Connecticut Travel

The New Canaan Nature Center located on 144 Oenoke Ridge is offering a program on Saturday, November 26 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. that will help you walk off some of those holiday calories. Grab the entire family (and any lingering holiday visitors too!) and head on down to the New Canaan Nature Center! You won’t want to miss this awesome annual event, a long-time favorite for both members & guests.

Join the NCNC Naturalists for a healthy, invigorating Trail Trek to work off that holiday meal. While “waddling” the trails, we’ll search for some of nature’s most treasured gifts (apple trees, maple trees & honey bees to name a few) and learn why the end of autumn may not be quite as quiet as you may think. In fact, autumn is a busy time of year for many wild animals such as deer, squirrels & birds!

As an extra Thanksgiving bonus, after our hike, you’ll also get to enjoy a FREE behind the scenes tour of our Animal Care facilities & Birds of Prey Exhibit – our way of saying “thank you” to the community.

Naturalists will be departing with groups from the Sugar Shack for Trail Treks at 10:30 AM and 11:30 AM (sign up is on a first come, first serve basis with limited spots for each).

This event will take place rain or shine and is a drop in program that is free for members and non-members and promises family fun from one years old to ninety!

For more area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com
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he Palace Theatre in Waterbury located on 100 E. Main Street is presenting the Broadway smash hit Kinky Boots from December 6- December 11. KINKY BOOTS is Broadway’s huge-hearted, high-heeled hit! With songs by Grammy® and Tony® winning pop icon Cyndi Lauper, this joyous musical celebration is about the friendships we discover, and the belief that you can change the world when you change your mind.

Inspired by true events, KINKY BOOTS takes you from a gentlemen shoe factory in Northampton to the glamorous catwalks of Milan. Charlie Price is struggling to live up to his father’s expectations and continue the family business of Price & Son. With the factory’s future hanging in the balance, help arrives in the unlikely but spectacular form of Lola, a fabulous performer in need of some sturdy new stilettos.

With direction and choreography by two-time Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell and a book by Broadway legend and four-time Tony Award-winner Harvey Fierstein, KINKY BOOTS is the winner of six Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Choreography.

Tickets may be purchased online. Performances are: December 06, 2016 at 7:30 PM , December 07, 2016 at 7:30 PM , December 08, 2016 at 7:30 PM , December 09, 2016 at 8:00 PM December 10, 2016 at 2:00 PM , December 10, 2016 at 8:00 PM , December 11, 2016 at 1:00 PM , and December 11, 2016 at 6:30 PM.

For more area information www.litchfieldhills.com

​Carole Peck’s Good News Cafe has announced a new art show by Katie Ré Scheidt who describes her painting style as “expressionism” and the empowerment of women. In this show, with the faces unseen, Katie’s subject is the woman’s body. Her nudes portray confidence, strength, vulnerability, and they certainly evoke emotion. Her use of color and strategic positioning of gesture bring a sense of fluidity of motion and transcending calmness. Katie admits she loves to “play and push color”. Her, loaded with paint, brushes and palettes are employed with intent and purpose.

Katie’s parents recognize her gift and gifted her with opportunity to go to Florence, Italy to study her craft. She was 16. Now mature in her talents, she believes, her classical training, at the Studio Cecil Graves, gave her the confidence to “lose her orderly self” and allow her oils on canvas to be “unrestrained, but not reckless” – Republican American.

Katie is not only an artist. She has two children, Madeline and Guther, and a loving husband which, after being witness to and surviving the 9/11 terrorist attacks on The World Trade Center, were her inspiration to leave her Wall Street position and settle into this beautiful life of a painter. Living in Roxbury, CT, Katie’s studio is her backyard. She has set up her studio in her barn. Called “The Fauve Barn”, it was originally the studio for Leonard Wisegard, a children’s book illustrator.

Another artist that is showing his work is Brien Coleman​ who uses scissors, glue, pens, and pigment to create his interesting pieces. Coleman applies magic markers for strategic color enhancement. Coleman’s theatrical compositions of cut-out ephemera provide thematic thrusts that combine with color and pattern to form each mysteriously evocative image. STRANGE MAGIC is the title of his latest book, much of which sprang from two actual double-sided books which were deconstructed and reconfigured.

Brien Coleman has shown his works in many publications (he was a long-time contributor to the EAST VILLAGE EYE), as installations at thematic downtown New York nightclub events (Mudd Club, Danceteria, et al), and galleries in NYC, Venice Beach, California, Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico, Chania (Crete), Greece, Amsterdam, Wynwood & Coconut Grove in Miami, Toronto, and most recently at “A Fall Gathering of Artists” in Litchfield, CT.

