Explore Wedding Traditions @ Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum

The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum opens its spring-summer season on Wed. April 5, 2017, 12-4 p.m., with new programs and extended tour hours. LMMM will be opened to the public through Jan. 8, 2018 and feature a 45 minute tour as well as a new and extended, 90 minute tour; both tours will be available by reserving online, through the Museum’s website, or by calling 203-838-9799 ext. 4. The 45 minute tour will include the first floor of the Mansion and the Servants’ Quarters, while the 90 minute tour will be more extensive and include the Mansion’s second floor bedroom suites and family room. Walk-ins will be welcomed subject to availability. All new exhibitions will be part of the tours’ admission.

New Exhibition

Wedding Traditions and Fashion from the 1860s to 1930s

Wed. April 5, -Sun. Nov. 12, 2017

Curated by Kathleen Motes Bennewitz

Opening Reception: Thurs. April 6, 2017, 5:30-7:30 p.m. $10 non-members $5 members

Gen. Admission: $10 Adults, $ 8 seniors, $6 children 8-18 years old/45 minute tour

Gen. Admission: $20 adults, $18 seniors, $16 children 8-18 years old/90 minute tour

From simple, at-home ceremonies to lavish events modeled on Queen Victoria’s, to weddings of young heiresses of Gilded Age fortunes that commanded social-page attention, this exhibition will explore the evolving nature of weddings and the socio-economic changes of this timeless tradition during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Dining and Drawing Rooms of the Mansion will display luxurious artifacts and accessories, as well as elaborate wedding gowns, while the Servants’ Quarters of the Museum will highlight ceremonies of immigrant brides who, once settled in the United States, desired to follow American customs and fashions.

New Exhibition

Right Angle Bliss

Contemporary Photography Exhibit

Curated by Gail Ingis-Claus

Wed. April 5, 2017-Thurs., July 6, 2017

Opening Reception: April 27, 2017, 5:30-7:30 p.m. $10 non-members $5 members

Gen. Admission: $10 adults, $8 seniors, $6 children 8-18 years old/45 minute tour

Gen. Admission: $20 adults, $18 seniors, $16 children 8-18 years old/90 minute tour

From vows taken in magnificent settings, to cutting edge images that will redefine rituals and boundaries, this exhibition will feature six up-and-coming as well as award-winning photographers that highlight today’s diversity of cultures and customs in wedding ceremonies throughout the United States. Right Angle Bliss will capture the tenderness, whimsy, beauty, and grit of the promised, “I Do”, and visually redefine this time-honored tradition through the lenses of photographers: Stephanie Anestis, David Bravo, Sarah Grote, Kathy Harris, Airen Miller, and Karol Setlak.

Heavenly Notes: St. Mary’s at the Mansion

Sun. May 7, 2017, 2-4 p.m.

Reservations Required – Limited Seating

Admission: $30 (third row and up) -$50 (second row seating), $100 (front row seating)

Reception: $10 per person

In collaboration with the Parish of St. Mary’s in Norwalk, CT, Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum will feature, Heavenly Notes: St. Mary’s at the Mansion, a rare fundraising concert highlighting the church’s outstanding choir. Repertoire will feature music from the Victorian and Edwardian eras led by Organist and Choirmaster David Hughes. As described in Florence Mathews’ diary, there was a longstanding relationship between St. Mary’s and the Mathews family, as the church was central to the life of the many servants who lived and worked at the Mansion during the Edwardian era. Built in 1848, and originally located on Chapel Street in Norwalk, St. Mary’s burned to the ground and was replaced by a magnificent Gothic Revival stone church in 1871 on West Avenue, half a mile from the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion.

For a free monthly newsletter on things to do and see and travel tips  visit www.visitfairfieldcountyct.com

Celebrate Earth Day in Western Connecticut

Earth Day was started by Senator Nelson of Wisconsin in 1970  in order to get the conversation going about how important it is to keep our planet healthy and clean. Since that time millions of people have celebrated Earth Day promising to help the environment and to make positive changes in the way they live and in their communities.  There are many Earth Day events taking place in Litchfield Hills and Fairfield County and here is a round-up of the top six.

