Music and Rhyme for Children from Birth to 3s! A program for babies and their caretakers that incorporates music, rhythm, stories, and nursery rhymes to spur language development, body awareness, pre-reading skills, self-confidence, and cooperation. Gathering at 10:15 on the green behind the Visitor Center, the program begins at 10:30.

In case of inclement weather or other adverse conditions, this event will move inside to the Junior Room.

Registration appreciated, drop-ins welcome!

DRIFTLINES, a dual exhibition featuring new works by painter Heather Neilson and photographer Babs Perkins, explores the meditative connections between memory, place, premonition, and afterthought. The two artists are local to the Northwest Corner of Connecticut with studios at Whiting Mills in Winsted. DRIFTLINES will be on display through Friday, September 12.

A reception for the artists will take place on Saturday, August 16, 5-7PM and an artist’s talk featuring the two artists in conversation is scheduled for Thursday, September 4 at 5:30PM. 

Stop by to get help using your tech gadgets, basic computer help or to explore e-books, e-audio, movies, comics, languages & more.

OR

Schedule an appointment.

“Ending Redlining through a Community-Centered Reform of the Community Reinvestment Act,” book talk and signing with Morris author Josh Silver, Wednesday, August 27, 6:30 PM

 This author talk describes a new book, Ending Redlining through a Community-Centered Reform of the Community Reinvestment Act, and will explore how and why members of Congress and community-based organizations developed the CRA law that emphasizes community participation in stopping redlining and rebuilding neighborhoods experiencing discrimination.

This talk will explain:

 ·        What is redlining and how it devastates communities

·        Why CRA is relevant for rural areas and smaller towns as well as urban neighborhoods

·        How and why CRA was devised as a means to rectify redlining through community empowerment

·        The successes and limitations of CRA

·        An overview of the legislative and regulatory history of CRA since its enactment in 1977

·        Recommendations for updates to CRA, its application to other industries, and the current threats to CRA

Please register with the library: 860-567-7440 or https://morrispubliclibrary.net/library-calendar-event-registration/

Get ready to go big! The New Hartford Artisans Guild is thrilled to announce our upcoming Big

Works Art Show, celebrating artwork that makes a bold statement. This is your chance to showcase

your largest, most impactful pieces—the only requirement is that one dimension must be at least

24 inches. Whether it’s towering canvases, sweeping landscapes, or grand sculptural forms, we

want to fill the gallery with work that commands attention. Don’t miss this opportunity to take up

space and let your creativity shine on a larger scale!

DRIFTLINES, a dual exhibition featuring new works by painter Heather Neilson and photographer Babs Perkins, explores the meditative connections between memory, place, premonition, and afterthought. The two artists are local to the Northwest Corner of Connecticut with studios at Whiting Mills in Winsted. DRIFTLINES will be on display through Friday, September 12.

A reception for the artists will take place on Saturday, August 16, 5-7PM and an artist’s talk featuring the two artists in conversation is scheduled for Thursday, September 4 at 5:30PM. 

Join us for Story Time on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:30 for new books, free play, and fun crafts!

Kenise Barnes Fine Art is thrilled to announce our midsummer exhibition focused on three artists whose keen observation and connection to the natural world invites us to pause and appreciate.

Margot Glass focuses primarily on drawing, using various traditional methods and materials as a foundation for her work, including traditional silverpoint and 14k goldpoint, homemade organic inks and oil and acrylic painting with mixed mica using fine point crow quill pens in place of brushes.

Glass is inspired by the tradition of idealizing nature in art and design as ornament across cultures while seeking to observe and represent her subjects as accurately as possible in all their irregularity and imperfection.

Central to her work is the exploration of ephemeral, fragile subjects, focusing primarily on weeds or ‘waste plants’, and other plants generally considered to be undesirable, to recognize their beauty in all their imperfection and asymmetry. Her focus on these marginal plants is guided by the question of what we value, what we consider ‘belonging’ to mean, and to highlight the beauty of what is present in the disrupted landscape that we find ourselves in today.