The Good News Café and Gallery is open from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, on Sunday from 12 noon to 10 p.m. and is closed Tuesday and open from 12Noon to 10pm Sundays.

To sign up for a monthly newsletter on Litchfield Hills and Fairfield County visit www.litchfieldhills.com

To get you in a holiday mood, the New England Carousel Museum located on 95 Riverside Ave. in Bristol is hosting the “Bizarre Bazaar, a holiday art and craft fair on November 19 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This is a juried show and sale of work by phenomenal artists and artisans handpicked by the Museum and one that you don’t want to miss especially if you are looking for unusual holiday gifts.

Expect to be dazzled as you wander among the work of artists and artisans at the Carousel Museum that will be displaying a variety of homemade crafts, amazing treats, and holiday gifts.

There will be two floors with over 50 exhibitors showcasing their unique gifts among the Museum’s holiday environment and gorgeous carousel horses.
As adults shop, there is plenty to do for the little ones. The Arts and Crafts Room of the Museum will be open for children and, “Amazing Magical Paul” will be back to create whimsical balloon animals !

Best of all, admission is only $1.00 with free carousel rides for children all day.

Only yesterday, it seems, one was hard-pressed to name more than a handful of successful women artists; now the list would be extensive, and the choices rich and varied. Although numerous recent exhibitions have featured women’s art, the collecting of art created by women has received scant attention. In fact, private collections are in the process of being dramatically transformed, shifting to focus on contemporary artists, women in particular.

The Bruce Museum’s new exhibition- Her Crowd: New Art by Women from Our Neighbors’ Private Collections will run through January 2, 2017. Greenwich and the nearby communities in Fairfield and Westchester counties are home to a number of the finest contemporary collections, and thus to some of the most exciting art by women being made today.

Her Crowd will offer the rare opportunity to see what some of America’s most influential collectors of contemporary art consider beautiful, important, and compelling. Themes specific to women continue to be of significance: motherhood, food, sexuality; beauty and its discontents; stereotypes of femininity and their undoing; intersections of gender and race. Equally important for Her Crowd is the current powerful resurgence of abstraction in its myriad forms: minimalist patterning, expressive mark-making, and painterly exuberance. Many artists represented in the show traffic in unexpected collisions: of the second and third dimension, of the carefully crafted and the found object, of the concrete and the immaterial.

Running the gamut from established figures to brilliant newcomers, the exhibition includes remarkable work by Yayoi Kusama, Kiki Smith, Betye Saar, Annie Lapin, Margaret Lee, Carol Bove, Dana Schutz, Jessica Stockholder, Jenny Saville, and Tara Donovan, among others. Her Crowd: New Art by Women from Our Neighbors’ Private Collections will offer a glimpse into the exciting interchange between contemporary artists and their passionate collectors.

The exhibition is co-curated by Kenneth E. Silver, New York University Professor of Modern Art and Bruce Museum Adjunct Curator of Art, and Mia Laufer, PhD candidate (Washington University in Saint Louis) and Zvi Grunberg Resident Fellow.

The Bruce Museum is located on One Museum Drive in Greenwich Connecticut and is open Tuesday – Sunday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Doors close 1/2 hour before closing and the last admission is at 4:30 p.m. For more area event information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

“A Christmas Story, the Musical”, will make a two performance stop at Waterbury’s Palace Theater on Friday evening November 18, at 8:00pm and Saturday November 19 at 2:00pm. Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.palacetheaterct.org, by phone at 203-346-2000, or in person at the Box Office, 100 East Main St. Tickets begin at $45.

Based on the classic 1983 movie, A Christmas Story, The Musical chronicles young and bespectacled Ralphie Parker as he schemes his way toward the holiday gift of his dreams, an official Red Ryder® Carbine-Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle (“You’ll shoot your eye out kid!”). An infamous leg lamp, outrageous pink bunny pajamas, a maniacal department store Santa, and a double-dog-dare to lick a freezing flagpole are just a few of the distractions that stand between Ralphie and his Christmas wish. Chock-full of delightful songs and splashy production numbers, A Christmas Story, The Musical, following its smash hit Broadway run, has proudly taken its place as a perennial holiday classic for the whole family.

To sign up for a monthly newsletter on Litchfield Hills and Fairfield County www.litchfieldhills.com

About the Palace Theater

The Palace’s primary purpose is to revitalize the Greater Waterbury community through the presentation of the performing arts and educational initiatives in collaboration with area cultural and educational institutions. Its mission is to preserve and operate the historic Palace Theater as a performing arts center and community gathering place that provides a focal point of cultural activity and educational outreach for diverse audiences.
For more information, visit: http://www.palacetheaterct.org.