Suzanne Benton, “First Day,” 2022
Sheffer Gallery
October 27, 2023, through January 8, 2024
Reception: November 1, 6-8 pm (reception: 6-7 pm; talk: 7-8 pm)
Suzanne Benton is a native New Yorker based in Connecticut for 64 of the 70 years she’s practiced her many-faceted art. Her pioneer dedication to feminism and activism has long carried her outreach beyond the borders of home.
The first year of world travel (1976-77) purposely coincided with Women’s International Year. It was then that she began the life pattern of bringing her metal mask making, mask performances, and workshops worldwide. That seminal journey to 14 countries led to decades of grants and invitations that fostered her learning and development as a trans-culturalist artist, highly recognized metal masquer, performer, printmaker, painter, lecturer, and workshop leader. Those opportunities brought her to 32 countries, East and West, and included a Fulbright lectureship in India, multiple artist residencies, generous support from colleges and universities, and frequent hostings by the cultural arm of U.S. embassies. Those amazing times gave a global awareness that’s greatly influenced her life and art.
Suzanne’s exhibitions include more than 200 solo shows, and her artwork is represented in museum and private collections worldwide. The mask tale performances that began at Lincoln Center in 1971, subsequently brought her to Elliot Hall’s 7,000-seat theatre at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana; Merrick Theater, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Harvard University Graduate School of Education; Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH; America Haus, Köln; Bosnian television, Sarajevo; India International Center, New Delhi; Bombay Center for the Performing Arts, India, and on.
Author of The Art of Welded Sculpture and numerous articles, Suzanne is and has been listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Art, and Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, edited by Barbara Love, 2006. In April 2023, Suzanne received a Lifetime Recognition Award from the Women’s Caucus of Art, Florida.
An upcoming exhibition from March 10 to May 5, 2024, Suzanne Benton: Unmasked will show a selection from her large oeuvre of welded metal masks and monoprints with Chine collé. It will be exhibited at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut.
The artist’s current direction, All About Color follows decades of intertwining color, shape, and imagery in distinctive monoprints with Chine collé. Those lengthy visits to India and Bangladesh brought in the palette of South Asia. Kenya, Tanzania, and Morocco taught her unique color juxtapositions. Suzanne is now casting such sun filled worlds into paintings of cosmic realms and unknown worlds.
All About Color Artist Statement
In this ninth decade of life, and as a working artist for nearly 70 years, I’d become interested in the concept of Late Style as described by the literary theorist Edward Said. “Each of us can supply evidence of late works, which crown a lifetime of aesthetic endeavor.” Matisse had it with his renowned paper cuts. While nearly blind, Monet created water lily paintings as his final legacy to the history of art.
My Late Style arrived as a surprise during the Covid pandemic. Sheltering in place ushered in an uncanny level of solitude that only painting could voice. Reaching for the purist of colors, I entered a world of Neo-Transcendentalpaintings large and small that I call All About Color.
The disappeared narrative came as a surprise. The imbedded image had been a mainstay in decades of monoprints and paintings. My welded steel and bronze masks and mask tale performances rely on character and story to amaze an audience. This time, I’m speaking of the inner life from a time of stillness that’s since stayed on.
I’d been well educated in color by John Ferren, the abstract expressionist painter who’d taught the year’s color study at Queen College. That sensitivity developed further through four art-working journeys in India: 1976-1977, 1992-1993, 1995, and 2011, and during the Bangladesh residencies of 1995 and 2011. Countries in Africa also gave my work unique juxtapositions of colors never found in Connecticut seasons.
All About Color began in Florida on the hopeful day of President Biden’s safe inauguration. Florida is also where walks along the beach, its sun on the water, flora and fauna, and even its cooing doves remind me South Asia and Africa. Here’s a long-ago memory from December 1976 when daughter Janet and I were in Puri on the Bay of Bengal. Staying at a hotel from the Raj period that was situated atop a hill from the beach, we took a mid-morning walk along the beach, and then rested in a bamboo hut where the sun came through its weave and cast warm shadows on Janet’s face. The next month took us to Varanasi where we hired a boat and boatman to take us along the Ganges River. It was noon. The heat and extreme contrast of the sun on the water was surreal, as much was, especially during that first time in India. Being in the presence of total poverty, uncanny splendor, and fantastical ancient sites gave an otherworldly strangeness that completely upended any previous sense of reality.
While each of the 32 countries where I’ve worked and traveled has given immeasurable impetus and richness to my art, there was something ineffable about India that drew me back. During the second journey, this time on a Fulbright, I recounted to friends what the guide book said, “Nothing prepares you for India, even if you’ve been there before.” Nevertheless, India became a country I knew to return, but never knew why. I now know that I’d gone again and again to finally arrive at All About Color, the painting series that’s freshening the ninth decade of my life.
Edward Said had added that difficult works also come late in artistic careers, works that “reopen questions”. To this, I’m thinking it’s not only the silence from the time of Covid that’s led to these recent works, or even what India had given me. There are the reflections that come with age, that bring in the weave of a lifetime’s journey and the whispering voice of mortality.
Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas, legends in the canon of painting, gone in minutes, as 13 priceless works of art disappeared from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in the dawning hours of March 18, 1990.
On the hinge of 2024’s WestportREADS selection, The Art Thief, by Michael Finkel, comes Westport Library’s Vanished program, Thursday, November 16, 7-8 pm. The event is free with registration.
Vanished features Stephen Kurkjian, journalist and author of the definitive book on the heist, Master Thieves, and Robert Wittman, retired FBI agent and author (with John Shiffman) of The New York Times best-selling memoir, Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures. Architect, academic, and Fulbright Specialist Allen Swerdlowe will present and moderate the discussion, delving into the Gardner Museum, the stolen pieces of art, the suspects, and the theories in the world’s biggest theft of art objects from a single institution.
“There are mysteries inside of mysteries inside the story," Swerdlowe told Westport Library Director of Strategic Community Partnerships Jennifer Bangser on the WPKN Open Book radio hour.
“One of which is that there was a painting called Chez Tortoni that was stolen from a room that nobody entered. Some of the authorities believe that there were two robberies that night. The story is complicated by the fact that the thieves were in the museum for 81 minutes. Robberies like this typically take a few minutes. ... It suggests the thieves knew they would not be apprehended.”
The mystery twists through rock ‘n’ rollers moonlighting as security (or vice versa), fake police arrests, and a potential Connecticut connection. These puzzling Garnder heist details and dead ends have consumed all included for 33 years.
Kurkjian is a 40-year veteran of The Boston Globe, serving as the paper’s former Washington bureau chief and a founding member of its investigative Spotlight Team. He has won more than 25 national and regional awards, including the Pulitzer Prize on three occasions. Kurkjian covered much of the investigation into the heist while in The Globe newsroom and has remained on the story since. He co-produced the award-winning podcast Last Seen with WBUR-FM radio in Boston, and has appeared in numerous documentaries on the case, including This is a Robbery, a four-part Netflix series, and others on the History Channel and CNN.
Wittman joined the FBI as a special agent in 1988, receiving detailed training in art, antiques, jewelry, and gem identification, taking on the role of the FBI’s investigative expert in art and cultural property crime investigations. Written with 2009 Pulitzer Prize Finalist Shiffman, Priceless follows Wittman through his career with the FBI, providing a first-perspective account of some of the most well-known art heists in modern history (including Gardner) and the undercover FBI stings that sought to foil them.
“It’s fascinating because of the fact that nothing was ever seen again,” Swerdlowe said of the crime. “It’s fascinating because everybody thinks they know the answer, and in all in cases it’s not the answer they thought it was.”
L to R: Yanone C by Hiromitsu Takahashi, courtesy WestPAC; Tilted Finish by Norm Siegel; and Continuum by Suzanne Benton
Three new exhibits are coming to The Westport Library to bring some color, curiosity, and energy to the end of fall and the start of winter.
Suzanne Benton’s All About Color will be featured in the Sheffer Gallery, with Norm Siegel’s Visual Curiosities in the South Gallery, and Showtime!, a series of selection from the Westport Public Art Collections (WestPAC), going up in the Jesup Gallery.
All three exhibits will run from October 27, 2023, through January 8, 2024, and all three will host artist receptions in the Library’s Trefz Forum: November 1 for Benton, November 8 for Showtime!, and November 20 for Siegel. The Benton and Siegel events will include a talk with the artists after the receptions.
“These are three brilliant exhibits for us to close out our collections for 2023,” said Carole Erger-Fass, the Library’s exhibit curator. “I’m thrilled we’ll be able to share these works with our community and welcome the artists into our space.”
Benton is a native New Yorker who has been based in Connecticut for 64 of the 70 years she’s practiced her many-faceted art. Her exhibitions include more than 200 solo shows, and her artwork is represented in museums and private collections worldwide. Author of The Art of Welded Sculpture and numerous articles, Benton is and has been listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Art, and Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975. In April 2023, she received a Lifetime Recognition Award from the Women’s Caucus of Art in Florida.
“In this ninth decade of life, and as a working artist for nearly 70 years, I’d become interested in the concept of Late Style as described by the literary theorist Edward Said, who said, ‘Each of us can supply evidence of late works, which crown a lifetime of aesthetic endeavor,’” recounted Benton. “My Late Style arrived as a surprise during the Covid pandemic. Sheltering in place ushered in an uncanny level of solitude that only painting could voice. Reaching for the purist of colors, I entered a world of Neo-Transcendental paintings large and small that I call All About Color.”
Siegel was inspired to become an artist during a sixth-grade field trip to the to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, mesmerized by a Willian Harnett still life and an Albert Bierstadt Yellowstone landscape. He subsequently attended the High School of Industrial Arts and The Cooper Union, going on to a career as an art director that included helping to help launch The Discovery Channel. He returned to painting in retirement and has had his work exhibited at The Salmagundi Gallery in New York, The New Britain Museum of American Art, the Billis Gallery in Westport, and at the Kershner Gallery at The Fairfield Public Library, among others.
