Tag: CT event

The Witches are back in Kent Connecticut!

Not many people know that Connecticut was New England’s most determined witch prosecutor – even fiercer than Salem. The record is terrible: The first person hanged for witchcraft in New England came from Windsor, and for a time every Connecticut woman indicted for witchcraft was convicted and hanged.

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In another of its continuing “Sunday Series” presentations, the Kent Historical Society will host Walt Woodward, the Connecticut state historian, giving a presentation on witch hunts that happened in Connecticut.

The lecture will be held Sunday, January 18, 2015 at 2 p.m. at the Kent Town Hall.
Walt Woodward animates this extraordinary, but neglected episode in a lecture that begins with the Protestant Reformation and continues through the Hartford Witch hunt of the 1660’s – a nightmare of trials and executions that preceded Salem by a generation. The story improves, too. Woodward documents how Connecticut’s Governor John Winthrop, Jr. played a role in ending executions for witchcraft 30 years before they even began at Salem.

Kent’s own Seger family was caught up in the madness. Elizabeth Moody Seger was accused of witchcraft three times. It is documented on the family’s web site http://www.onsegermountain.org/witchcraft.html

For more winter event information on the Litchfield Hills visit www.litchfieldhills.com

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LEGOS AND LIGHTHOUSES BRIGHTEN THE SEASON IN CONNECTICUT

There’s no merrier place to be this season than Fairfield County in Western Connecticut where two of the most original exhibits in New England brighten the season at local museums.

A lavish moving landscape made of a billion LEGO® bricks delights visitors to the Stamford Museum and Nature Center while the 13th annual Festival of Lighthouses contest at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk shows off dozens of fabulous new miniature creations.

WIDE WORLD OF LEGOS®

Trains and planes. Cars, tractors and trucks. Ships, shuttles and monorails. Helicopters and spaceships

Just about anything that moves on land, sea, air and space will be seen as colorful LEGO® sculptures, moving through a three-dimensional imaginary landscape at the Billion Bricks 2 exhibit at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center. Everything in the amazing exhibit is made of LEGO blocks.
Master builder Bill Probert & I LUG (LEGO® Users Group) NY return to the Museum Galleries for a sixth season of their popular displays, promising a LEGO world that is even bigger and better this year. The exhibit runs from November 22 to January 25.

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Starting in January, families are invited to make their own LEGO® creations in weekend workshops. Participants on Saturday, January 3 will build and race a LEGO® car while the group on Sunday January 4 will build and fly a Lego helicopter or space ship.

Lights! Camera! Action! Animation Workshops on Saturday and Sunday January 17 and 18 for ages 10 and up will be led by Alex Kobbs, of KooberzStudios. Kobbs will teach techniques for film stop action animation using LEGO® creations and mini figures.

Workshops are limited in size and advance reservations are required. Phone 203-977-6521 to register and see www.stamfordmuseum.org for more information.

LIGHTHOUSES LIGHT UP THE SEASON

Some are funny. Some are clever. Some are beautiful.

For the 13th year, artists and would-be-artists will compete for the most original entry in the Festival of Lighthouses at the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk from November 22 through January. 19.

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The rules are simple. Entries must be three to six feet tall and have a working light. They may not include animal remains such as shells. Beyond that, it’s up to the creators’ imaginations and the results are guaranteed to amaze. Past entries have been made of stained glass, stone, yarn, clay, candy and tiny coffee cups. One entry was made of holiday greeting cards, another included computer animation. One memorable entry featured all the makings of the 12 days of Christmas.

This year’s exhibit will showcase 24 lighthouses and there is no telling what the creative results will be. Aquarium visitors will follow these one-of-a-kind beacons through the galleries and then cast a vote for their favorite. The winner takes home the $1,500 first prize. Runner-ups divide the rest of the $3300 in prize money. To learn more, see www.maritimeaquarium.org.

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For more information about holiday events and a free copy of Unwind, a full-color, 152-page booklet detailing what to do and see, and where to stay, shop and dine in Fairfield County as well as in the Litchfield Hills, contact the Western Connecticut Visitors Bureau, PO Box 968, Litchfield, CT 06759, (860) 567-4506, or visit their web site at www.visitwesternct.com.

