Destination Hartford, CT

DESTINATION HARTFORD, CT

HARTFORD, CT

DESTINATION HARTFORD, CT

The Taste of the Caribbean & Jerk Festival, August 5, 2017, at Mortensen Riverfront Plaza in Hartford, CT. Photo credit: Riverfront Recapture.

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onnecticut is a state steeped in history.

It is home to iconic figures—such as Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Samuel Colt—that have helped shape America into the nation it is today. It is also rich in the arts and culture, becoming at the turn of the 20th century a hotbed of American Impressionism. Artists Childe Hassam and J. Alden Weir both reveled in the beauty of coastal Connecticut. The state is home to modernist artists as well, such as Sol LeWitt and Alexander Calder. From the rolling hills and rivers, to rural towns, scenic beaches and bustling cities, Connecticut’s diverse regions continue to attract both artists and art aficionados.

The Greater Hartford area is no exception.

A perfect place to begin exploring Hartford

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is the country’s oldest continuously operating public art museum: the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Founded in 1842 by Daniel Wadsworth, the museum is located in the heart of Downtown, and is home to a collection of nearly 50,000 works of art, from antiquity to today, with a strong focus in European and American art from the 1600s onward. Its collection of Hudson River School landscapes is unsurpassed, and the innovative contemporary MATRIX exhibits are not-to-be-missed.

Indeed, the museum has a long history of cutting-edge exhibitions. In 1931, it hosted the first surrealist exhibition ever to be held in the United States, not long after this avant-garde cultural movement emerged in Paris.

This fall, the Wadsworth Atheneum features

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two special exhibits: Sublime North: Romantic Painters Discover Norway (opening September 7), and Morgan: Mind of the Collector (opening September 23). Sublime North presents the dynamic development of landscape painting by 19th-century Norwegian painters from the collection of Asbjørn Lunde. Morgan: Mind of the Collector features decorative arts from the collection of Hartford-born financier J. Pierpont Morgan. The exhibit also explores the man himself: his groundbreaking collecting career, his impact on art scholarship and his own identity as both cultural superhero and businessman.

A short distance from the Wadsworth, down Capital Avenue and into the Parkville section of Hartford, lies Real Art Ways, an alternative multidisciplinary arts organization presenting

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HARTFORD, CT contemporary artists and their work. As executive director Will K. Wilkins says, “a central idea of Real Art Ways is that it is a place where people connect with each other.” The Creative Cocktail Hour, held on the third Thursday of every month, is considered a “rite of passage for anyone who wants to call herself a Hartford resident,” and represents the best of everything Real Art Ways has to offer.

In additional to popular film and music events, Real Art Ways works with emerging artists, supporting new ideas, experiments and risk. Stewart Crone: Pinned to the Wall is on view through September 20. This exhibit, curated by Connecticut artist Peter Waite, features works on paper based on commercial printing that celebrate error, chance, uncer-

tainty and the awareness of imperfection. Hong Hong: All the Light in a Vivid Dream (through October 29 is interdisciplinary artist Hong Hong’s first solo exhibition in Hartford. Her large-scale, handmade papers investigate time, the limits of human perception, and the unfolding of time in relation to the body and the landscape in which the work is created.

An interesting complement to this approach to landscape, Peter Edlund’s paintings that connect the historic aesthetics of the Hudson River School with the social realities of racism and genocide will be on display in the Main Gallery (opening October 19).

Right next to Real Art Ways on Arbor Street is Watermark Press, a contemporary fine arts printmaking studio celebrating its 10th anni-

versary this year. Owner and instructor Martha Jeffrey Galuszka opened the studio because of the strength of the neighborhood arts environment, and says that being green was a driving goal. Watermark Press is dedicated to solventfree, non-toxic and environmentally safe studio practices. The studio and equipment can be rented for a single project or on a longer-term, co-op basis. Additionally, the press offers a range of workshops and classes in intaglio, monotype, relief printing and book arts and is open to all ages and abilities.

Galuszka herself works in a variety of media, experimenting and studying contemporary techniques and materials. Hartford’s art scene keeps her busy. Currently, she is preparing for four local group exhibitions, along with

art is part of our story watch paper come to life

mysticseaport.org/stories

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HARTFORD, CT the November 11–12 Hartford Open Studio Weekend. She is a founding member of the Women Artists Collective where she regularly exhibits. Last year both Watermark Press and Galuszka’s own prints were featured in the book Contemporary American Printmakers by Schiffer Publishing.

Close by, past the beautiful Elizabeth Park on Prospect Avenue, is the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, a school steeped in the history of Hartford, and one of New England’s leading art schools.

