New Britain Museum of Art

 After seeing the Walter Wick exhibition featured in yesterday's post, we walked through the rest of NBMAA.

The late conceptual artist Sol Lewitt grew up in New Britain.  The stairwell between the museum's first and second floors is named for his family.  Works by different artists fill the stairwell for a couple of years at a time.  I was delighted that the current works are by his daughter, Eva Lewitt, a fabric artist. 

A full room is devoted to paintings by Thomas Hart Benton that once graced other walls.

I'll let viewers supply their own captions for this 2016 silkscreen by Deborah Kass.

I love Porcelain Promises, a 2008 pair of photographs by Israeli artist Drew Tal.  He digitally superimposed cracks from porcelain over their faces to give them a timeliness.

Down in the lower level, the girls found an area for children to create.

The six year old likes to write but let's not worry about whether it says or means anything.

Walter Wick

Walter Wick's children's books -- the "I Spy" and the "Can You See What I see?" series -- are colorfully illustrated with photographs of the richly detailed worlds he creates. 

 

The New Britain Museum of American Art is presenting a summer-long Wick exhibition.  

There are many photographs from his books and numerous displays of the intricate miniatures that he photographs.

Well spent time with eight and six year old granddaughters.

Brown

 

A simple brown shingled house with an American flag.  Just across the state line in New York.

Two dogs

 

My mind goes toward symmetry, even when it is not perfect symmetry.  

I can't help it.  It is how I was made.

Around the Yard Yesterday

The bees are active in my pollinator garden.

Not many butterflies yet, but a great spangled fritillary did join them.

As did an orange dragonfly.

A Carolina wren by one app and a marsh wren by another.

There were also hummingbirds, other small birds, chipmunks, etc., but they were too quick for me in the time I was willing to devote.

Spread Kindness With Music

 But would the person who took the gnome please bring it back?

Putnam Park

 Putnam Park is in West Redding.  It is the site of winter encampments in 1788-1789 by a force of Revolutionary War soldiers led by General Israel Putnam.

General Israel Putnam was from my old home town in Massachusetts.  It always catches me off guard when I come across something memorializing Putnam. 

The troops camped in Redding were used to protect the Long Island Sound, the Hudson Highlands and, especially, the military stores at the Army Supply Depot in Danbury.  There is a field with a quarter mile of rock piles, which are the remains of the chimneys of 116 log huts that housed the soldiers.

The statue is by a noted female Connecticut sculptor, a wealthy woman who had an estate near here.  Anna Hyatt Huntington donated it to the State of Connecticut in 1969, when she was 93.