Pola Esther, the Polish-born photographer and mixed-media artist who divides her time between New York City and Old Lyme, hasn’t gotten the hang of certain conventions observed by artists. Her website bio is entitled “Pretty Me,” there’s no résumé, and her narrative is just 27 enigmatic words.

“The legend says Pola Esther was kissed by the Pope and that event made her who she is. Born in Poland. Based in the USA.”

The sense of mystery evokes Balthus’ quote, “Balthus is a painter about whom nothing is known.” Esther shares Polish heritage and an affinity for eroticism with Balthus, once telling Metal Magazine her aesthetic sensibility gained cinematic qualities from viewing “fornication” on late night TV as a young Catholic girl.

Red Sweater: Searching for the Truth (from The Girl The Woman series), 2013 Archival digital print

Nudity and eroticism is thematically important in Esther’s work—notably in the Dream About a Dream and Mutual Attraction series—but it’s a riff for the margins when considering her current exhibit at the Florence Griswold Museum of Art in Old Lyme. In a Room of Her Own (Ballad of Ruth Coxe) creates a captivating portrait of her late Old Lyme neighbor, Ruth Anne Brown Coxe, who died at age 85 in 2015 after an iconoclastic life in which she championed the La Leche League in its infancy, ran an organic farm, evangelized for natural foods, and traveled the world to study traditional agricultural practices before any of that was considered “normal.”

Coxe also fought a legal battle to hold onto her deteriorating 18th-century house and farm in Old Lyme. “The house was everything to her,” says exhibit curator Amy Kurtz Lansing. “The house has this amazing presence. It was like walking into a Walker Evans photograph. You feel how time has registered on this place.”

Esther first met Coxe at the nearby residence she shares with fiancé Brian Keith Stephens, a painter. “She would come into the house and be like, ‘Yooo-hooo,’” Esther remembers. “That’s how I first saw her.”

Photos of Coxe, the house, the farm, protest placards, things from the house itself and much more powerfully reflect what the museum calls Coxe’s “own chaotic universe.” Esther pushes things to a higher plain with the In Her Clothes series of nuanced, cinematically rich photographs in which she photographs young models pose in the house wearing Coxe’s clothes and holding emblems of her beliefs.

I MakeYou Warm (from In Her Clothes series), 2015-2017 Archival digital print on fabric

Esther’s identity was forged in Lodz, Poland, home to the famous Lodz Film School, where she studied at the University of Lodz and was involved in theater, photography and film. She came to the Connecticut around 2012, initially to be involved in theater.

Her affinity for “active engagement” runs like an electric current through her work, including a series chronicling the making of Blondie’s music video for the 2017 song Fun. Debbie Harry is fabulous at 72, but the cast and crew become star players in these hypnotic photos.

As far as that “Pretty Me” papal kiss, Pope John Paul II presided over Esther’s First Holy Communion. The museum fills out Esther’s bio a bit, saying she has exhibited internationally, was the artist-in-residence at the Hygienic Art Gallery in New London in 2010-11, and has exhibited locally.

Pola Esther
Old Lyme, Connecticut
Website
Facebook
Twitter
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Top image: Red Sweater: KK (from The Girl The Woman series), 2013, Archival digital print. All photos courtesy of Pola Esther.

The post A Room With Her View appeared first on Take Magazine.

Once you’ve seen the work of Weston artist Leslie Giuliani, it’s difficult to stop thinking about the vibrant colors, hypnotic implied narratives, and intricacies of a process that wraps in monotype, painting, embroidery and more. In viewing pieces like “Traveler” and “World of Wonders,” anchored by often amusing, sometimes darker, cartoonish and anthropomorphic figures, it’s fun to imagine the story behind Giuliani’s lexicon of symbols, abstract shapes, glyphs, and primitive characters.

Giuliani has upped the interpretation ante by embracing more abstract shapes in her newest mixed media works like “It Works!” and “Phantasm.” But perhaps the real puzzle for the uninitiated is this: What kind of artist is Giuliani? Printmaker, painter, weaver, rug hooker?

Genre-hopping like the best artistic polymaths, Giuliani is all of the above, often in a single composition—and while her works can look a bit folksy and homespun, looks deceive. Giuliani passionately embraces digital age technology throughout her process.

