Join us on Wednesday, May 27 for our a reception and artist talk with visual artists Mari Gyorgyey (Rooms in Bloom) and Fruma Markowitz (Willful Alchemy), joined by Westport artist Miggs Burroughs. Both exhibits will be on display April 9 through May 31.
The reception will take place from 6 to 7 pm, followed by an artist talk from 7 to 8 pm.
Mari Gyorgyey is best known for her narrative art which flows into book arts, drawings, paintings, computer imagery, and printmaking. She is not afraid to mix all of these techniques to communicate her unorthodox themes — some of which are Dogs in Dresses, Tweens in Weight Loss Camp, and Snippets of the Lives of the Romanov's. Mari’s artwork is influenced by living in communist Hungary, and suburban America. Her work has the passion of European Expressionism with the visual superficiality of Technicolor films. Her work seems offbeat...but at closer glance is strangely approachable and empathetic to our human condition. Mari currently teaches mixed media, printmaking and the artists book as well as Procreate for Artists at the Rowayton Arts center.
Fruma Markowitz’s photography practice focuses on historical, experimental, and hand-made processes, with an emphasis on cyanotype and lumen photography, textile-based mixed-media collage, and most recently one-of-a-kind photobooks. Family life, womanhood, cultural histories with shared legacies, and environmental concerns are where she mostly draws inspiration for making images.
***
For more about the Library's art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
Miggs Burroughs
Healing Power of Art
Jesup Gallery
April 9 through May 31
Reception: Wednesday, May 27, 6-8 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by a conversation between Markowitz, fellow featured artist Mari Gyorgyey, and Miggs Burroughs at 7 pm.)
Willful Alchemy is a collection of lumen prints, most of which were created during my September 2022 artist residency at the Weir Farm National Park in Wilton. For 21 days I had the freedom to research and experiment with several camera-less, experimental photographic processes, as well as photograph freely around the farm. I lived in the old caretaker's house, rising early to set out my lumen compositions in the sun, take long walks along the forest trails, and build a new body of work.
Every day I made at least one lumen print, gradually creating a visual diary of my time at the farm. Lumens are photographic images made on classic analog black and white darkroom paper. I used the naturally growing plant life on the farm to create my daily compositions by layering the botanical matter on top of the paper, covering with a sheet of glass, and leaving them to expose outdoors for several hours. The fantastical colors are made as the chemicals inherent in each brand of manufactured paper are activated by the sun combined with the bleeding of the plants' own phytochemicals into the paper as they are heated up by the sun. The resulting images are magical, unexpected, and often quite abstract.
While there I also photographed John Weir’s barn studio and home with the intention of one day creating a handmade artist book, combining his work and mine as two artists having a relationship — engaged with an identical landscape, albeit separated by both process and time. Willful Alchemy is the commencement of this work. It is the ecological foundation upon which more complex images will follow.
Fruma Markowitz’s photography practice focuses on historical, experimental, and hand-made processes, with an emphasis on cyanotype and lumen photography, textile-based mixed-media collage, and most recently one-of-a-kind photobooks. Family life, womanhood, cultural histories with shared legacies, and environmental concerns are where she mostly draws inspiration for making images.
A resident of Connecticut since 2003, she belongs to local artist organizations such as The Artists’ Collective of Westport and the Ridgefield Guild of Artists. Fruma’s work has been shown nationally at the SoHo Photo Gallery in New York, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts, The Halide Project in Philadelphia, RICPA in Providence, and she is represented by the CAMP Gallery in Miami. A full portfolio publication and review of her work was featured in DekUnu Arts (2023), FLOAT Magazine (2024), and Lenscratch (Oct. 2024). She had a solo show featuring her cyanotype and lumen work at the Grover Gallery in Port Townsend, Washington in September, 2025.
Fruma won Honorable Mentions from the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers (2022, 2023). She has received three materials grants (2020, 2022, 2024) through the Drew Friedman Fund. In July 2025, she won the Arthur Griffin Legacy Award at the Griffin Museum Juried Members Exhibition. She completed an Artist Residency at the Weir Farm Nature Preserve in September 2022.
