Featuring Arlene Skutch's Pink House Painters plus
Stevan Donahos, Leona Frank, Enid Munroe, Nancy NcNerney, Olivia Munroe,
Howard Munce,
Arthur Schilstone, Alberta Cifolelli, Ellen Spadone, Laura Wilk
Art and the Good Earth: As Seen Through
the Painter's Eye is an exhibit featuring 14
artists who have painted together with Westport artist Arlene Skutch, who
runs the Pink House Painter's Studio, a serious and dedicated group of local
artists. Programs for both adults and children are planned during the
run of this exhibit. The exhibit celebrates Westport’s beginnings as a
farming community – the days when ships pulling up to our wharves on the
Saugatuck River loaded barrels of onions and produce for delivery in New
York and beyond.
Lilacs and Onions by Arlene Skutch
Westport onions were in great demand at that
time, with New York wholesalers providing a ready market. During the Civil
War the army purchased thousands of barrels of pickled onions to combat
scurvy. The lucrative onion business continued to the end of the 19th
century, when a cutworm plague destroyed Westport’s onion fields. However,
orchards, vegetable farms and dairies were very much a part of the local
farm scene until after World War II when the acreage was sold to housing
developers.
Family-owned farm stands such as Rippe’s,
located where Harvest Commons is now, Christie Masiello’s Country Store and
Wakeman’s Farm on Cross Highway continued to provide Westporters with
homegrown vegetables, especially tomatoes and corn, until the late 1970s.
Fillow Flowers, Daybreak Nursery and The Flower Farm were known for their
extensive array of annuals and unusual perennials. The Westport Garden Club,
founded in 1924, still has a dynamic membership that helps keep Westport’s
public areas blooming every season.
Westport’s community gardens, with plots made
available to all Westport residents, were first established in the 1970s and
were located where Bedford Middle School now stands. Plots are still
available today – albeit in another location. Amazingly productive when they
were first established, they also supplied the local soup kitchens with
their surplus.
Westporters’ preference for home-grown
produce continues today in the form of the Farmers Market held on each
Thursday from June through October on the grounds of the Westport Country
Playhouse. A project of Michel Nischan, award-winning chef of The Dressing
Room restaurant, in partnership with Paul Newman, the Farmers Market
features only products grown in Connecticut. It returns for its second
season in June.
The Westport Historical Society chose
Lilacs and Onions as the exhibit’s signature painting. With its swirl of
lilacs that are a harbinger of springtime and the earth's awakening - plus
the onions that symbolize Westport’s beginnings as a farming community,
artist Arlene Skutch has portrayed with paint what we have tried to express
in words.
Farmers' Market
My Favorite Vase
Garlic and Statice
by Laura Wilk
Unseen Westport:
Looking Up, Down, From, Through, Forward
Also opening in the Little Gallery is a
special collection of photographs by Carol Young. Unseen Westport represents
an innovative and fun way of looking at what is around us all the time in
Westport. It is Carol’s way of stimulating your imagination, challenging you
to look and think about your favorite Westport venues from a completely new
and different perspective. It’s a great exhibit to visit with your children.
You and they will never look at Westport in the same way again!
Can you identify where in Westport these photos were taken?
Photos of Art and the Good Earth and Unseen Westport
Opening Reception - January 21
Photos from the Installation of Art and the Good
Earth