Her embroidered encaustic paintings combine encaustic (hot wax) painting, digital machine embroidery, and printmaking processes that include monotypes and silkscreen—all of it on Encaustiflex, a cross between paper and fabric. The images begin as drawings, which are turned into stitch files on her computer. Sent to a sophisticated computerized sewing machine, they are then stitched directly onto the encaustic paintings and prints. The embroidery files are infinitely repeatable and color choices even trickle down to thread choice.

Giuliani assembles a corps of painted, printed, and stitched pieces, and then choreographs them into a final composition, not unlike quilting. “Nothing is pre-planned,” says the artist, who continues to work on a series  in a 20-by-16 inch format.

Lever (2017), 16” X 20”, sewn encaustic monotype

“I got an iPad and I’m working with one of these new [design] programs. It’s really fun to work with geometrics,” Giuliani says of the new shape-making magic. “These new works are more taking monotypes and using decorative stitching as line elements as I sew them together.”

Giuliani, who has been influenced by Louise Bourgeois’ textile works, Philip Guston’s cartoon imagery, and Byzantine icon paintings, has also been weaving lately, and has been rug hooking for 20 years. She’s the one who taught New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast how to hook. They’ve become close friends and will be exhibiting together in June at the Guilford Arts Center.

“The hooking I did mostly when my daughter was growing up,” Giuliani says of the intensive process. “I really don’t have time to do them without a commission.”

It Works! (2017), 6” X 20”, sewn encaustic monotype

Notable past commissions include five rugs she hooked for Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and his wife, model and actress. Patti Hansen. “They live in town. They’re wonderful people,” says Giuliani, who met the couple through their designer and worked for them for six or seven years, repairing all the textiles in their house as well as hooking rugs for the couple.

Giuliani’s work will be in a group show opening Jan. 18 at the Walter Wickiser Gallery in Chelsea, and she’s also in the Some Like It Hot: Works In Encaustic exhibit opening Jan. 13 at the Rye Arts Center in Rye, New York.

Leslie Giuliani
Weston, Connecticut
Website

Top image: Detail from “World of Wonders” (cropped), (2016) 45”x 32”
Sewn and Embroidered Encaustic Painting. All photos courtesy of Leslie Giuliani.

The post Leslie Giuliani: Genre-Defying Art appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally ran in our April/May 2016 print issue. 

The fickle haute monde of the fashion industry, where “one day you’re in and the next day you’re out,” as Heidi Klum famously warns on Project Runway, may tailor fame and fortune for anointed designers willing to edit their aesthetic to win and retain the idolization of tastemakers.

That arc of ambition doesn’t interest Neville Wisdom, the self-taught designer from Jamaica who can pull off dressing up his dreadlocks and a T-shirt with a tweed jacket that is rendered exuberant through an unexpected cascade of playful pockets.

Wisdom’s success as a womenswear designer with two spacious showrooms/retail stores in New Haven, Connecticut, is built on a signature style of architectural—”little bit more constructed,” as Wisdom puts it— dresses, skirts, sweaters, tops, coats, and more that are “classic with a bit of an edge.” That funky edge might mean turning up the volume with color, embracing bold patterns, or adding unexpected flourishes.

Making Neville Wisdom’s Fashion Design Studio work as a business model involves essentially delivering bespoke garments at wholesale prices by selling the clothing directly to customers, while also offering women a personal shopping experience that results in a perfect fit through complimentary custom alterations.

Neville Wisdom with pieces from his collection.

“We’re not trying to chase millions,” Wisdom says of his business and creative ethos. “We love what we do, and we love how people feel when they wear our clothes.” Where did his inspiration come from?

“I watched a lot of old movies, even as a kid,” Wisdom has said about the origins of his love for the vintage classicism in his designs. In his teens, he became serious about fashion and launched his first design shop in Jamaica while in his early twenties.

Jamaica didn’t seem like fertile ground for a fashion designer, at least compared to the United States, so Wisdom emigrated to Connecticut, where he transitioned into a position as a surgical technician at Yale- New Haven Hospital for seven years.

Design remained his primary aspiration, however, and when Wisdom made the leap of faith to open his first atelier and retail shop four years ago in the Elm City’s Ninth Square district, he gambled that New Haven’s status as an arts and culture hub—anchored by Yale University—would provide a steady stream of discerning clients.hat faith paid off, with the flagship location on Orange Street spawning a second, larger location in the hip Westville section of the city, home to antiques shops, galleries, cafés, and specialty shops. Launched a year ago, the new space on Whalley Avenue is nearly 5,000 square feet, with a street level showroom and a basement where the magic happens.