Fruma taught photography to women in crisis at the Project Return home in Westport and to cancer survivors at The Creative Center in New York, and more recently at her private home studio, The Carriage Barn Art Center, and the Five Points Art Center. In July 2022, she participated in a panel at the Exp22 FotoFest in Barcelona, Spain, on cyanotype in contemporary art practice. In July, 2025, Fruma was invited to return to the Experimental FotoFest to lead two workshops and participate in a panel on artist hand-made books. In September 2024 Fruma led a cyanotype workshop at the Northwind Arts Center in Port Townsend, WA, and will return to the area in June, 2026 to teach cyanotype for textile artists at NorthWest Arts Center, on Whidbey Island, WA. Fruma was a member of the first graduating class (1984) to earn a BFA in photography at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Jerusalem, Israel, where she was the recipient of the Agfa Award, the Jerusalem Student Award and numerous merit scholarships.
***
For more about the Library's art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
South Gallery
April 9 through May 31
Reception: Wednesday, May 27, 6-8 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by a conversation between Gyorgyey, fellow featured artist Fruma Markowitz, and Miggs Burroughs at 7 pm.)
Flowers, like the figure, have historically been the standard of beauty that artists use to showcase their styles. My interest in flowers and furniture is not the beauty of them but the contrast of their characters against the environments that they are in.
How does their character effect their space, how does it effect themselves — these are the issues which define the success of these paintings.
Every flower I make has an attitude and a reason behind it.
Mari Gyorgyey is best known for her narrative art which flows into book arts, drawings, paintings, computer imagery, and printmaking. She is not afraid to mix all of these techniques to communicate her themes.
Since earning her BFA from RISD, and MFA from UPENN, Gyorgyey has shown her work domestically and internationally with solo shows in Budapest, Hungary, New York, and places in Connecticut. She has won printmaking awards from UPENN, Dharma Silk Company, and the Center for Contemporary Printmaking.
Some of Gyorgyey’s unorthodox themes are Dogs in Dresses, Tweens in Weight Loss Camp, and Snippets of the Lives of the Romanov's.
Mari’s artwork is influenced by living in communist Hungary, and suburban America. Her work has the passion of European Expressionism with the visual superficiality of Technicolor films. Her work seems offbeat...but at closer glance is strangely approachable and empathetic to our human condition.
Mari currently teaches mixed media, printmaking and the artists book as well as Procreate for Artists at the Rowayton Arts center.
***
For more about the Library's art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
Celebrate Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22 with a reception and artist talk with visual artist and environmental activist kHyal, joined by Westport artist Miggs Burroughs. Her exhibit Signs of the Times will be on display April 8 through May 31.
The reception will take place from 6 to 7 pm, followed by an artist talk from 7 to 8 pm.
Signs of the Times is an ongoing series by kHyal. Complex, and unclassifiable, kHyal’s mixed media work riffs off of pop culture icons and performs like a Rorschach Test in a behavioral science lab, tugging at the neurons of each viewer, and born to challenge perceptions. Using ordinary objects snatched from dumpsters, recycle centers, flea markets, tag sales, thrift stores, the ocean, and the street — assembled with raw precision in a dazzling cacophony of visual clutter — each piece decidedly explodes the human-centric flaws, foibles, and sometimes tragic outcomes of a plastic society.
kHyal’s work is an archeological dig, an observation of the mess we call mankind, in a rearrangement of the discarded ordinary into an awkward form of self-portraiture through vignettes of childhood memory, sometimes blended with current events.
kHyal is a self-taught environmental activist and digital art pioneer who has worked with recycled materials since the early 1980s. She created street art and found-object sculpture in Los Angeles before moving to New Haven, where she was among the first wave of self-taught artists to use personal computers to create immersive multimedia installations and live MIDI performances incorporating video and computer animation.
Sustainability has long been central to kHyal’s practice. She is a Certified Climate Reality Leader, a Beyond Plastics advocate trained by former EPA administrator Judith Enck, and a Project Limulus Beach Captain conducting horseshoe crab conservation as a citizen scientist along the Connecticut coast. She is a graduate of the NYC Department of Sanitation’s Trash Academy and a Save the Sound Cleanup Captain, and is a member of Clean Creatives, Break Free from Plastic, and the Plastic Pollution Coalition.
