Wilton Library will present the diverse works of eight area women artists in its October art exhibition, “Resilience, Reflection, and Revelations,” The exhibition features women artists: Pam Ackley (Killingworth), Afsaneh Djabbari-Aslani (New Cannan), Alma Faham (Danbury), Cynthia Fazekas (Shelton), Mari Gyorgyey (Stamford), Katya Lebrija (Wilton), Pam Rouleau (Old Greenwich), and Nomi Silverman (Greenwich). They will exhibit their works in an array of styles, media choices, and subject matter, all portraying vibrant and varied types of resilience found in life and nature.
The exhibit opens on Friday, Oct. 4, with a reception from 6-7:30 p.m. The opening reception is free and open to the public.
“The exhibition started with the requests of three artists — Pam Rouleau, Mari Gyorgyey, and Katya Lebrija — to display their works at Wilton Library, and the common themes of resilience, survival, and strength emerged from their works. Then we started to reach out to more local women artists to see if they would like to participate,” Wilton Library Art Co-Chair Betsy Huffman said. “This exhibition delves into some interesting questions — what makes something or someone resilient? How do we find inner peace in chaos? What provides refuge? What strengths do motherhood or nature or art reveal? We hope this exhibit helps people to reflect on the many rich and diverse types of resilience found all around us.”
The artists come from a range of backgrounds:
Pam Ackley received a Bachelor’s Degree in psychology from Marymount Manhattan College and a Masters in clinical social work from New York University. In September 2006, Pam began her artistic journey at Silvermine School of Art where she studied still life for eight years with Kirill Doron of the Art Institute of Moscow. Ackley’s primary focus was portraiture and her interests were directed towards classical realism since that method’s use of light was so effective. Toward that goal, Ackley was classically trained in the academic tradition for seven years. Her training was furnished by several instructors from the Florence Academy of Art. “My paintings are the poetry of my interpretations of reality. After my years of formal academic training, I sometimes take my work toward the more contemporary, non-classical style. This is accomplished by combining structure of form along with an organic, reactive approach to color and value. While my still lifes and portraits adhere to the traditional, I often incorporate contemporary design. Some paintings are a departure from reality in that I allow my reactions to take the painting to places I cannot preconceive as I focus only on the essentials.” Ackley is co-founder and model coordinator for the New Street Guild of Artists in Bridgeport. She also co-founded North Light Studio in Bridgeport where she paints still life and non-model-related work with her colleagues. She has had several solo and group shows in Connecticut including in Wilton, Greenwich, Westport, Norwalk, Stamford, Darien, Ridgefield and New Canaan. Her work is in several private collections. Ackley is an elected member of the Silvermine Guild of Art as well as Connecticut Women Artists. Ackley was born and raised in New York City and currently lives in Killingworth, CT. She is represented by the Silvermine Art Guild in New Canaan and the Geary Gallery in Darien.
Iranian-born artist Afsaneh Djabbari-Aslani attended USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, at the onset of the Iranian revolution. The upheaval in her native country culminating with the U.S. embassy hostage crisis dramatically transformed her world, with significant influence on her artistic work. After earning her BFA, she moved to New York in 1983 and then began working at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in the Public Affairs Division, where she learned more about the plight of third-world countries and their socio-economic issues. She also earned her Master’s Degree from NYU’s Robert Wagner School of Public Service. Her painting, “Working Towards a Brighter World,” was published as a holiday card and sent out worldwide in 1989. With the birth of her second child, Afsaneh moved to New Canaan and became an active volunteer in the community and an art history teacher in the public school system. This reconnected her with her passion for the arts and she started painting full-time again in 2009. Djabbari-Aslani says she never finds art relaxing: “It is a very active emotion for me.” She is very responsive to issues in the world: choosing a self-portrait from 1982 for her website, she writes: “I had hoped that 35 years later I would look at this and put it as part of my history, where politics, religion and sexism would be resolved and I would not feel this trapped. Unfortunately, it continues — with all of its trappings.” She says that, as an older artist and mother of three, she has learned to channel her feelings in more positive ways. Djabbari-Aslani enjoys painting still lifes and playing with texture and color: “I don’t think of these simple objects as just a bowl or a vase but containers which hold life. We have always created containers to carry our grains and water. Bright colors, light, water, texture and reflections are an integral part of my work, tracing back to my Persian roots where color and decorative art are part of its rich history.”
