Wilton Library will present the diverse works of “G&B Cultural Center Artists” in its September art exhibition, opening on Friday, Sept. 8 with a reception from 6-7:30 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public.
G&B Cultural Center is a non-profit organization in Wilton supporting the visual and performing arts in a local and collaborative manner for all ages. Its historic building, preserved on the National Historic Register, has evolved into a modern, thriving art center offering artists’ studios, workshops in music and visual arts, and hosting exhibits, concerts, and demonstrations.
At least 19 artists from the group will be exhibiting their works in an array of styles, media choices, and subject matter. The artists are Joanne Bryant (Redding), Christina Calzolari (Redding), Elainem DiBiase (South Salem, NY), Colleen Fawcett (Wilton), Alice Hayes (Ridgefield), Pat Hegnauer (Wilton), Madeline Long (New Canaan), Elisa Marmer (Ridgefield), Ingrid McCullough (Newtown), Michael Morris (Wilton), Erin Nazzaro (Georgetown), Christine O’Keefe (Redding), Leo Ortiz (Wilton), James Pascucci (Wilton), Anne Porco (New Canaan), Renee Santhouse (Wilton), Clarice Shirvell (Ridgefield), Sally VanDevanter (Westport), and Ken Woods (Wilton).
“Some of the talented artists of G&B Cultural Center are featured in our Summer Show, and we are excited to welcome them back to the library for their very own exhibition. Their organization is right here in Wilton and it has a very interesting history,”Wilton Library Art Chairman Ed MacEwen said. “I admire their artwork as well as their mission to inspire and cultivate personal creativity for people of all ages and abilities, while providing a cultural venue with wonderful spaces for artists and musicians to work.”
The exhibition runs through Friday, Sept. 29. A majority of the works are available for purchase with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the library. Wilton Library hours are Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; and Sunday, 1-5 p.m.
The artists of G&B Cultural Center come from a range of backgrounds:
- Joanne Bryant graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the College of New Rochelle, studying under successful New York City artists. Many inspiring trips were made to Manhattan’s museums and galleries, including an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Following undergraduate school, sculpture study continued in Pietrasanta, Italy through Columbia University’s master’s program. Early work was primarily in stone, with figurative work in clay. As a uniquely versatile artist, a graphic design career was begun alongside sculpting. While raising her daughter, Joanne started a new business as a decorative painter. Yet a love of sculpting has always found a space in her busy life. Today Bryant works in clay from models at Silvermine Arts Center and utilizes mixed media for her abstract and figurative work. Her extraordinary finishes show a strong understanding of paint application from her years of decorative painting. Multiple awards have been won along the way and many acceptances at juried shows. Work has been sold to homes in the tri state area and as far as California including a large relief for a home in Southampton, NY. Joanne lives in Redding with her husband artist Wayne Bryant.
- A newcomer to monotype printing, Christina Calzolari finds the method exciting. Christina has spent a lifetime painting for fun beginning with oils and has dabbled in watercolors, photography and now printmaking.
- Elainem DiBiase has always been a lover of the arts and worked in advertising. When he retired, he decided to paint and studied with Jock MacRae.
- Although Colleen Fawcett is not new to the field of art, having taught elementary school art classes 30 years ago and currently using art in her work as a psychotherapist, creating original watercolor paintings is new for her. While on vacation in Maine she bought a small travel watercolor set on Monhegan Island and found the process of painting immensely enjoyable. The exploration of color in nature and how it changes throughout the day is fascinating yet frustrating because she cannot paint fast enough to capture enough accuracy of place, color, and light. She uses photographs to help with this challenge. Although she has always appreciated being immersed in the nature, painting has provided deeper observation and appreciation. Having raised two children, Gavin, and Ben, while working two jobs for the past 25 years, she now has the most awesome luxury of some free time. As she continues in her private psychotherapy practice, she and her husband Scott have filled much of their free time together with new adventures aboard a beautiful blue vessel, that they named Orabelle, which means beautiful seacoast. They are learning and doing all aspects of boating from engine repair and maintenance, to navigation, to keeping their boat ship-shape for their travels. And from this vessel they have new vantage points, and she paints along the way. She feels fortunate to have found another activity that will provide an entire lifetime of learning and discovery.
- Alice Hayes began studying with Elaine Urbain, a graduate of Black Mountain College, who encouraged her to draw everyday. When she moved to Ridgefield, she studied with Jock McCrae for many years at the Ridgefield Guild of Artists. She met Sam Morrow who taught at the Rowayton Art Center and later at the RGOA. She is now taking classes in monoprint with Anthony Kirk, a renowned printmaker.
- Pat Hegnauer is the Director of G&B Cultural Center in Wilton. She has enjoyed the pleasure of painting for 40 years and has sold several works.
- Madeline Long believes that beauty, harmony, and the sublime are topics rarely discussed in contemporary art, yet she returns to these words as inspiration in her work. Seeing beyond the conspicuous and capturing the vitality of nature is her great joy. Classic questions of color and composition are challenges that motivate and deliver resolution to her finished pieces. Added whimsy propelled by music, fervor, paintbrush or bondo spreader generate and inspire the creative process. As a painting’s narrative unfolds, she revisits compositional structures and emotional content with her “virtual scotch & cigarette.” Explorations of her environment are reoccurring themes reflecting her contrasting neighborhoods of Florida and New England. Her work is about the essence of a place both personal and evocative of a memory.
