Connecticut Travel

​A “Blue Moon” is a fairly infrequent phenomenon involving the appearance of an additional full moon within one month and the next one is on January 31. To celebrate the blue moon the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington is hosting a blue moon hike on the 31st @ 6:30 p.m.- 8:30 p.m. Native Americans followed the cycles of the moon and every month the full moon had a different name.

The Algonquin tribes called January the full wolf moon because when this full moon appeared wolves howled in hunger outside the villages. Traditionally, the January Moon is also known as the Old Moon. The hike concludes at the replicated Algonkian village for hot cocoa around the campfire. Native Americans drew constellations, created a mythology around the stars and built structures in alignment with the sky long before Europeans arrived on American shores. Like other groups, they tracked the motions of the Sun to help them decide when to plant crops, move their camps, or stage sacred rituals.

Their stories contained explanations of the constellations they saw as patterns of bright stars, meteor showers, the Northern Lights, and saw in what we call the Milky Way a pathway to the afterlife.

Some tribes built great circles of stones to help them predict the changing seasons, or ceremonial sites and mounds of earth in alignment with the Sun and stars and to reflect the patterns they saw in the heavens.

Participants on this hike through the Native American Village and surrounding woodland trails will learn about the beliefs and folklore of the Eastern Woodland Indians that made Connecticut their home.

For information about additional programs visit the website​ and facebook page​.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to present Anissa Mack: Junk Kaleidoscope, a reflection on Mack’s The Fair project, realized in both 1996 and 2006, to be reimagined at the Museum through April 22, 2018. Mack mines Americana, its artifacts, folklore, and rituals, and explores American vernacular traditions, examining their shifting role in a dialogue between the history of art making and the culture of collecting. Through all new objects, Junk Kaleidoscope will re-envision The Fair in a way that weaves together over two decades of work, sixty miles from the Durham Fair fairgrounds that inspired this project.

The Fair was first realized in 1996, when Mack entered all seventy-three craft categories at the Durham Fair, the largest agricultural fair in Connecticut; she had participated in the fair, located near her hometown of Guilford, CT, throughout her childhood. In 2006, she remade the project as The Fair (10th Anniversary Edition) by generating new entries for all of the craft categories available that year. On both occasions, the objects were displayed at the fairs and then (re)presented in a commercial gallery with their winning ribbons. At The Aldrich, Mack will create a layered exhibition that engages fairs in new ways. For Junk Kaleidoscope, she will utilize a self-generated list of seventy categories—comprising actual competition categories collected from various county and state fairs, as well as those of her own invention—to generate and support the works in the show. The list will serve as a catalyst for production and as a framework for understanding the shifting, participatory display that the objects will enjoy at The Aldrich.

For Mack, “fairs serve as fascinatingly complex archives that mirror both ‘America’ and the art world.” Repetition, displacement, and distortion are constant concerns and the act of revisiting is an ongoing theme. Mack attends county and state fairs nationwide, where her experiences fundamentally reshape her approach to the creation and staging of her work. The atmosphere of the local fair and the environment of the artist’s studio share similar outtakes, as both are equally concerned with narrative, arrangement, and (e)valuation. Her appropriation of the fair’s system of categorization attempts to undo or rewrite storylines embedded within local material culture. These objects are symbolic containers of a collective memory that can travel across time. Ultimately, Mack positions herself as both an artist and maker, placing herself inside a subculture and adopting its system of classification for her own (re)invention. This enables Mack to move seamlessly between two distinctive locales and contexts, each of which has its own structure, methodology, and currency. The objects embody these alternating experiences and distinguishing histories.

On Saturday, January 27, the Bruce Museum (One Museum Dr.) in Greenwich will host a World War I Digitization Day organized by the Connecticut State Library. Scheduled to take place from 12 to 4 pm (snow date, February 10), Remembering World War One: Sharing History/Preserving Memory is a statewide collaborative project to create a community-generated archive of stories related to the Great War.

The event is held to complement the Bruce Museum’s new exhibition Patriotic Persuasion: American Posters of the First World War, which opens Saturday, January 20, and commemorates the centennial of the entry of the United States into the global conflict once hailed as “the War to End All Wars.”

For Digitization Day, Connecticut residents are invited to bring their photos, letters, and other keepsakes from World War I to be added to the State Library’s online archive. The images and stories collected at the event will be made accessible for public use. Original materials will be returned to the owners after digitization is complete. Digitization contributors and their families will receive free admission to the Bruce Museum.

For more information about the Digitization Day project, please see this set of FAQs: http://ctinworldwar1.org/digitization-days/faq/.

The Museum’s Patriotic Persuasion exhibition, which features a selection of works from the First World War donated to the museum by Beverly and John W. Watling III, will be on view through June 10, 2018.

“This show represents a hallmark of the Bruce — to develop creative ways to showcase our collection in meaningful exhibitions that link artistic works with human history on a global and local scale,” says Kirsten Reinhardt, museum registrar. “These posters were displayed all over the country, including in Greenwich, and the power of their message remains strong today.”