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“A Prairie Refrain” at Carole Peck’s Good News Cafe

Contemporary realist painter, Karl Hartman, will exhibit his new show titled “A Prairie Refrain” through January 27, 2015 at Carole Peck’s Good News Cafe and Gallery, 694 Main Street South, Woodbury CT.

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Hartman’s paintings focuses on his memories of the prairie landscapes that he grew to love and his evolvement with these landscapes as a geologist in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas. Hartman describes this part of the United States as spare, quiet and infinitely dynamic, beautiful and terrifying all at the same time. In contrast to his painting of the plains, he is also working on drawings of Bergen County, New Jersey that reflect the tightly packed, crowded suburban local domestic world of this area as well as its occupants and their imprint on it.”

Karl Hartman was born in Billings Montana and grew up mostly in the plains states of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma. He received his BS from the University of Oklahoma majoring in geology and minoring in art. He received his MFA in painting from the School of Visual Arts in New York where he studied with Sam Cady, Ursula von Rydingsvard and John Lees. He lives with his family in New Jersey and travels back to Oklahoma to see family, take photographs and sketch.

Karl shows at the Mary Ann Doran gallery in Tulsa, OK and the New Arts Gallery in Litchfield, CT. He has exhibited at the Kansas Museum of Fine Art in Wichita, KA, The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH, The Charles A. Wustum Museum, Racine, WI. He has also shown at The Grand Central Galleries, The Adam Baumgold Gallery, and the National Academy of Design in New York as well as the Yoyogi School of fine art in Tokyo Japan.

His most recent award was the New Jersey State Council for the Arts Fellowship for painting. For area information visit http://www.litchfieldhills.com. For New Year or dinner reservations, contact Good News Cafe at http://www.good-news-cafe.com/

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‘Let’s Play Shakespeare’ free in Rowayton Dec. 12

Shakespeare on the Sound reaches down through the centuries to introduce the enduring and timeless themes of The Bard in premiering the 2015 version of “Let’s Play Shakespeare” Dec. 12 (Friday) at 3:30 p.m. in the Moose Room of the Rowayton Community Center on 33 Highland Avenue.

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The 50-minute production—to be followed by a question-and-answer opportunity—is an original and interactive theatrical work designed to give children from kindergarten to grade five an insight into Shakespeare– but appealing to all ages. Admission is free, donations optional.
The sweep of Shakespeare’s lyrical scythe from comedy to tragedy unfolds onstage as the actors argue over which passages they should perform—and who gets the biggest part– from a palate that shuffles iconic scenes from “Macbeth,” “Henry V,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “As You Like It” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The performers work with props extracted from a trunk they bring onstage with them. All three are New York-based professionals who have all appeared in previous outdoor productions of Shakespeare on the Sound in Rowayton’s Pinkney Park. They are Katie Wieland, Matthew Lynch and Daniel Levitt.

The playwrights, Kelly and Bryan, created an innovative format where youngsters from the audience are invited on-stage to warm up with the actors and to act in the performance, becoming, for example, part of Henry V’s army. The play with its interactive dimension is also portable and available for presentation in schools and libraries.

For more information visit http://www.shakespareonthesound.org For area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

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Holidays with the Bridgeport Symphony

The Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra has an exciting holiday season planned and tickets are selling fast. Once again this year, the orchestra is returning to Saturday night concerts beginning at 8 p.m. with a special optional 7:00 PM pre-concert open to all ticket buyers. Pre-concert attendees will hear the stories and letters that have inspired the repertoire for each concert by invited narrators. Pre-concert events also allow participants closer interactions with conductors, soloists and other musicians as well as the visuals that enhance each live performance.

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On November 15 at 8 p.m. the concert called Dream of Dances will feature György Ligeti – Old Hungarian Dances, Igor Stravinsky – Suite from Pulcinella, Ludwig Beethoven – Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Opus 92. The conductor, Jacomo Rafael Bairos has been described as “expressive and passionate” [Malaysian Straits Times], and lauded by the Leipziger Volkszeitung as an “impressive conductor… who is elegantly demanding”, Mr. Bairos enjoys an emerging career as an imaginative and inclusive conductor, dedicated collaborator and educator, and ardent champion of living American composers.

