Twined Art at the Institute for American Indian Studies

The exhibition Woven from Milk Weed by Wabanaki Artist Vera Longtoe Sheehan opens at the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington Connecticut runs through May 31, 2013. There is no charge for this exhibition. The Museum is open Monday through Saturday 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday 12 noon to 5pm.  The last admission is at 4:30 pm.

Vera Longtoe Sheehan is a fiber artist who follows in the footsteps of her ancestors. When she was young, her father started teaching her how to harvest and process plants to make cordage. He also taught her the various techniques that she uses to make twined bags, baskets and textiles.

Vera combines her tribal and family knowledge with many years of researching Wabanaki history, culture and tradition to create her one of a kind twined woven items. She uses both hand-rolled and commercially rolled plant fiber cordage. Each of the hand items can take hours, days, weeks or even months to complete.

Her twined art is environmentally friendly because it is made from plants, which are quick growing, renewable resources. She is currently teaching her children to twine, so that this endangered art form is not lost. Some of her twined bags, baskets and textiles have appeared in films and literature.

The artist and her family reside in Vermont. She offers a variety of programs for schools, museums and historic sites. 

“Meet the Artist” Reception is Sunday, April 7th from 1pm -3pm.  The reception includes refreshments at 2pm.

For more information about the Institute for American Indian Studies located on 38 Curtis Rd. in Washington CT call 860-868-0518 or visit www.iaismuseum.org.  For area information www.litchfieldhills.com.

Daffodils in Litchfield Hills

Daffodils beginning to bloom in Litchfield at Laurel Ridge

As the winter snow melts and the days become warmer and longer daffodils, the heralds of spring in New England's Litchfield Hills and Fairfield County slowly begin to emerge.

The best place in the state to watch the sea of yellow unfold is at the Laurel Ridge Foundation located on Wigwam Road in the Northfield section of Litchfield Connecticut. For information about the Foundation visit www.litchfielddaffodils.com.

The Foundation, located on a winding country road in the scenic Litchfield Hills is open to everyone from sunrise to sunset during the time period daffodils are in bloom which is typically late March through early May. The fields are closed the rest of the year. Visitors are encouraged to take photos of the field and are invited to submit their photos on the Laurel Ridge website a t www.litchfielddaffodils.com/gallery.phpwww.litchfielddaffodils.com/gallery.php. Bulky photography equipment however is discouraged. The Foundation is on private property; picnics and household pets are not allowed.

A walk among the daffodils at Laurel Ridge Foundation is a rare early spring outing in an unspoiled oasis. The wild natural landscape of gently sloping woodland, fields and aged stonewalls overlooks a small lake dotted with two tiny islands. The park land and one of the islands is completely carpeted with gold and white blossoms, a glorious sight that is nirvana for photographers.

In Wilton, located in Fairfield County visit Weir Farm National Park located on 735 Nod Hill Rd. which has daffodils in bloom amid its many stone walls and in fields. For information on Weir Farm visit www.nps.gov/wefa/index.htmwww.nps.gov/wefa/index.htm. Weir Farm, Connecituct's only National Park was once the home of and workplace of J. Alden Weir (1852-1919) and is now considered to be the best preserved landscape associated with American Impressionism.

Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum Announces New Season’s Events

The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum will reopen its doors in April for an eventful Spring season. This season, the Mansion will highlight Victorian era technology, a cutting-edge art movement called Steampunk, and a nod to the Mansion’s beginnings with its annual Victorian Tea.

What Is It? Technologies and Discoveries of the Victorian Era features 19th century technological and scientific marvels of the Mansion’s heyday that revolutionized the way people lived opens to the public on April 17th and runs through October 6, 2013.

Also in April, the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum presents an exciting short-term exhibit, Steampunk: Nature & Machine. At this, the first Steampunk exhibit in Fairfield County, visitors will catch a view of this bold new style, a neo-retro aesthetic that borrows imagery from the Industrial Revolution and Victorian eras and has influenced everything from literature and product design to fashion and fine art. The exhibit will feature the art of renowned Steampunk artists Bruce Rosenbaum, Katie Shima and Leslie Mueller. There will be an opening reception on April 25, from 6:00 – 8:00pm. The exhibit runs until June 15.

Rounding out the 2013 spring season is the Mansion’s Victorian Tea on Sunday, May 5 at 2:00pm. The family-friendly event features a formal English tea in the Mansion’s Rotunda, including a wide selection of desserts, sandwiches, the traditional scones and cream, as well as music and other entertainment. The Tea is sponsored by Cottages & Gardens Publications and King Industries.

The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum is a National Historic Landmark located at 295 West Avenue in Norwalk. Tours will begin in April and are offered Wednesdays through Sundays, at noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., and 3 p.m.