“Unlike many artists, it’s difficult for me to put into words what I put on the canvas,” said Siegel. “What you see is what I intend you to see. I’m not one to experiment with new techniques, materials, or mediums. Spontaneity and intuition are not involved. I do experiment with subject matter to satisfy my past and current influences and my sense of humor using the skills I’ve honed over decades, with brush and paint on canvas or panel.”
Showtime!, meantime, celebrates the performing arts in Westport. A cultural asset to Westport, WestPAC holds more than 1,800 works of art in a broad range of media — paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, illustrations, cartoons, photographs, sculptures, and murals — by notable American artists, giants of the international art world, and important artists who established their homes and studios in the Westport-Weston community. WestPAC’s artworks were acquired primarily through gifts, mostly given by the artists themselves or donated by heirs and collectors.
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Pictured above (clockwise from top left): Suzanne Benton, Norm Siegel, the WestPAC logo
L to R: The book cover for Head Over Heels; Melissa Newman
The Newman family is a Westport institution, and fittingly, the latest chronicle by and about the family will get its unveiling in their hometown.
Westport's own Melissa Newman will celebrate the launch of her extraordinary new book, Head Over Heels: Joanne Woodward & Paul Newman, A Love Affair in Words and Pictures, in The Westport Library's Trefz Forum on Tuesday, October 10. She will be in conversation with longtime friend and filmmaker Doug Tirola, sharing insights into her affectionately curated and lushly illustrated book, which offers a fresh perspective on her parents, both storied legends, putting their relationship front and center.
The event kicks off at 7 pm ET; please click here to register. The event is free to attend. Copies of Head Over Heels will be on sale, with Newman signing copies after her talk.
“Music, visual art, and drama have always been a big part of the family DNA,” Melissa said. “It’s been fascinating, certainly, to be an insider to my parents’ artistic process as well as the nuances of their relationship. The two things are inexorably intertwined. The more I thought about it, the more I felt the photographs and writings in this book needed to be collected and sent into the world in a particular way, and that perhaps I brought enough of a distinct perspective to make something unique.”
Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, longtime Westport residents, were most famous as movie stars and stage actors, but they also were artistic collaborators, political activists, and philanthropists whose legacies are expansive and enduringly modern.
With 120-plus photos of the couple together, including many that have never been published, Head Over Heels celebrates the enduring power of love. It features handwritten notes, snapshots, letters, and family treasures — offering revelatory and intimate insights into the private lives of these towering figures in American public life.
“I wanted to capture some of the layers, the humor, the beauty and complexity of their 50-year love affair,” Melissa Newman said. “I wanted it to feel immersive, the way I think they were immersed in each other. Once I began this journey, I was gobsmacked by the list of photographers who chronicled them. I tried to include not only unseen material, but also some of the less obvious choices from familiar series.
“My friend, co-creator, and editor Andrew Kelly was a sleuth of the highest order. We let the images lead us, reveling in unexpected visual and textual juxtapositions. Together we pared away until we felt we had something we felt was worthy of them.”
Primarily an artist and jazz vocalist, Melissa is also a writer and a third-generation teacher whose eclectic career has included singing jingles, teaching in a women’s correctional facility, and leading art and vocal workshops. As a visual artist she has designed everything from packaging to theater posters to tattoos. She continues to perform regularly with her jazz trio and quartet.
Tirola, also a Westport resident, is an American filmmaker and writer who has worked as a director and executive producer. He is the owner and president of 4th Row Films, a movie and television production company.
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About the Event:
Book Launch: ‘Head Over Heels: Joanne Woodward & Paul Newman, A Love Affair in Words and Pictures’
Tuesday, October 10
7 pm
Westport Library, Trefz Forum
Register (seats are limited)
This fall, comic art, deconstructed case-bound book boards, and visual mixed media all grace the walls of The Westport Library gallery spaces, collecting the unique works of local artists with national attention including Marc Zaref, Niki Ketchman, Rowan MacColl, and Connor McCann.
Connor McCann's instructive exhibition panel
Coinciding with the Neil Gaiman StoryFest Keynote Conversation and Fall 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts lecture (Friday, October 20) is the visual companion in the Sheffer Gallery, Panels & Gutters: The Comic Art of Rowan MacColl and Connor McCann.
The exhibition celebrates the form storytelling in comic art featuring MacColl's and McCann’s illustrations with added panels demonstrating their conceptual and technical process. MacColl and McCann are both recent graduates of Staples High School and the Rhode Island School of Design, navigating the art scene with great success.
Rowan MacColl's process panel for Panels & Gutters: The Comic Art of Rowan MacColl and Connor McCann
MacColl is a comic artist and illustrator whose work has been published in various anthologies and art fairs. MacColl’s latest graphic novel, Who Was Accused in the Salem Witch Trials?: Tituba will be published in September 2023 by Penguin Random House.
McCann is a cartoonist and designer. His critically acclaimed graphic novel God Bless The Machine was published and distributed internationally by Strangers Publishing in 2021, and the highly anticipated follow-up will be released this fall.
