Connecticut Travel

Over 100 artists showing one-of-a-kind ceramics, wearable art and a wide variety of other fine arts and crafts will be featured at the 5th Annual Norwalk Art Festival on Saturday and Sunday, June 24 and 25, from 10 am to 5 pm, rain or shine. Juried exhibitors, many new to the show, will share their unique talents and creativity in painting wood, wearable and decorative fiber, metalwork, leather, paper arts, glass, ceramics, jewelry, photography and more at this nationally recognized event. The Festival is held on the beautiful grounds of Matthews Park at 299 West Ave. in Norwalk, Connecticut. All works exhibited are available for purchase.

The 5th Annual Norwalk Art Festival includes fun, educational activities for children, international cuisine, and live music performances. Ed Wright performs his original guitar music on Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm. Annalisa Ewald also performs both days. On Saturday, June 24, students of Becki Christensen’s will participate in a recital by the Suzuki Violin Method Open House from 12:00 am to 1:00 pm in the Children’s Art Area. At 1:00 Mayor will open the Annual Art Festival with a creative experience. This year the Mayor will be the subject of a Poetic work at the Poets Corner.

A new highlight of the Festival will be the “Poet’s Corner” stage, featuring improv poetry writing and a special array of writers and performers on going each day. Patrons will hear Connecticut Poets read their most outstanding work on the stage. While visiting, enjoy a personalized poem written just for you at the “A Poem Tailored Just for You” Desk. Participate in a Group Recital of Poems Written by World Renown Artists led by Local Poets in the “Poetry Flash Mob” Coordinated by Jerry T. Johnson: Poet, Danbury CT. Featured Poets include: Laurel Peterson: Poet Laureate Norwalk, CT, Tarn Granucci: Poet Laureate Wallingford, CT, Mark Saba: Writer, Poet, Artist, Filmmaker, Richard Duffee: Writer, Poet, Stamford CT, Jerry T. Johnson: Poet, Danbury CT.

Artists will feature demonstrations and text to educate and share their process of creating art. All exhibitors are present to show their own work and enlightened then audience about their process. Hands-on craft activities for all ages are available at no additional charge in the Children’s Art Area, and the Newly remodeled galleries of the Center for Contemporary Printmaking will be open. The weekend features the Mini Print Show and Sale. CCP Galleries will be open during the weekend.

Admission to the Norwalk Art Festival is free. and includes all Festival activities. Lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum will be offering a Mini tour for a special $5 admission which is open to the public during Festival hours. At the Art Festival entrance, visitors will be able to join the area Museums and Local Art Centers at a discount, and will receive free admission and many instant discounts at the Festival.

Visitors are asked to park in Mathews Park and will be directed in. Mathews Park is located just off exit 14 or 15 off I-95. The Park is a short ride from MetroNorth’s South Norwalk railroad station. Or enjoy a scenic walk along the River from downtown SoNo Parking Garages. For information, visit www.NorwalkArtFestival.org, or call (518) 852-6478.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is presenting Tony Matelli: Figure, a monumental sculpture, as part of the Main Street Sculpture series, which offers an opportunity for artists to create site-specific work for The Aldrich’s most public site, the front lawn through October 22, 2017.

Matelli will debut his singular, larger-than-life-size outdoor figurative sculpture on May 6, 2017. This work is part of Matelli’s Garden Sculptures series, initiated in 2015, in which he defaces garden statuary of classical or religious icons and subverts material expectation. Based on ancient Greek and Roman statuary and poised atop a cast concrete pedestal, the statue will be sandblasted to expose the concrete’s aggregate innards, forcing decay on presumably permanent concrete. Matelli then stages trompe l’oeil edibles—such as immaculately ripened melons, avocados, blackberries, and asparagus, as well as ready-to-eat cocktail shrimp, crab claws, and sausages—upon the weathered ruins of symbolic effigies, such as those of Jesus, Buddha, and Hermes. These flawlessly painted cast-bronze perishables, presented in an eternal state of freshness, balance upon the intentionally eroded and debased concrete figure’s creases, folds, and at its feet. In doing so, Matelli stages opposing entropic forces, the synthetically preserved, and the forcibly decayed.