From 2022–23, kHyal was part of the global team invited by Seth Godin to support climate action through The Carbon Almanac. She spearheaded the online sustainable fashion resource guide, contributed to the LinkedIn Learning course 34 Things to Know About Carbon and Climate, created content for The Daily Difference, and produced a standalone event as part of the worldwide book signing. The Carbon Almanac received the “Most Insightful Data Book” award for Data Literacy.
kHyal has been an invited speaker at the Yale School of Sustainability, a featured guest on the Climate Gist and EarthWork Collective podcasts, and a recipient of a Connecticut Office of the Arts Artists Respond grant for an environmental justice project. She has also spoken on climate and plastic pollution at NYPL, MoCA CT, the School of Visual Arts, the Connecticut Art Directors Club’s As We Create podcast, and Earthworks: Unhurried Conversations.
***
For more about the Library's art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
Miggs Burroughs
Healing Power of Art
Sheffer Gallery
April 8 through May 31
Reception: Wednesday, April 22, 6-8 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by a conversation between kHyal and Miggs Burroughs at 7 pm.)
Signs of the Times is an ongoing series by kHyal. Complex, and unclassifiable, kHyal’s mixed media work riffs off of pop culture icons and performs like a Rorschach Test in a behavioral science lab, tugging at the neurons of each viewer, and born to challenge perceptions. Using ordinary objects snatched from dumpsters, recycle centers, flea markets, tag sales, thrift stores, the ocean, and the street — assembled with raw precision in a dazzling cacophony of visual clutter — each piece decidedly explodes the human-centric flaws, foibles, and sometimes tragic outcomes of a plastic society.
The work speaks to our imperfections and glazed ideals, actions taken on that which we once professed to love. What we aspired to yesterday is what we throw away today — leaving our emotional bonds, saliva, bite marks, and fingerprints behind — often on objects made from materials that will never decompose, and would otherwise be left to the landfills, in shapes we form attachments to, then get bored with because they have no real meaning. Glitter, rhinestones, rainbows, and unicorns. Overused clichés and superficial samenesses. A vernacular of nothingness.
kHyal’s work is an archeological dig, an observation of the mess we call mankind, in a rearrangement of the discarded ordinary into an awkward form of self-portraiture through vignettes of childhood memory, sometimes blended with current events. Via a highly personal saga, the past is unearthed and merged with the future in stories told through the immediacy of quickly juxtaposed objects, much like when children who suffer trauma are asked by psychologists to visualize their experience through puppets or drawings. Through each story, obscurity surfaces in a remix of the banal malaise of society at large into a contemporary primordial ooze. Here, we journey into microcosms where what was unwanted, rejected and discarded becomes elevated and seen anew — bringing with it an awareness of the urgency for action.
Sustainability has always been a center point for kHyal. She is a member of Beyond Plastics, Clean Creatives, and Break Free from Plastic, and is a Certified Climate Reality Leader. From 2022–23, she was part of the team invited by best-selling author Seth Godin to rally for climate action. As a cross-functional collaborator, writer and strategist, her work included spearheading the online Sustainable Fashion Resource Guide, contributing to the LinkedIn Learning course “34 Things to Know About Carbon and Climate,” creating content for “The Daily Difference,” and producing a standalone event as part of the global book signing event for The Carbon Almanac. (Which won the “Most Insightful Data Book” award for Data Literacy). She has been an invited speaker at the Yale School of Sustainability, a featured guest on the Climate Gist, EarthWork Collective, and Salvage podcasts, and received a CoA Artists Respond grant for an environmental justice project. In 2025, she completed the Sanitation Foundation’s NYC Trash Academy certification program.
The history of my work evolves with time, although shaped primarily through childhood experiences in the physical world, which were mapped by psychological mysteries. My obsession with the ecosystem of the ocean tidal pools while summering on Money Island, one of the Thimble Islands off the coast of Stony Creek, Connecticut. Endless hours of observing the sun glinting refractions across the skin of the water, sea glass, bits of mica, barnacle-adorned shell fragments, miniature fish babies, tiny crabs, anemones, star fish, tangled seaweed shaped in jello molds, like chunky Lucite souvenir paper weights, dense collages of constant change metered by my own internal complexities and shifts of mood. A sense of wonder, magnetized toward found objects and how relationships form in color, juxtaposition, emotion – a private world where I am continuously lost.
kHyal is a self-taught environmental activist and digital art pioneer who has worked with recycled materials since the early 1980s. She created street art and found-object sculpture in Los Angeles before moving to New Haven, where she was among the first wave of self-taught artists to use personal computers to create immersive multimedia installations and live MIDI performances incorporating video and computer animation. She was a member of the Amiga Users Group at Yale University.