Visitors to the Bruce Museum on WWI Digitization Day will enjoy the added attraction of a new exhibition debuting January 27, Hot Art in a Cold War: Intersections of Art and Science in the Soviet Era. Juxtaposing art made in opposition to state-sanctioned Socialist Realism with artifacts from the Soviet nuclear and space programs, Hot Art in a Cold War examines one of the dominant concerns of Soviet unofficial artists—and citizens everywhere—during the Cold War: the consequences of innovation in science, technology, mathematics, communications, and design.

White Memorial Foundation in Litchfield is offering a series of two programs on Saturday, Feb. 3 that assure winter family fun. First program will teach families about animal tracking and the second program explains the history of ice cutting in the Litchfield Hills.

On Saturday, February 3 from 10 am to 12 noon go on an adventure with Andrew Dobbs to learn how to track wolves. Andrew Dobos takes you on a wildlife tracking walk through the winter woods. There are always clues left behind by the animals for us to decipher, telling a story of their habits and lives.

Get to know our beloved wildlife that much better. Children should be accompanied by an adult and all should dress extra warm and wear good boots! You never know where the animals have been! Meet in the Museum. Members: $5.00 Non-Members: $15.00, Pre-registration and pre-payment are required. Call 860-567-0857 or register online

Also on February 3 is the popular Ice Harvest Festival that will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is free of charge. For many years, ice harvested from Bantam Lake was used for refrigeration throughout the year. This event begins in the Museum with a visit to the Ice House display, then participants will head outdoors for a walk down the Lake Trail to visit the old ice house ruins.

The ice harvest program culminates with White Memorial staff, Jeff Greenwood, James Fischer, and Gerri Griswold demonstrating how ice was cut and moved using the same tools and methods. Dress for the weather because participants will be walking and standing on Ongley Pond for extended periods of time. Wear warm boots and prepare for wind and sun. Hot beverages and treats will be provided to fortify you! 11:00 A.M. – 2:00 P.M. Meet in the Museum.

For its first art exhibit of 2018, the David M. Hunt Library located on 63 Main Street in Falls Village will present Forced Perspective by Berkshire artist Michelle Iglesias. This selection of her vivid large-scale photorealistic paintings takes the viewer from macro to micro, from a stampede of elephants to a close-up of a ladybug. Forced Perspective will be on display through February 17. This event is free and open to the public. For more information call the library at 860-824-7424 or visit huntlibrary.org. The artist’s work can be seen at miglesiasart.com.

Michelle Iglesias is a self-taught artist who first took to painting for its therapeutic values after being diagnosed with cancer. Her passion and perseverance has led her to become a nationally recognized award-winning artist, art instructor, and the successful business owner of Berkshire Paint and Sip. She continues to encourage and foster creativity in her students and others inspired by her art.

Ms. Iglesias’ paintings are influenced by family connections, nature, and travel. Consisting of the tumultuous dimensions that nature offers, portraits with personalities, and engaging exotic landscape compositions, her canvases invite viewer involvement and have been described as insightful, symbolic, and clarifying. She conveys the vision of nature’s grandeur to produce artwork that is expressive, of the highest quality, and will grab the viewer’s interest and attention. Her painting Queen Angelfish is a perfect example of this.

A Berkshire-area native, Michelle Iglesias was born in 1972 in Blandford, MA and currently resides in Dalton, MA. She entered into the art scene in 2002 when she opened Piece of My Art Gallery and Frame Shop in Westfield, MA. Two years after opening the gallery she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 31 which led her to pick up her own paint brush for the first time, discovering the therapeutic value of creating art. Since then she has been showing her work regularly in group and solo exhibitions and her work is included in a variety of private collections.

American robins, the state bird of Connecticut, have not yet returned from warmer climes, but other species are in our area, surviving the snow and cold. On Saturday, January 20 from 11:00 – 12:30 at the Wilton Historical Society, a Birds of Winter Workshop for Kids will be presented.

Educator Lola Chen will be discussing what birds are in the area for the winter, information that is gathered by the National Audubon Society at its annual Christmas Bird Count. She will share the history of the Audubon Society, while the kids work on a useful project – making a bird feeder with grapevine and suet for our feathered friends. The children will help make their own snack.

Suggested for ages 6 – 12. Wilton Historical Society Members $10 per child, maximum $25 per family; Non-members $15 per child, maximum $35 per family. Please register: info@wiltonhistorical.org or call 203-762-7257.

Did You Know?

“Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is the longest running Citizen Science project in the world. Started in 1899 as a way of encouraging people to count birds instead of shoot them, the CBC takes place each year from mid-December to early January when thousands of volunteer birders contribute to the long-term study of early winter bird populations across North America. Count captains in each local area coordinate volunteers for their respective “count circles,” and count birds (both number of species and number of individuals) throughout a 24-hour period.

CBC participants range from expert ornithologists to beginning birders, following established protocols to ensure consistent data collection. The data from each count circle is tabulated and submitted to the National Audubon Society, to be used by scientists in a wide variety of studies.” – National Audubon Society

The 2017-2018 Christmas Bird Count in Connecticut ran from December 16 – January 1. Audubon Greenwich counted birds in the Greenwich to Stamford area, while in Westport, the Connecticut Audubon Society Birdcraft Sanctuary participated.