First Weekend in June

(Bryan Gill & friends)

It was a good idea to go for two Art openings on Thursday evening before band rehearsal, just to get warmed up for the four planned for Friday. It was another arty weekend in CT.

We began on Friday in historic Wethersfield for the 53rd Annual Members Juried Exhibition of the Wethersfield Art League.. How historic, you ask? Just fourteen years after the landing at Plymouth Rock, a group of traders settled in what is now Wethersfield. 1634, which makes it the oldest town in the State. The historic district remains not only the oldest, but the largest.

The Keeney Memorial Cultural Center, which seems new having been built in 1893, was the site of the exhibition. Here are a couple of the participants:

Helen Gorski

Carol Carnemolla with granddaughter/subject

Then north on I-91 to Windsor and the Rough Around the Edges show. This was a personal project of one Sarah McKay, who utilized her father’s warehouse and a family full of artists to help launch this event last year. There were several performances and Art of a variety of styles. Here are a few:

Sarah McKay

Chris Creath with Bunnesha

Terese Newman

Back near downtown Hartford, we found the Broad Street Gallery empty, when there should have been an opening, so we took right off for the University of Hartford campus and the Silpe Gallery. The show there featured five professional printmakers called Focus on Process. This was not a student show, but one presented by Paper New England to promote printmaking. Here are a two (plus Bryan Gill at the top of the post):

Chet Kempczynski

Keiji Shinohara

On Saturday (after the tag sales) we drove down to Milford for the annual Fair On The Green. This was mentioned as the largest Art fest in the New Haven area. I only mention this because there was no real Art and what they had for crafts was of low quality. I also noticed that they charge vendors $100 for one day’s rental!

Milford did, however, have a nice looking building or two:

A couple of weddings:

And a waterfront restaurant. We had a couple of Guinness and guacamole for two, prepared tableside in a mortar, so we could instruct them on what we liked. Avocados that were more ripe is what I like. But it was fun sitting out on the deck overlooking Milford Harbor.

Milford Harbor

We still had enough juice for another opening that afternoon in East Hartford, where Hartford Fine Art & Framing was hosting the Premier Fine Art Competition & Exhibition. A very nice show in a beautiful facility.

Kelli Folsom

Pat Corbett

On Sunday, I went to Manchester’s Show in the Park 2011 at Center Memorial Park. Like Saturday’s show, it was mostly crafts, with so many jewelers I think they could do a festival just for them. There was even a couple antique dealers, but, believe it or not, a few artists in attendance. Of course, they were mostly youngsters selling from a cardboard box, or the small show that the public got to vote for their favorite.

Jaya Thiruvan got my vote.

Kathleen makes a set of ceramic pieces that are used to grate garlic, or cheese, using a plastic food holder and a brush. There is no display of these items, as they are not beautiful to look at. The attraction was Kathleen’s presentation which was a cross of carnival barker, a Ronco advertisement, and Jeeves. She used the oddest voice and the wildest gestures while demonstrating and hopefully selling her ware. Only $20. But I never heard her say, “But wait, there’s more.”

Kerry Kozaczuk painted this piece on stage while several bands performed at Swan Day CT in Haddam.

Here is a video of her Swan Day "performance" that I found online:

That afternoon we went to the opera at the Elmwood Community Center.  Not the poshest part of West Hartford.  The Hartford Opera Theater presented a program called A Night in Suburbia featuring little operas by Gian Carlo Menotti (The Telephone), Samuel Barber (A Hand of Bridge) and Leonard Bernstein (Trouble in Taihiti). Tickets were only $10 and from the moment you entered the old school building you could see the extra effort this young company gave.  The Suburbia theme was expressed with hostesses in aprons greeting us at the door.  Plates of frosted cupcakes awaited, along with newsphotos of the era.

The orchestra was very good, made up of young musicians in black.  The cast for each of the productions was terrific, I thought.  The audience, while not huge, was young.