Her analog collage and assemblage work was first exhibited in the early years of the Outsider Art Fair through Henry Boxer Gallery, London, and was featured in Raw Vision magazine. This work has been shown by Margaret Bodell, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, The Folk Art Society, and the American Visionary Art Museum.
Simultaneously, through her digital work, she was featured in Rhizome (now part of the New Museum), became active in Manhattan’s nascent Silicon Alley scene, and cofounded an Internet users group at a time when professional creatives working with computers were rare. She also cofounded blowtorch, a women-owned digital agency and software development firm based in New Haven. Her simulated AI-based sculpture was included in Ricco/Maresca’s 1994 exhibition CODE, an international digital art exhibition sponsored by Microsoft and Softimage, and her work was shown at 55 Broad Street, Manhattan’s first wired network building. She appeared on Cherry Bomb, Art Dirt, and The Silicon Alley Reporter through the livestreaming arts and technology network Pseudo, and in 1997 launched her own pilot livestreaming show at the New York Film Academy in partnership with OnlineTV.
Working fluidly between analog and digital media, kHyal continues to explore identity, technology, and material reuse. Under the registered trademark MegaGlam, she creates mixed-media art, wearables, illustration, and character design. She is the creator of The Weather sKwirl™, an alter ego for which she produced an original cartoon daily for 730 consecutive days between 2010 and 2012. This project led to media attention, inclusion in art books, public art commissions, private sales, and a product line featured in stores, galleries, art fairs, and street art venues internationally. Her original art and product designs were featured in dedicated branded sections at P!Q locations in Grand Central Terminal and Rockefeller Center.
Her sustainable fashion–based work examines body image and the artist as a kinetic sculpture. Built around the performance of everyday actions, this evolving practice uses color, pattern, messaging, and movement as tools for personal and collective social engagement. Current iterations focus on activism and advocacy related to human rights, climate action, plastic pollution reduction, and nature conservation.
Sustainability has long been central to kHyal’s practice. She is a Certified Climate Reality Leader, a Beyond Plastics advocate trained by former EPA administrator Judith Enck, and a Project Limulus Beach Captain conducting horseshoe crab conservation as a citizen scientist along the Connecticut coast. She is a graduate of the NYC Department of Sanitation’s Trash Academy and a Save the Sound Cleanup Captain, and is a member of Clean Creatives, Break Free from Plastic, and the Plastic Pollution Coalition.
From 2022–23, kHyal was part of the global team invited by Seth Godin to support climate action through The Carbon Almanac. She spearheaded the online sustainable fashion resource guide, contributed to the LinkedIn Learning course 34 Things to Know About Carbon and Climate, created content for The Daily Difference, and produced a standalone event as part of the worldwide book signing. The Carbon Almanac received the “Most Insightful Data Book” award for Data Literacy.
kHyal has been an invited speaker at the Yale School of Sustainability, a featured guest on the Climate Gist and EarthWork Collective podcasts, and a recipient of a Connecticut Office of the Arts Artists Respond grant for an environmental justice project. She has also spoken on climate and plastic pollution at NYPL, MoCA CT, the School of Visual Arts, the Connecticut Art Directors Club’s As We Create podcast, and Earthworks: Unhurried Conversations.
Her fine art and design work has appeared in Raw Vision, Artforum, ARTnews, ArtSlant, Flavorpill, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Culture, Fashion, Gothamist, Nylon, Time Out New York, La Gazette Drouot, and Whitehot, and on CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, NBC News, Fox News, HBO, and Vice News. Her work has been exhibited at the American Visionary Art Museum, Pictoplasma (Berlin), the New Britain Museum of American Art, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), the Outsider Art Fair, Intuit (Chicago), EGGO Arte (Buenos Aires), Cooper Union, Henry Boxer (London), City Museum (DC), Miami Art Week, La Luz de Jesus (Los Angeles), and the Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center in association with the Smithsonian Institution.
kHyal has served as Chief Creative Officer on experiential design for digital projects for the Whitney Museum of American Art, Lincoln Center, BRIC Arts Media, BAM, and the New York Public Library. She continues to work with emerging technologies and currently writes about AI for leading cybersecurity companies, while just as readily creates analog sculptures from ocean and landfill plastics and writes poetry by hand on vintage paper.
