Category Archives: Arts

Lyme Academy College Hosts ArtsBall in Bloom Tonight

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Guests danced the night away at last year's ArtsBall.

Guests danced the night away at last year’s ArtsBall.

A few tickets remain for the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts signature fundraiser, which is being held this Saturday, June 7, at the College. Contact Ann de Selding at 860.434.3571 ext. 117 oradeselding@lymeacademy.edu to reserve your tickets today.

This year’s annual gala is titled, “ArtsBall in Bloom: A Night in the Garden of Art,” and all proceeds raised will fund student scholarships. The co-chairs of this year’s event are Dini Mallory and Allison McCall.

artball_in_bloom_logoUnder lavishly decorated tents, guests will experience a tantalizing cross-pollination of gardens and art, both ancient and modern, with an exciting auction, cocktails, dinner, and dancing into the night.  The décor for ArtsBall in Bloom: A Night in the Garden of Art promises to delight guests with its highly artistic and one-of-a-kind “garden” of sight and sound, thanks to the inventive expertise of master landscape designer, Louis Raymond of Renaissance Gardening.

The gala begins at 5:30 p.m. in the cocktail tent with a full open bar, delicious hors d’oeuvres, and diverse silent auctions featuring high-quality art, vacation opportunities, event tickets, vintage collectibles, and more.  Diane Kaslow is the guru behind the auctions and this year she has incorporated a new feature, which is the opportunity to bid online for select auction items in advance of the event — bidding is open now at www.BiddingOwl.com.  Also, bidding during the event has been extended to 9 p.m.

A live auction featuring a week in Miss Lena’s Cottage in the Bahamas, a year’s membership to the exclusive Hermitage resort on Haystack Mountain in Vermont and a fabulous, hand knotted Afghan rug will be held during the evening.

Guests enthusiastically applaud auction winners at last year's ArtsBall.

Guests enthusiastically applaud auction winners at last year’s ArtsBall.

Patricia Spratt of Patricia Spratt for the Home is again organizing the popular feature, “A Community Paints,” in which members of the community take a standard size canvas from the College and create a piece of artwork in the ArtsBall theme.  These pieces are sold in a separate silent auction and always draw a flurry of bids.

Known for inventive, farm-fresh cuisine, Jonathan Rapp’s River Tavern of Chester will be serving a delicious dinner.

Corporate sponsors for this year’s event include Outthink; Venü Magazine; Essex Savings Bank andEssex Financial Services, Inc.; Middlesex Hospital/Shoreline Medical Center; Sennheiser Electronic Corporation; Essex Meadows Lifecare Retirement Community, Ironwood Capital, Mohegan Sun, Patricia Spratt for the Home, Seaside Wine & Spirits, Centerbrook Architects, and Smith Insurance, Inc.

The College greatly appreciates their generosity and that of numerous additional sponsors and patrons who have donated in-kind goods or services, auction items or financial contributions.  Contact the College’s Vice-President of Development Fritz Jellinghaus at 860.434.3571 ext. 125 to discuss additional sponsorship opportunities.

Founded in 1976 and accredited for the BFA degree in 1996, the College has not had a long history to build its endowment and therefore looks to the community for support, especially with regard to its scholarship funds.  More than 90 percent of the College’s degree-seeking students receive financial assistance and this need is the driving force behind the College’s annual ArtsBall.

Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts continues the tradition of fine art in southeastern Connecticut begun by the Lyme Art Colony at the start of the twentieth century.  The fully- accredited College provides students with a solid foundation in figurative and representational fine art while preparing them for a lifetime of creative practice in the contemporary world.

The College offers Bachelor of Fine Arts degree programs in drawing, illustration, painting, and sculpture and Post-Baccalaureate and three-year Certificate programs.  The small student body allows for a more personal education and an intimate artistic community.

The ArtsBall in Bloom: A Night in the Garden of Art fundraising gala for students of Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, will take place on Saturday, June 7, from 5:30 to 11 p.m. on the College campus at 84 Lyme Street in Old Lyme, Conn.  Tickets for the full evening are $150 per person. A range of additional ticket options is also available.  One hundred percent of the net proceeds benefit student scholarships.

 Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts continues the academic tradition of figurative and representational fine art while preparing students for a lifetime of contemporary creative practice.  The College offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drawing, Illustration, Painting, and Sculpture (full- and part-time study); Certificates in Painting and Sculpture, a Post-Baccalaureate program; Continuing Education for adults; and a Pre-College Program for students aged 15-18.  The College is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, the National Association of the Schools of Art and Design, and the Connecticut Department of Higher Education.  The College is located at 84 Lyme Street, Old Lyme CT 06371.