The opening reception and artist talk (Thursday, October 19, reception 6-7 pm, artist talk 7-8 pm) will have MacColl and McCann reuniting with their former art teacher, fellow artist, and Westport Artists Collective member Katherine Ross. The conversation will focus on MacColl and McCann’s transition from college to the art world, freelance commissions, the role of social media in art promotion, and their upcoming graphic novels.
Cascade 2023, by multidisciplinary artist Zaref, features a Jesup Gallery site-specific designed installation of recycled, deconstructed case-bound book boards.
“Cascade, along with its description of falling water, is a term in music referencing a progression of notes,” said Zaref. “I took advantage of an unusual feature—a partially open ceiling, a place to begin a cascade, the illusion of an unknown source of the piece—not unlike an underground stream or the mind of a musician.”
The South Gallery hosts Ketchman’s Resinations with mixed media resin 12" x 12" visual works. Over the years, Ketchman has exhibited extensively, including one-person museum exhibitions at the Katonah Museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park. Reviews of her work have appeared in The New York Times, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, and The Boston Globe, among others.
"I start each piece with a 12" x 12" stretched canvas. Then I either paint on the surface of the canvas or adhere a digital print of one of my photos that has often been manipulated in Photoshop,” said Ketchman.
“Once I have the initial image, I spread out many of my materials on a worktable in my studio: fabrics, beads, string, wire, metal ornaments, lace, etc. This is my palette. Once I am satisfied, I pour resin over the whole piece. The resin coating makes the whole piece feel more like an object than a painting or collage. With its shiny and indestructible surface, it is now a Resination."
The two former exhibitions celebrated with an opening reception and artist talk on August 29 moderated by Westport Artist Collective co-founder Miggs Burroughs.
All three exhibitions run through October 25.
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Rounding out the art activity at The Westport Library is The Westport Artists Collective “Affordable Art Trunk Show and Sale” on Sunday, October 1, from 11 am to 4 pm in the lower parking lot adjacent to the Library and Jesup Green (Taylor Lot).
Around 40 members of the Artists Collective of Westport will be displaying their artwork out of the trunk of their cars — all for sale at affordable prices. The Artists Collective of Westport is a vibrant group of 150 creative individuals who have joined forces to discuss, create, and develop dynamic experiences for the Fairfield County community. The collective is open to all active artists in pursuit of expanding their careers and in developing a strong, diverse arts community.
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Artists pictured at top of page, clockwise from top left: Niki Ketchman, Connor McCann, Rowan MacColl (self portrait), and Marc Zaref
L to R: Exhibit Curator Carole Erger-Fass, Ellen Naftalin, artist Charles Joyner, Anne Levine, Joan Miller, MaryEllen Hendricks, and Katherine Ross
Patrons who come into The Westport Library probably don’t think about what it takes to mount the rotating art exhibits that grace the walls of its three dedicated art galleries — or maintain the artwork on the walls throughout the building. The Library’s all-volunteer art committee, along with Westport Library Exhibit Curator Carole Erger-Fass, make it all happen.
Exhibiting original art is a key part of the Library’s programming and is the direct outgrowth of the town’s rich roots as an artist colony. Dating back to the early 1900s, and continuing through today, the Library has been committed to supporting Westport’s visual artists.
During the many years prior to the transformation of the Library in 2019, the esteemed artistic trio of Howard Munce, Leonard Everett Fisher, and Neil Hardy curated the Library’s exhibits of local artists, working in conjunction with then-Exhibit Curator Chris Timmons. In 2011, while contemplating retiring, the committee members recruited Ellen Naftalin and Anne Levine, both active volunteers at the Westport Historical Society; artist and Westpac member Joan Miller; and Westpac Co-Chair and Art Director Erger-Fass to join their crew. At their first official meeting together, Munce, Everett Fisher, and Hardy revealed their plans and turned over their hammers and nails to their new recruits.
Munce and Fisher were also responsible, along with Shirley Land, for assembling the Library’s 100-plus item collection, Black and White Works on Paper. That, along with many paintings, prints, and photographs, make up the Library’s extensive permanent collection. These holdings, plus the dozen or so yearly rotating exhibits, are part of the art committee’s purview. Prior to the transformation project, all the permanent works needed to be photographed, catalogued, and packed up — a painstaking job that Timmons managed with the help of the committee. And once the rebuilding was complete, the team was responsible for rehanging it all in the Library’s new home.
Miggs Burroughs interviews botanical artist Dick Rauh in the Library's Trefz Forum.
In 2020, just before the pandemic, Timmons announced her own retirement as exhibit curator, and the Library subsequently hired Erger-Fass as her successor. Looking to expand the team, Erger-Fass added artist Katherine Ross, photographer MaryEllen Hendricks, and finally, local artist/legend Miggs Burroughs to the team. These three members are also members of the Artists Collective of Westport, bringing a natural synergy with one of the town’s robust artistic resources.
“As a local photographer, I was so honored to be involved in such a forward-thinking institution as The Westport Library,” Hendricks said. “Being a part of the committee has been such a joy for me. Meeting the artists and hanging their work has been very inspiring.”