Margot Glass grew up in New York City, and studied art at The Art Students' League, Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Fashion Institute of Technology. Glass’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally. She is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council STARS Artist Residency; Lost and Found Lab Artist-in-Residence and an Oak Spring Garden Foundation Interdisciplinary Fellowship. Her work is in private and public collections including the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon, PA, Weatherspoon Art Museum, NC, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, VA, Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, MA, Hotel Del Coronado Collection, CA, Allentown Art Museum, PA, Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, IN, the Beth Rudin deWoody Collection, among others. She currently lives and works in Western Massachusetts.

Richard Klein has been copper plating organic objects for over three decades utilizing found objects that are intrinsically fragile and impermanent. The process allows Klein to encase natural objects in a thin coating of metallic copper, permanently preserving them. The alchemical transformation being both practical and poetic. 

In his most recent work, the artist juxtaposes electroplated natural findings with photo gravures of urban landscapes addressing our relationship with nature simultaneously reminding us that we are nature and that our detachment from nature is the source of much of the destruction to our planet. In particular, the artist’s interest in both fungi and copper hint at the convergence of natural and technological evolution: fungi, through their mycelium, connect virtually all terrestrial plant life, acting as natural communication networks; while copper is the material that the human-made electrical and digital networks depend on. 

Richard Klein is the former exhibitions director of The Aldrich of Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. His work has been shown widely in US and is in the public collections of Norton Family Collection, Santa Monica, CA, De Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA, Connecticut Artists Collection, Hartford, CT and has been featured in The New Criterion, Two Coats of Paint, Hyperallergic, Art Forum, The Brooklyn Rail and Art New England to name a few. The artist lives and works in CT.

Francis Sills’s work is grounded in the perceptual-based, realist tradition. The artist works directly from observation in nature. In dealing with the intricacies and challenges of working from observation and the sustained experience of intense, visual scrutiny, the artist comes to understand and know his world. The flora series is an ongoing group of paintings utilizing the flowers and plants from the artist’s home garden. Sills recently been adding various shaped mirrors to the set ups, which both multiply the forms and fracture the space. Sills’ paintings are dense and subtle, revealing specific nuances of color, light, and form. Often, the underlying geometry and architecture of the composition are apparent in the application of paint, the artist’s analytic thinking about structure and his methodology still evident in the finished work.

Sills’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, has been featured in publications such as Wall Street International Magazine, American Art Collector, The New York Times, I Like Your Work Podcast, and can be found in The Fine Art Program and Collection at Montefiore Einstein, New York, NY. Francis Sills earned his MFA at Parsons School of Design, New York, NY and BFA at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. The artist lives and works in South Carolina.

Please contact Lani Holloway, Associate Director, Lani@kbfa.com, 860 560 3085 with inquires or to arrange a preview of the exhibition.

Bring your lunch, listen to stories, and enjoy a fun craft! All are welcome, this program is intended for preschool-aged children. This event will be offered in person in the Junior Room of the Library.

Registration is appreciated but not required.

🎨✨ August Light: A Sherman Artists Exhibition @ Kent Art Association

🗓 August 8–30

🎉 Opening Reception: Friday, August 8 | 6–8 PM

Celebrate the glow of late summer at August Light, a stunning exhibition presented by Sherman Artists at the Kent Art Association. This show features an inspiring collection of artwork in all genres and mediums—from painting and photography to sculpture and fused glass.

Join us for the opening reception on August 8 to meet the artists, enjoy refreshments, and explore this vibrant showcase of creativity.

🖼️ See something you love? Take it home!

Purchasing a piece directly supports local artists and helps keep the creative spirit thriving in our community.

Free and open to the public. Come be inspired—and maybe leave with something beautiful.

Beginners and seasoned stitchers alike are invited to visit the Makerspace for our new summer Crochet Club with guest coach Missy Stevens! Bring a project you’ve been working on or the supplies to start a new one- you can borrow yarn and hooks from the Makerspace, too! Learn to crochet, get help with a project, or enjoy a relaxing afternoon with fellow stitchers at this fun event.

