Around Town

New Downtown Stroll to Kickstart ‘Art in the Windows’ on May 22

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Three springs ago—her first in New Canaan—Serena Gillespie found herself walking downtown when she noticed, and felt moved by, works of art in storefront windows. Attracted to a display that included peonies flowers, Gillespie made inquiries and discovered that she was experiencing Art in the Windows. That’s how she came to find out about the Carriage Barn Arts Center (home of the New Canaan Society for the Arts), which organized the event. “For me, art has always had to connect with me personally,” Gillespie, now president of the art center’s Board of Trustees, recalled on a recent evening as fellow board members, Carriage Barn staff and business owners gathered at the Waveny property during a kickoff/planning gathering for the Seventh Annual Art in the Windows. “If it talks to me and brings back a memory, that’s when it connects with me.

Around Town

PHOTOS: ‘Absolut Kuba!’ Opens at Carriage Barn Arts Center

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Steve Certilman of Greenwich has spent more than 15 years visiting Cuba at least annually, forging long-term relationships with artists whose work he admires and scouring Havana and environs for emerging painters, sculptors, assemblage artists and others. On Saturday, about 80 of the pieces that Certilman has amassed—roughly one-third of his private collection—went on display in “Absolut Kuba!” at Carriage Barn Arts Center. Featuring about 50 artists’ work, the free exhibition marks the first-ever public showing of the diverse collection. According to Arianne Kolb, co-director of the Carriage Barn Arts Center and, with Certilman, curator of the exhibition, “Absolut Kuba!” is a chance to experience about 20 years’ in Cuban art in person without physically going there. “Unless you are planning on going to Cuba regularly or planning to go in the near future, this is a rare opportunity to see an incredible, really well-chosen assemblage of contemporary art that has been produced over the last 20 years,” Kolb said as dozens of appreciators moved through the roomy gallery in Waveny for the opening reception.

Around Town

Private Cuban Art Collection To Debut at Carriage Barn

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Next week, the Carriage Barn Arts Center is launching an exhibition that will put on display for the public, for the first time, the Cuban artwork that Greenwich residents Steve and Terri Certilman—both attorneys—have been collecting for decades. “Absolut Kuba” opens April 24 and will be followed on May 17 by “A Night in Havana,” Carriage Barn Arts Center’s inaugural benefit. In reading some background on the new exhibition and curious to know more, we asked to connect with the collector, and our conversation with Steve Certilman is transcribed in full below. A photographer himself who even through law school nursed his abiding interest in the arts, Certilman came to discover Cuban art himself by chance, and quickly became fascinated by the work as well as its creators. The collection he and his wife have amassed and soon-to-open exhibition it forms are singular for Carriage Barn Arts Center, said Rebecca Stedman, a co-chair of the event together with Serena Gillespie, Barbara Calaba and Stacey Essex.

Around Town

‘Found Materials’ Art Exhibition Coming to Carriage Barn

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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. 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. 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.

Faces of New Canaan

George Baker: John Adams in New Canaan [VIDEO]

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[Editor’s Note: Town resident and re-enactor George Baker will appear as John Adams at New Canaan Library at 6:30 p.m. on March 25 to present “My Wife, Abigail Adams, the First Modern American Woman.” The videos interspersed throughout this article—shot Friday, March 14—offer a glimpse of Baker’s special talent, as he channels Adams in question-and-answer format, placing the second president in 18th (and early 19th) Century New Canaan and discussing our town, library, commuting and the upcoming show.]

 

Though he was just two or three years old that day, New Canaan resident George Baker still recalls his very first encounter with a performing artist. The memory is this: Baker and his father were walking through an open, outdoor area in New York City—something similar to Hyde Park in London—when the pair came upon a man surrounded by a crowd, singing. via YouTube

“Everyone was listening and he was so good,” Baker recalled Friday afternoon from a table at Connecticut Muffin on Main Street, his favorite cup of coffee in town steaming in front of him (regular roast with plenty of milk). “People were singing along and I said, ‘Wow, that’s what I want to do.’ ”

It was a prophetic moment for the young boy, whose wish would materialize in ways that, in retrospect, surprise and delight Baker himself. A lawyer out of Columbia University who practices employment law and litigation (with wide experience in condominium law), Baker has developed a highly tailor-able, professional one-man show re-enacting John Adams. In just over five years, it’s taken him from stages at Mystic Seaport to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kan.