Tag: New England

A Trio of Performances at the Gary the Olivia Theatre in Bethlehem

On the grounds of the Abbey of Regina Laudis in the quite town of Bethlehem Connecticut the Clay and Wattles Theatre Company has planned two exciting performances this summer at the Gary the Oliva Theatre located on 249 Flanders Road.

The first show is “The Trip to the Bountiful that will take place from June 12 through June 21 with Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and a Sunday matinee at 2:30 p.m.

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The Trip to Bountiful” finds a perfect home here, on the grounds of the working farm run by the Benedictine nuns at the Abbey. The roofed, open air theater was built with the vision of former actress and now Benedictine Nun, Mother Dolores Hart, and the generous support of Oscar winning actress Patricia Neal, and has a rich history. The June 12 opening night performance of “The Trip to Bountiful” at The Gary-The Olivia Theater will include a reception during intermission featuring local wines and cheeses.

The musical for the 2015 season is the Tony Award winning “Man of La Mancha.” It is the unforgettable story of the “mad” knight, Don Quixote, as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. It will play from August 1-16 at The Gary-The Olivia Theater, with Friday and Saturday performances at 7:30 pm and Sunday matinees at 2:30 pm.

A third performance, a Concert/Fundraiser for Clay & Wattles Theater company at The Gary-The Olivia Theater entitled “From Rags To Riches” will take place on Saturday, September 19 from 3-6 pm with special guest artists performing scenes, songs and dances from your favorite American Musicals and a dramatic reading from Mother Dolores Hart. The concert will be followed by a wine, cheese and chocolate reception with a meet and greet the performers.
The new season offers subscriptions for groups and individuals, and special rates for seniors. For ticket information and more details on the Clay & Wattles Theater company’s 2015 season, visit www.thegarytheolivia.com, or call 203-273-5669, or email info@thegarytheolivia.com.

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John Funt and Gerald Incandela to show at Five Points Gallery

Five Points Gallery, located in Downtown Torrington, will open a new exhibition “John Funt and Gerald Incandela at Five Points” on Thursday, May 28th. The show will run through June 27 and will be open Thursdays through Sundays from 1-5 p.m. Five Points Gallery is free and open to the public. An opening reception will take place on Friday, May 29 at 6 p.m. and an artist talk with occur on Friday, June 12 at 6 p.m. The public is encouraged to attend both events, which are sponsored by Burlington Construction.

John Funt Waterfall
John Funt Waterfall

John Funt studied art with sculptor Rhys Caparn at the Dalton School in New York and with painter Joseph Slate at Kenyon College in Ohio. He has had solo exhibitions at Nelson Macker Fine Art, Morgan Lehman Gallery, James Graham and Sons and the Norfolk Library. Funt has worked as an event designer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Designer and Display Director for Tiffany & Company but for the past decade, has devoted himself full-time to painting.

Commenting on Funt’s work, The New Criterion wrote: “John Funt turns the dynamics of landscape around.” Another review from The New Yorker described his work as follows: ” The wide-screen format announces representational intent; the jewel-like undertones and simplified forms reveal the fundamental decorative impulse.”

Incandella Card
Incandella Card

Gerald Incandela is an American artist, born in Tunisia. Incandela received a philosophy degree in 1969, then moved to Paris where he studied art history. In 1974, Gerald Incandela began to photograph and soon after learned photographic printing. He is recognized for his unique photographic process, by which he conceptually merges drawing and photography. During the course of developing the large format, black and white prints, Incandela selectively applies developer and fixer on paper with a brush as to reveal and animate selected elements of the captured image.

His work is in numerous collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Incandela has had numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad and has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions. In his recent body of work, Gerald Incandela has transitioned from drawing with the photographic medium to painting with it. The tones and colors are the result of the action of regular light oxidizing the silver in the paper before fixing the image. It is not a tinted or colored silver print and therefore not “mixed media”. Each one is unique because Incandela applies selectively the solutions onto the paper instead of immersing the paper evenly in the solutions.

Five Points Gallery is located at 33 Main Street, Torrington, CT. Hours are Thursdays through Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. The gallery is also open by appointment. For more information please visit www.fivepointsgallery.org.

For more event information www.litchfieldhills.com

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National Train Day and MotherÂ’s Day at the Danbury Railway Museum

The Danbury Railway Museum has joined in the celebration of National Train Day on Saturday, May 9. At the Danbury Railway Museum this promises to be a day full of educational activities and FREE train rides for the whole family. The fun will begin at 10:00am and end at 4:00pm. Museum admission is $6.00 for adults; $5.00 for seniors; $4.00 for ages 3-12; under 3, free. However, current and former railroad employees will receive free museum admission (proper ID required). Trains will begin running hourly at 10:30 with the last train departing at 2:30.

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The museum’s Rail Yard Local will be operating — a short trip on a vintage train pulled by a 68 year old locomotive, with locomotive cab rides also available. As a National Train Day gift to all the friends of the Danbury Railroad, all train rides will be free on this day! As a special educational treat, periodically during the day, demonstrations of railroad signaling and coupling/uncoupling train cars will take place, and other educational talks will be given. In addition, the historic New Haven Railroad Cedar Hill forge is expected to be operating with a blacksmith making various items, and train riders will have an opportunity to take a spin on the operating turntable, followed by a tour of the water tower pump house.

In the Danbury museum building, visitors can explore railroad history exhibits, operating electric train layouts, static model displays of the station and railyard, many one-of-a-kind artifacts of railroading history, a wonderful gift shop, a coloring table and other children’s activities, and many other items of interest. The museum’s Research Library will hold a used book and model sale with some great bargains. Outside in the historic railyard, guests will find walk-through exhibits, and a vast assortment of train cars and locomotives –
many that ran in Danbury during its railroading heyday.

