Tag: CT Travel

Sharon Audubon Enchanted Forest and Kids’ Day in Litchfield Hills

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Family fun is in the works at the Sharon Audubon Center the last two weekends in October. Both events are “non scary” and geared toward families with children pre-K through 2nd grade.

The Audubon’s popular Enchanted Forest will be held on Saturday, October 19. Guided groups will meet friendly costumed animal characters along a candlelit trail and hear how the animals live their lives on the Audubon grounds. After the tour, which lasts approximately 45 minutes, participants can enjoy a cup of hot chocolate inside the Center building before taking a hayride back to the parking area. This non-scary program is ideal for children up to 8 years old and their families. Tours begin every 10-15 minutes between the hours of 6:00 and 7:30 p.m.. Participants should bring an extra flashlight. Admission is $4 per person. Children under 2 are free.

enchanted forest

Audubon Kids’ Day is taking place on Sunday, October 27 from 12-3 p.m. This is a fun, autumn afternoon for young children and their families that features carnival-type games, kids’ crafts, a hay bale maze, hay wagon shuttles, and food to name a few of the fun activities. Children are encouraged to come in costume and join in the costume parade that will be lead by a real life marching band around the Center grounds at 2:30. The event is held rain or shine. Admission is $7.00 per carload.

The Sharon Audubon Center is located on Route 4 in Sharon, for more information, contact the Audubon Center at (860) 364-0520 or visit http://sharon.audubon.org.

For area information www.litchfieldhills.com

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Bee Aware at Fairfield Museum and History Center

The Fairfield Museum Shop located on 370 Beach Street in Fairfield is all abuzz with a new selection of bee-related items including honey produced by their own honeybees!

Skeps at the Ogden House
Skeps at the Ogden House

This year, for the first time, the Museum raised bees near the 1750 Ogden House in keeping with their mission to explore the past and to imagine the future. The museum has used bees to pollinate the colonial garden and has harvested the honey in much the same way as our ancestors did.

The Ogden House located on 1520 Bronson Rd., is an authentic saltbox home with a colonial kitchen garden containing plantings dating back to the home’s origin. Visitors to the garden can see replica straw bee skeps that represent the importance of beekeeping in the colonies in terms of pollination and wax production, as well as the medicinal, culinary, and household uses of honey. In fact, apple trees and honeybees used to pollinate trees were brought across the Atlantic in the early 1600s so settlers could make cider because water was not considered portable. Honey was used to preserve food, weatherproof leather and medicinally to help prevent infection.

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Today, visitors to the gift shop at the Fairfield Museum will find the museum’s newly harvested honey along with bee-themed tea towels, coasters, and pure beeswax candles. In addition to these “sweet” products, the museum shop offers an interesting selection of locally made items such as art by Michael Michaud and beach inspired jewelry.
In conjunction with the Museum’s current maps exhibit, There’s a Map for That! the Museum Shop offers map themed pieces such as passport covers, journals, and flasks. Specialty jewelry items from CHART metalworks, including pendants, earrings and key chains, exclusively designed for the Museum, feature maps of Fairfield Beach and Southport Harbor.

The Fairfield Museum Gift Shop is open daily from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and weekends from 12 p.m. – 4 p.m. For more information visit www.fairfieldhistory.org.

For area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

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11th Annual Kitchen Tour in Litchfield Hills November 2

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Once again, this year, kitchen fans can look forward to another great line-up of unique and awe-inspiring kitchens offered by the annual Litchfield Hills Kitchen Tour. This highly anticipated tour is known for including a wide range of kitchen styles from cozy country chic to breathtaking ultra modern. The tour has grown in popularity because of the ideas and innovations that participants can take home to their own kitchens. This year, the 11th annual Kitchen Tour to benefit the Housatonic Musical Theatre Society will be held Saturday, November 2, 2013, from 10 am – 4 pm.