Missy Stevens is a maker and studio artist who uses thread, fabric, and clay to create unique pieces inspired by her connection to the natural world. After learning how to sew as a child, Missy has since explored many forms of textile art, including weaving, embroidery, crochet, and the punch needle embroidery technique she uses to create richly colored thread paintings with densely stitched loops of sewing thread. Her work has been exhibited across the country and featured in numerous books and magazines. 

Ages 18+

Registration Required: https://www.gunnlibrary.org/calendar/crochet-club-with-missy-stevens-2/

Participants must have a signed GML Makerspace waiver on file. Please arrive a few minutes early to complete this paperwork if this is your first Makerspace program.

For the first year, we will be hosting a summer market located at COE PARK on the same nights as our Summer Concert Series. Each Thursday between June and August, check out vendors of all different varieties from meats, veggies, maple syrup, handcrafted goods, and more! Check out our full vendor list soon! Inquire above if you would like to be a vendor!

Michael Albert will give a short talk and presentation and then lead a Hands-On Collage workshop where participants will have the chance to create their own masterpieces using Albert’s materials of choice, namely cereal boxes and other colorful cardboard packages including cookie boxes, cracker boxes, and soda cartons. All participants will receive a free signed poster of one of Albert’s creations as a special gift for joining him in this creative art making session.

Come check out the Torrington Recreations 2025 Summer Concert Series at Coe Park! Over the course of 14 weeks, every Thursday, starting June 5th and running through September 4th, we will be hosting 14 different bands who will perform a range of different genres. Concerts will be held on the outside portico at the Coe Memorial Park (101 Litchfield Road) from 6pm-8pm. Bring your blankets, chairs, food and drinks to enjoy our concerts in the park!

The Torrington Symphony Orchestra will be performing a wide range of selections consisting of Broadway favorites, familiar melodies, and more!

In August, the Thursday evening book club at the Gunn will discuss another tour de force novel by Jodi Picoult: By Any Other Name. Readers are encouraged to participate in a dynamic discussion.

Aspiring playwright Melina Green has just completed a powerful new drama inspired by her ancestor, the Elizabethan poet Emilia Bassano. But in today’s theater world—still riddled with inequality—Melina doubts her work will ever see the stage. Disheartened and hesitant to risk another rejection, she’s blindsided when her best friend secretly submits the play to a prestigious festival under a male pseudonym.

In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of the English court, her intellect and talent nourished by lessons in language, history, and literature. Yet as a woman, her voice is silenced. When she’s forced into a relationship with the influential Lord Chamberlain—the man responsible for all theatrical productions in England—Emilia discovers the profound power of words to stir hearts and minds. Determined to make her mark, she hatches a daring plan: to bring her play to the public by enlisting a young actor named William Shakespeare to present it as his own.

Spanning centuries and told through dual narratives, By Any Other Name is a sweeping story of ambition, resilience, and the unrelenting pursuit of creative freedom. As both Melina and Emilia navigate the barriers placed before them, the novel raises provocative questions about authorship, legacy, and the price women pay to have their voices heard. Anchored in historical research, this moving tale ensures that Emilia Bassano’s name—and story—are remembered.

Registration is required: https://www.gunnlibrary.org/calendar/gml-thursday-book-club-by-any-other-name-by-jodi-picoult/

Thursday, August 28th, at 6:30, 2nd Home welcomes back the DenMar Jazz Trio. The trio is Dennis Marolda on drums, Dawn Zukowski on flugelhorn and trumpet, and Austin Tewksbury on guitar. We are thrilled to have the Trio back for our Thursday Jazz/Blues nights, and hope you will come down to enjoy what we know will be a night of great jazz.

For reservations (encouraged but not required) call 860-238-4500 or email us at momanddad@2ndhomelounge.com

See our complete event list - https://2ndhomelounge.com/events/

2nd Home Lounge

524 Main Street, Winsted

2ndhomelounge.com

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