For more information about the College, call 860-434-5232 or visit www.lymeacademy.edu.

Local Artists Cantrell, Christiano, Friday Featured in Rowayton Art Show This Weekend

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CCNS_Postcard_2014_4 front-1 web
Local artists Helen Cantrell, Catherine Christiano, and Judy Friday will be featured from June 5 – 8, in the 52nd Annual Art Show, hosted by the Community Cooperative Nursery School (CCNS), in Rowayton, Conn.  The featured artists will be present at the opening reception this evening, June 5, from 7 to 10 p.m.  Wine and hors d’oeuvres will be offered, admission is $40 and valet parking is available.

This show, which includes work by an additional 70 artists, is a great opportunity to view numerous works in a wide range of styles and price points.  Many of the paintings can be viewed on the show’s website www.ccnsartshow.org. Forty percent of your art purchases are tax deductible.

Additional show hours are Friday, June 6, 6 – 10 p.m., June 7, from 2 – 8 p.m., and Sunday, June 8, from 12 – 4 p.m. with admission of $15.  On Saturday, June 7,  from 3 – 4 p.m., Helen Cantrell will be demonstrating her palette knife painting technique, and on Sunday, June 8, from 2 – 3 p.m., Judy Friday will be demonstrating her painting technique using etching ink on paper.

"Summer People" by Helen Cantrell.

“Summer People” by Helen Cantrell.

Helen Cantrell is a painter and printmaker from Old Lyme.  Born in Chicago, Illinois, she moved to New York City in 1968, after majoring in painting at the Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis, and has lived along the Northeast coast for the past 40 years.  Cantrell was inspired early on by a Horizon magazine article on Richard Diebenkorn and the Bay Area figurative painters.  She retired from working as a typesetter in NYC about 15 years ago to pursue painting and printmaking full-time.

Cantrell has intensively studied and worked with printmaking techniques at workshops in Connecticut, at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and at Crown Point Press in San Francisco.  She is an elected artist member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists, exhibits extensively in the Northeast, and recently co-founded gallery19 in Essex with Judy Friday.

"Precursors" by Catherine Christiano.

“Precursors” by Catherine Christiano.

Catherine Christiano is a representational artist from Old Lyme, who works primarily with painting and drawing media.  Her unlikely path to studio art began with a bachelor’s in engineering and an MBA in finance followed by some years of work combined with part-time study in drawing and painting at the National Academy of Design’s School of Fine Arts in New York.

A move to Connecticut prompted her to fully focus on her artwork and additional study at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, where she completed a BFA in 2001.  Christiano’s artwork often focuses on subjects that are close to her own life and environment.  She exhibits in the Northeast, is included in numerous private collections, and has been published in several journals. Christiano also designed the seal for the Town of Old Lyme.

Judy Friday was born in Columbus, Ohio, and lived there until she graduated from Ohio State University in 1980 with a degree in Business Administration.  Having worked off and on in artistic and decorative painting for several years, she began to study art seriously when she and her husband moved to Lyme in 1985.  Friday studied at Lyme Academy of College of Fine Arts from 1987 to 1993.

Her primary focus recently has been on landscapes, particularly bodies of water with an interest in the haze and light that bounce off the water.  She finds inspiration in the Connecticut River and the Long Island Sound.  Recurring subjects also include Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island.  Friday exhibits in Ohio and the Northeast and recently co-founded gallery19 in Essex with Helen Cantrell.

Bee & Thistle Offers an Open ‘Art Night’ This Evening with Author B.A. Shapiro, Then Sit-Down Dinner

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shell_outsideDelight the senses from palette to palate!  The Second Annual ‘Bee Inspired’ Art Night will be held this evening, Thursday, May 15, at the Bee and Thistle Inn.

Visitors will have the opportunity to tour The Bee’s dining and guest rooms and beautiful grounds to meet the artists whose work fills the Inn’s spaces both inside and out.

Acclaimed author, B.A. Shapiro, will be on hand to greet fans and sign her New York Times bestselling novel, The Art Forger, a literary thriller about Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist that spans three centuries of forgers, art thieves, and obsessive collectors.

B.A. Shapiro

B.A. Shapiro

Creative cocktails and bar specials will be offered throughout the evening.  A “pop-up” boutique featuring work by local artisans will include items for purchase.

Admission is free for this part of the event.