***
For more about the Library's art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
Join us on Wednesday, March 25 for our reception and artist talk with VersoFest 2026 featured visual artists Holly Danger (Lighthouse) and Sean Williams (The SneakerVangelisT), joined by Westport artist Miggs Burroughs. Both exhibits will be on display from March 20 through April 5.
There will be a reception from 6 to 7 pm, followed by an artist talk from 7 to 8 pm.
Lighthouse is a video art installation that reminds us that we project light into the world for ourselves and each other. As you move through this exhibit, you’ll be surrounded by thousands of colorful strings lining the perimeter of gallery. These soft, polyester strings are illuminated by projections and synchronized to an original soundscape, featuring a 10 minute original art piece.
The strings create a magical atmosphere as they dance with the natural airflow, abstracting the projections and spilling shadows and light around the room. The projected imagery is mostly abstract, featuring slow movement, vibrant colors, nature scenes, and original drawings from Danger, which offer uplifting messages.
This installation naturally invites participation — Viewers are invited to touch, interact, and take photos with the string. There will also be faux fur rugs and floor pillows for lounging and comfortably observing the artwork in a relaxing, inspirational space.
The SneakerVangelisT, named after Sean Williams' self-proclaimed moniker in the sneaker world, display an array of digital graphic-based works.
Sneakers are wearable art that serve both self expression and function simultaneously. Some sneaker models offer an ideal canvas for artistic expression, while others make the perfect muse. This exhibit provides examples for both of these roles by showcasing unique “one of one” pieces. Some of sneaker culture’s most iconic and classic models are featured in these works. Each piece is a statement piece that declares a love and appreciation for kicks.
***
For more about the Library art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
Miggs Burroughs
Healing Power of Art
In the South and Jesup Galleries
March 20 through April 5
Reception and Artist Talk: Wednesday, March 25, 6-8 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by an artist talk at 7 pm with Williams, Westport artist Miggs Burroughs, and fellow VersoFest 2026 artist Holly Danger.)
About the Exhibit
In The Westport Library's South and Jesup Galleries, Sean "Opus 1" Williams presents The SneakerVangelisT, an exhibit named after his self-proclaimed moniker in the sneaker world. These works are presented as part of VersoFest 2026, the Library's annual music and media festival and conference.
Sneakers are wearable art that serve both self expression and function simultaneously. Some sneaker models offer an ideal canvas for artistic expression, while others make the perfect muse.
This exhibit provides examples for both of these roles by showcasing unique “one of one” pieces. Some of sneaker culture’s most iconic and classic models are featured in an array of digital graphic-based works. Each piece is a statement piece that declares a love and appreciation for kicks.
About the Artist
Sean “Opus 1” Williams (also known as the SneakerVangelisT) is a multi-hyphenate creative born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is most notably known worldwide in the sneaker world as a consultant, teacher, and exhibition curator. He has curated exhibitions in partnership with organizations such as The Mana Contemporary in New Jersey, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He has even curated a sneaker exhibition for the Congressional Sneaker Caucus on Capital Hill. Since 2013, Williams has curated or co-curated exhibitions that have been experienced by over 13 million people worldwide.
In the Sheffer Gallery
March 20 through April 5
Reception and Artist Talk: Wednesday, March 25, 6-8 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by an artist talk at 7 pm with Danger, Westport artist Miggs Burroughs, and fellow VersoFest 2026 artist Sean Williams.)
About the Exhibit
Stamford-based video artist Holly Danger presents Lighthouse, an immersive art experience on display in the Sheffer Gallery as part of VersoFest 2026, The Westport Library's annual music and media festival and conference.
Lighthouse is a video art installation that reminds us that we project light into the world for ourselves and each other. As you move through this exhibit, you’ll be surrounded by thousands of colorful strings lining the perimeter of gallery. These soft, polyester strings are illuminated by projections and synchronized to an original soundscape, featuring a 10 minute original art piece.
The strings create a magical atmosphere as they dance with the natural airflow, abstracting the projections and spilling shadows and light around the room. The projected imagery is mostly abstract, featuring slow movement, vibrant colors, nature scenes, and original drawings from Danger, which offer uplifting messages.
