Women Who Love What They Do:

New Panel Hopes To Inspire

By Nancy K. Crevier

Filmmaker, writer, assistant editor for Educational and Industrial TV magazine, and former Newtown teacher of Natural Science and adjunct instructor of film at Western Connecticut State University Paula Hopper is pleased to announce the organization of a new group meant to offer inspiration to women, through presentations by women successful in various branches of the arts.

A soft organizational meeting, open to the public, of Women Who Love What They Do will take place at Ms Hoppers’ Boggs Hill Road studio on Sunday, April 29, from 1 to 4 pm — the same house in which the idea for Society of Creative Arts in Newtown (SCAN) was originally conceived by the late Larry Newquist and Ms Hopper.

The April 29 gathering of artists, published authors and poets, filmmakers, news editors, videographers and a music impresario will include Newtown poet Polly Brody, author and research librarian Andrea Zimmermann, Newtown Friends of Music president Ellen Parrella, and editor Joanne Rochman, as well as several other area personalities.

“All of the women invited are extremely diverse in their own pursuit of excellence,” said Ms Hopper, “and like snowflakes, there are no two alike. These women have one common trait: they are all doers. Each one has given herself permission to follow her own star.”

The experiences in “getting there” will be shared by presenters on April 29. Books, poetry samples, art and graphic arts will be exhibited that day as well, with some available for signing and purchase.

Women Who Love What They Do came about, said Ms Hopper, due to a recent desire to revive her own artistic interests, after a downturn of several years. Following a number of health crises in the family and a 2½-year period in which her ailing father lived with her, until his death in 1994, Ms Hopper found herself uninterested in filmmaking and the other ventures that had excited her for her whole life. She dabbled in various medias and writing during that period, but it was only in the past several months, she said, that she found her fire “relit. I feel like I still have stuff to do, and I’m going to do it,” she said. One of those things includes updating Measuring the Marigolds this summer, a film starring Newtown resident Dana Fradon (of The New Yorker magazine fame), and produced and shot by Ms Hopper at local schools in the 1970s, and entering it in an independent film festival.

The new group is part of Ms Hopper’s motivation.

“I wanted to know how other women have broken through to do the things we do,” she said, and she believes other women will be interested in hearing these successful stories, as well.

Call 203-426-9712 to reserve a seat for the April 29 meeting of Women Who Love What They Do.

Plans for future meetings of Women Who Love What They Do are already in the works, said Ms Hopper. The premiere public showing of Measuring the Marigolds, as well as a video produced by Ms Hopper with anthologist Louis Untermeyer, will take place at a future meeting of the group. Later this summer, at a larger venue to be determined, an encore performance of early presenters of Women Who Love What They Do will take place.

“This meeting,”  said Ms Hopper, “will be for the benefit of Newtown Animal Control and The Animal Center.”