That faith paid off, with the flagship location on Orange Street spawning a second, larger location in the hip Westville section of the city, home to antiques shops, galleries, cafés, and specialty shops. Launched a year ago, the new space on Whalley Avenue is nearly 5,000 square feet, with a street level showroom and a basement where the magic happens.

The expansion was made possible in part from a Small Business Express Program grant from the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, which matches between $20,000 and $100,000 in funds that a venture can show on its books.

In addition to allowing Wisdom to add a few jobs, the grant paid for equipment that has enabled digitization of the design and manufacturing process, the centerpiece of which is a massive Autometrix Advantage fabric-cutting table.

Detail of Neville Wisdom coat

“Once I’m satisfied with the pattern I digitize it,” says Wisdom. “All of our patterns become digital patterns.” The process has streamlined the number of sample patterns it takes to get to the final one, and has greatly reduced the amount of waste. When the final design is set, each piece of clothing is constructed by one individual.

Rather than designing fabrics and contracting to have them produced, Wisdom prefers to buy existing fabric of great quality. With it he produces between four and 14 pieces of any one design—usually around 12—and keeps the leftover fabric in case someone wants something custom-made. And now he has to make two sets of each design, one for each showroom.

The new spring line makes its debut in a runway show in early April. “Every year the building changes,” says Wisdom, who plans to include some menswear in his collection for the first time, and to feature men’s linen shirts and pants in his stores this season. For his womenswear, the designer favors raw silk and will feature a lot of “great cotton” in pieces that are thin and light for summer.

The designer, who previously sold clothing exclusively in his stores, has launched an online shop, making his fashions widely accessible.

Photos by Ireland Studios

Follow Neville Wisdom on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

The post Neville’s Wearable Wisdom appeared first on Take Magazine.

The best writing aspires to unlock complexities of existence and leaves powerful words imprinted, as if by hot-lead type, on the province of the brain where intellect and emotion distill truths so fine they’re nearly impossible to articulate.

For connoisseurs of letterpress printing, words needn’t come from literary giants to be sublime. Wedding invitations, business cards, even coffee shop posters embody grandeur and gravitas when the inkjet ethos is jettisoned in favor of beautiful printing done on a press that might date to the nineteenth century and be operated by hand.

Big Wheel Press, Easthampton, MA

“With digital communication now being the norm, my clients are seeking out the unique tactility and elegance of letterpress printing,” says Dan Wood of DWRI Letterpress in Providence, Rhode Island, in an “our risd” post on the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) website. Wood is a RISD faculty member and an artist.

While letterpress printing may employ antique, handmade wooden type or a vintage Ludlow Typograph system that creates bars of type from hot lead, the most common method of printing involves photopolymer plates. The latter, says Wood, is a cost-effective way to transfer a digital image from a film negative into a relief printing surface for letterpress.

Custom pencils by DWRI Letterpress, Providence, RI

“It is probably one of the most significant factors in the reestablishment of letterpress printing as a viable financial medium,” he says. “In our shop, probably 90 percent of the wedding invites are polymer versus metal type, maybe three quarters of the art prints, and roughly fifty-fifty on the business cards, posters, etc.”

Letterpress is the epitome of luxury print, and some of its finest practitioners have thriving print shops in New England, creating everything from greeting cards and fine-art prints to innovative literary magazines and product lines that extend to mugs, T-shirts, and even jewelry constructed from recycled letterpress type bound for the scrap heap.

Big Wheel Press

“The thing about letterpress is it was pushed out of the Main Street printing world a long time ago. It was left in back rooms for artists like us to rediscover and use to create a new chapter/life for the process,” says Bill Muller, who in 2006 founded Big Wheel Press, located in a sprawling former mill in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

Bill Muller, Big Wheel Press

“It satisfies the need in people to feel the words they said and read,” he continues. “You write a poem, cast it in hot lead, print it on a handmade paper and bind it into a book yourself. Then it is truly a labor of love and life.” Muller was indoctrinated into printing as a boy when his father gave him The Ideal Toy Company’s home printing press as a Christmas gift in 1964.

“The other kids on the block got the Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. I got the printing press,” he says.