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On December 6 the orchestra has planned a special holiday concert that will also begin at 8 p.m. whose theme is A Folk Christmas. This concert will feature the work of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky – Serenade, opus 48; Antonio Vivaldi – from The Four Seasons; Carols and folk songs and the conductor is Eric Jacobsen. This promises to be a night of holiday cheer!

In addition, the holiday concert will highlight a performance by the Fairfield County Children’s Choir conducted by Jon Noyes, Musical Director. The Fairfield County Children’s Choir (FCCC) is a community-based choral program made up of 300 children in grades four through twelve from communities in and around Fairfield County, Connecticut. The FCCC was founded in 1995 to provide children the opportunity to participate in a musical experience which is challenging, rewarding and enjoyable. The FCCC has performed throughout New England as well as in New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Maryland, New Orleans, San Francisco, Oakland, Hawaii, Canada, England, Ireland, Austria and the Czech Republic. The group has shared the stage with such artists as Renee Fleming, Charles Strouse, Stephen Schwartz, Lawrence Gilgore, Sam Waterston, Christopher Plummer, Nick Page, Ivan Rutherford, Michelle Mallardi, Henry Leck, Bob Chilcott, Jean Ashworth Bartle, Tom Chapin and Rob Hugh. We welcome FCCC back to perform a 2nd time with GBS!

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There will also be a performance by Sara Watkins who plays the fiddle and has spent nearly two decades, as singer and fiddle player for the Grammy Award–winning, bluegrass-folk hybrid Nickel Creek, a trio she’d started performing in when she was a mere eight years old. As a solo artist as the BBC put it, “Watkins’ time in the spotlight is a triumph with her agile playing and the kind of voice that gives your goose bumps the shivers.”

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The final performer is Aoife O’Donovon, best known as the founder and frontwoman of the string band Crooked Still. She is also one-third of the female trio Sometymes Why, and has appeared on the Prairie Home Companion radio program. She has collaborated with artists as varied as jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas, Yo-Yo Ma’s Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile’s Goat Rodeo Sessions band, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and Olabelle, to name just a few.

All performances are at the Klein Memorial Auditorium on 910 Fairfield Ave. in Bridgeport. For ticket information call 203-576-0263 or visit http://www.gbs.org.

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Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting: Paintings by Mia Brownell 2003-2013 at the Housatonic Museum of Art

Twenty-eight of Mia Brownell’s paintings will be on display at the Housatonic Museum of Art in the Burt Chernow Galleries from through November 17, 2014. Luscious and sensuous, Mia Brownell’s paintings invite us to indulge in “earthly delights” and are themselves ripe with sexual innuendo.

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What Brownell asks us to contemplate is the brevity of life. “We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness,” wrote the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, “we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses.” Seventeenth century Dutch still life paintings of tables laden with gastronomic delights served to remind viewers that all things perish but Brownell’s fruits invite us to relish the sweetness of now.

Although Mia Brownell’s paintings “may recall classical Vanitas paintings, her food-based compositions also invoke contemporary food politics. A critic of the food industrial complex, Brownell creates a juxtaposition between the natural and artificial, modeling her opulent still-lifes after molecular structures. Her depictions of shiny apples, bead-like caviar and juicy grapes look almost too good to be edible, hence the title of her upcoming traveling solo show, Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting.

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The exhibition, which premiered at J. Cacciola Gallery in New York, is a ten-year survey of Brownell’s paintings (2003-2013) travelled to the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey, Juniata College Museum of Art in Pennsylvania and the final stop at Housatonic Museum of Art in Connecticut.”

Gallery hours: Monday- Friday from 8:30am until 5:30pm, Thursdays until 7pm, Saturday from 9am until 3pm and Sunday Noon until 4pm. Please note that the Gallery will be CLOSED Monday. October 13th. For more information visit http://www.housatonic.edu/artmuseum/index.asp

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