Kitchens in Cornwall and Kent are featured on this years’ tour. The kitchens range in style and size to inspire a variety of approaches to the “heart of the home.” This year’s homes include a barn designed for entertaining with a large kitchen island and table with cherry wood from a backyard tree; an Early Modern House finished in 1939 for Pulitzer Prize winner Hatcher Hughes, recently restored by the present owners to its original splendor; a restored barn with two storybook cottages; a house built for large crowds and family get-togethers featuring a beautiful screened-in detached room with a massive stone fireplace; and a center hall colonial that has a large center kitchen island,a bar area and a traditional dining room. An added bit of fun on this tour are the local samplings of goodies offered at each kitchen on the tour.

Tickets for the Kitchen Tour are $35 in advance and $40 the day of the Tour. There will also be a number of raffle prizes offered. Advance Kitchen Tour ticket buyers will receive two complimentary raffle tickets for the various raffle prize drawings. For information, go to www.hmts.org or call (860) 364-6022 or email hmtsct@gmail.com. For area information www.litchfieldhills.com

JanetLeave a comment

Vanishing America at the Sharon Historical Society

The Sharon Historical Society, located in the Litchfield Hills of northwest Connecticut is hosting an art exhibit by Jeffrey L. Neumann titled Vanishing America: The Disappearing Commercial Landscape of the 20th Century through October 25.

Painting By Jeffrey L. Neumann
Painting By Jeffrey L. Neumann

This exhibit is a celebration of the exuberance and independent spirit of life in post WWII America tempered by the inexorable march of time. With a focus on the mom and pop eating establishments, motels and movie theaters of roadside America, Neumann’s paintings take the viewer on journey down the two-lane highways of the twentieth century. They allow us to experience a part of our past that is being rapidly replaced by the widespread influence of corporate conformity.

The cultural and anthropological aspect of Neumann’s work is balanced by his uniquely personal vision. The artist, born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1953 and currently residing in Copake, NY, cannot be considered a regional painter. The subjects of his oil and watercolor paintings come from all across the nation. They are influenced by Neumann’s childhood years living in New Mexico and California and his numerous trips on Route 66 in the back of the family station wagon. His work is noted as finding profound meaning in places often overlooked.

On October 13 at 3 p.m. there will be a gallery walk and talk with the artist.

Running concurrently with Neumann’s Vanishing America exhibit in The Gallery @the SHS, the Sharon Historical Society & Museum will present Now you see it…in the exhibit galleries. This exhibit will take its audience backwards in time, challenging the viewer to use objects and images that are familiar today as a roadmap to the past. Focusing primarily on the changes that have occurred in town from 1850 to the present day, visitors will be confronted with familiar scenes, such as the Sharon War Memorial, the Sharon Fire Department, Mudge Pond Beach, the Sharon Valley Tavern, Sharon Hospital and the Sharon Center School, and with the help of objects from the museum collection, will be transported back in time to pivotal junctures in the town’s development.

About the Sharon Historical Society
The Sharon Historical Society and Museum is located at 18 Main Street, Sharon, Connecticut 06069. For more information, call 860-364-5688 or visit www.sharonhist.org. Museum Hours are Wednesday & Saturday from 10AM – 2PM, Thursday & Friday from 10AM – 4PM and by appointment.

For information on Litchfield Hills visit www.litchfieldhills.com

JanetLeave a comment

Alex Schweder: Rehearsal Space at The Philip Johnson Glass House

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Now through October 12, New York-based artist Alex Schweder will participate in the cultural life of the Glass House campus while occupying a mobile living unit temporarily situated alongside the Brick House. Speculating that architecture is enacted as well as built, Rehearsal Space comprises a portable accommodation (combining a van, a scissor lift, and an inflatable room) that anticipates the Glass House’s potential artist residency program.

Connected to the Brick House by a power cord, Schweder’s van contains an inflatable room that can be raised twenty-two feet in the air by a hydraulic system. An interior control panel allows the artist to toggle the furniture between a sofa and a bed. The entrance, which is also a private shower and bathroom, serves as an air hatch that balances the interior air pressure. While in residence, Schweder will live in the inflatable room and work on a manuscript about “performance architecture” in Philip Johnson’s library.