Big Wheel has 15 presses, including a hand-operated Golding Pearl #14 with a large cast-iron flywheel and a tabletop Sigwalt Ideal Model #4, which Muller calls “the inkjet printer of the 1880s.” With newer technology, he can produce hot foil stamping and even add glitter.

Big Wheel Letterpress

Muller, who also owns Guild Art Supply in Northampton, caught the letterpress bug for good while visiting artist and friend Ali Osborn and watching “as one print was inked, aligned, spoon-rubbed and set out in a line to dry.”

Big Wheel is one of the few letterpresses in the world set up to cast in Hebrew and Yiddish, says Muller, who prints a line of Jewish-themed greeting cards and shows off a Jewish marriage contract, declaring it “the first hot lead Ketubah done in 50 years.”

Big Wheel is also the last studio casting in Arabic on a hot lead linecaster, Muller says.

Muller does a thriving business with broadsides that marry iconic images with messages—like one with a giant silver screw about to drill down into the word cancer.

DWRI Letterpress

“The excitement and the goal is, ‘How do you use these machines with writers and artists in innovative ways?’” Wood says of the equipment arrayed within DWRI Letterpress. That equipment ranges from hand-operated presses to a die-cutting machine to equipment that makes photopolymer plates.

Dan Wood, Founder of DWRI Letterpress

With RISD graduates Lois Harada and Hope Anderson as part of the team, Wood prints tactile, elegant invitations, business cards, CD covers, and more—such as posters for Brooklyn, New York coffee haven Café Grumpy. But creativity is the key for Wood, who established Garbaszawa Press in 1994 and subsequently DWRI around 2003.

“Dan is always trying to push the business forward,” says Harada, who recently designed and produced a “Beach, Please!!” letterpress print that embellishes a map of Rhode Island with the names of the state’s beaches. The titles are done in navy ink holographic foil.

“We do a lot of work with artists and writers,” says Wood, whose own artwork is included in the print collections of the New York Public Library and the RISD Museum of Art.

DWRI Letterpress

Two compelling prints by Wood hang on the walls at DWRI. One depicts a giant Zithromax tablet made by Pfizer that has a pop-art quality and a satirical subtext. The other recasts New York Times coverage of George W. Bush leaving Washington, D.C., in a helicopter after Barack Obama was sworn into office. Wood altered the original photograph, which centers on the chopper lifting above the Capitol. His inspiration came from the feeling that Bush’s departure looked eerily like the famous Vietnam War image of a helicopter lifting off from the roof of an apartment building in 1975 as U.S. personnel were evacuated before the Fall of Saigon.

More recently, Wood has been working on three versions of his “YOU ARE NOT A SCHMUCK” prints. The largest, at 18 x 24, is printed on reflective metallic paper, “so the words speak to you as you look at your own reflection,” Wood says. He plans to exhibit a full edition of the prints at the Columbus Theatre Gallery in Providence in the late spring.

Hartford Prints!

The DNA of this venture, launched by three sisters, is summed up in a Facebook post: “Hartford Prints! was founded in 2012 in the spirit of the Millennial lifestyle. An urban goods retail brand, Hartford Prints! makes letterpress stationery, urban streetwear, and local love.”

Addy Gale of Hartford Prints!

Rory Gale, Callie Gale Heilmann and Addy Gale use stationery, invitations, and fanciful greeting cards—printed on a Vandercook 4T press from the 1960s—as a foundation for creating a lifestyle brand whose heart is a gleaming retail store in downtown Hartford.

Aided by an iConnect grant from the City of Hartford, the sisters launched the store in 2013 and segued into a line of screen-printed clothing and accessories featuring Connecticut themes, such as a graphic image of the Hartford skyline. There’s even a suite of T-shirts for toddlers and onesies for babies.

Rory Gale, who has a background in graphic design, says the apparel is popular in part “because it tells a story the people wearing it want to tell you.” The initial declaration in that narrative of pride, first on a greeting card and later on T-shirts, was “Small State, Big Heart.”

Hartford Prints!

“Everything took off from that slogan,” Gale says while giving a tour of the shop and discussing the evolution of Hartford Prints! Built into its coding is “the idea that a company can both make and do good things,” she adds. As an example of the latter, Hartford Prints! teamed up with seven other homegrown ventures for Small Business Saturday this past holiday season, and it runs Pints + Prints, an introduction to letterpress accompanied by local craft beer.