The Hartford Art School was founded in 1877 by an impressive cohort of women who formed Connecticut’s elite during that era: Harriet Beecher Stowe, the abolitionist writer; Olivia Clemens, the wife of Mark Twain;

Elizabeth Colt, the president of Colt’s Firearms Manufacturing Company; Susan Warner, the wife of Charles Dudley Warner, editor of the Hartford Courant; and Mary Bushnell Cheney of Cheney Silk Mills. The Hartford Art School is not just a place when art is taught; it is also exhibited in two galleries that are well worth a visit. This fall, the Joseloff Gallery will feature The Cave of Forgotten Dreams: the Non-mimetic Self Portrait (opening October 31), curated by photographer Steven Holmes. Each artist uses their own subjectivity to question the idea of the self-portrait. In the Donald & Linda Silpe Gallery, be sure to see Mark Dion: Print Re/View (through October 6).

While there is much to see and do in the capital, Harford is an easy drive to the coast

via Interstate 91 and Route 9, making it one point in a triangle connecting New Haven and those bucolic villages to the east that continue to attract plein air painters. To experience this culture-rich region to its fullest, consider a longer stay with road trips to some of the following points of interest.

A half-hour drive from Hartford, Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts in Middletown is home to three incredible galleries. The Davison Art Center holds Wesleyan’s collection of more than 24,000 works on paper, primarily prints and photographs. Sasha Rudensky: Acts and Illusions (opening September 13) highlights Rudensky’s photographs of Russia and postSoviet territories, investigating contemporary life in the New East through the eyes of a

Fall Exhibitions Sublime North: Romantic Painters Discover Norway Paintings from the Collection of Asbjörn Lunde September 7, 2017 – January 15, 2018

Morgan: Mind of the Collector September 23, 2017 – December 31, 2017

thewadsworth.org

HARTFORD ART SCHOOL GALLERIES JOSELOFF GALLERY SILPE GALLERY KAMAN PRINT STUDY CENTER hartford.edu/galleries

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JOSELOFF GALLERY September 12–October 22, 2017 Hartford Art School Faculty Exhibition October 31–December 17, 2017 The Cave of Forgotten Dreams: the Non-mimetic Self Portrait curated by Steven Holmes SILPE GALLERY August 24–October 6, 2017 Mark Dion: Print Re/View JOSELOFF AND SILPE GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday–Friday: 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday: 12–4 p.m.

KAMAN PRINT CENTER HOURS: By appointment only For school group tours, please email joseloff@hartford.edu

200 Bloomfield Avenue West Hartford, CT 06117

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HARTFORD, CT generation that has come of age during the Vladimir Putin era. The Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery explores contemporary issues through exhibits like Black Pulp! (opening September 19), which examines the evolving perspectives of black identity in American culture. Works by artists, writers and publishers range in format from comic books to etchings and more.

Opening October 27, Up in Arms presents 13 artists’ perspectives on the impact of guns in contemporary culture. Finally, at the College of East Asian Studies Gallery at the Mansfield Freeman Center, don’t miss Jiaqi Maria Ma: (BEIJING) (opening September 20). This exhibit will present a series of five paintings based on Wesleyan alumna Jiaqi Maria Ma’s experiences of China’s capital city, and how her feelings for

and memories of her home city have changed as she has distanced herself from it, both in location and in time.

From Middletown, extending your trip to New Haven will bring you into contact with the work of Anna Held Audette, an artist with strong ties to the New Haven area who celebrated the strange beauty of America’s 20th-century industrial ruins before she died in 2013. On view from September 6 through October 28 at the stylish New Haven Lawn Club—itself a premier event destination— Anna Held Audette: Selections from the Artist’s Portfolio chronicles artwork from three phases of the artist’s life, and includes some works never before exhibited to the public. In the Rotunda, drawings and prints from Audette’s

Janine Robertson landscape oil painter

(203) 421-4036, Madison, CT janinemr1@yahoo.com www.janinerobertsonart.com

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early years as an MFA student at Yale and as an art professor at Southern Connecticut State University will be on view, while in the Grill Room and Inner Terrace, Audette’s industrial paintings will be on view. Considered as part of the precisionist art movement, these works are about industry ruins and old machinery, and chronicle the decline of American industry. The Inner Terrace will feature seven paintings that specifically reference industrial buildings in the greater New Haven area.

These paintings, according to Audette, comment on “the melancholy beauty found in relics of our industrial past” and “remind us that, in our rapidly changing world, the triumphs of technology are just a moment away from obsolescence.”An opening reception, including a presentation by the artist’s spouse and executive director of the Anna Held Audette Collection, Louis Audette, will be held on Tuesday, September 12, 5–7 p.m., and is open to the public.