The committee meets several times a year to discuss and plan the gallery schedule, and generally books ahead about two years. Their goal is to showcase the diversity of Westport’s art scene, including a variety of media. The Sheffer, South, and the Jesup galleries each have three to four shows per calendar year, which Erger-Fass and the committee curate, install, and ultimately de-install. They also host artist receptions and talks, with each member participating in the exhibit process from start to finish.
“I have been on many volunteer committees over the years, and this is by far the most gratifying,” said Naftalin, a 12-year veteran of the committee. “The artists we work with are a diverse group of Westport’s finest, and we try to continue Westport’s tradition of being an artist’s colony.”
On Tuesday, June 6, in partnership with the Connecticut Art Trail, The Westport Library’s Verso University will launch an exploration of the art museum landscape in Connecticut.
Connecticut Art Trail President and longtime Westport resident Carey Weber will present an overview of the organization’s mission and member museums, illustrating the world-class cultural vibrancy that exists throughout the state.
This initial program will take place from 2 to 3 pm on June 6, in the Brooks Place program room on the Library’s main level, adjacent to the Sheffer Art Gallery. Registration is available here.
Verso University is the Library’s lifelong learning and education initiative, serving up year-round offerings of classes, workshops, and lectures designed to further education and learning. Offerings run the gamut of educational opportunities, ranging from one-time lectures to ongoing courses to classes that meet weekly or perhaps monthly.
“This collaboration reinforces our goal with Verso University, which is to provide a valuable regional resource where our patrons can explore new interests and gain insight and knowledge from other members of the local community, the experts among us who have so much to teach — to an audience eager to learn,” said Bill Harmer, Westport Library executive director.
For its latest endeavor, Verso University will bring individual curators and museum directors from the CT Art Trail membership to the Library. Participants will have the opportunity for deeper learning — gaining an insider’s view of the museums, their collections, and history, along with an invitation for an on-site visit.
On July 12, the newly appointed director of the Housatonic Museum of Art, Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye, will present an overview of the Museum’s 7,000-piece collection and upcoming exhibits. (The museum was founded by the late Burt Chernow, a Westport resident and professor emeritus at Housatonic Community College, as well as the husband of renowned Westport artist Ann Chernow.)
Then, on August 2, the director of the The Weir Farm National Historic Site will present an overview about Weir Farm, the only national park service site dedicated to American painting, and the home to three generations of American artists.
The Connecticut Art Trail is a nationally recognized partnership between 23 world-class museums and historic sites, created to promote Connecticut’s rich cultural assets to residents and visitors.
Carey Weber is the Frank and Clara Meditz Executive Director of the Fairfield University Art Museum. She currently serves as president of the Connecticut Art Trail and as the Connecticut representative for the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries.
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Verso University programs are made possible by the generous support of the Nancy J. Beard Lifelong Learning and Education Fund.
The Westport Library is unveiling three new exhibitions for spring, highlighting the work of Connecticut artists Nancy Moore and Charles Douthat as well as the art of the album with a display related to the Chicago blues.
All three exhibits are currently on view and will run through August 8, with Moore’s Women Telling Stories in the Sheffer Gallery, Douthat’s Three Seasons in the South Gallery, and Chicago Blues displaying in the Jesup Gallery.
With a background as a book editor, Moore has internalized the art of storytelling to inform her passion as a painter. She paints primarily on large slices of archival paper, working mainly with watercolor and also with graphite, gouache, metallic paint, colored pencil, and wax crayon. Themes of her work include transformation, ethnography, design, shape-shifting, gender identity, fashion, and creation myth.
Moore (pictured above) is a proud, self-taught artist who revels in the distortion of body proportions and perspectives, with a goal of creating narratives from emotion and instinct that flow from the heart and hand onto the paper. The resulting work resides in many private homes, and in galleries, museums, and other public institutions.
There will be an event and reception on June 4 to celebrate the exhibit, from 2 to 4 pm, with a talk between Moore and Miggs Burroughs at 3 pm.
“How wonderful to have my work hanging here in this glorious space,” Moore said. “I grew up in my neighborhood library in New Haven internalizing the voices of countless authors who entertained me, guided me, and kept me company. I went on to become a book editor, spending 38 years in the company of people compelled to describe the world and to tell stories. Around the edges of that career, I painted — a passion I discovered in childhood and never lost. The need to tell stories, to communicate through my work, has propelled me forward in my career as an artist.”
Douthat is a poet, retired litigator, visual artist, and member of the Artists Collective of Westport. A graduate of Stanford and the University of California, Douthat is a self-taught painter who works within the traditions of abstract expressionism and lyrical abstraction. He began painting 15 years ago, toward the end of a long career as a trial lawyer in New Haven. In 2019, he received an MFA in fine arts from Warren Wilson College.
His paintings, featured individually in many curated and juried shows, were most recently the subject of the one-person exhibition, Everyone Has Feelings, at Metro Art Studios in Bridgeport, and a two-person exhibition, Moving Lines, at the Kershner Gallery in Fairfield.
