Join our Director of Education, Danielle Cavanna, for a lively, interactive, and discussion-based talk on the role and influence jazz played on 20th-century artists. The talk will primarily focus on painters, including Vasily Kandinsky, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Romare Bearden, and Jacob Lawrence, and will touch upon the influence of Jazz on the Beat Generation.

This event is free and open to the public. Coffee and refreshments will be served.

Reservations are requested but not required; please reserve your spot by email here, or call (203) 222-7070.

Image: Bob Thompson, Homage to Nina Simone (detail), 1965

Daily Exchanges: U.S. Soldiers in Iraq -- the Ordinary in Images is an exhibition curated by Westport Arts Center ’s Director of Visual Arts, Terri C Smith with the guidance and input of artist and Operation Enduring Freedom veteran, Paul Kaiser. The exhibition is in dialogue with the Westport Country Playhouse’s “Letters Home” performance and includes artist interpretations of the daily lives of U.S. soldiers in Iraq – as well as projects relating to their loved ones at home. The exhibition will also feature photographs, videos, and other documents from soldiers themselves. Direct documents and artworks are exhibited in tandem to provide a variety of viewpoints. By emphasizing the quotidian – the everyday routines, environments, and stories of U.S. soldiers – the exhibition hopes to circumvent stereotypes of soldiers in the war.

Opening reception: Wednesday, November 11, 6-7pm, before the public performance.
Terri Smith and Paul Kaiser will be available to talk about the exhibition both before and after the performance.

Image: Paul Kaiser, Trumpets of Jericho: Al Qanat, group B (detail), C-print, 2008, 20" x 100"

Terri C. Smith, WAC's Director of Visual Arts and the curator of Aggregate: Art and Architecture -- a Brutalist Remix, will give an informal gallery talk about the exhibition, discussing the theme's inspiration, the artists' works and the intersection between individual artistic practices and the intellectual and material qualities found in Brutalism.

Free and open to the public; reservations are not required.

To view a slideshow of Brutalist buildings, click here.

To view installation shots of the exhibition, click here.

Join us as renowned architect John Johansen speaks about the spirit of Brutalism, the architectural movement that inspired the exhibition Aggregate: Art and Architecture - A Brutalist Remix.

Several of Johansen's buildings are considered prime examples of Brutalist architecture. From 1955 - 1960, Johansen taught at the Yale School of Architecture with Louis Kahn and Paul Rudoph -- fellow world-renowned architects associated with Brutalism. His Brutalist buildings include the Labyrinth House (1966, Westport, CT), the Mechanic Theater (1967, Baltimore, MD) and the Goddard Library at Clark University (1969, Worcester, MA).

Free and open to the public; reservations are requested due to much interest in this event.
RSVP to (203) 222-7070 or send an email here.

To view a slideshow of Brutalist buildings, click here.

To view installation shots of the exhibition, click here.

To view a video of Mr. Johansen's talk, click here.

HUMAN / NATURE
Nancy Reinker

Opening Reception: Friday, August 14 from 6:30-8:30pm.

Artist Statement
These ink drawings are an intense focus on a personal visual excursion. The drawn lines are meant to 'fracture' the surface of natural plant and human forms. By doing this, the simple becomes complex and the complex becomes more interesting.

Biography
After studies at Kent State University, The Cleveland Institute of Art, and Independent Study and Critique with Robert Reed at Yale University, Reinker exhibited extensively in the Northeast and in Japan. Her work has received numerous awards and is in many public and private collections.

The Westport Arts Center will be hosting the children’s activity area at the 36th annual Westport Fine Arts Festival. Please join us on Saturday, July 18 from 9:00am-5:00pm and on Sunday, July 19 from 10:00am-5:00pm for a variety of cool, creative arts activities designed to celebrate life “Under the Sea”. The activities are suited for children of all ages and abilities and are designed to inspire creativity and imagination.

For more information about the Fine Arts Festival, please see www.westportfineartsfestival.com.

BELLES LETTRES
by Hally McGehean

Opening Reception: Friday, July 17 from 6:30-8:30pm.

