Naples Art Fest

 The Naples Art Fest in Cambier Park was, as always, fun to see.

I got four colorful wine stoppers from Pam Stockfish, two for Naples and two for Ridgefield.

Dennis Goodman is a very good Naples professional wildlife photographer.

New Britain Museum of Art -- The Security Guard and the Stairwell

 The security guard at the far edge of the second floor of the stairwell has been located in various rooms of the museum when I have visited over the past two decades.

Security Guard is a hyper-realistic 2006 Polyresin sculpture with oil paint by Marc Sijan.

Many, many visitors over the years have been shocked when they addressed the security guard and did not receive a response.

Behind the security guard is the Lewitt Family Stairwell.  The noted minimalist artist Sol Lewitt grew up in New Britain and his family made a large donation to support the museum.  The artwork in the stairwell changes every seven or eight years.  At present the installation is a colorful display of loose fabric hangings.  The artist is Eva Lewitt, one of Sol Lewitt's daughters. 

Well, the fog lifted, airplanes flew again, and I got back to Naples.  Photos from Southwest Florida will be here in the coming days. 

Vik Muniz at New Britain Museum of American Art -- Part 2

This is Muniz's Migrant Mother, after Dorothea Lange's famous Depression-era photograph.

Muniz constructed it from black and white dots.

Muniz arrived in the USA in 1983.  One of his first purchases was a book of iconic photographs.  He produced his "copies" of his favorite images from memory, so there are deviations from the originals, and he blurred them, to give the effect one would have when seeing the images in newspapers.

These are six Muniz images of young Black men and women.

The closest images are based on mug shots of George Stinney, Jr.  Within the space of three months in 1944, Stinney was arrested, accused of the murder of two young white girls, convicted in minutes by an all-white jury, and executed in an electric chair. At fourteen years old, he was the youngest person to be executed in twentieth-century America. Stinney's conviction was vacated in 2014.

 Muniz's work is a photograph of a collage made from snapshots of white American families celebrating occasions, both grand and every day, in which Stinney was never able to take part.

Vik Muniz at New Britain Museum of American Art -- Part 1

 The museum is hosting a big special exhibition of works by Brazilian-born artist Vic Muniz.  They are remarkable.  Muniz meticulously combines numerous different materials into his desired image before photographing the assemblage for the final work. 

A horse, a soldier and a Native American chief greet visitors to the Muniz galleries.

This close-up shows the way Muniz created the works shown above by combining small plastic figures into the overall form he wanted before photographing them.

A collage-based photographic work based on A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, after Édouard Manet, from Muniz's Pictures of Magazines series.

Muniz created this work with torn pages from old magazines before photographing the completed work.

Landscapes in New Britain Museum of American Art

 I never know what will grab me when I visit a museum I have visited many times before.

On this visit, I lingered over the 19th century landscapes by American artists.  And, I admired the way the curator placed NBMAA's terrific collection of benches, like this bear.

Over several years in the 1870s, Albert Bierstadt painted Seal Rock, a romantic scene of seals cavorting on  islands off the Californian coast.

Thomas Moran's 1864 painting, The Wilds of Lake Superior, affords numerous places for the eye to roam.  A gnarled tree.  Mountains and rocks.  A mysterious dark cloud.  And, I admired the way Moran captured the details of water cascading from a waterfall.

Justin Favela in New Britain Museum of American Art

 Fog canceled the flight back to Naples, so I booked a hotel and visited the NBMAA.

The Latin artist Justin Favela created a piñata-influenced mural in the museum's entry way.  Brilliant colors, tissue paper and cardboard are used to evoke images from Latin America in the museum's permanent collection. 

I was floored by the artist's patience in cutting and installing these small pieces of paper on a large scale.

Photo(s) of the Year

On January 1 each year, City Daily Photo participants show their Photo of the Year.  My self-imposed rule is that it has to be where I live, not where I travel.  As a snowbird with homes in Connecticut and Florida, this year I have chosen one from each hometown. 

 It is humbling to review a year's worth of photos.  Many are fine or I wouldn't have shown them, but are any special enough to be "Photo of the Year"?  Maybe not.  But, here goes.

House wrens.  June 26.  This bird house is in front of my house in Ridgefield, Connecticut.  I enjoyed watching the parents caring for the hatchlings until they all departed a few weeks later.

Cormorant.  November 21.  My Florida house is in a community that is an Audubon Certified Sanctuary (meaning that lots of land has been left undeveloped).  I spend plenty of time photographing wildlife, of which very little is shown on my blog.  This cormorant took off in the bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico.

Boston Public Library.  August 27.  From my 2024 travels in the United States, this was a favorite nighttime photo in Boston's Copley Square.

Shanghai.  September 30.  In 2024 the international travels were to Apulia (Puglia), Italy, and China.  At night the skyline of Shanghai is stunning, so the city gets the credit, not me.