On Sunday, May 10, the Danbury Railway Museum is offer free rides on the Rail yard local to commemorate –Mother’s Day. Trains will run from 12 noon to 4 p.m.

The Danbury Railway Museum is a non-profit organization, staffed solely by volunteers, and is dedicated to the preservation of, and education about, railroad history. The museum is located in the restored 1903 Danbury Station and rail yard at 120 White Street, Danbury, CT. For further information, visit the Web site at http://www.danburyrail.org, or call the museum at 203-778-8337.

For area information www.litchfieldhills.com

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Cut Flowers from Paper Roads in Falls Village Connecticut

In the bucolic hamlet of Falls Village, the David M. Hunt Library is presenting an exhibit by Gail Jacobson, Cut Flowers from Paper Roads through May 9.

The artist’s work in this exhibit was created from old books bought at library and tag sales and then cut up, treated, and shaped into natural subjects such as flowers and insects.

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Jacobson, a self-described crafter, recently discussed her source of material and inspiration, “Today atlases and maps pile up at library sales, tag sales and in boxes marked “free” along the sides of the road. These documents of how to get places resulted from hundreds of years of work, adventure, and skill by thousands of explorers, travelers, and artists. Paper artists rejoice at this bounty, knowing that they are saving these relics from landfills. A bath of tea ages and helps to obscure their previous lives. Flowers, leaves and butterflies are cut from their pages and reassembled as Victorian bouquets full of cabbage roses, spiky mums and fantasy flowers that Mother Nature never imagined. No longer hidden away in seat pockets, the maps adorn our walls and remind us of our past and the miles we have traveled to get where we are.”

Gail Jacobson grew up in California where her father owned a printing business and scraps of paper were plentiful. She graduated from college with a BA in art. After her marriage to her husband Jeff they proceeded to move across the country and to England, settling in Cornwall, CT almost 20 years ago when they bought a 100-year-old hay barn and converted it into their home. Creating art has been a constant activity no matter where she is.

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After visiting the exhibit, stop in at the Falls Village Inn for lunch or dinner. This historic inn built more than 175 years ago has shaped the rich history of this quaint village nestled in the Litchfield Hills. For more information visit http://thefallsvillageinn.com

For area information visit www.litchfieldhills.com

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Photographys by Hank Meirowitz at Carole Peck’s Good News Cafe

Hank Meirowitz is proud to bear the title of Portrait Photographer of the Pampered Pet. He has proven himself in group and solo shows in the area and in New York as a lover of animals, using his talent to capture the personality of his subject in his studio in New Milford equipped with animal toys, cookies, bench, backgrounds and floods. He has had no problem with their posing after adjusting themselves to his comfortable set-up. Dealing with pets, much the same as with humans, a one-to-one relationship and trust must be established and then everything works perfectly! However, you must start out with a basic love and interest in both people and animals. And they will respond once they sense your feeling.

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As time has passed, he has grown restless with being confined to a studio space and the lureof travel came on the scene. He now documents far-away lands and indigenous wildlife many people only dream of seeing. Over the last few years he has photographed Russia, Poland, Australia, India, Turkey, China, Korea, Prague, Budapest, Croatia, and ANTARCTICA and has only recently returned from a most exciting riverboat cruise to Viet Nam and Cambodia, which will be on display through March 2015 at the Good News Cafe in Woodbury, Connecticut.The architecture, the people, the faces of happy children and the ambience of each locale are what interests him the most.

The Good News Café is open from 11:30am to 10pm daily; closed Tuesdays and open from 12pm to 10pm Sundays. For more information www.Good-news-café.com

For more event information on Litchfield Hills www.litchfieldhills.com

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Curator for a day in Litchfield Hills and more

February is a busy month at the Litchfield History Museum. On February 22 for example, at 3pm a lecture, The Colonial Revival as Collective Memory and Consumer has been scheduled. The lecture will be presented by Thomas Denenberg, director of the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, VT. The development of a culture of consumption in the decades that bracketed the turn of the twentieth century created unprecedented opportunity for the dissemination of images, objects, and texts that engendered historical consciousness in the United States. Antiquarian activities, the province of social outliers, the wealthy, or the creative such as the painter Edward Lamson Henry (1841-1919), became normative behavior in the new middle-class America.

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Gathering, collecting, and sorting historical material culture, once an end unto itself in the nineteenth century, gave way to the creation of a widespread aesthetic that prized idealized “native” forms. Entrepreneurial individuals, including the minister-turned antimodern colporteur Wallace Nutting (1861-1941), employed the very modern platforms of advertising, publishing, department stores, and mail order merchandising to encourage and fulfill middle-class desires for objects and myths that answered contemporary social needs in an era of rapid economic and geographic change.

Often termed “the” Colonial Revival—an aesthetic assumed to be, monolithic, sui generis, and whole upon arrival, this illustrated lecture will look at the phenomenon as a complex and carefully constructed collective memory that matured over time. This program is free for members and $5 for non members. Register at registration@litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org.

If you have ever wondered what it’s really like to be a curator at a history museum, you are invited to shadow the curator of the societies collections on February 26 from 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Participants will study artifacts from the Historical Society’s collections, get a behind-the-scenes peek at object storage, a hands-on experience with some of a curator’s day-to-day work, and assemble a hypothetical exhibit. Please register for this program by Tuesday, February 24. Non-members are required to pay the registration fee in advance of the event. Your registration will not be considered complete until we have received payment and the cost is $10 for members; $15 for non-members. Register at registration@litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org.

For more ideas about what to do and see in Litchfield Hills visit www.litchfieldhills.com

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