Douthat will be appearing in the Library on June 14 for a reception and talk with Burroughs, from 6 to 8 pm. The talk kicks off at 7 pm.
“I grew up in Southern California, and though living here for over 40 years, I still can’t make myself like New England winters,” said Douthat. “Partly it’s the cold and the short, dark days. Partly it’s the absence of vivid colors in the world around me. The best I can say for winter is that the more it lingers, the more I long for it to end. And sometimes I’m able to paint out of that longing, as I did this year for the three new works in this exhibit, which were all started and finished during the coldest months. You’ll notice no winter painting among the three. Yet if they’re strong paintings, I suspect that winter walks behind them, that each expresses my winter longing for spring.”
Chicago Blues features albums from the collection of Ellen and Mark Naftalin, the American blues keyboardist who was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 2015. The exhibit features album covers of some of the original blues musicians who made their way to Chicago and changed the face and sound of American music forever.
The Chicago blues evolved from rural country blues following the Great Migration of African Americans from the southern U.S. to the industrial cities of the east, north, and west. The blues was one of the most significant influences on early rock music, with Chuck Berry crediting Muddy Waters and playing with Willie Dixon and others on his early Chess recordings.
Across the Atlantic in the 1960s, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and the Animals brought Chicago blues to a younger audience, while at the same time American artists such as the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, John P. Hammond, and Charlie Musselwhite performed in the style of Chicago blues.
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Pictured above (L to R): Muddy Waters cover, courtesy Ellen and Mark Naftalin; Nimbus, by Nancy Moore; and Spring 40x40, by Charles Douthat
VersoFest is The Westport Library’s annual celebration of music, media, and creativity, four days of innovation, inspiration, and exploration. This year, it will have a special artistic component to match.
The Artists Collective of Westport will be celebrating music through visual arts with a two-part exhibition that will encompass all three of the Library’s galleries — Music to Our Eyes residing in the Sheffer Gallery and the Jesup Gallery, and Piece by Piece in the South Gallery.
The exhibits will run March 4 through May 9, with the reveal of Piece by Piece to be held during a special reception held March 8 from 6 to 8 pm.
“Music to Our Eyes, and its companion exhibit, Piece by Piece, was conceived as a way to add a visual arts component to the VersoFest musical experience,” said Westport Library Exhibit Curator Carole Erger-Fass. “I am thrilled to have the Artists Collective of Westport partner with the Library in this all-member exhibit, which showcases the myriad of ways that artists are inspired by music.”
Piece by Piece is a 6-foot by 10-foot art installation composed of the work of 60 Artists Collective members. Each artist received a 12-inch by 12-inch blank panel along with a 6-inch square section randomly selected from a single iconic music-themed painting. The artists created their individual piece, replicating a part of the larger painting in their own style, without knowing what the final painting will look like until it is revealed at the opening reception.
“The end result,” said Artists Collective founding member and longtime Library supporter Miggs Burroughs, “is an entertaining exercise in community, creativity, and collaboration.”
In addition to Burroughs, those contributing to Piece by Piece include Katherine Ross, Michael Brennecke, Nina Bentley, Susan Fehlinger, Eric Chiang, and Elizabeth DeVoll.
For Music to Our Eyes, each of the Artists Collective members were invited to display a work in the medium of their choice, interpreting music through painting, drawing, photography, and collage.
“The history of visual art has been fundamentally tethered to the history of music,” said Fehlinger. “Many famous artists have credited music as a muse for their work, while some musicians have revealed that art or an artist has been their inspiration. Since antiquity, artists have found inspiration in the songs, instruments, and musicians of their eras for inspiration to push the visual arts forward.
“In this show, over 50 local artists will be exhibiting their musically themed paintings in the Library’s Sheffer Gallery. Some artworks were inspired by a style of music, and some were inspired by a specific piece, but all are related to the artists’ musical experience.”
Each 12-inch by 12-inch “piece” of Piece by Piece will be available for purchase starting the night of the reception. Each square will be $100, with 50% of the proceeds supporting the Library’s art programs and 50% going to the artist. The additional artworks on display in the Sheffer and Jesup Galleries will also be available for purchase, with a percentage of the proceeds going to benefit the Library.
The Artists Collective of Westport is a group of creative individuals who have joined forces to discuss, create, and develop dynamic experiences for the Fairfield County community. The collective is open to all active artists in pursuit of expanding their careers and in developing a strong, diverse arts community.
Exhibit support is provided by The Drew Friedman Community Arts Center.
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Related: Video from the 2021 Piece by Piece exhibition:
Due to predicted inclement weather in the Westport area for Monday, February 27, and Tuesday, February 28, the Spring 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts with renowned artist and musician Richard Butler is being postponed.
The lecture, originally scheduled for Tuesday, February 28, will now be held Saturday, April 1, at 7 pm in the Library’s Trefz Forum. It will still feature Butler in person and in conversation with Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer Chris Frantz, and all currently held tickets will be honored for the rescheduled date and time.