The Brick House and the Glass House, designed by Johnson and completed in 1949, form a two-part composition that challenged ideas about domesticity in midcentury America. Connected by a gravel path across a landscaped courtyard, the Glass House and Brick House counterpose transparency and opacity. Although the Glass House and its grounds opened to the public in 2007, the Brick House was closed shortly thereafter because of water infiltration.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation continues to raise funds to restore the structure. It is anticipated that successful preservation efforts can reactivate the Brick House as a guest house for artists, writers, and other creative individuals engaged in short-term residencies at the Glass House.
Schweder’ project was originally commissioned as the hotel rehearsal © by the 2013 Biennial of the Americas in Denver for the exhibition “Draft Urbanism,” curated by Paul Anderson, Carson Chan, Gaspar Libidinsky, and Abaseh Mivali. This will be the project’s first presentation outside of Denver.

EV Day exterior for web

Also on view through November 30 is SNAP, a site-specific installation by E.V. Day Conceived for the building known as Da Monsta – designed by Philip Johnson in 1995 as a visitor center and now a gallery – SNAP! interprets the pavilion’s peculiar geometry and atmosphere both inside and out. Day has roped the exterior of Da Monsta with massive climbing webs and populated the interior with an ensemble of recent sculpture that tease out the noir qualities of Johnson’s late work.

About the artist
Alex Schweder works with architecture and performance art to question the separation of occupying subjects and occupied objects. His projects have been exhibited at Tate Britain; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art;,Sculpture Center, New York; Magnus Müller, Berlin; the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum; the Biennial of the Americas; the Lisbon Architectural Triennial; the Moscow Biennial; and the Marrakech Biennial. He has been artist-in-residence at the Kohler Company, the Chinati Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome, and has taught at SCI-ARC, the Architectural Association, and the Institute for Art and Architecture, Vienna. Schweder is a doctoral candidate in architecture at the University of Cambridge, England, and teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. For more information, visit http://www.alexschweder.com.

The Glass House, built between 1949 and 1995 by architect Philip Johnson, is a National Trust Historic Site located in New Canaan, CT. The pastoral 49-acre landscape comprises fourteen structures, including the Glass House (1949), and features a permanent collection of 20th-century painting and sculpture, along with temporary exhibitions. The tour season runs from May to November and advance reservations are required. For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit www.theglasshouse.org.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a privately funded nonprofit organization that works to save America’s historic places to enrich our future. For more information, visit www.PreservationNation.org.

For area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

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Incredibly rare Amur Leopard at Beardsley Zoo

In the wild there are only 30-40 Amur Leopards left in the wild and only 176 in captivity worldwide.

Sofiya
Sofiya

One of the newest exhibits at Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo features Sofiya, an amazingly rare female Amur leopard that now calls Bridgeport home. She was born on May 10, 2008 at the St. Louis Zoo and now resides in the newly remodeled space that once housed the Andean bear exhibit.

Sofiya’s new exhibit features rock outcroppings that will enable her to explore her surroundings at ground level. It also includes areas as high as 10 feet off the ground, to enable her to view her domain from a different level. Amur leopards have been known to leap more than 10 feet vertically, so Sofiya will have room to stretch her legs. Visitors will be able to meet Sofiya between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. daily, in this new space located next to the lynx exhibit. The exhibit would not have been possible without the support of the City of Bridgeport, the Connecticut Zoological Society, and through the generous donations of zoo patrons.

About Amur leopards

A rare subspecies of leopard that has adapted to life in the temperate forests from Northeast China to the Korean peninsula, they are often illegally hunted for their beautiful spotted fur. The Amur leopard is agile and fast, running at speeds up to 37 miles per hour. Males reach weights of 110 pounds and females up to 90 pounds. They prey on sika, roe deer, and hare, but the Amur leopard has to compete with humans for these animals. Some scientists have reported male Amur leopards remaining with the females after mating, and possibly even helping to rear the young. They live for 10-15 years in the wild, and up to 20 years in captivity.

Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo is closer than you think and open daily from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. Adult admission (ages 12 & older) is $12.00, children (ages 3 -11) and senior admission (62 and older) is just $10.00, and children under 3 years old are free. Zoo members also are admitted free. Parking at the Zoo is free of charge. For more information about Connecticut’s only zoo visit www.beardsleyzoo.org.

For area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com.

JanetLeave a comment