Wadsworth Atheneum Event Returns Next Week

Garden Club Of Newtown Is Taking A Step Toward

The Contemporary With This Year’s Fine Art & Flowers Entry

By Shannon Hicks

HARTFORD — Pairing paintings and sculpture with dramatic floral interpretations and beautiful table settings, Fine Art & Flowers showcases the collections of Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Inventive garden displays will also be created this year to complement three of the museum’s historic and elegant interiors.

The 26th Annual Fine Art & Flowers will be presented at the museum April 26–29. The museum — and this special exhibition — will be open Thursday and Friday from 11 am until 5 pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 10 am until 5 pm. Garden clubs, professional florists, and talented amateur floral arrangers from across the state are invited each year to participate by the Women’s Committee of the Wadsworth Atheneum, which organizes the event.

“Springtime Inspirations” is this year’s theme. Among the highlights will be the first-time display outside of the Governor’s Mansion of the governor’s tableware, and four (instead of one or two, as has been done in the past) full garden displays similar to what are created for flower shows.

Anthony Palmieri, AIFD and the owner of Datura, A Modern Garden in Middletown, is this year’s honorary arranger. Fine Art & Flowers is a fundraiser for the museum, one of two the Women’s Committee organizes annually (the other being the monumental Festival of Trees & Traditions in December).

The Garden Club of Newtown will be creating a floral arrangement to complement “Verdun: The Trench Diggers,” a 1916 oil on canvas by Fernand Léger (1881–1955).

The painter, born in Argenten, France, studied in Paris and is credited with helping to form the Cubist movement but later, according to Biography.com, “developed his own ‘aesthetic of the machine.’” Léger was at one point a teacher at Yale University, designed theater sets, and, in 1952, painted murals for the UN building in New York City. He also collaborated on the first “art film,” 1923’s Le Ballet mécanique.

Garden Club of Newtown member and former president Deb Osborne is coordinating the Fine Art & Flowers committee for the local garden club this year. She is being joined by Thurley Burns, Beth Caldwell, Alma Kearns, Peg Redmond, Paula Stephan, Connie Urso, and Diane Warner in creating the arrangement to represent Newtown’s club.

The Léger painting the club is working with, says Mrs Osborne, is very modern compared to ones the club has worked with in the past. The Garden Club of Newtown has entered Fine Arts & Flowers for at least the last four years, club president Beth Caldwell said this week.

More than 60 individuals or groups will be participating in Fine Arts & Flowers 2007, with more than half of that figure represented by garden clubs. Newtown’s arrangement will be presented within “Picasso To Pop: Aspects of Modern Art,” one of three exhibitions currently on view at Wadsworth Atheneum.

The garden club received its assignment about a month ago, on March 28. Past assignments have been coordinating flowers with landscapes.

“It’s been different than any one we’ve ever done before,” she said. “What we’re finding with this one is we’re trying to match shapes and colors. It’s a more contemporary arrangement. Apparently [the artist] was fascinated with the soldiers digging the trenches in France during the time of the first World War.”

The arrangement for “The Trench Diggers” will use Henry Lauder walking sticks (which Mrs Osborne described as “a curly looking twig”), ferns, two different sizes of chrysanthemums — “the little bitty button ones and the bigger spidery ones,” she said — and a lily. If they can find some, the Newtown group will also use some Bachelor’s Button (Centaurea Cyanus) in its arrangement. A type of cornflower, Bachelor’s Button comes in a range of blues, purples and pinks. If it can be found, the deep blue will correspond perfectly with a few points within Léger’s painting.

“There’s some real clear blue in the painting that’s hard to find,” said Mrs Osborne.

Garden Club members plan to leave Newtown by 8 am next Thursday in order to be in Hartford early enough to put together their arrangement in time for the show’s opening.

“We have to be there between 8:30 and 10:30. They’re very specific about all that,” said Mrs Osborne. “The galleries open to the public at 11.”

Amy Redfield, the Women’s Committee Liaison at Wadsworth Atheneum, said this week that the event continues to shift even a quarter century after its inception. Traditionally offered for Mother’s Day weekend, the show shifted to the final weekend in April last year. Also, after being “a garden club event” for many years, the four-day special event has grown to encompass “an incredibly wide range of people,” said Ms Redfield.

“It’s a lot of people who live to make flowers look pretty,” she said. “Professionals especially love a creative outlet. They get tired of doing standard FTD bouquets.

“There are so many people who have talent in that profession,” she continued. “They can feel stifled, really want to just go wild and crazy, and in a museum setting they really can do that.”

Fine Art & Flowers has also become more focused in where it is presented. After following a similar pattern used at Art in Bloom at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where one arrangement goes into one gallery, another lone arrangement goes into another gallery (“It becomes kind of a treasure hunt,” said Ms Redfield), the Wadsworth has tried something different recently.

“During the past few years, we’ve been condensing. We’ll put 25 arrangements into one gallery, which gives more drama, more of a festival feeling,” she said. “That’s the direction we’re going in.”

This will be the second year for dual interpretations within Fine Art & Flowers, where two people or groups will be given the same work of art to interpret with their florals.

“This reminds visitors that the same work of art can leave two different people with very different impressions,” said Ms Redfield.

More than 4,000 people attended last year’s Fine Art & Flowers, said Ms Redfield.

“It’s such a cool thing for the garden club to be involved in this event,” said Garden Club of Newtown President Beth Caldwell. “It’s neat to walk around in there and see that you’re part of something in that beautiful museum.

“The artwork is so beautiful, and you walk around and have a direct connection to it. It’s a really fun thing.”

Admission to Fine Art & Flowers is $13 for adults, $11 for seniors (age 62 and up), $8 for students (college students will be asked to show ID), and $3 for ages 11 and under and museum members. Group rates are available; call 860-278-2670 extension 3046.

Wadsworth Atheneum is at 600 Main Street in Hartford. For additional information about events with additional fees (see sidebar), call 860-278-2670, extension 3034. For information on exhibitions and parking visit WadsworthAtheneum.org.