Spanning sculpture and painting, Matelli’s hyperreal practice embodies the human condition. Suspended in changing physical states or transformative stages of existence, his work concerns the very circumstance of actuality, joining the ordinary with the speculative in order to assess cultural worth: what people keep or abandon, what appears to be in or out of place, and what seems pleasing or distasteful. Often provocative and hallucinatory, Matelli’s work expresses excess, neglect, decomposition, and regeneration, the upturned and the adrift, the romantic and the surreal. At The Aldrich, Matelli’s colossal sculpture of a familiar mythological figure may read as a modern memento mori, or as a devotional offering to a saccharine present, cast against a corrosive past. Ridgefield, a Revolutionary-era Colonial town with a landmarked Main Street, is a befitting location for this tragicomic siting, as Matelli’s ancient giant testifies to history as theatrical backdrop.

Tony Matelli (b. 1971, Chicago) received his BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 1993 and his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1995. Recent solo exhibitions include the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; the Davis Museum, MA; Künsterlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. A mid-career survey, Tony Matelli: A Human Echo, premiered at the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark in 2012 and traveled to the Bergen Kunstmuseum, Norway in 2013. His work is in numerous public collections including the FLAG Art Foundation, NY; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark; and the National Centre of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia, among others. He lives and works in New York City.

This summer a wee bit o’ Scotland comes to the Litchfield Hills on June 25 at Lime Rock Park when the Round Hill Highland Games takes place from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. This annual festival celebrates Scottish heritage and culture; a highlight of this event is the traditional traditional professional and amateur highland game competitions. The Round Hill Highland Games are the third oldest in the United States and this is the 93 year this event has been organized.

This tradition dates back to King Malcolm III (1057-93) who started the Scottish Highland Games nearly a thousand years ago at Craig Choinich by Braemar near Balmoral, in order to sort out the smartest, swiftest, strongest, most nimble, accurate, agile and coordinated Cumbrians with the most prowess, endurance, stamina and character from amongst his subjects! These subjects became the King’s Royal Inner Circle of protectors and couriers when going into battle.

Scottish and Scottish at heart are welcome to attend and will enjoy traditional piping and drumming competitions, pipe major competitions, pipe band competitions, Scottish country dancing, heavy athletic competitions, races and amateur sports for the whole family and children’s games & crafts. There will plenty of Scottish entertainment and folk music to add to the fun as well as fabulous Scottish food and drink plus vendors offering a wide assortment of Scottish merchandise.

Stepping Stones Museum for Children recognizes that many special people may play the role of dad in children’s lives, and that “dad” can mean different things to different people. That’s why, for the first time ever, one caregiver per family gets into the museum in Norwalk for FREE on June 18th – not just dads!

Children can honor someone special by creating a “You’re Worth Every Penny” greeting card during their visit from 11:15 – 11:45am, or a personalized #1 Dad Cheer Finger from 1:15– 1:45pm. While supplies last.

Also from 11:15 – 11:45am everyone can make Hulk-inspired Gamma radiation slime! Limited Space – Ticketed. 2 sessions of 12 participants.

The weekend fun actually starts on Saturday, June 17th when parents and kids are invited to explore music and movement through song, dance and the playing of instruments at Around the World: Performance Series from 2:00 – 3:00 pm. Folklore Urbano NYC will perform Cumbia for Kids, an interactive dance performance featuring Colombian music. Songs in Spanish are based on rhythms from the region like bambuco, pasillo and torbellino.

In addition to the many fun and educational exhibits, families can check out the travelling Healthyville exhibit that teaches children and adults about fitness and nutrition. It offers hands-on opportunities to explore topics in ways that helps kids understand their bodies, the importance of making healthy choices and apply concepts in everyday situations.

One free adult admission per family and the adult needs to be at least 18 years of age. Cannot be combined with other offers.

ABOUT STEPPING STONES MUSUEM FOR CHILDREN
Stepping Stones Museum for Children is an award-winning, private, non-profit 501 (c)(3) children’s museum committed to broadening and enriching the lives of children and families. For more information about Stepping Stones, to book a field trip or schedule a class, workshop or facility rental call 203-899-0606 or visit http://www.steppingstonesmuseum.org.