Connecticut-based abstract artist Alma Faham has been elevating her techniques and style for the past few years as she experiments with new measures and ideas. Growing up in an aesthetic family and being surrounded by varied cultures have cemented Faham’s early foundation of craft and creativity that keeps flourishing throughout her art. Faham was born and raised in Kuwait, where she attended French and British schools until the age of 16. She then moved to Jordan, completed her secondary education at the American School in Amman, and graduated with a BS of Architectural Engineering from the University of Jordan. Through the different stages of her life, she continued to nurture her passion for art by enrolling in painting, jewelry design, and mosaic art courses while living in Greece, Jordan, and the U.S.. Enriched with cultural experiences and travel to many cities around the world, Faham’s upbringing exposed her to different cultures, traditions, and religions, which are apparent in her art and choice of subjects. Since 2015, she has participated in different exhibitions, events, and interviews and is currently a cultural commissioner and a member of local cultural alliances in her region. Faham’s paintings are always based on a story, a poem, or an incident that left a mark on her soul. She blends her professional background as an architectural engineer with her artistic skills to bring about a union of shapes, lines, shadows, and colors extending the range of her talent further. Her work exudes a lively and cheerful atmosphere and sparks viewers’ imagination, examination, analysis, and personal understanding of her art.
Cynthia Fazekas is a southwestern Connecticut-based contemporary visual artist who finds wonder and solace in the natural world which influences her expressive paint and ink work. Recent themes include delicate female forms in dreamy vignettes that reflect the processing and release of old emotions and ultimately the return to inner peace. Learning to ‘let go’ in her artwork has translated to the study of the female experience in artistic rendering as well as the connectedness of humans with nature. The artist grew up between her native Bridgeport and Hollywood, FL, displaying an artistic interest at an early age. While leaving art behind to pursue other careers, she dabbled between formal instruction and self-teaching and has returned to art with passion and wonder.
Mari Gyorgyey is best known for her nonlinear narrative art which flows into book art, pen and ink drawings, paintings, computer imagery, and fine art etchings. She is not afraid to mix any of the techniques to communicate her theme. Gyorgyey’s approach can be described as figurative and expressionistic. Her quirky and satirical drawings have been compared to Philip Evergood, William Kentridge and the pre-war drawings of George Grosz. Since earning her BFA from RISD, and MFA from UPENN, Gyorgyey has shown her work domestically and internationally with solo shows in Hungary as well as Stamford. She has won printmaking awards from UPENN, Dharma Silk Company, and the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, where she is a longtime member. Some of Gyorgyey’s unorthodox themes are dogs in dresses, tweens in weight loss camp, and uneventful but creepy moments in the lives of the Romanovs but her new project is the largest and personally most important yet. This current artwork is a multifaceted investigation of her parent’s history, and her Hungarian upbringing in America. It is called “Heritage Excavation.” Gyorgyey investigates the conflicts and harmonies from Hungárián communities in both countries. She explores what it’s like to have two identities vying for dominance. Gyorgyey’s work integrates her fine art and textile design background. Her content is strongly influenced by living in communist Hungary and suburban America. Her portraits have the passion of European expressionism with the visual superficiality of technicolor films. Her work seems offbeat, but at a closer glance is strangely approachable and empathetic to the human condition.
Award Winner, Katya Lebrija, was born in Mexico City, where she obtained her Bachelor of Arts Degree in graphic design from Universidad Anahuac in 1995. After graduating she worked as a freelance graphic designer until December 1999, when she moved to the United States with her husband and two daughters. Throughout her career, she has used different mediums, including watercolors and acrylics, and has also worked extensively with printmaking. Most recently, she has used different materials like acrylics, paper, mono-types, fabric, gesso, ink, charcoal, and oil sticks. Lebrija likes to work in series, which enables her to explore a single theme or idea in a variety of ways. Each finished piece, in turn, sparks new ideas and inspiration for the next one and each new work is the cumulative result of all the pieces that came before it. There is always a new discovery, new solutions and she often allows even unintentional elements to become part of the final composition. Some of her paintings are currently (or have been recently) on display throughout her home state of Connecticut, Vermont, New York City and her native Mexico City. She constantly participates in juried group shows and has had several solo exhibitions since 2013. Lebrija currently works in her home studio, though she also enjoys painting with a group of local artists in Westport and Norwalk.