At 8 p.m. an exclusive sit-down dinner with Ms. Shapiro, featured artists and celebrity guests will be presented by Chef Kristofer Rowe, showcasing his imaginative “art on a plate” accompanied by wine.

This intimate gathering is the place to “see and ‘Bee’ seen!”  Tickets are required for this part of the evening only and are $75 each, all inclusive.  Advance reservations are still available by calling the Inn at 860-434-1667.  Seating is limited, so prompt reservations are advised.

Sculpture by Gil Boro.

Sculpture by Gil Boro

‘The Bee’ serves as a ‘springboard’ for local artists to gain exposure, featuring work by Brian Keith Stephens, Chamomile Hixon, Thomas Caleb Goggans, Elizabeth Weiss, Jacques Pepin, and Pola Esther.

Striking outdoor art installations by Gil Boro, Michael McLaughlin and Chandler Davis also dot the picturesque grounds surrounding the Inn.

Old Lyme Town Band Returns to “The Kate,” Thursday, May 8

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The 40-piece Old Lyme Town Band, under the direction of John LaDone, will perform its most ambitious concert yet at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, 300 Main Street, Old Saybrook, on Thursday, May 8,  at 7 p.m.

Billed by “The Kate” as, “Our favorite of that genre,” the band will perform  “Crown Him with Many Crowns”;  “Lincoln”; “Orpheus in the Underworld”; Selections from “Chicago,”  and “Music from “The Incredibles.”

Tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for children and are available online or at the door.

‘Con Brio’ Auditioned Chorus Presents Spring Concert Today

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Con Brio Choral Society

The Con Brio Choral Society gathers for a photo.

Con Brio, the area’s renowned all-auditioned chorus, will present its spring concert on Sunday, May 4, at 4 p.m at Christ the King Church in Old Lyme.  Directed by Dr. Stephen Bruce, assisted by Associate Director Susan Saltus, featuring soloists Patricia Schuman, Clea Huston. John Broderick and John Dominick III together with the Con Brio Festival Orchestra, this promises to be another joyful, not-to-be-missed concert.

The featured work will be Mozart’s splendid Vesperae solennes de Dominica, a piece commissioned in 1779 by the Archbishop of Salzburg for use in Sunday Vespers.  Only 24 at the time, and just beginning his musical career, Mozart wrote some of his most memorable compositions in Salzburg.  Proud of this work, Mozart asked his father to show it to a later patron.  Though the title sounds formal, even forbidding, this piece has been called a “most delicious of Mozartean feasts, “ “one of the sunniest and most highly-concentrated of Mozart’s Salzburg choral works and one of this composer’s most spectacular soprano concert arias.”

The piece is in six movements, five of them settings of the daily psalms.  Throughout, Mozart suits his music to the varying temperaments of the psalm texts.  The traditional “Magnificat” brings the work to a life-affirming close.  Those who attended Con Brio’s Christmas Concert have already had a chance to hear this magnificent last movement. Throughout, the chorus interweaves with the solo quartet.  Patricia Schuman, the distinguished and widely known soprano, will be the principal soloist.

The second half of the concert includes selections the chorus will offer in its upcoming concert tour to France and Spain, as well as diverse secular and sacred pieces.  As always, the audience will have its chance to participate.

An eight part antiphonal motet by the nineteenth century composer Josef Rheinberger, “Kyrie,” will be sung surrounding the beautiful space of Christ the King Church.  Three diverse French pieces include a light country song, “La fanfare du printemps,” that the chorus acquired from a chorus in Sicily on an earlier tour; a beautiful setting of one of Rilke’s poems, “Dirait-on,” one of the best-selling choral octavos of the late-twentieth century by Morten Lauridsen (part of his Rilke song cycle,“Les Chansons des Roses”); and a delightful tongue-twister, “Ton thé a t’il ôté ta tou?” (“Your tea, has it taken away your cough?”).

Other pieces include a rousing 10-part arrangement of the folk song Cindy, a lovely arrangement of Robert Burns’ poem, “A Red, Red Rose,” Bartolucci’s“Jubilate Deo” (also learned from a chorus on tour in Italy), Palestrina’s “Exultate Deo,” and “Ride the Chariot” a spiritual featuring Patricia Schuman.

The concert will conclude with a stunning gospel song, “Praise His Holy Name” and the audience singing along in John Rutter’s joyful arrangement of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

What a joyous way to welcome in the spring!!

Tickets ($30, $15 student) may be purchased on line at www.conbrio.org, from any Con Brio member, or by calling 860 526 5399.

Christ the King Church is located at 1 McCurdy Lane, Old Lyme, Connecticut.