A Year in New England: Catching Up

Since I haven't posted since Christmas weekend, I thought an update was in order. We began by celebrating Marie's successful installation of the new system for the CT DOT which was now operational. They are no longer on mainframe.

Then the New Year began with a visit to the International Skating Center of CT in Simsbury for the Winter Fantasy on Ice. It was a wonderful show, starring Ekaterina Gordeeva, Ilia Kulik and their daughter, Lisa. Here are a few of stills:

Ilia Kulik

And here are some videos I shot:

We celebrated our 25th Anniversary on January 3rd and continued all week by going out to a variety of nearby restaurants. Started with Harry's Pizza on Monday (Best of Hartford), Korean at Pic & Mix on Tuesday, (I cooked on Wednesday), Thursday we had linguini with clams at J's Crab Shack and Friday was at Lao-Thai East West Grille. We had Tom Yum, Shumai, Sai Ghock and Yaring Kai Noi. Delicious. Here are some pictures from J's:

The next weekend we took a trip to Western Connecticut, beginning with our search for the home of sculptor Alexander Calder in Roxbury. I did see a map that Calder himself had drawn, so it wasn't too difficult. The house is still in the Calder family and not open to visitors, but I did get a few shots from the street.

studio, side

studio, back

studio on left, house on right

Then we went in search of the house belonging to Surrealist painters Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy in Woodbury. This was a little more difficult as all I knew was that it was formerly the Town Farm, which meant the "poor house." I did, however, once see a photo of the house from the back of the property, so I had an idea what it would look like. First we looked for Old Town Farm Road. On the way, we passed this fun dog sculpture:

As luck would have it, I spotted it. It looks like the property is now a nursery, but I was able to get a couple of shots:

The each had separate studios in the barn.

Then we drove over to New Milford through some very pretty countryside. Had lunch at Johanna's, a very skinner restaurant in the center. Marie got the fried eggplant sandwich with onion rings, while I had the grilled turkey with brie and apples, came with a salad. We took our lunch with us over the Lover's Leap State Park. After our tasty meal, we started exploring. First, we saw the Falls Bridge, built in 1895 by the Berlin Iron Bridge Company, spanning the Housatonic River. A "lenticular" bridge, the span is 173 feet with the river 100 feet below.

It was a beautiful day for a walk, so we hiked around on various trails. Most were eventually blocked by trees that fell during the Halloween Snowstorm, but we lots of the park. It's called Lover's Leap because, legend has it, Princess Lillinonah plunged to her death here when her European lover failed to return to her.

part of the Housatonic, called Lake Lillinonah

We next drove over to Waterbury. I wanted to get a picture of the fountain designed by Karl Gerhardt in 1888, for my Connecticut Artists project. More about that later. The fountain was for Carrie Welton, who left $7,000 for the project and $100,000 to the ASPCA. The statue was done in memory of her black stallion, Knight, who killed her father with a kick. Ms. Welton died while mountain climbing in Colorado. I have to go back and get a better picture after they take down the decorations.

Just across the green is the Mattatuck Museum. The only museum in Connecticut solely dedicated to collecting and exhibiting Connecticut artists and sculptors, as well as the industrial history of the state.