This installation naturally invites participation — Viewers are invited to touch, interact, and take photos with the string. There will also be faux fur rugs and floor pillows for lounging and comfortably observing the artwork in a relaxing, inspirational space. We do kindly ask that viewers refrain from spinning, hanging, or running through the strings to ensure everyone’s safety and preserve the artwork’s integrity.
About the Artist
The project is created and produced by husband and wife team, artist Holly Danger and Jeff Schram. Together, they form a two-person collaborative team that create bespoke immersive experiences around the world.
Holly leads the visual design, while Jeff runs tech and composes original music that synchronizes seamlessly with the visuals. With years of experience working together on immersive installations, performances, and projection-based artworks, they bring a shared vision and passion to every project.
Danger's art combines motion, light, and sound to create joyful, immersive experiences, that invite you to step into and become a part of the art.
Some of her favorite projects to date have been creating an immersive art experience for the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, performing at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, her first international exhibit at the K Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, and creating large scale string projection installations at the Ignite Light + Art Festival in Ft. Lauderdale and at the MAD Arts Museum at Dania Beach.
Danger was honored to receive an award for Most Innovative at the Digital Graffiti Festival and most recently received the Connecticut Artist Fellowship Award.
This winter, The Westport Library is featuring Building Bridges Through Storytelling, a multi-gallery quilting exhibition currently spanning the Library’s Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries now through March 17, 2026. Like a patchwork quilt itself, the show weaves together three distinct yet interconnected exhibits — each exploring how art, memory, and narrative bind communities across generations and geographies.
In the Sheffer Gallery, the Southern Connecticut Modern Quilt Guild (SCTMQG) presents original quilts inspired by the exhibition’s theme. Building Bridges Through Storytelling highlights quilting as both a creative practice and a powerful storytelling medium. These works reflect shared experiences with a modern sensibility, from the pandemic to everyday acts of resilience.
A reception and artist talk for the exhibit will be held Thursday, January 15, from 6 to 8 pm. The reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by an artist talk at 7 pm with Westport artist Miggs Burroughs and a panel of quilters featured in the exhibit.
Founded more than a decade ago, SCTMQG is dedicated to advancing modern quilting through art, education, and community engagement. The Guild also supports regional nonprofits, creating and donating quilts and pillowcases to organizations including Homes with Hope, Susie’s House, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, and others.
The Guild’s first connection with author, educator, and quilting expert Tangular Irby laid the foundation for the interwoven saga of this three-part exhibition. At a SCTMQG meeting in 2023, Irby shared her family’s quilting traditions rooted in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, which migrated north as members of the Gee’s Bend community settled in Bridgeport, carrying their craft with them.
“While our footprints may fade, our stories can live on,” Irby said of her work in sharing and celebrating her quilting heritage.
This exchange between Irby and SCTMQG sparked a beautiful collaboration honoring the enduring journey of Gee’s Bend quilting across generations and geography. The resulting exhibit, A Traveling Legacy: From Gee’s Bend to the Nutmeg State, is now on display in the South Gallery. It showcases quilts crafted by Gee’s Bend descendants now residing in Connecticut.
This textile anthology traces the enduring legacy of Dinah Miller, one of the first documented Gee’s Bend quilters who was captured and brought to America from Benin, Africa. Her lasting impact lives in the patterned similarities these quilts share with traditional Benin weaving, preserving a storied history branching from Africa to Alabama to Bridgeport.
A reception and community talk with Irby and her fellow Gee’s Bend descendants, Eula Pettway and Sandra Juliet Pettway, will take place on Saturday, January 31, from 1 to 3 pm. A quilt sale will also take place from 12 to 5 pm that same day, offering a chance for Westport’s vibrant art community to participate in the interconnected narrative.
Described by the New York Times as “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced,” Gee’s Bend quilts are celebrated worldwide and held in major museum collections. Known for their bold, abstract designs and vivid cultural expression, these quilts tell stories of faith, strength, and creativity that span generations. Their patterns and piecing styles have been enduringly passed down, surviving slavery and Jim Crow. They are a testament to the power of storytelling, expanding the realm of Black visual culture and opening doors to new understandings of American art and history.