Stepping Stones Museum for Children is located at 303 West Avenue, Norwalk, CT, exit 14 North and 15 South off I-95. Museum hours are: Labor Day through Memorial Day, Tuesday-Sunday and holiday Mondays from 10:00 am – 5:00 pm; and Memorial Day through Labor Day, Monday-Sunday from 10:00 am – 5:00 pm. Admission is $15 for adults and children and $10 for seniors. Children under 1 are free.

On Saturday, June 17 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 pm. the Wilton Historical Society located on 224 Danbury Road is hosting a special Father’s Day program for kids on one of their favorite topics…cartoons! When people think of cartoons, they may think of comic books, political cartoons and “the funnies” in the Sunday newspaper when they were kids. But cartoons have been around in print and visual media for several hundred years; some of the earliest date to the 18th century in Britain.

Museum Educator Lola Chen will be discussing how cartoons evolved, and will use the Society’s current exhibition Dr. Seuss, Political Cartoons and the Battle Over Isolationism vs Intervention to show some examples. From the start, cartoons have been a way to lampoon and poke fun at the establishment and government. The kids will have a chance to draw their own cartoon, which may be a great gift for Father’s Day! Snack included, which the children will help prepare.

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?
“The cartoon art form began with ‘caricatura’. A caricature – from the Italian caricare, to load or exaggerate – is a drawing that gives weight to the most striking features of its subject for comic effect. The great Italian masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Annibale Carracci and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, all drew caricatures. These were technical exercises in virtuosity with the aim of defining the essence of a person in a few deft strokes of the pen.” — The Cartoon Museum, London

Now in it’s 11th year, Experience the Sound hosted by the Greenwich Shellfish Commission is once again taking place on June 25 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Greenwich Point Park in Old Greenwich and best of all this event is free and you don’t need a beach pass or car sticker to attend! This year the theme is “From Streams Through Soil to Sea” to emphasize that the local ecology in our own backyard is connected to the Sound and to encourage the public to be good caretakers of the land and the Sound. Activities will take place around the Innis Arden Cottage and the Old Greenwich Yacht Club and it’s docks at Greenwich Point. A free shuttle bus will be available to take participants back and forth between the two areas.

One of the highlights of this event is the Board a Boat exhibition. Festival goers are invited to climb aboard commercial shellfishing barges as well as the other boats that dock at the Old Greenwich Yacht Club. The Soundwaters Schooner, an 80 ft. three-masted representation of a 19th Century Sharpie Schooner used for teaching science to students of all ages will be docked along with the Atlantic Clam Farms barge, and the Copps Island Oyster boat, a traditional shellfishing boat operated by the third generation of shell-fishermen in the Bloom family.

If you have worked up an appetite, no worries as festival goers are invited to sample fresh clams and oysters from local waters. The raw bar hosts are local commercial shellfishing companies Atlantic Clam Farms and Hemlock Oyster Company.

The Greenwich Historical Society is teaming up with the Greenwich Point Conservancy and Old Greenwich Yacht Club to host a historical boat tour of the waters off Greenwich Point. Taking a new tack in honor of its exhibition Close to the Wind: Our Maritime History, the Historical Society is offering lucky guests a chance to test their sea legs during this 45-minute cruise. Each of the two tours (scheduled at 9:00 and 10:00 am) is limited to 11 passengers, so reservations must be made prior to the event and will be confirmed the day before. Participants will meet at the dock at Old Greenwich Yacht Club and are advised to dress appropriately for the weather, wear boat shoes or other footwear with soft, non-marking soles and apply sunscreen.

The Historical Society will also host a booth at Innis Arden Cottage from 1:00 to 4:00 pm featuring a fun family craft project involving the design of your very own nautical flag. In addition, outside the Innis Arden Cottage, attendees will have a chance to connect with many of the wonderful community groups and organizations in Greenwich and the surrounding area which organize water sports and other environmental and naturalist pursuits. The Greenwich Audubon and Wild Wings for example will be in attendance to talk about birds and other wildlife that make the Long Island Sound their home. The Bruce Museum Seaside Center will have a large touch tank with crabs, oysters, clams, fish, and more, and Naturalists on hand to answer your questions.