"House Project" in Westport this weekend

Westport Arts Center
51 Riverside Ave., Westport, (203) 222-7070
House Project
Sat., Apr. 25, 10 a.m.—5 p.m., Sun., Apr. 26, 10 a.m.—7 p.m.
Free opening reception: Sat., Apr. 25, 5—7 p.m.

Press release

In conjunction with Westport Arts Center 's fortieth anniversary and the exhibition Home, Westport Arts Center Director of Visual Arts, Terri C. Smith, and Visual Arts Assistant Maura Frana are curating an exhibition event called House Project.

The art exhibition will take place in an unoccupied home at 54 Bayberry Lane over the weekend of April 25 and will include individual artworks and installations as well as a handful of ephemera and objects from nearby collections. There will be a $5 admission at the door for non-members; admission is free for members of the Westport Arts Center. There will be a free opening reception Saturday evening from 5—7 p.m.

The artists in the exhibition are cross-generational -for example, veteran photographer Larry Silver and Yale MFA student/photographer David Bush are both exhibiting work.

The show will take on the feeling of a project space that embraces fluidity and energy by creating relationships between artworks, crafts associated with home (including Denyse Schneider's quilts and Frances Palmer's vases), and the architecture of the house itself. Straddling a traditional gallery installation, a studio situation, and home staging, House Project hopes to expand the idea of how home can influence, enrich, and perhaps complicate the artistic process.

Sub-themes include: studio as home for creativity (Joe Fucigna will create a version of his studio in one room), how the meaning of sentimental objects can shift when inserted in a new context (stylized photos of family members that conjure specific eras, the abstracted drawing of a turkey by an artist's child, a Yale MFA student's conceptual graph about her family's Thanksgiving dinner, etc.), and the transformation of materials associated with home through the creative process (a hollow core door becomes a sculpture, a toilet seat becomes a painting, a broom are co-opted and transformed into sculpture). The associations, like the installation, are loose and improvisational, giving each viewer the room to incorporate his or her own perspective about how the works might allude to or question domestic spaces and experiences. The exhibition is sponsored by Connecticut Cottages & Gardens and FineHomesUSA.