One way to start the day is at Flanders Nature Center in Woodbury on 5 Church Hill Road that is offering a special Earth Day hike beginning at 9:30 a.m.Hikers should plan to meet Naturalist Edward Boisits, Ph.D. in the parking lot of the Sugar House. Boisits will lead hikers through the beautiful and historic Van Vleck Sanctuary, on an informative walk in search of the signs of spring. This walk is suitable for all ages and hiking levels. This event is free but registration is appreciated.

In  Washington at the Institute for American Indian Studies Museum and Research Center there will be an Earth Day open house from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Guests will enjoy free admission to the museum and engaging tours that will highlight the fascinating stories of artifacts on display such as Sitting Bull's jacket and the Albert Afraid of Hawk star quilt. Celebrate Connecticut's early history when exploring the museum's core exhibition, Quinnetukut: Our Homeland, Our Story. And, don't miss the wooded trails behind the museum to the Native American Village in the woods.

After the camaraderie of a morning hike, you might want to head to Woodbury’s 22^nd annual EarthDay Celebration at Hollow Park located on Hollow Rd. just off Rte. 6.  There will be demonstrations, local craftsmen, unique vendors, activities, live music, exhibits and more to help you celebrate our great planet.  This event takes place from 11 am to  4 pm.

In Fairfield County, the  Fairfield Earth Day Celebration takes place on April 30 this year at the Fairfield Theatre Company located on 70 Sanford St. from 10 am - 4 pm.  There will be hundreds of exhibitors, a variety of live music, crafts, games, science experiments and much  more. Event goers will learn how to improve their health and the health of the environment.

The Bartlett Arboretum, located on 151 Brookdale Rd. in Stamford is hosting Gardens Arbor Earth Day on April 22 from 10 am to 3 pm.  Guests will celebrate the day with music, lectures on plants,  live demonstrations and trail tours where you will admire Champion trees, wildflower meadows and charming gardens. Kids will love the face painting, storytelling and riding in a Bartlett cherry picker. Adults can learn how to prune, plant a tree and identify native plants set amid this unspoiled historic landscape that is a natural preserve like no other in Fairfield County. The rain date for this event is April 23.

Bridgeport's Discovery Museum is hosting an out of this world Earth Day Celebration on April 22 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Kids will enjoy Earth and nature themed hands on activities, make and takes and science and sphere demonstrations. A highlight of this event is the planetarium show.

Worldscapes @ Carole Peck's Good News Cafe

Carole Peck's Good News Cafe located on 694 Main Street South in Woodbury has long been a mecca for art and creatively fresh cuisine. This spring, from April 19 through June 12 the beautiful artwork of Adrienne Zinn will be the backdrop for fine dining in the restaurant's art gallery.

Adrienne Zinn is a self-taught artist who discovered her passion for painting later in life. Born in Bridgeport Connecticut, Adrienne grew up sailing with her father in Long Island Sound and the Gulf of Mexico. Her father’s love of the ocean and his own artistic expression fostered Adrienne’s love of art beginning in early childhood.

Drawn to the people and cultures of distant places, Adrienne’s collections reflect and depict the everyday life of the people and her love for the land and wildlife of Africa and the Antarctic creating these paintings to exemplify a comprehensive portrayal of the beauty of these lands. Loving to work in different mediums, Adrienne has a special expressionist collection called “Berlin”. Using the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as the model, these paintings reflect her interpretation of this historic era. 

A final and quite special series in Adrienne’s cannon, called “The Tiny House Series”, is a collection of vivid 4”x 4” acrylic on stretched canvas paintings of flowers and garden vegetables making them the perfect added touch to the little nooks and crannies of one’s home. Adrienne’s work has been shown throughout Georgia, in such places as the “Grandview Gallery”. She has also been featured in “Fine Art America” and “The Art Colony”. A Summa Cum Laude graduate of sociology, possessing 28 years in the airline industry, and having experienced the beauty of all seven continents, Adrienne’s collections do indeed reflect the influence of culture and world travel.

Adrienne presently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband Ben Zinn, a retired aerospace engineering professor. In her free time, Adrienne loves gardening, kayaking, and spending time with her mother, brothers, children, daughter-in-law, and four grand-dogs. She loves to communicate with people and speaks both French and Spanish. An avid reader, Adrienne has been a member of a book club for several years. In possessing a love and desire to care for the wildlife of her area, in particular birds, Adrienne happily shares her balcony by welcoming any winged creature to be her guest to the bird bath and several feeders she has provided for them.

