
For more information about the show, please call the Gregory James Gallery at 860-354-3436 and visit www.GregoryJamesGallery.com.

For more area information www.litchfieldhills.com

The last one hundred years have witnessed the explosion of virtually every available means and medium in the service of art making, yet painting has not only maintained a central position in visual art, but has also adapted creatively to rapid changes in our culture as a whole. Today, painting is embedded in the broad debate of actual vs. virtual, and its ability to balance what is illusive and what is real, what is tactile and what is optical, and what is emotive and what is formal, providing fertile ground for a diverse range of artists.

This fall, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, will present Painting in Four Takes, a series of solo exhibitions that will provide a window into the practices of four engaging painters who imbue the medium with relevance and character. The series, on view from November 15, 2015, through April 3, 2016, will mark the first time in over twenty years that The Aldrich has dedicated all of its galleries to painting.

The four artists selected span generations, methods, and intentions, but all are deeply entrenched in what painting is and can be in the image-dominated atmosphere of our twenty-first century. The artists include: Steve DiBenedetto, Hayal Pozanti and Julia Rommel.

Steve DiBenedetto (b. 1958, Bronx, New York) has established himself as an idiosyncratic artist who has brought the pursuit of painting into the unpredictable chaos and flux that categorize the Post-Modern world. Evidence of Everything is his first major solo museum exhibition.

The practice of Hayal Pozanti (b. 1983, Istanbul, Turkey) spans painting, digital animation, and sculpture. For her first solo museum exhibition, she will debut a new series of paintings and digital animations. Pozanti negotiates two opposing image-producing interfaces, the digital, with its mechanical, frenetic pace, and traditional studio practice, with its slowness, imperfection, and tactile insistence. To do so, she has invented “Instant Paradise”: a thirty-one-character “alphabet,” which she uses to generate shapes that never repeat themselves, nor have a recognizable equivalent in visual culture.

For her first solo museum exhibition, Julia Rommel (b. 1980, Salisbury, Maryland) will debut a series of new paintings presented alongside small works from 2010–2012. Rommel’s oil paintings range from head to body size, and oscillate between cool and warm palettes, color fields of denim blues, moody greys, creamy whites, salmon pinks, and citrus hues.

For more information visit http://www.aldrichart.org