On Oct. 18, Steve Dedman will give a benefit concert for Hadlyme Hall. Photo courtesy of Steve Dedman.
HADLYME— On Saturday, Oct. 18, from 7 to 9 p.m., Steve Dedman & Friends return to Hadlyme Hall for a special benefit concert in an intimate cabaret-style setting.
All are welcome to help Steve (and his friends) help the Hall.
Admission is $20.00 at the door.
Overlooking the head of Whalebone Cove, Hadlyme Public Hall has served the quiet town of Hadlyme since 1911. It serves the community through social gatherings, plays, an annual art show, and raising community issues that effect the town. New members and guests are always welcome to events at the Hall.
Hadlyme Public Hall is at 63 Ferry Road at the intersection of Joshuatown and Day Hill Roads in Lyme.
The signature work of Allison Gildersleeve’s exhibition at the Lyman Allyn Museum is ‘Split Screen’, 2024, oil on canvas. The image above shows a detail from the painting. Photo courtesy of Lyman Allyn Museum.
NEW LONDON – On Friday, Oct. 10, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum hosted an opening reception for its newest exhibition, “Allison Gildersleeve: Here Somewhere.”
The collection – described by the museum as a series of richly layered paintings in which “time is not sequential, and location is not fixed” – will be on view through Jan.18, 2026.
The museum in a press release said Gildersleeve was raised in a colonial farmhouse surrounded by woods in southeastern Connecticut. The artist returns to the familiar settings of her childhood — wooded areas, home interiors, open highways, and backcountry roads — to show that repeated visits to the same place invariably result in wildly divergent depictions.
“I paint environments as they present themselves to me: as dynamic, ever-changing places thick with anticipation, dread, happiness, calm,” Gildersleeve said. “These are experiential landscapes — settings filled with the presence of human activity and emotion even though no people are painted within them. I use photographs I have taken in the same locale over a tenyear period as source material, but the paintings are never derived from just one take.”
The opening reception is free for museum members. Non-members are $10. To register, call 860-443-2545 ext. 2129 or email info@lymanallyn.org.
This exhibition has been made possible with support from an anonymous foundation. Funding is also provided by the Department of Economic and Community Development’s Office of the Arts.
Tessa Lark will help open Musical Masterworks’ 35th season in Old Lyme on Oct. 5 and 6. File photo by Richard Bowditch.
OLD LYME–Musical Masterworks will begin its 35th season at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme in a concert weekend featuring Artistic Director and violinist Tessa Lark.
Performances will be held on Saturday, Oct. 4 at 5 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 5, at 3 p.m.
Musical Masterworks in a press release said the weekend’s ensemble features Lark, pianist Inon Barnatan, violist Hsin-Yun Huang, cellist Efe Baltacigil and double bassist Tim Cobb. The program pairs Schubert pieces including the Trout Quintet and the Arpeggione Sonata with Lark’s Appalachian Fantasy, blending the timeless and contemporary.
“This season, I’m drawn to music that feels deeply personal, exploring the sublime worlds of specific composers and sharing the places I love most,” Lark said. “I hope these programs invite our concertgoers to linger, discover, and experience something new and meaningful along the way.”
The season runs from October to April at the church, 4 Lyme Street.
The Wee Faerie Village opens Saturday at the Florence Griswold Museum. This year’s theme is “Gardener’s Grove: a Growing Community.” Photo courtesy of the Florence Griswold Museum.
OLD LYME — The perennially popular Wee Faerie Village and a new exhibition titled, ‘Fall Into Impressionism‘ open today at the Florence Griswold Museum In Old Lyme.
The theme of the Wee Faerie Village this year is Gardener’s Grove: a Growing Community! and it celebrates the growing world with a wee community that is inspired by plants. Each site will be place for a faerie to live, work, play, or shop that is based on a single flora or plant type…flower, vegetable, bush, or tree.
The event will feature at least two dozen faerie installations as well as a roster of special events to compliment the theme.