How Sweet it is at Quassy Amusement Park

How sweet it is this year at Quassy Amusement Park in Middlebury Connecticut. The park has just announced that they will open a new candy shop for the 2017 season which, like much of the landmark property, will have a mix of old and new to offer guests.

The highlight inside the new store will be a taffy-making operation complete with historic machinery restored specifically for the park. They have researched the way to recreate the nostalgia of candy-making from yesteryear – that time when you could stroll the boardwalk and see the taffy being pulled the old-fashioned way on a machine and bring it to the park as a delicious attraction. Quassy has been in touch with Ron's Candy Equipment from Wildwood New Jersey that owned two refurbished machines for taffy making that are making their debut at the park this year!

The taffy cutter and packaging machine, date back to the 1920s, and was built by Package Machinery Co., of Springfield, Mass. The puller, which had to fully rebuilt, was from the same era but its original manufacturer was unknown. This year, guests at Quassy can watch how taffy is made as well as purchase some of this delectable confection to try. Quassy will be making taffy daily in season in a variety of flavors. If you can't get to the park this year, not to worry, Quassy is expecting to offer their taffy online.

The taffy operation will be housed in a new 1,200 square foot store that will not only feature taffy, but also favorites such as cotton candy, popcorn in a variety of flavors, candy apples, chocolate and hard candy. In addition, the shop will offer nachos and giant pretzels. Beverages will include soda, fresh-squeezed lemonade, slush and other bottled soft drinks. The new building will also house a pizzeria, where homemade pizza with a variety of toppings will be offered by the slice or whole pie. Beer and wine will be sold on the pizzeria side of the building as well.

For more information about what to see and do and travel tips in Litchfield Hills and Fairfield County visit www.litchfieldhills.com

Family Sleepover @ Maritime Aquarium May 5

Ever dream of sleeping with the fishes?  Well, now you can on Friday, May 5 beginning on Friday, May 5 at  6 p.m. and concluding on Saturday, May 6 at 10 a.m. Families are invited to bunk down among the sharks, fish, jellies and other creatures as the Aquarium hosts a fun Family Sleepover. It's open to children ages 5 & older, with an accompanying parent or caregiver over age 18. The cost is $90 for adults and $80 for children (($75 & $65 Aquarium members) and advance reservations are required. Reservations fill up fast so if you are interested it is best to register as soon as possible!

The fun begins after "check-in" at 6 p.m. with a tasty dinner of  chicken tenders, fries and penne.  Afterward, expect a fun- and fact-filled evening that will include a behind-the-scenes tour of the Aquarium, an IMAX® movie, snacks and themed crafts.

"Lights out" is at 10 p.m. Participants sleep in sleeping bags (BYOSB) throughout the Aquarium galleries. Air mattresses are allowed for adults.

Breakfast the next morning is at 8 a.m., followed by a private seal show. You'll be on your way home by 9 a.m. on the 24th.

Love Art Lounge @ Franklin Street Artworks through May 7

"Love Action Art Lounge" is a group exhibition at that features works that are generated from or encourage convivial social scenes, freedom of expression, and interpersonal connectivity. Through installations inspired by underground music clubs, written scores that instruct audiences, performed celebratory rituals, and videos that simultaneously world-build and critique existing sociopolitical systems, "Love Action Art Lounge" becomes its own hang out space that reflects the people-positive, aspirational, and, at times transgressive, attributes of its artists and collectives. Love Action Art Lounge will be on display through May 7 at Franklin Street Artworks 41 Franklin St. in Stamford. Gallery Hours are Tues. - Sun. 12 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Curated by Franklin Street Works' Creative Director, Terri C Smith, the exhibition will be on view from January 28 – May 7, 2017. Exhibiting Artists: Chloë Bass, Katie Cercone, Go!PushPops, Elisa Garcia de la Huerta, Riley Hooker, House of Ladosha, Carmelle Safdie, Christopher Udemezue, and Laura Weyl.

The exhibition will also include a commissioned event with Bruce High Quality Foundation University on March 25th as well as educational programming throughout the exhibition. "Love Action Art Lounge" is supported by a generous two-year grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and with support from Connecticut Office of the Arts.

