Several local businesses are helping to sponsor a soon-to-launch exhibition at Carriage Barn Arts Center that features “found” or repurposed materials, as a long-established arts culture in New Canaan increasingly integrates with other parts of the community.
Visitors to "Spectrum/Sustainable Art Show" will be greeted in the courtyard by two monumental sculptures by Carole Eisner, who is based in New York and Weston. Here's "Chiara." Photo courtesy of the Carriage Barn Arts Center
The exhibition, “Spectrum/Sustainable Arts Show” (the 25th annual Spectrum show) launches March 23 following a free, open reception at the Waveny-based arts center from 6 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 22.
Among the featured New York artists is June Ahrens, now New Canaan-based, whose “Staying Afloat” uses the kinds of found materials she’s worked with for her entire career, according to a written statement from the Carriage Barn Arts Center.
“Artistically, I transform discarded objects to create a visual language that evokes the experiences of impermanence and loss, fragility and vulnerability, pain and most of all healing and survival,” she said in the release.
Here's "Saint Gabriel" by David Barnett, a mock flying machine that comments on man’s compulsion to outdo nature through industrialization. Photo courtesy of the Carriage Barn Arts Center
The exhibition is sponsored in part by Baldanza (whose mixed-bag kale salad is to die for, we’re told), New Canaan Wine Merchants (owned by wine-pairing expert Jeff Barbour), Karl Chevrolet (which recently donated equipment to youth baseball and softball programs in New Canaan), April Kaynor Homes, New Canaan Lions Club, Earth Garden and New Canaan Foreign Car.
The arts center’s new directors last week met with one venerable civic organization in New Canaan to discuss its expanding community and youth art programs, officials say.
Eleanor Flatow and Arianne Faber Kolb, Co-Directors of the Carriage Barn Arts Center (home of the New Canaan Society for the Arts), spoke to Kiwanis members at a recent luncheon, held at Picador restaurant on Elm Street. Photo courtesy of the Kiwanis Club of New Canaan
Carriage Barn Arts Center Co-Directors Eleanor Flatow and Arianne Faber Kolb met with the Kiwanis Club of New Canaan to talk about “upcoming art exhibitions, children’s workshops, programming and outreach programs,” according to a press release issued by Kiwanis.
Here’s what Kiwanis President Stacey Hafen said, according to the press release: “We can all benefit tremendously from programs that the Carriage Barn offers. It’s wonderful that they’re expanding their efforts to bring more events, exhibits, and classes to the New Canaan community.”
Here’s some more information about the Spectrum/Sustainable Art Show (full write-up from the Carriage Barn Arts Center here):
All of the artists in the show give new life to the debris of civilization. The exhibition features many highly creative local artists as well as established New York artists, whose main focus has been on sustainable art. The New York artist David Barnett creates intricate assemblages, which juxtapose natural and mechanical objects that recall the objects of curiosity in Renaissance collections. His sculpture Saint Gabriel is a mock flying machine that comments on man’s compulsion to outdo nature through industrialization. It’s created from hundreds of tiny turquoise-tipped rooster feathers supported by a soldered brass structure—and embellished with pulleys and gears to suggest a mechanical function that exists only in one’s imagination.
Visitors will be greeted in the courtyard by two monumental sculptures by Carole Eisner, who is based in New York and Weston. Eisner’s elegant abstract sculptures are made from metal scrap and recycled fragments from buildings and bridges. Her work has been exhibited in public spaces and museums, and is in collections such as the Guggenheim.