One of Connecticut’s contemporary coastal artists is Janine Robertson. Robertson began her career as a muralist and trompe l’oeil painter, and worked on commercial and residential installations throughout New England before switching her focus to landscape painting in oil. Her inspiration comes from the marshes and woodlands in the Northeast, especially those along the shoreline near her home in Madison. Beginning her paintings en plein air before finishing them in her studio, Robertson captures a sense of place and mood, and the dramatic effects of weather on the landscape. One of the most intriguing elements of these paintings is their support: aluminum or copper. In Robertson’s words, “the ultra smooth surface highlights brushstrokes and texture while adding a luminous quality to my work. The depth and light of the reflective surface adds dimension to my paintings.”

Her work will be on view for the month of December at Maple and Main Gallery of Fine Art in Chester, right off Route 9 and along the scenic Connecticut River. Robertson is also an elected member of the National Association of Women Artists and Connecticut Women Artists, and is a charter member of Guild Brook Artists. She exhibits her work in juried shows and galleries throughout New England.

A short distance east of Madison along the scenic coast, Old Lyme is home to Lyme

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HARTFORD, CT Academy College of Fine Arts. Founded in 1976 by Elisabeth Gordon Chandler to teach representational and traditional art methods, the school became affiliated with the University of New Haven in 2014 and now offers degrees in drawing, illustration, painting and sculpture. Additionally, the Center for Arts programming offers classes, lectures, exhibitions, readings, a film series and more to high school students and adults of all levels. This fall, the college’s Chauncey Stillman Gallery will present the work of 19 artists that focuses on the fluidity and constructedness of assumptions surrounding femininity, feminism and gender in Female\Feminist/2017.

A mere hour to the southeast is Stonington, CT—a prime shoreline destination. While you’re there, enjoy an afternoon at Mystic Seaport. Affectionately termed “The Museum of America and the Sea,” Mystic Seaport is not only the nation’s leading maritime museum and a national center for research, it hosts fantastic contemporary art exhibitions. A yearlong exhibition of West Coast paper-cutting artist Nikki McClure, Life In Balance: The Art of Nikki McClure, is a must-see at the museum’s C. D. Mallory Building. Dozens of works created painstakingly with an X-ACTO knife reveal what can be accomplished with a single piece of paper—and McClure’s patience and gentle humor.

Those interested in marine art will enjoy Mystic Seaport’s ever-popular International Marine Art Exhibition and Sale, opening September 23 with a special Artists’ Walk during which participating artists lead tours of the show and offer comments about their work. Now in its 38th year, the exhibition gathers more than 100 of the world’s finest painters of the sea and sailing.

With a balance of history and contemporary culture, emerging artists and seasoned masters, and tradition and innovation, Hartford and its environs are a prime destination for art. It was true for the American Impressionists in the 19th Century, and it is true today for the countless artists who call Connecticut home.

Nurturing art-making with its communities, centers and events, and encouraging art-appreciation with the many museums and classes available to the public, this region is truly an artful corner of New England worth every hour spent exploring it.

—Jessica Fallis

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FEMALE\FEMINIST/2017 EXHIBITION Opening Reception September 8, 2017 | 5 – 7 p.m.

Exhibition on view through November 4, 2017 Panel Discussion | October 12 All exhibitions are free and open to the public.

GALLERY HOURS: Mon. – Sat., 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

For more information, visit:

www.lymeacademy.edu Hilary Harkness, Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas, Paris, October, 1939, Oil/copper, 2007-2008. © Hilary Harkness. Courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery, New York.

w All galleries are free and open to the public

CENTER FOR THE ARTS Wesleyan University 283 Washington Terrace Middletown, CT

Explore three galleries on the Wesleyan campus this fall!

Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery

Davison Art Center

Black Pulp!

William Villalongo and Mark Thomas Gibson, Guest Curators Tuesday, September 19 through Sunday, December 10, 2017 Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 19 from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Main Gallery, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery

Sasha Rudensky: Acts and Illusions Clare I. Rogan, Curator Wednesday, September 13 through Sunday, December 10, 2017 Opening Reception and Gallery Talk: Wednesday, September 13 at 5 p.m.; Gallery Talk at 5:30 p.m.

UP IN ARMS Susanne Slavick, Guest Curator Friday, October 27 through Sunday, December 10, 2017 Opening Reception: Friday, October 27 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

South Gallery, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery

Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Gallery Jiaqi Maria Ma: ( BEIJING | 北京 ) Wednesday, September 20 through Friday, December 8, 2017 Opening and Gallery Talk: Wednesday, September 20 at 12:30 p.m.; a luncheon buffet will be served.

Visit www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/artnewengland to find all events in the Wesleyan galleries, or call 860-685-3355 for more information.

All galleries are free and open to the public.

WORKS BY (above, from left): Renee Cox, Sasha Rudensky, Dadpranks, Jiaqi Maria Ma

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