While the respective work of SCTMQG and the Gee’s Bend quilters is showcased individually in the other galleries, their artistry comes together in the final piece in this exhibition. Uniting both exhibits is the Jesup Gallery’s centerpiece quilt, Building Bridges, collaboratively created by members of SCTMQG, the Bridgeport Gee’s Bend community, and quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Each community offers their own stories stitched into every seam.
Excitingly, the collaborative quilt will enter a new chapter when it finds a home in The Westport Library’s permanent art collection. This honored exchange will take place before the Building Bridges artist talk at 7 pm on Thursday, January 15.
Through striking designs and thoughtfully layered textiles, Building Bridges Through Storytelling invites viewers to reflect on how art preserves heritage and creates new narratives. Woven throughout this exhibition are stories of life, love, resilience, and community — a powerful reminder that storytelling, like quilting itself, continues to build bridges of understanding across generations.
For more information about the exhibition and related programs, visit the Art at the Library page.
In the Jesup Gallery
December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026
This winter, The Westport Library will feature a multi-gallery quilting exhibition that will span the Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries from December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026. Like a patchwork quilt itself, the show will weave together three distinct yet interconnected exhibits — each exploring how art and narrative bind communities across generations and geographies.
Uniting the exhibits in the Jesup Gallery is Building Bridges, a centerpiece quilt collaboratively created by members of the Southern Connecticut Modern Quilt Guild, the Bridgeport Gee’s Bend community, and quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The quilt will be presented as a gift to The Westport Library’s permanent art collection, symbolizing creativity, connection, and storytelling stitched into every seam.
Through thread and fabric, this unique and meaningful art exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how art preserves history — and how communities continue to create beauty, meaning, and understanding together.
Gee's Bend Artist Statement
We are not an organization. We are women bound by our Gee's Bend connections and roots. Many of us are related. We are the descendants Dinah Miller, who was captured and abducted in Benin, Africa and illegally transported to Alabama in 1860 aboard the Clotilda, the last known U.S. slave ship. She is credited as one of the first documented quilters in Gee's Bend. I had been told many years ago that the way the women in Gee's Bend quilt is very similar to how the women in Benin weave. Now we know why.
About the Guild
Southern Connecticut Modern Quilt Guild is a community of 42 artists focused on modern quilting for the last 11 years. The Guild offers a space where people can meet, share, learn and create. Interested in advancing modern quilting and supporting growth through art, education, and community. While they focus on modern quilting and are part of the National Modern Quilt Guild, SCTMQG welcomes all quilters and fiber artists. Like the national guild, they seek to foster an inclusive environment built on encouragement and mutual respect where all are welcome.
As a 5O1(c)(3) organization, SCTMQG provides quilts and pillowcases to local organizations in line with their mission and nonprofit status. They have provided quilts for Susie’s House and Homes with Hope in Westport, as well as California Fire Victims. They have partnered with Columbus House in New Haven, providing quilts and pillow cases for people experiencing homelessness. They have also supplied pillowcases to Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Harford,and Elizabeth Seton Children’s Center in White Plains.
Learning is a large part of the guild. Members of the guild teach one another, and additionally have teachers come in and teach different quilting techniques, lessons on color, and expand on the history of quilting, fiber, and sewing machines. They host biannual retreats in the spring and fall and meet twice per month to commune, sew together, and work on charity quilts.
Community is very important to SCTMQG. Two years ago, the guild met Tangular Irby when she spoke with her Bridgeport Gees Bend family and friends. She came to a guild meeting and taught about her family in Gees Bend, Alabama, and their quilt making; and she shared her quilts with and spoke about how many from Gees Bend transitioned to Bridgeport, continuing their quilting.
***
For more about the Library art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
Join us for a very special reception, artist talk, and quilt sale for A Traveling Legacy: From Gee's Bend to the Nutmeg State in the Library's South Gallery, showcasing quilts crafted by descendants of the celebrated Gee’s Bend, Alabama, who are now based in Connecticut. This exhibit is part of a multi-gallery quilting exhibition on display from December 19 through March 17.
There will be a reception from 1 to 2 pm, followed by an artist talk from 2 to 3 pm. Additionally, there will be a quilt sale from 12–5 pm that same day.
This special artist talk will feature Tangular Irby, author and expert on the Gee's Bend Quilters, along with other members of the community, who will share their rich histories that span their family’s migration north, their fight for civil rights, and the art and craft of quilting as it relates to their stories; as well as the appropriation of their history and craft.