The sisters launched a “Small State, Big Heart” video commercial last year and have further plans for the future, including merging their studio and storefront in Hartford, and opening a second retail shop in New Haven or Bridgeport.

Headcase Press

At Headcase Press in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Nicole Monforti doesn’t just create attractive custom stationery, business cards, invitations, and greeting cards. She also uses cast-off type to make a line of jewelry that includes rings, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, cufflinks, tie bars, key chains, and even belt buckles.

Nicole Monforti, Headcase Press

“The jewelry was created out of an interest in preserving material that would otherwise have been destroyed,” says Monforti, who opened her print shop a few years after catching letterpress fever in a class she took at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts.

“The type that I use for the jewelry is type that’s unable to be used for printing anymore, because it’s not a full font, or [is among] random pieces that never made their way back to their drawers, etc. In the past, it was melted and recast into new type, but with the advent of polymer-plate printing there aren’t too many shops that melt and recast type.”

Jewelry by Headcase Press

The most prominent product of Headcase Press at the moment is Monforti’s Tarot of Curiosities, a 78-card Tarot deck that was 10 years in the making and released this past October. She describes the project as a “deck of the major and minor arcana reimagined in cut paper and photographic collage.” The cards come with a small booklet that analyzes each card.

Monforti prints on three presses: a Heidelberg Windmill (1948), a Kelsey (1953), and a New Style Chandler & Price (1916). While Headcase Press isn’t in a location that lends itself to visitors—Monforti does most of her sales online—she loves the atmosphere of the former whaling capital of the world.

“New Bedford is a great place for artists,” she says. “The rents are low, and the concentration of artists is high. There’s an amazing creative community there that is supportive.”

This article originally appeared in our Feb/March 2016 Print issue.

Top photo Nicole Monforti from Headcase Press in New Bedford, MA | All other photos by Natasha Moustache

The post Letter Heads appeared first on Take Magazine.

“I am passionately in love with line, form, and color,” Munson says while discussing his work in his attic studio in Longmeadow, Massachusetts — work that embodies the “tension between realism and abstraction” and stretches from New York City facades and a largely realistic “Barn Series” to a powerful series of abstract paintings titled “Stations” and newer abstract works inspired by Morse code and runic letterforms.

Entrance – 2013 for the EVOLUTION show | Photo courtesy of Don Munson

“It’s the allegorical stories that I’m trying to tell that are the real driving force,” the artist says of his range and body of work.

Munson’s approachability belies the accomplishments he has accumulated in a career spanning more than 50 years: work in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); a Grammy nomination for designing the Chicago VI album cover; 12 set paintings for the 1974 Broadway musical Over Here! featuring the Andrews Sisters; tenure as vice president and art director of Ballantine/Del Rey/Fawcett Books at Random House; an Chesley Award from the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists for Best Artistic Director; and seven original typeface designs, including a font used for the novel Gorky Park. (Munson also recounts collaborating with Salvador Dali on a MoMA Junior Council project to create blank writing cards, and says, “Josef Albers was critiquing my color work as a 17-year-old.”)

Not surprisingly given that list of accomplishments, Munson has not one but two opportunities for fans to view his magnetically radiant paintings, drawings, and more.

An exhibit titled Evolution: Don Munson, Fifty Years of Painting runs through Nov. 28 at the Richard Salter Storrs Library in Longmeadow. Among the works are some of the “Stations” paintings, based on the Stations of the Cross but with the artist “witnessing this thing as a civilian spectator,” Munson says, and offering a “secular abstract view of a religious passage.”

Photo courtesy of Don Munson

The show comprises the Longmeadow Cultural Council’s second annual local artist spotlight, and Munson was honored at a reception Nov. 19 that featured a raffle whose prize was an original painting from Munson’s “Barn Series.”

Barns and the seasons along the Connecticut River star in the second show, Memories – Architecture & Barns, which runs through Jan. 30, 2016, at The Wood Library & Museum in South Windsor, Connecticut. A reception with Munson featuring music, wine, and hors d’oeuvres is scheduled for Jan. 15.

In addition to paintings, the show features drawings and archival photographs. “I literally took a notebook apart to show how it all works,” Munson says of one piece in the show, whose images were inspired by the “unique feelings” barns engender. “Their presence is visually provocative,” Munson writes.