Biography

In January 2008 Hally began a 365-Day Self Portrait Subscription, taking and sending a photo of herself each day for a year to paying subscribers. She is currently editing a book that merges the photographs with the impressions of her subscribers and explores the relationship between exhibitionist and voyeur. She hopes to exhibit the photos soon. In May 2008 Hally won her first juried solo exhibition, a public art installation in Wormwood Park, Boston, as part of the 2008 Fort Point Arts Community Art Walk and the American Institute of Architects’ convention. Hally’s work was featured in the July issue of Playgirl Magazine and was recently shown at the 119 Gallery in Boston and at Lynn Arts in Lynn, Massachusetts. She will have a solo show at the Westport Arts Center, Connecticut, in July of 2009.

Hally’s work is owned by Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Judith Jamison, Jacques D’Amboise, Collette Blanchard (Collette Blanchard Gallery, NYC), and Charles Desmarais (Brooklyn Museum).

Hally divides her time between Norwalk and New York City.

Artist Statement

I make things that talk to people for me, often to people who won’t or can’t listen. People I love. People who have hurt me. People who are dead. People I miss. I like to organize inarticulately expressed feelings and make them visual and concise and resonant.

I discovered the term belles lettres, more often referring to essays, and filched it for its apt description of the stories I make. Despite its awkwardness on the American tongue, belles lettres are defined as literature that is regarded as fine art. I make picture books, laminate their pages, attach the pages with plastic cable ties, and hang them on walls; the name fits.

I grew up a performer in New York City, working professionally since I was seven. As a child I was enamored with the sparkle of sequins and the bat of false eyelashes that surrounded me in the dressing rooms of chorines and the closets of cabaret singers. My family’s first New York apartment, a studio in Murray Hill was sublet sight-unseen and turned out to be classic Ian Schrager: red shag, platform bed, black satin sheets, mirrored headboard, mirrored ceiling, snakeskin wallpaper, and Lucite boxes labeled: “qualudes” and “coke.” Theatrical, Mid-Town, Liza Minelli, Gay, New York City was half fishbowl, half hall of mirrors in 1981. Everything was either transparent or reflective. I was impressionable and in the center of it. It is therefore no wonder that I am an exhibitionist who works mostly in self-portraiture.

A few years ago I named my own production company in order to manifest scripts I’d written and scripts I need to write. We are working hard to finance our first projects and I spend sleepless night dreaming of what for me will be the apex of a magical career: the convergence of my lives as visual artist, storyteller, and actress.

Fine art has provided an invaluable independence for me. But I miss performing. I am currently writing a one-woman indie rock, indie folk, indie soul musical for myself based on my belles lettres, “Upping My Numbers,” a story of love told through my sexual history. It takes place entirely in bed.

The Westport Arts Center’s (WAC) Visual Arts program is dedicated to contemporary art and artists, creating exhibitions and programming that enrich the community. During the summer, WAC celebrates the artistic diversity of our community with its member shows.

MEMBERS GROUP EXHIBITION
The non-juried member Group Exhibition follows the Solos Show and is divided into two concurrent installments. The first is July 17 – August 9 and the second is August 14 – September 6.

Congratulations to prize winners from Group Show I and Group Show II:

Group Show I:
1st Place, Christian Berman, Quien?, 2008, Painting
2nd Place, Justine Hirten, Crux II, 2009, Watercolor mixed media
3rd Place, Barbara Bernstein, Tapestry and Plants, Oil

Group Show II:
1st Place, Deborah Weiss, Silk Road, 2009, Woodcut on paper
2nd Place, Tiffany Musser, Semblance, 2009, Mixed media
3rd Place, Jim Richardson, Factory Lights, 2008, Acrylic on canvas

IMPORTANT DATES
Submissions Due: June 19

Group Show I, Last Names A - K
Artwork drop off: July 12 & 13, 12N - 5 pm
Exhibition: July 17 - August 9
Opening reception: July 17, 6:30 - 8:30 pm
Awards presented at 7:00 pm
Artwork pick up: August 10 & 11, 12N - 5 pm

Group Show II, Last Names L - Z
Artwork drop off: August 9 & 10, 12N - 5 pm
Exhibition: August 14 - September 6
Opening Reception: August 14, 6:30 - 8:30 pm
Awards presented at 7:00 pm
Artwork pick up: September 7 & 8, 12N - 5 pm

For more information on submitting work, click "read more..." below.

To download an entry form, click here.