Exhibitions At HMA Offer Experimental Illumination & Adirondacks Photography

BRIDGEPORT — Housatonic Museum of Art will be presenting two very different exhibitions in its gallery during the six weeks of June 10 to July 23. “Izzy the Frog in Lumina Land” is an “experiential” exhibition by the artist Joy Wulke with illumination by Jamie Burnett and soundscape by Istvan Peter B’Racz. “Places of The Spirit: Sacred Sites of the Adirondacks,” meanwhile, will feature the work of four photographers who were commissioned by The Lake Placed Institute for the Arts and Humanities to visually respond to sacred sites within the Adirondack region in upstate New York.

The installation of “Izzy The Frog in Lumina Land” will lead viewers/participants through a landscape of reflective ponds of water, light, glass sculptures, bubbling water and a series of illustrated stories. The illuminated text tells of the evolution of our relationship with toads and frogs as symbols of transformation though multicultural myths throughout time and as the species of warning of universal ecological breakdown. Visitors are invited to add to and make their own stories of transformation and ecological enquiry on the scrolls of Izzy Life.

The exhibition is intended to reach a broad audience, including those who will be participating in The Izzy Frog Festival at Connecticut Beardsley Zoo on June 27 and a multi media event at The Ballpark at Harbor Yard presenting a full laser show, a symphony of amphibious sound, and an illuminated pond full of frogs on July 16 and 17.

All programs offer educational opportunities about the earth’s fragile ecology and a wondrous and unique experience for all ages to become inspired through the artful and scientific frog to take a proactive role in environmental stewardship.

The museum will host a special reception on Thursday, June 10, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Ms Wulke is expected to be attending and can answer questions about her work, Mr Burnett and Mr B’Racz, who named Izzy.

Admission to the exhibition is free. Tickets for “Terrarium” at The Ballpark at Harbor Yard range from $6 to $12; information is available by calling the ballpark directly, 877-462-5837.

Programs at Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo are included with zoo admission: $7 for adults, $5 for children ages 3-11, senior citizens and handicapped visitors, and free for ages 3 and under. Call the zoo’s information hotline at 203-394-6565 or visit www.BeardsleyZoo.org for details.

 

Sacred Sites Of

The Adirondacks

The opening reception for “Places of The Spirit: Sacred Sites of the Adirondacks” will be on Friday, June 11, from 6 to 8 pm.

Curated by Mara Miller, the exhibition presents images by Barry Lobdell of Saranac Lake, N.Y., Heather MacLeod of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Romaine Orthwein of New York City and Shellburne Thurber of Boston. The photographers were commissioned in 2001 to visually respond to sites that included churches, synagogues, burial grounds, and landscape sites of spirituality.

The photographers set off on their own to record and visually represent both the palpable and unseen but “felt” signs of the spirituality of a people in a specific community at a specific time. Each photographer has considerable experience and exhibition history using the visual idiom of documentary photography to expand multiple levels of reading and meaning for structures and sites within the natural landscape.

In the Adirondacks as elsewhere, sacred objects and phenomena are set off from ordinary, everyday life. The architecture and furnishing of churches and synagogues – right down to the materials used to adorn and embellish inside and outside – like the boundary markers of cemeteries, are signifiers for how a particular community views and conducts its daily life and how it wishes to leave that life “behind.”

The Adirondack landscape itself contributed greatly to additional readings of what was “sacred” or truly spiritual. The wilderness for several centuries stood for the sacred – for native American peoples as well as for the people of the State of New York, who in the latter decades of the 19th Century brought such pressure to bear upon their legislators that the Adirondack Park was created and thus deemed “sacred.”

“Places of the Spirit” attempts to question how faith or the sacred may be invested in a particular site or structure, how it may be represented or indicated in such a space, and how the photograph as a memory of the past may shed light on issues of architecture, cultural history and religion, and photography’s role in representing each. The works in this exhibition offer up some record of the past, of beauty, and of loss; such recording may stimulate reflection, visual awareness, and perhaps even action.

The exhibition consists of approximately 40 photographs.

Housatonic Museum of Art, at 900 Lafayette Boulevard in Bridgeport, is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm, Thursday evenings until 7. For additional information call 203-332-5000.