For more information on tours and programs, visit www.lockwoodmathewsmansion.com, e-mail info@lockwoodmathewsmansion.com, or call 203-838-9799. For area information www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com.

The Story of the Game Bird Horse

The Game Bird Horse

The New England Carousel Museum located on 95 Riverside Ave. in the heart of Bristol is on a mission.  This beautiful museum has one of the largest collections of carousel art in the country and wants to welcome a new horse to their magnificent collection. 

Located in a 33,000 square foot restored silk mill factory building, the museum preserves and displays carousel art, which is fast becoming a vanishing art form of Americana.  Their mission is dedicated to the acquisition, restoration and preservation of operating carousels, and carousel memorabilia as well as the creation of new carousel material for the education and the pleasure of visitors.

The latest quest of the New England Carousel Museum is the acquisition and continued preservation of the Game Bird Horse.  Recently, the museum was informed by the estate of Marianne Stevens that she had bequeathed a spectacular jumper horse, named the Game Bird Horse to the Carousel Museum Collection.  Marianne, the co-author of Painted Ponies decided to leave this horse to the New England Carousel Museum’s collection because it once rode on a Connecticut Carousel.

The Game Bird Horse will add immeasurably to the Museum’s collection.  John Zalar, a carver of great note for the carousel manufacturer Charles Looff, created the horse.  The Game Bird horse has a masterfully carved “peek-a-boo” mane and two realistic quail at the back of its saddle and many other beautiful details.

In the spring of 1946, the Game Bird Horse began whirling on the carrousel at Ocean Beach Park in New London Connecticut before Marianne Stevens eventually acquired it.

To find out more about how to get the Game Bird Horse back to Connecticut from Roswell, New Mexico visit http://www.thecarouselmuseum.org because every donation brings this wonderful gift to Connecticut closer to its’ new home at the New England Carousel Museum. 

The Art of Advertising to Open at the Litchfield History Museum

Taking a walk through Litchfield’s center you can’t help but notice the businesses lining West Street. Brightly colored window displays catch your eye. Perhaps you smell lunch being served in a nearby restaurant. To distinguish themselves from each other, each business has a sign hanging outside the door.

While many things have changed over the past two hundred years, one thing has remained the same: Litchfield is dotted with signs. Opening on Saturday, April 13, the Litchfield Historical Society’s new exhibition, The Art of Advertising: Signs around Town, will explore these symbols that mark the retailers, museums, schools, and establishments that make up the community. These beautifully crafted objects let us know what can be found behind each door, and each has something to reveal about the establishments that have helped create this charming community.

Visitors and residents alike will enjoy this new exhibit of 19th- and 20th- century signs from the museum collection while learning about the businesses that helped shape Litchfield’s past. This exhibit will be on view through the end of June, 2013.

The Litchfield History Museum is located at 7 South Street, Litchfield, CT. The History Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, and Sunday, 1:00 to 5:00 pm. For more information, please call (860) 567-4501 or see www.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.orgwww.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org. 

For area information www.litchfieldhills.com.

Concerts at Keeler Tavern

The Louise McKeon Chamber Music Concerts will return to the Keeler Tavern Museum,  (http://keelertavernmuseum.org) located at 132 Main Street in Ridgefield on Sunday April, 14th at 3 PM . The first concert of the season will feature Threeds, an oboe trio based in New York City. The trio includes oboists Kathy Halvorson, Katie Schele and Mark Snyder. Formed in 2008, the trio enjoys creating new paths for the oboe and English horn.

The ensemble plays their own arrangements of pop, rock, jazz, folk and world music while using improvisational techniques.  A special guest of Threeds at this concert will be Christof Knoche who plays the bass clarinet. Threeds has also arranged music to accompany local singer-song writers and has recorded at Avatar Studios and Daytone Records.

One of the founding principles of Threeds is to make the oboe an instrument more accessible to the general public by bringing their music out of the concert hall to bars, galleries and other public places that include sites from Joe’s Pub to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  Recently, the trio was invited (by audition) to participate in MTA’s Music under NY where they will play in the New York subway.

Over the last few years Threeds have performed in Los Angeles, Providence, Philadelphia, Cape May as well as at the New York and Arizona Summer Music Festivals.  The trio is composed of accomplished musicians that have performed with many prestigious orchestras, including Broadway Shows and Emmy nominated independent film tracks.  In addition to the trio, the artists of the trio have taught at WestConn University, C. W. Post, Rudolph Steiner School, and the Brooklyn Conservatory among others.

