Dates:  June 14 – July 27, 2025

Reception: Saturday June 14, 4 – 6 PM, public invited

Gallery hours: Thursday – Saturday 11:00 – 5:30, Sunday 12:00 – 4:00 and by appointment

Kenise Barnes Fine Art is honored to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Janna Watson. Watson is a conceptual painter based in Toronto, Canada. Poems Without Words is Watson’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery who has included Watson in eight other exhibitions and placed her work in numerous private collections. The gallery has represented the artist since 2017.

Through her practice, Watson works to reframe spirituality into objects that reflect fluidity, agility, and joy. She communicates this through a queering of the painterly process, into one that is diversely applied, gestural, and multi-oriented. Janna intentionally forgoes the use of borders on her paintings to create a sense of the infinite, and the inherent vulnerability of a spirituality that is not contained by a canon.

Janna Watson’s compositions and color choices are both careful and spontaneous, each gesture evoking an unstated emotional response. The paintings are generous passages of vivid color with swooping buttery paint strokes, and calligraphic marks floating on fields of saturated color. They are not spare, but they have an implied economy of language, each gesture gathered towards the others with an unseen gravitational force coalescing into a graceful equilibrium.

Part of the exhilaration I acquire from painting is being able to see shifts within myself manifested into a physical reality. The most truthful form of expression I have found in my life thus far has been the abstract language of painting.  – Janna Watson, 2025

Janna Watson’s work is widely exhibited internationally including in Canada, the United States and Taiwan. Watson’s paintings can be found in significant collections including Google, Air Canada, TD Bank Financial Group, Toronto, CIBC, Toronto, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Toronto, HBC Global Art Collection, New York, to name a few. Watson earned a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Ontario College of Art and Design University, Toronto.

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

The Hickory Stick Bookshop is excited to welcome author Nicholas Benson who will be reading from his latest book of poetry “I Commissioned Some Wooden Luggage” on Sunday, June 29th at 2 pm.

ABOUT THE BOOK

While backpacking in Europe as a teenager in the 1980s, Nick Benson stumbled on a window display in a Venetian gallery that caught his eye: it featured a beautifully carved duffle-bag sculpted from wood, complete with drawers.  For the itinerant Benson, this objet d'art was a source of fascination: "you could keep your travel bag by your bed and be ready to go, but it could also be a useful piece of furniture...I would have commissioned some wooden luggage, if not for the price tag... instead it became a metaphor and took on a life of its own.  I didn't realize it then, but it's the embodiment of wanting opposing things at once.  It seems to sum up this permanent sense of duality-rootedness and restlessness".

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicholas Benson, son of a US diplomat, was born in West Germany in 1966 and grew up in Yugoslavia, Turkey, and the USSR.  He holds a PhD in Italian (New York University, 1999) and an MFA in Writing (Vermont College of Fine Arts, 2009).  

A cup of coffee and a book of poetry…Benson is an English teacher at the Frederick Gunn School in Washington.  He also translates Italian literature (poetry, books, a short novel).  He loves cooking, and he loves coffee.  Since 2007, he has been roasting his own coffee beans.  He turned his passion for coffee into a business, and now he is a micro-roaster.  He has a loyal following in Litchfield County.

Author photograph – Mike Yamin.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

“Benson’s poems are a mixture of wit and sorrow, satire and self-reckoning, urban pastoral and epigram; they manifest themselves in a myriad of inventive forms, including experiments with line, collage, and poetic sequence-making. They are cosmopolitan, urbane, and just plain damn smart poems.” — David Wojahn

“A terrific poet, Benson’s poems range from a kind of Whitmanesque vision as he tries to visit an old Jewish graveyard in NY to intense lyrics that as he says in one poem, would ‘rescue your breaking heart.’  This is a poet and translator with a wide range of talents.” — Richard Jackson

This event is free and open to the public.  If you are unable to attend this event, you may reserve copies of “I Commissioned Some Wooden Luggage” by calling The Hickory Stick Bookshop at (860) 868 0525, or shop our website 24/7 at www.hickorystickbookshop.com.  

Franz Joseph HAYDN String Quartet in D Minor, Opus 76/2, "Quinten"

Hugo KAUDER String Sextet

Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir de Florence for String Sextet in D Major, Opus 70

Tickets: $30-65, Under 19 Free

Musicmountain.org or 860-824-7126 for tickets and more information

Come early for a free pre-concert talk at 2PM

Hugo Kauder and the Gordon String Quartet 

Pre-Concert Talk with Barbara von Bechtolsheim. Three great refugee artists meet at a remote college – Hugo Kauder, Josef Albers, Walter Gropius – while the Gordon String Quartet travels from Music Mountain to Black Mountain College to give six concerts.

The 2025 season of free concerts in the Park continues on Monday, June 30th at 7 pm with a concert by Bad Foot. The concerts are returning to the renovated Seth Thomas Park on South Main St. in Thomaston. Each concert begins at 7 pm and concludes at 8:30 pm. The concert series is indebted to the Thomaston Savings Bank Foundation for core funding.

Bad Foot is a CT-based high-energy band playing modern country rock, including hits from Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean & more. Don't miss this toe-tapping, driving beat concert by a CT favorite band.

Alcohol is not permitted in the Park by Town ordinance. Bring your lawn chair, your friends, and your love of music to Seth Thomas Park on Monday, June 30th!  All ages welcome, and the Park is handicap-accessible. In the event of inclement weather, the concert will move to the Thomaston Opera House, 158 Main St. in the Town Hall. Visit the FACT website for further information or weather alerts concerning concert

relocation: www.thomastonfinearts.com.

Join local historical costuming enthusiast Abigail Yanaway to...

• Ask questions about 18th century sewing Access resources related to 18th century sewing
• Get help with your own 18th century projects
• Meet other people interested in historical sewing
• Join other historical sewing enthusiasts to work on projects together

This workshop will cover the fundamentals of wheel throwing with an emphasis on individual experimentation and expressive design. Explore surface techniques such as sgraffito, slip trailing and glaze applications.

Instructor: Kathy Cady

Wednesdays, June 25, July 2, 9, 16, 23 & 30, 2025

10 AM - 2 PM

Members: $378 / Non-Members: $420

MORE INFO & REGISTER

View the works of local artist DJ Stenson at the New Hatford Artistans Guild.