Since 2009 over 190,000 visitors have immersed themselves in the spirit of imagination and whimsy that comes from visiting at least two dozen pint-sized installations across the Museum’s campus on a perfect autumn day.
Autumn Sunlight (1888) by.Theodore Robinson (1852–1896) is a signature painting of the ‘Fall Into Impressionism’ exhibition opening Saturday at the Florence Griswold Museum..OThe painting is oil on canvas and a gift of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company. Photo courtesy of the Florence Griswold Museum.
‘Fall Into Impressionism’ features selected artworks from the Museum’s permanent collection, which celebrate the appeal of fall to the Impressionists, whose flecks of paint capture the textures and colors of autumn.
For artists including Fidelia Bridges, Charles Ebert, Frank Vincent DuMond, Breta Longacre, Willard Metcalf, and Theodore Robinson, fall presented the opportunity to contemplate nature in transition. They appreciated both the season’s vibrance and its gradual movement toward much more muted colors.
Many of these painters spent August in cooler climes like Maine, but come Septeber, they flocked back to Connecticut as the weather cooled to paint outside in the drier air, particularly in locales like Old Lyme.
During the fall, leaves dazzled with reds, golds, and a multitude of other colors before falling to the ground. The artists would concentrate on the play of light and shadow in these autumnal months before the weather turned cold and maybe the first snow fell. At that point, they headed back to their studios in the city for the winter.
The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10am-5pm. Special event pricing is in effect at this time as follows: $23 Adults, $22 Seniors (62+), $21 Students (13+). Entry is free to Children 12 and under, and members.
“He has created a land and characters that instantly feel familiar.“
Like Faulkner, I was raised at the knee of a storyteller and read everything in every conceivable accent to my children. Some of us were more often amused (me) than others (them) but, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing beats a story. A tale. A yarn. A ballad … so I was, naturally, very excited about this one.
Any storyteller knows a tale about an island is a boon. The islands of northern Great Britain especially are remote and historically, literarily magical; a perfect step into The Ballad of Innes of Skara Skaill.
Skara Skaill is an island, fictional, off the coast of Scotland. It should feel barren and cold and unwelcoming.
It doesn’t.
This is Hunt’s talent, I think. He has created a land and characters that instantly feel familiar. Likable, as maybe vestiges of classic literature or amalgamations of people we relate to; his characters are tangible.
Obviously his work as a screenwriter comes into play (puns away) but not uncomfortably so. It’s more an auditory or visual hint that stands quietly off to the side. It stands just so as a lovely book and we aren’t just flipping through a script waiting for Colin Farrell to step in on screen.
The setting and the characters are so organic it just flows. The smoke and fog and moss; It’s so quintessentially Scottish island moor yet not brow-beatenly gratuitous. It feels fresh, which is a feat.
It’s also fun.
The four main characters—Hamish, Innes, Rory and Tito—find each other in a plot to unearth and profit from the treasure mentioned in the legend of Skara Skaill. No ordinary ballad this. King Harald mentions a hoard and a hoard there be. It isn’t an ethically ambiguous plot. Each of the four is a good person with well-intentioned desires.
The bad guys are the opposite.
Like any ballad worth its salt; there are solid moral boundaries.
With a mix of Robert Louis Stevenson meets a tamer Trainspotting (in a good way), the truth outs and I was hooked. The cast of minor characters is also excellent. Hermits, barmaids, conniving mules—Hunt paints a brilliant portrait.
Hunt has taken many familiar parts of literature and made something new. I was so comfortable to be on Skara Skaill. I was so happy to be with these people. It felt so natural and unrestrained that I mention it only because I’m suddenly aware of how rarely, as a reader, I do feel that way. I’d simply never noticed.
This does not feel like a first novel.
If I had to guess, Faulkner has been writing it in his head for years.
Lucky us that he put pen to paper.
Jennifer Petty Hilger
About the author: Jen Petty Hilger grew up in New York and London, England, but finds herself happily quiet living by the water in Old Lyme.
She and her husband have six children between them and a myriad of rescued animals.