Tickets at the door are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and students, and $10 children under 12 years. Members of the audience are invited to enjoy conversation with the musicians following the concert. Light refreshments will be provided

The final performance of the 2012-2013 season on Sunday May 19th at 3 PM will feature the Devonshire Players, a string quarter.

For area information www.visitwesternct.com.

The Beauty of Botanical Illustrations in Litchfield Hills

Betsy Rogers-Knox has been drawing and painting since childhood.  Her interest in botanical illustration began in Boulder, Colorado where she worked for a botanist and learned by close observation to appreciate the intricate beauty of Colorado wildflowers.  This interest led her to the botanical illustration program at the New York Botanical Garden.  Her final project included paintings of historic plants from the gardens of the Bellamy Ferriday House in Bethlehem, Connecticut.

Betsy is enchanted by the full lifecycle of the plants she portrays in watercolor, and typically observes a plant for a full year before beginning a composition.  Published work includes cover designs for Herb Quarterly magazine, the illustrations for the bookHerbs, Leaves of Magic and White Flower Farm's catalog, as well as over thirty greeting card designs internationally distributed by Renaissance Greeting Card Company and Sunrise Publications. 

She has exhibited extensively including the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., London's Kew Gardens, the Horticultural Society of New York, and the New York Botanical Garden.  In April 2013 she will show several works at the Royal Horticultural Show in London.  Betsy also teaches drawing and watercolor painting to both adults and children from her studio in Bethlehem.  Her website is www.betsyrogersknox.com.

A selection of the work of Betsy Rogers Knox will appear in the  Gallery of the Oliver Wolcott Library located on 160 South Street, Litchfield, CT. through April 26 2013.  For more information call 860-567-8030. or visit www.owlibrary.org. For area information www.litchfieldhills.com

The Artist in Venice: at Darren Winston, Bookseller

On Saturday, April 6, from 2 to 4 p.m., bookseller and gallerist Darren Winston located in Sharon Connecticut in the Litchfield Hills  will host a reading and book-signing by Adam Van Doren to celebrate the publication of The Artist in Venice, at Darren Winston, Bookseller (81 Main Street, Sharon, Connecticut). A selection of paintings by Van Doren, including pieces featured in the book, will be on display from April 2–28.

Van Doren’s new book showcases not only his virtuosity as a painter but also his writing talent. He first went to Venice to paint in 1986, to escape the “barren and cheerless” New York winter. He left as an architecture student and came back a painter—and “Venice was responsible.” The Artist in Venice presents twenty-five glorious watercolor paintings of that city, accompanied by sketches, maps, and the artist’s insightful narrative and history.

In the introduction to the book, the writer Simon Winchester observes: “Adam Van Doren has a way with light. His painterly calling-card is, in its essence, illumination. It is opalescence, iridescence, brilliance.”

Publisher’s Weekly says of the book: “Architect and artist Van Doren offers a love letter to Venice in this elegant and slender volume, and he sings his praise to the city through majestic prose and 25 beautiful watercolor paintings.”

Adam Van Doren was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1962 and is of the distinguished New York literary and artistic family that includes his grandfather Mark Van Doren—the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and celebrated Columbia professor—and his great-uncle Carl Van Doren, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian. His great-aunt Irita Van Doren was the editor of the Books section of The Herald Tribune for forty years, and his grandmother Dorothy Van Doren was a novelist and editor at The Nation. His mother is a painter and was integral in cultivating his artistic sensibilities.

Van Doren studied at Columbia University and the National Academy of Design. He has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., among other institutions, and his work is included in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Princeton University Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the Yale University Art Gallery, The Addison Gallery of American Art, and The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of American Art, among others. Van Doren has been a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome and an instructor at the Institute of Classical Architecture in New York. He is an Associate Fellow and former Lustman Fund Lecturer at Yale University. He maintains a studio in Manhattan, where he exhibits annually.

Although he was raised in New York, Van Doren and his family have deep connections to the Litchfield Hills in northwest Connecticut. While growing up he spent summers in Cornwall Hollow on the old farm owned by his grandparents, and now he splits his time between that property (in a new house he designed and had built there) and his home in Manhattan. In a recent interview he remembered stories of how his grandfather and uncle had to travel from Manhattan for five hours in a Model-T to reach the farm in Connecticut. “I can only imagine what it was like,” he said. “It might have meant they didn’t come up too often. They went for the summer and stayed there.” Van Doren returns to Darren Winston, Bookseller following the bookstore-gallery’s popular October 2011 exhibit of his paintings, which garnered favorable coverage in The New York Times.

For more information about Darren Winston, Bookseller, please call (860) 364-1890 or e-mail darrenwinston@gmail.com. The shop’s hours are Tuesday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment, and the website is www.darrenwinstonbookseller.com. For area information www.litchfieldhills.com.