With the rescheduling, the Spring 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts will now be held in conjunction with VersoFest 2023, The Westport Library’s annual music and media festival being held March 30 through April 2.
The April 1 lineup for VersoFest 2023 will now feature Butler, Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club drummer Frantz, and legendary producer Steve Lillywhite, reuniting three of rock’s seminal figures, all of whom rose to international prominence in the late 1970s and 80s. Lillywhite will deliver his festival keynote, a conversation with Frantz, on Saturday, April 1, at 1 pm.
The Spring 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts with Butler will replace the previously scheduled laser light show at VersoFest 2023. The laser light show will be rescheduled for a later date.
“While we’re disappointed Richard won’t be able to join us as planned on February 28, we’re elated that he can be here April 1, and that Chris is able to reschedule as well,” said Bill Harmer, executive director of The Westport Library. “First and foremost, we want to ensure the safety of Richard, Chris, and all who would be traveling to the Library on a potentially snowy and icy evening. Looking ahead, this creates a truly incredible experience, to have Richard join our already incredible VersoFest lineup.”
Butler rose to international fame with the Psychedelic Furs, with the Furs emerging as one of London’s leading post-punk bands in the late 70s. Their self-titled debut, produced by Lillywhite, was Top 20 on the UK Albums Chart, and their run of success continued with six subsequent albums released between 1981 and 1991, including Talk Talk Talk and Forever Now.
Butler put his painting on the backburner to accommodate the Furs’ record promotion and worldwide touring, returning to his first love when the band took an extended hiatus in the early 90s. Since then, he’s kept at it and found a balance between the two endeavors.
With his daughter as his muse, Butler produces expressionistic portraits of female subjects who he said serve as ciphers for himself, smudging, distorting, and overlaying patterns onto his models’ faces to create what has been described as “dynamic compositions that are at once naturalistic and hallucinatory.”
“In a way,” said Butler, “I think all of my paintings are self-portraits in that, though the face I am painting may not be my own, the feeling I get back from the painting is certainly an important element of my own psyche.”
Butler’s work has been featured worldwide, with the artist having launched exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Berlin, and at other prestigious galleries across the globe.
Despite the shift in artistic expression, Butler has continued to create music with several side projects. He also released a solo album in 2006, and in 2020 he put out the first new Psychedelic Furs album in nearly 30 years, which was met with international chart success and rave reviews from both fans and critics alike.
Past Malloy Lecture programs have included Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; distinguished playwright Arthur Miller; artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude; musicians Joshua Bell and Frederic Chiu; U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins; Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation; author Joyce Carol Oates; cartoonist Roz Chast; actor Christopher Plummer; stage, film, and theater star John Lithgow; preeminent classical dancer Jacques d'Amboise; music legend Clive Davis; author Salman Rushdie; Falsettos: In Conversation; Bernstein on Broadway; playwright, actor, and educator Anna Deavere Smith; and Tony Award-winning actress Kelli O’Hara in conversation with renowned American theater director Bartlett Sher.
There will be a livestream broadcast of the Spring 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts, and a recording will be featured afterward on The Westport Library YouTube channel.
The Malloy Lecture in the Arts is made possible by a generous contribution from Westport artist Susan Malloy. The Westport Library created the lecture series in 2002 as a free, public discussion by an individual who has had a significant cultural influence and whose work has enhanced the understanding and appreciation of the arts.
Before he was musician, and long before he was a rock star, Richard Butler was a painter. He studied at Epsom Art School outside London and brought that work to bear in the artwork and designs for his band, the Psychedelic Furs, with whom he has gained international acclaim.
An artist in the truest sense — both as a painter and a musician — Butler will serve as the guest of honor at the February 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts, to be held in The Westport Library’s Trefz Forum on Tuesday, February 28, at 7 pm.
Butler’s appearance is the first of two Malloy lectures planned for 2023, following a brief hiatus; the normally annual series was last held in November 2021, featuring Broadway star Kelli O’Hara in conversation with renowned American theater director Bartlett Sher. The second 2023 lecture will be held in the late fall or early winter.
The Malloy Lecture in the Arts is made possible by a generous contribution from Westport artist Susan Malloy. The Westport Library created the lecture series in 2002 as a free, public discussion by an individual who has had a significant cultural influence and whose work has enhanced the understanding and appreciation of the arts.
“It is an honor beyond measure to welcome Richard to our forum and our stage,” said Bill Harmer, executive director of The Westport Library. “He is, without question, the ideal guest for our reprisal of the Malloy Lecture in the Arts — perhaps best known for his time with the Psychedelic Furs but also an artist of great acclaim and immeasurable talent. I can’t wait for our community to get to hear from him.”
Butler will be joined at the Library by famed American musician, record producer, and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Chris Frantz, the drummer for both Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, which he co-founded with wife and Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth.
“I have known Richard since 1980, when the Psychedelic Furs toured with Talking Heads,” said Frantz. “They were a darn good band then and still are. Having seen Richard’s paintings in his New York gallery and in his studio, he brings something great and unique unto himself to the work. I look forward to our conversation and learning more about what inspires him and how making music and painting continue to turn him on.”