- Elisa Marmer is a realist painter of figures and landscape. She discovered her ability to paint at the age of 39 after finally deciding to explore the strange and unlikely notion which kept returning to her that she could, indeed, paint. She contacted an art instructor for private lessons, and to their mutual surprise, out poured the work of a long ignored, and perhaps even suppressed artist. Elisa has been exhibiting and selling artwork ever since. While Elisa enjoys painting landscapes and portraits, and even the occasional still life, her favorite genre is figures engaged in thoughts, actions, emotions, or reactions. Her goal is to capture something familiar, and open a window for the viewer, thereby hopefully creating sympathy for or connection to the subject, and in turn to our shared humanity generally. emarmerstudios.com
- Ingrid McCullough has been painting since age 14. She received degrees in architecture & design. Her work is inspired by her surroundings as she travels.
- Michael Morris is a painter, sculptor, and retired illustrator. He has a BFA and MFA from Yale.
- Erin Nazzaro is a Connecticut born artist. She started doing very detailed pencil work at a young age and gradually she was drawn into painting and the exciting world of color. Travels to Mexico and the South American countries of Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, and Colombia provide much of the inspiration for her work. Her painting is based in realism with abstract qualities. It is bold, expressive, and colorful. She is especially drawn to rural areas of these beautiful countries. She paints the people, landscapes, animals and birds.
- Christine O’Keefe is a classically trained figurative artist, having studied drawing and oil painting at Silvermine School of Art in New Canaan CT over a period of about 6 years. Over the years since then she has regularly taken private workshops with talented artists such as Mark Boedges, Steven Assael, as well as Florence Academy trained artists Jennifer Gennari and Jesus Villarreal. She is a member of The New Street Guild of Artists, a group of women artists. She also studied privately with artist Justin Wiest in Wilton, painting live models, portraits, and figures in oil. Over the past several years she has devoted more and more of her work to painting animals, especially dogs, horses and wildlife. She is a lifetime lover of all animals, an animal rights advocate, and served on the board of the Humane Society for about 20 years in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. She does commissions of pets and also has worked on a series she calls “Dogs in Cars” of silly dogs she find in parking lots at the grocery store, parks, and anywhere they think they can be mistaken for a human passenger. Her studio is located at the G&B Cultural Center in Wilton.
- Leo Ortiz is a painter, sculptor, and photographer.
- James Pascucci is a graduate of Fine Art from Paier College. He is a draftsman and artist and has been painting for over 40 years.
- In the late 1990’s Anne Porco began taking classes at Silvermine School of Art with Kirill Doron, Nomi Silvermine, and Will Nathans. Later she studied privately with Jesus Villarreal and Hege Haugen both graduates of the Florence Academy of Art. She was a member of the New Street Guild of Artists in Connecticut. She participated in Still Life, Figure, and Landscape workshops with Leo Mancini-Hresko, Teresa Oaxaca, Carmelo Blandino, Kathy Andersen, and Justin Weist. She mostly works in the realist genre in oils although more recently she has begun to explore acrylics and abstract realism. She currently maintains a studio at G&B Cultural Center.
- Renee Santhouse is a fine artist specializing in contemporary landscapes. She works in in printmaking, plein air painting, and book arts. She has an MA in Fine Art Lithography from California State University and is a member of the Artists Collective of Westport and the Ridgefield Guild of Artists.
- Award-winning artist Clarice Shirvell, long-time resident of Ridgefield, of Argentine descent, is well known for her accomplishments in both pen and ink drawings, and acrylic paintings inspired by nature. Her artwork has been purchased for both private and public collections and has been in over 50 solo, juried, and group shows in both museums and galleries. A graduate of Marymount College with a BA degree in Studio Art, the artist sketches in pen and ink and paints en plein air as a form of meditation. The artist’s process includes writing and meditating, and her style is characterized by loose and expressive brush strokes. Shirvell is the founder and instructor of “The Artist’s Way Study Group” and was the curator of The Meetinghouse Gallery in Ridgebury. She won the 2021 Artist in Residency at Ridgefield Guild of Artists and 2022 Artful Grant and RPAC residency where each concluded with a solo show featuring new series of work. Currently, Clarice has her own studio at the G&B Cultural Center in Wilton where she works on painting commissions and book illustrations.www.clariceshirvellartist.weebly.com
- Sally VanDevanter has over three decades of experience in the arts with a diverse background spanning painting, advertising, and art book production. Since 2018, she has been privileged to continue her artistic journey, exploring her passion for painting in her studio at the G&B Cultural Center in Wilton. She is largely self taught and she doesn’t have a traditional fine arts degree but has cultivated a classical foundation in painting through immersive experiences. This journey commenced with apprenticeships with renowned painters Danni Dawson and Frank Wright in Washington, D.C. To further refine her skills, she studied at institutions like the Art Students League (NY), the School of Visual Arts (NY), and the Corcoran School of Art (Washington, D.C.). For twenty years, she was a Production Manager at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), overseeing the creation of fine arts “”coffee table” books. Working with a team of curators and editors, she oversaw project timelines, collaborated with book designers and supervised press runs in Europe and Asia. Her most cherished responsibility was to color-correct digital printouts to precisely match original artworks. She spent countless hours in the Met basement, scrutinizing works by diverse artists to ensure precise color fidelity. For over a decade, she was an Art Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising (NY). During her tenure, she created and executed national television and print campaigns for clients as varied as Procter & Gamble and General Mills. With her partner she conceptualized, storyboarded, presented and oversaw shooting and final production. She has a Bachelor of Arts (double degree) in both Art History and Psychology from the University of Virginia (VA) – and a Master of Arts degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University (NY). Her journey seems to be an evolving tapestry of hands-on experiences, diverse expertise, and passion that continues through the realms of art, creativity, and psychology.
- Ken Woods is a contractor by day, and designer and crafter by night.