Accessible Art Exhibition Features Redding Artist

The Cultural Alliance of Western Connecticut kicked off its 9th year of its Accessible Art multi-site program of visual art exhibitions on February 1, through an award of $10,000 from Fairfield County’s Community Foundation.

Lisa Scails, Executive Director of the Cultural Alliance, said, “This year marks an expansion of the Accessible Art program that now attracts more artists to submit work, more venues to realize the economic value of our intent, and more viewers to enjoy the outstanding, creative work that our artists produce. To expand our outreach, through a partnership with Bethel Arts and with the generous support from Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, helps us to continue this community collaboration and to grow services.”

Thirty-two artists and art students from Western Connecticut State University have been chosen to participate in the year-long program, which runs through February 3, 2017. There are currently, 10 venues that will host 34 exhibitions in five rounds.

For more information about Accessible Art, call (203) 798 0760 or visit www.artswesternct.org.

Accessible Art - Round I

The premier exhibitions, which will be on view through Friday, April 1st, are:

Shari Abelson (Danbury) Hodge Insurance Agency, 283 Main Street, Danbury, (203) 792-2323

Shari thinks of herself as a re-emerging artist. “Like life, she says, creating art is a constant progression toward a common goal: artwork that is personal and engaging. Whether working with different sources of inspiration or multiple media, each piece is part of the whole story with each painting having its own narrative and direction.” Her show, On Location, demonstrates the main elements of traditional landscapes, but with a focus on the inter-relationship between sky and water or land and nature, and strong color and mood are primary.

Spencer Eldridge (Ridgefield), Danbury City Hall, 155 Deer Hill Avenue, (203) 797-4511

Spencer’s show, Excursions: abstracted landscapes by Spencer Eldridge, is the product of a voyage for the past fifteen years from abstraction towards representational works and back again. He notes, “After arriving at my most representational and structured work which employ the use of chiaroscuro (painting from the shadows towards the light) and grids, I felt I had accomplished all I could with representational work for the time being. Now I find myself going ever farther towards pure color, line and shape.”

Kateleen Foy (Newtown), Bethel Train Station, 13 Durant Avenue

Kateleen began her photography career when she was in the 4th grade. She took her first black-and-white film photography class in Newtown. Throughout high school, she did whatever she could to work with pictures and now attends Pratt Institute, studying Creative Art Therapy. She has traveled extensively throughout the USA, Europe and Australia, continuing to take classes and carrying her camera with her every step of the way.

Gayle Glecker (North Salem, NY), YMCA’s ESCAPE to the Arts, 293 Main Street, Danbury, (203) 794-1413

Gayle works with the themes of Perception, Illusion, and Magic. With a successful career in advertising, she currently is CEO and Owner of the Whole Enchilada Branding & Marketing Company that does everything from soup to nuts. Along the way she co-wrote, produced and cast The Lords of Flatbush, starring Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler. Her interest in art goes back to her studies at University of Florida where she earned a Bachelor of Design. She went on to graduate studies at NYU and taught Graphic Concept classes at The School of Visual Arts in NYC.

Michael Morris (Bethel) , Bethel Public Library, 189 Greenwood Ave, (203) 794-8756

Michael Morris is a highly respected painter, sculptor and graphic designer who was an originator of the Massurrealist Art movement, an art form rooted in the interplay between mass media, pop art, contemporary culture and Surrealist imagery. His work has appeared in solo exhibits at Westport Art Center, and in Bethel and South Norwalk, showing his large-scale Massurrealist paintings. He has won awards at Silvermine “Art of the Northeast” and “Contemporary Visions” at the University of Bridgeport.

Gary Stanford (Danbury), Danbury Public Library, 170 Main Street, (203) 797-4505

Gary is a photographer who believes that the very essence of photography is the ability to create an historical record of an event at a precise moment in time. Events may involve people, places and things and be can literal or figurative. He says straighforwardly, “My purpose as a photographer is to depict the world around me and to offer my interpretation of that event.”

Tracey Van Buskirk (Newtown), Filosa/Hancock Hall, 31 Staples Street, Danbury, (203) 794-9466

Tracey’s ideas dance around in her head like clouds. In Color On Paper: Limited Edition Relief Prints, she “traps them in my rectangle of graphic contrasts. Pulling the paper off the block is opening a present...what did the fates give me today? Printing multiple pieces in an edition is a long poem with many stanzas, all a little different but part of the same thought.” With very little formal training in fine art, she studied East Asian Art in college and with a calligrapher in Taiwan. She started doing block prints about 4 years ago and has had two prints chosen for Newtown Arts Festival posters, in 2012 and 2015.

Virginia Zimmerman (Sandy Hook), CityCenter Danbury, 268 Main Street, (203) 792-1711

As a story teller, Virginia weaves time sensitive messages and images into art. The result can be joyfully playful, culturally important, historically specific or educationally minded, which she calls “interactive visual ‘play’.” The works submitted to Accessible Art are from her recent show Ethereal Newtown, which was the culmination of a 2014 individual artist grant from the Newtown Cultural Arts Commission.

Artists to be shown throughout the year also include:

• Samantha Amoroso (Middletown)
• Alex Andrade(Danbury)
• Steve Bean (Danbury)
• Eric Camiel (Danbury)
• Anna Chamberlin (Newtown)
• Ted DeToy (New Fairfield)
• Vickie Foy (Newtown)
• Maressa Gershowitz (Danbury)
• Helga Jensen-Ruopp (Newtown)
• Stephanie Kix (New York City)
• Katie Tynan Helu (Ridgefield)
• Chris Kiely (Danbury)
• Elisabeth Levy (Bethel)
• Lisa Libretto (Ridgefield)
• Cynthia Mullins (Ridgefield)
• Maureen Murray (Danbury)
• Suzanne Nicoll (Redding)
• Honorah O’Neill (Bethel)
• Amy Oestreicher (Westport)
• Chris Plaisted (New Milford)
• Julia Provey (Sandy Hook)
• Peter Schachter (Danbury)
• Margaret Ival Stratford-Kovner (Bethel)
• Mary-Margaret Walsh (Danbury)

Additional sites include Portofino Restaurant & Wine Bar, Bethel, and Visual Impact, Danbury.