This winter, The Westport Library will feature a multi-gallery quilting exhibition that will span the Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries from December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026. Like a patchwork quilt itself, the show will weave together three distinct yet interconnected exhibits — each exploring how art and narrative bind communities across generations and geographies.
The South Gallery will display A Traveling Legacy: From Gee’s Bend to the Nutmeg State, showcasing quilts crafted by descendants of the celebrated Gee’s Bend, Alabama, who are now based in Connecticut. This exhibit traces the enduring legacy of Dinah Miller — one of the first documented Gee’s Bend quilters — and her descendants’ journey from Africa to Alabama to Bridgeport.
Tangular A. Irby is a speaker, author, and educator. She holds a bachelor's degree in Business Administration, a master's in the Art of Teaching, and a 6th Year in Educational Leadership. She has worked professionally with all grade levels, Pre-K through 12.
She is the host of The Legacy of our African American Lives Podcast and has published seven books, including Pearl and her Gee’s Bend Quilt. Her love of children's literature developed during her time as a second grade teacher. Tangular is the proud granddaughter of Gee’s Bend quilters Pearlie Kennedy Pettway and Jensie Lee Irby. Sharing their history is her way to honor their legacy.
Tangular has traveled, virtually and in-person, sharing her story with schools, libraries, quilt guilds and parent groups with the goal of inspiring others to research and document their own stories.
***
For more about the Library art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
Miggs Burroughs
Healing Power of Art
In the South Gallery
December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026
Reception and Artist Talk: Saturday, January 31, 1-3 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 1 pm, followed by an artist talk at 2 pm with author and Gee's Bend quilting expert Tangular Irby. Additionally, there will be a quilt sale at the Library from 12 to 5 pm that same day.)
About the Exhibit
This winter, The Westport Library will feature a multi-gallery quilting exhibition that will span the Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries from December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026. Like a patchwork quilt itself, the show will weave together three distinct yet interconnected exhibits — each exploring how art and narrative bind communities across generations and geographies.
The South Gallery will display A Traveling Legacy: From Gee’s Bend to the Nutmeg State, showcasing quilts crafted by descendants of the celebrated Gee’s Bend, Alabama, who are now based in Connecticut. This exhibit traces the enduring legacy of Dinah Miller — one of the first documented Gee’s Bend quilters — and her descendants’ journey from Africa to Alabama to Bridgeport.
Gee's Bend quilts can be found in US museums and abroad. They are on postage stamps, journals, rugs, and more. Most recently, Gee’s Bend quilters were featured vendors in Target stores for Black History Month. The quits tell the story of the sweat and tears, the resilience and faith and the hopes and dreams that continue to run through the veins of Gee’s Bend descendants.
For this special show, the Southern Connecticut Modern Quilt Guild collaborated with their Gee's Bend quilting friends in both Alabama and Bridgeport on a quilt that will be displayed for the duration of the exhibits and will later become part of the Library’s permanent art collection, along with additional availability to schools and other town buildings.
Artist Statement
We are not an organization. We are women bound by our Gee's Bend connections and roots. Many of us are related. We are the descendants Dinah Miller, who was captured and abducted in Benin, Africa and illegally transported to Alabama in 1860 aboard the Clotilda, the last known U.S. slave ship. She is credited as one of the first documented quilters in Gee's Bend. I had been told many years ago that the way the women in Gee's Bend quilt is very similar to how the women in Benin weave. Now we know why.
About Tangular Irby
Tangular A. Irby is a speaker, author, and educator. She holds a BS in Business Administration, a Masters in the Art of Teaching, and a 6th Year in Educational Leadership. She has worked professionally with all grade levels, Pre-K through 12.
She is the host of The Legacy of our African American Lives Podcast and has published seven books, including Pearl and her Gee’s Bend Quilt. Her love of children's literature developed during her time as a second grade teacher. Tangular is the proud granddaughter of Gee’s Bend quilters Pearlie Kennedy Pettway and Jensie Lee Irby. Sharing their history is her way to honor their legacy.
Tangular has traveled, virtually and in-person, sharing her story with schools, libraries, quilt guilds and parent groups with the goal of inspiring others to research and document their own stories.
***
For more about the Library art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
