SummerFest

 Yesterday was SummerFest in Ridgefield.  It was unbelievably crowded.  

Tents were massed together along Main Street and adjoining streets for crafts, artists, politicians, school groups, businesses, civic organizations, and more.

Children at ACT's summer camp sang in front of Town Hall.  Their parents took photos and videos.

A lion sat next to the Lions Club's tent.

Barbershop singers waited for their turn.

And a very attractive and glittery young woman walked through on stilts.

Chanin

 I met Chanin -- pronounced "Shannon" -- at Starbucks.  She is the payroll manager for a nonprofit that helps foster children.  She was working on her laptop while waiting to pick up her daughter from camp.

I enjoy talking to strangers, learning a bit about them, and then doing some portrait photographs.  But, ever since the COVID pandemic, I have got out of practice.  I need to start doing it again.

Newtown

 Newtown is maybe half an hour east of me.  I visited not long ago.  What impressed me most was the long run of traditional and classic New England structures on Main Street.

The two-tone paint job on this Victorian residence caught my eye.  The style is what I think of as a Carpenter Gothic.

This red saltbox is the kind of 17th century home still found occasionally in southern New England.

This is a relatively simple Second Empire home, but a lovely one.

And here we have a Colonial property, with some embellishments around back.

OK, I give up.  It is a handsome house, but I can't identify the style.

I shouldn't have tried to give the architectural name of each of these properties.  I have no idea what the style of this remarkable commercial property is either.

Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Garden - II

 Some more statues from the PepsiCo grounds.

Our guide was especially impressed by Isamu Noguchi's Energy Void.  It is constructed from Swedish granite, with very fine chisel marks.  

During the 1960s, Henry Moore produced a series of increasingly abstract and monumental sculptures. Works from this period include multi-part sculptures with forms that repeat or interlock, and so-called ‘knife edge’ works that incorporate thin, flat forms with sharp edges.   In Double Oval, Moore combines and develops both of these interests.  

Ásmundur Sveinsson was an Icelandic sculptor whose 1977 scuplture Through the Sound Barrier stands beside a pathway on the Pepsico grounds.

Robert Davidson's Haida Totems, installed at PepsiCo in 1986, are the last works added to the PepsiCo sculpture garden.  The Haida people are Northwest Coast Indians, of which Mr. Davidson is a full-blooded member.  The three totems, which Mr. Davidson described as ''legend totem poles,'' have as a common element the Killer Whale, Chief of the Underworld.

Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Garden - I

 I visited PepsiCo's global headquarters in Purchase, New York, for a tour of the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens.  Kendall was the PepsiCo CEO in the late 1960s and 1970s.  He conceived this sculpture garden as creating an atmosphere of stability, creativity and experimentation.

Il Grande Disco (The Big Disc) is a striking work by Arnaldo Pomodoro.  Completed in the 1980s, this large bronze disc features intricate engravings and a polished surface that reflects its surroundings and the sky. The sculpture's design symbolizes the interplay between technology and nature.

Grizzly Bear is a 26 ton sculpture by David Wynne out of Belgian marble.  The pose is unusual for a Grizzly Bear because Wynne, a keen sculptor of all wildlife, has modeled the bear as if it is standing on the edge of a cliff, on the precipice of extinction.

Alexander Calder's 1969 stabile called Hats Off is 31 feet high.

Kiosque l’évidé, a painted outdoor fiberglass-reinforced phenoxy resin sculpture by Jean Dubuffet, was made in 1970.  The surface didn't weather well in New York, so in 1984 it underwent a very difficult preservation and conservation effort.

Auguste Rodin's Eve, sculpted in 1881, was designed as part of Rodin's high relief work, The Gates of Hell.  Rodin envisioned Adam and Eve as standing on opposite sides of the gates.

Another David Wynn work on PepsiCo's grounds in Girl with a Dolphin, a statue that is a picture of movement. It elegantly shows a diving girl playing with a curious dolphin.

More PepsiCo sculptures tomorrow.

PepsiCo

Until 1970 PepsiCo's global headquarters were on Park Avenue in Manhattan.  When the beverage company (PepsiCo) and the snacks company (FritoLay) combined in the late 1960s, they moved to a new suburban campus on a former polo field in Purchase, New York.

The building was designed by noted architect Edward Durrell Stone. 

I visited Pepsico to see the 42 large sculptures on the 112 acre campus,

some of which I will show in the coming days.

New Pond Farm Education Center

 

I recently drove past an educational farm in Redding, Connecticut, and pulled in for a few minutes.

There were several pens.  This one had sheep.

When I turned around, a woodchuck was scampering across a field before ducking into a hole under a barn.  Folks in other parts of the country call these critters groundhogs.

And, in a more remote field, cattle grazed.