Butler rose to international fame with the Psychedelic Furs starting in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, with the Furs emerging as one of London’s leading post-punk bands. Their self-titled debut, produced by VersoFest headliner Steve Lillywhite, was Top 20 on the UK Albums Chart, and their run of success continued with six subsequent albums released between 1981 and 1991, including Talk Talk Talk and Forever Now.
Butler put his painting on the backburner to accommodate the Furs’ record promotion and worldwide touring, returning to his first love when the band took an extended hiatus in the early 90s. Since then, he’s kept at it and found a balance between the two endeavors.
With his daughter as his muse, Butler produces expressionistic portraits of female subjects who he said serve as ciphers for himself, smudging, distorting, and overlaying patterns onto his models’ faces to create what has been described as “dynamic compositions that are at once naturalistic and hallucinatory.”
“In a way," said Butler, “I think all of my paintings are self-portraits in that, though the face I am painting may not be my own, the feeling I get back from the painting is certainly an important element of my own psyche.”
Butler’s work has been featured worldwide, with the artist having launched exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Berlin, and at other prestigious galleries across the globe.
Despite the shift in artistic expression, Butler has continued to create music with several side projects. He also released a solo album in 2006, and in 2020 he put out the first new Psychedelic Furs album in nearly 30 years, which was met with international chart success and rave reviews from both fans and critics alike.
In addition to O’Hara and Sher, past Malloy Lecture programs have included Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; distinguished playwright Arthur Miller; artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude; musicians Joshua Bell and Frederic Chiu; U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins; Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation; author Joyce Carol Oates; cartoonist Roz Chast; actor Christopher Plummer; stage, film, and theater star John Lithgow; preeminent classical dancer Jacques d'Amboise; music legend Clive Davis; author Salman Rushdie; Falsettos: In Conversation; Bernstein on Broadway; and playwright, actor, and educator Anna Deavere Smith.
All seats have already been reserved for the in-person component of the February 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts. There will be a livestream of the conversation, however, and a recording will be featured afterward on The Westport Library YouTube channel.
Three new installations will grace The Westport Library walls starting in December, headlined by Dick Rauh: A Botanical Retrospective, an exhibit featuring botanical paintings from the 97-year-old longtime Westporter that will hang in the Library’s Sheffer Gallery from December 5, 2022, through February 28, 2023. There will also be a special artist talk and reception with Rauh and host Miggs Burroughs on January 29, 2023, in the Trefz Forum.
Also coming to the Library in December is Speak to Me, an exhibit of woven art by local artist Tina Puckett, and a series of eight works from the Westport Public Art Collections (WestPAC), titled Musical Notes.
“I am extremely fortunate to be granted the ability to continue to function as well as I do as the years pass,” said Rauh, who took up botanical painting in retirement, after a long career in motion pictures special effects. “Spread along these walls are the results of what I have observed looking closely at flowers over the years. Whether in my quest for the accurate I have managed to bring a personal statement is for you to judge. It is enough for me that you will look at flowers in a way you never have before.”
Rauh won the gold medal and Best in Show awards at the 2006 Royal Horticultural Society Show in London, and his work is in the permanent collections of the Lindley Library in London; the Shirley Sherwood Collection in Kew Gardens, London; the New York State Museum; and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University. He has served as an instructor in the botanical illustration certificate program at the New York Botanical Gardens since 1994 and was named its Teacher of the Year in 2010. He also teaches widely in local senior centers.
Puckett’s work will be displayed in the South Gallery and run December 6 through February 2023. Puckett specializes in baskets woven from natural materials, in particular the bittersweet vine, a source of inspiration she described as a happy accident.
“Sometimes, the path in life that we chose to take comes in the form of an unexpected gift,” said Puckett. “In 1981, my mother gave me a gift for an adult education basket weaving class. … It didn’t take me long before I became bored with weaving traditional baskets. I started to look for natural materials grown locally that I could incorporate into different woven forms. One brilliant autumn day when I was foraging for grapevine, I came across the bittersweet vine, and it was love at first sight. Going on 40-plus years, I have never looked back and continue to forage for Native American bittersweet vines and imagine the fantastic forms that we will create together.”
The WestPAC exhibit will also go up December 6, in the Jesup Gallery, and remain on display through the end of February. The exhibit includes works that pay tribute to the performing arts in Westport and features artists Susan Malloy, Ann Chernow, Larry Silver, and Paul Rand, among others.
“Dick Rauh is a local treasure, and we are absolutely thrilled to host this retrospective of his larger-than-life, beautifully detailed botanical paintings in the Sheffer Gallery,” said Carole Erger-Fass, exhibits curator at the Library. “At the same time, in the South Gallery, Tina Puckett’s whimsical woven art, created out of bittersweet and other local materials, delights the viewer, offering a distinctly different way to experience the natural world around us. And for these works to be joined by so many great pieces from WestPAC is a true treat for us and a gift to everyone who visits and who will pass through our space in the coming months.”
For more on the Library’s art collection and upcoming events, visit our Art at the Library webpage.