Pam Rouleau is a photographer, wife, mom, gardener, and cancer survivor. Prior to her cancer diagnosis in 2016, Rouleau’s life motto was ‘No Regrets’. She now pushes those boundaries even more. She has adopted author Jon Acuff’s advice, “Be brave enough to be bad at something new.” Since then, she has become an avid rower with the Saugatuck Survive-OARS rowing team, learned to swim, and opened her heart to the community by volunteering her photographic talents for many cancer support programs. She has taken photographs for the Smilow Connections Newsletter; Saugatuck Survive-OARS, a Breast Cancer Rowing Program in partnership with Saugatuck Rowing Club; as well as documenting Casting for Recovery of Connecticut’s Annual Breast Cancer Retreat Program. A graduate of The Art Institute of Boston, Rouleau has been in the professional field of photography for over 36 years, managing other professionals’ businesses and then making the leap to run her own business in architectural photography; adding portraiture to her repertoire in the recent past. Rouleau made the move to digital photography when using film started to become obsolete, but she still works with film, vintage cameras, pinhole cameras, and historical and alternative processes for her fine art work. Acting on a long-time dream of learning from portrait photographer Joyce Tenneson, Rouleau took an immersive workshop with Tenneson at the Maine Media Workshops, securing the very last spot due to a last-minute cancelation. Two years later, in her effort to continue to ‘give back’ to the cancer community, Rouleau began to orchestrate a traveling portrait exhibit and fundraiser, “Finding Resilience: Thirteen Survivors Paths to Inner Peace,” with the inaugural exhibit at The Connecticut State Capitol during October 2023, raising funds for a local medical group. For this project’s second exhibit, she is proud to be supporting the organization Pink Aid through a direct donation opportunity which one can learn more about in the Artist’s Statement.
Nomi Silverman was born in New York City and graduated from the High School of Art and Design and Barnard College. She also studied with Daniel Greene, David Leffel, Gustav Rheiberger, Harvey Dinnerstein, Ron Sherr, George Nama, Bob Blackburn, Burt Silverman, and Michael Mazur. She has had solo shows at the Housatonic Museum of Art, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, A Shenere Velt Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, A-Space in West Haven, CT, the Silvermine Guild of Art in New Canaan, the Fine Arts Gallery at the Westchester Community College in Valhalla, NY, and the Greenwich Arts Center Gallery in Greenwich, amongst other places. She has also shown in many group shows, including, the Douro Biennial in Portugal, the International Print Biennial in Taiwan, the Print Triennial, the Susquehanna Art Museum, Politically Speaking, Contemporary American Printmaking at the William Patterson University, and Monotypes at the National Academy Museum in New York. She has an upcoming solo show at the Five Points Gallery in Torrington in 2025. She has won several awards and received grants from the CT Commission on the Arts and the Puffin Foundation; a fellowship to Duke University; a residency at the Grafikwerkstatt in Dresden, Germany; and was a finalist for the MacDowell Artist Colony. She was reviewed in Pressing Matters Magazine, Printmaking Today, Art in Print Magazine, Venu Magazine, The New York Times, the Stamford Advocate, the LA Times, and Philadelphia Weekly. She was also named one of 10 artists to watch in 2024 in Artscope Magazine. Her work is in the collection of numerous museums and collections around the country and abroad, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the William Benton Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Housatonic Museum of Art, the Hunterdon Museum of Art, Indiana University, the Fairfield University Art Museum, and the National Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, as well as numerous national and international private and public collections.
The exhibition runs through Thursday, Nov. 7. A majority of the works are available for purchase with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the library. Wilton Library hours are Monday through 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 library will be closed on Monday, Oct. 14, in observance of Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day.