The social as it's explored in 'Love Action Art Lounge,' looks at a variety of approaches to and tactics for encouraging social connection in art, including aspirational world-building, critique of oppressive systems, participatory ritual, and poetic instructions to prompt interpersonal exchanges. "Love Action Art Lounge" will feature three videos created by House of Ladosha along with two works by individual members commissioned for the show -- a takeaway poster by Riley Hooker and a photograph by Christopher Udemezue.

There will also be two videos on view made individually by Go!PushPops members Katie Cercone and Elisa Garcia de la Huerta. As part of the exhibition programming, Go! Push Pops has organized a hip hop yoga CHAKRA workshop for youth of Stamford in collaboration with UNDAKOVA, which will culminate in a live-action performance as a kinetic sculpture embodying the rainbow of chakras and the celestial serpent of consciousness.

Two projects in "Love Action Art Lounge" – one by Chloë Bass and one by Carmelle Safdie -- encourage visitors to connect socially through real, fictitious, and/or hybrid situations that include prompts and immersive design. Carmelle Safdie's "Nightlife Design" project navigates from architectural proposals to pop music, imagining idealized spaces for collective audio-visual engagement.

This ongoing project was inspired by the artist's reflection on her communal creative experience as a musician and a desire to establish a utopian space for such social expressivity. In her 2016 music video, "Discovery of The Shape," she uses interior design — created as part of an artist residency at a New York City bar — as the stage for a fabricated party where her friends perform various roles in a nightclub scene. At Franklin Street Works, the video is installed amidst sculptural lounge furniture, and its original dance track activates a full-scale prototype for a light-up dance floor. Additional components include drawings that sequence through the patterning of dance floor lights and a new series of phosphorescent paintings that translate these sequences into a gridded system.

"Love Action Art Lounge" will also include a score-based, interactive installation by Chloë Bass, which includes a test kitchen installation that directly interfaces with the daily workings of Franklin Street Works' café. The project is one of several Bass has created to connect people via performance scores and food. "The project," says Bass, "is designed to question intimacy in one-on-one relationships. The kitchen will serve as a gathering and decompression space in contrast to the more 'party' aspects of the exhibition." The project includes text prompts printed on café cups, napkins, and plastic cutlery that encourage interconnection, safe place making, and solidarity via phrases such as, "We make sense of things by being together," and "We need each other more than ever." For the exhibition, Café goers will pick up their printed cups in the gallery as part of making their order at the café.

While all of the exhibiting artists in "Love Action Art Lounge" approach the social from distinct and varied perspectives, they, arguably, share what Yates McKee, the author of Strike Art: Contemporary Art and the Post-Occupy Condition, describes, when writing about Occupy Wall Street, as "...a horizontal pedagogical space in which viewers themselves might be prompted to imagine and perhaps eventually enact their own sense of social transformation." While this exhibition has a celebratory and social tone, it is not escapist in its intentions. In keeping with Chloë Bass's statement, "When I make art, it's not a balm or a distraction. It's an invitation to come closer," "Love Action Art Lounge" explores how ecstatic actions and supportive, accepting prompts can set the stage for personal expression and, through a caring social space, spark interest in learning about each other and expanding our common ground.

Families Take a Hike @ Stamford Museum and Nature Center

There is no better way than to celebrate spring than to get out into the fresh air and take a hike!  This April from the 11 -13, the Stamford Museum and Nature Center located on 39 Scofieldtown Rd, in Stamford is offering three days of hiking perfect for a family expedition. 

To start off, participants will pick up a passport on the website for exact programming offered each day. Members can participate free and non-member participation is also free with gate admission.

The week kicks off on Tuesday, April 11  with "RecycleMania Day" that will highlight the opening of the Center's new Recycled ReCreations Makerspace in the Stamford Museum. 

Here visitors can create and build with a variety of recycled materials. Later, join museum staff for hikes to the Rotten Log Hotel to meet nature's recyclers, discover the cycles of the seasons, and more.

Forest and Farm adventures will be the highlight on April 12 with an awesome annual adventure scavenger hunt! Favorites of this popular event includes: the Hay Hike on the Farm, Scat and Signs Hike, and more forest and farm fun!

The week wraps up on April 13 with Wild Water Day! Hikers will marvel at perennial favorites such as the Center's Vernal Pool and Stream hikes, along with a special"hike" through our Powerful yet Fragile: Connecticut's Waterways photography exhibition in the Stamford Museum.  It will be fun to learn how water plays a role in the lives of all the Heckscher WILD! creatures that make the center their home.