Art and the Good Earth & Unseen Westport

Art and the Good Earth:
As Seen Through the Painter’s Eye

January 21 – May 11, 2007

Featuring Arlene Skutch’s Pink House Painters plus
Stevan Donahos, Leona Frank, Enid Munroe, Nancy NcNerney, Olivia Munroe, Howard Munce,
Arthur Schilstone, Alberta Cifolelli, Ellen Spadone, Laura Wilk

Art and the Good Earth: As Seen Through the Painter’s Eye is an exhibit featuring 14 artists who have painted together with Westport artist Arlene Skutch, who runs the Pink House Painter’s Studio, a serious and dedicated group of local artists. Programs for both adults and children are planned during the run of this exhibit. The exhibit celebrates Westport’s beginnings as a farming community – the days when ships pulling up to our wharves on the Saugatuck River loaded barrels of onions and produce for delivery in New York and beyond.

Lilacs and Onions by Arlene Skutch

Westport onions were in great demand at that time, with New York wholesalers providing a ready market. During the Civil War the army purchased thousands of barrels of pickled onions to combat scurvy. The lucrative onion business continued to the end of the 19th century, when a cutworm plague destroyed Westport’s onion fields. However, orchards, vegetable farms and dairies were very much a part of the local farm scene until after World War II when the acreage was sold to housing developers.

Family-owned farm stands such as Rippe’s, located where Harvest Commons is now, Christie Masiello’s Country Store and Wakeman’s Farm on Cross Highway continued to provide Westporters with homegrown vegetables, especially tomatoes and corn, until the late 1970s. Fillow Flowers, Daybreak Nursery and The Flower Farm were known for their extensive array of annuals and unusual perennials. The Westport Garden Club, founded in 1924, still has a dynamic membership that helps keep Westport’s public areas blooming every season.

Westport’s community gardens, with plots made available to all Westport residents, were first established in the 1970s and were located where Bedford Middle School now stands. Plots are still available today – albeit in another location. Amazingly productive when they were first established, they also supplied the local soup kitchens with their surplus.

Westporters’ preference for home-grown produce continues today in the form of the Farmers Market held on each Thursday from June through October on the grounds of the Westport Country Playhouse. A project of Michel Nischan, award-winning chef of The Dressing Room restaurant, in partnership with Paul Newman, the Farmers Market features only products grown in Connecticut. It returns for its second season in June.

The Westport Historical Society chose Lilacs and Onions as the exhibit’s signature painting. With its swirl of lilacs that are a harbinger of springtime and the earth’s awakening – plus the onions that symbolize Westport’s beginnings as a farming community, artist Arlene Skutch has portrayed with paint what we have tried to express in words.

Farmers' Market by Laura Wilk

My Favorite Vase by Laura Wilk

Garlic and Statice by Laura Wilk

Unseen Westport:

Looking Up, Down, From, Through, Forward

Also opening in the Little Gallery is a special collection of photographs by Carol Young. Unseen Westport represents an innovative and fun way of looking at what is around us all the time in Westport. It is Carol’s way of stimulating your imagination, challenging you to look and think about your favorite Westport venues from a completely new and different perspective. It’s a great exhibit to visit with your children. You and they will never look at Westport in the same way again!

Can you identify where in Westport these photos were taken?