“I’m just exploring constantly,” says the artist, who is finalizing details for exhibits of the works inspired by Morse code and runic letterforms while at the same time working on a new series called “Nineism,” which integrates shapes and numbers in exploring “the idea of repeating something without it becoming a pattern.

“I just bring stuff together,” Munson says. “I see no boundaries … I’m very much a classical painter, as abstract as it may be.”

Green Barns – 2002 for the MEMORIES show | Photo courtesy of Don Munson

The post Line, Color, and Barns appeared first on Take Magazine.

Humans have always been interested in the weird, the unusual, the freakish. The well-to-do made collecting oddities acceptable by creating so-called cabinets of curiosity, exhibits that emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries in which royals and academics displayed their unusual worldly collections. A new exhibit of such cabinets at the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts, offers just enough creepiness to be riveting, while keeping the focus on thematically linked items that provide an intriguing lens on other cultures and eras.

The creepiness? How about a hamster-like creature with at least a couple extra legs? A cabinet featuring animal skulls includes one of a small, three-horned animal. It’s not a freak of nature; one of the horns is going in, having pierced the skull in a fatal fight. In another cabinet, long, sharp, and ornate Japanese fingernail protectors worn by regal women of the Qing Dynasty are enough to inspire nightmares.

Photo by John Polak, courtesy of Julia Courtney, Curator of Art

Cabinets of Curiosities: Contemporary Interpretations fills a large gallery with cabinets that focus on such themes as mounted animals, ancient glass and Greek vases, ornithology, Japanese Tansu (cabinetry), Chinese cloisonné and snuff bottles, Japanese bronzes, and more.

The first thing you encounter is the outer coffin of a mummy, Padihershef (664-525 BC). It’s a fine example of Egyptian art and history — and pleasantly disconcerting goose bumps pop up when curator of art Julia Courtney recounts the museum solving the mystery of Padihershef’s whereabouts; he isn’t missing, he’s the “oldest patient” at Mass General.

“Springfield resident George Walter Vincent Smith began accumulating an array of unusual items and art objects during the 1850s, and the bulk of his treasures later provided the foundation for the museum which now bears his name,” the museum says in a release on the exhibit. Cabinets of Curiosity, which also features a children’s activity area, draws on items from the science, art, and history collections housed at the Springfield Museums, which are under-the-radar gems worthy of discovery and exploration.

Photo by John Polak, courtesy of Julia Courtney, Curator of Art

Clustered around a quadrangle with the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum are the Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, the Springfield Science Museum, and the Lyman & Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History. The site is also home to the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden, composed of bronze sculptures of Dr. Seuss’s whimsical creations, honoring the birthplace of Theodor Geisel.

The post Curiouser and Curiouser appeared first on Take Magazine.

Think of Marc Chabot’s collection of works on paper as heirlooms presented on Antiques Roadshow. A first glance suggests talented artists and not insignificant value, but the true status of the works — museum-quality treasures — only becomes apparent when a skilled appraiser details their attributes and origin stories.

Marc Chabot | Photo by Douglas P. Clement

Chabot, an artist who teaches at Weir Farm National Historic Site in Wilton, Connecticut, is both the proud collector of nearly 500 works and the art dealer who eloquently assesses their importance.

He exhibits at Papermania at the XL Center in Hartford and at the Boston Print Fair, and meets with clients of Marc Chabot Fine Arts at his home/gallery in Southbury. Most transactions funnel through his website.

In the spirit of the Antiques Roadshow hidden-attributes analogy, Chabot’s collection features a fascinating confluence this fall among the works of three prominent 20th-century women artists. Gertrude Barrer (1921-2002), Natalie Van Vleck (1901-1981), and M.G. (Trudy) Martin (1931-2013) lived in western Connecticut, and each broke new ground.

Barrer studied with Will Barnet and was one of the Indian Space Painters, who came to prominence in the late 1940s and ‘50s when Abstract Expressionism reigned. Saturated with color, Barrer’s work embodies movement and strong narrative qualities. “As she embraced, personalized, then transcended Indian Space concerns for all-over patterning and ambiguity between positive and negative form, Barrer infused her own hybrid imagery with elements of both organic and manmade structure, and monumental and mythic themes,” Chabot writes on his website.

Clapp & Tuttle in Woodbury, a gallery and framing shop, is showing late works by Barrer through Oct. 31. These religious-themed pieces feature early Christian and Renaissance archetypes. “They’re sort of Byzantine,” says Chabot, who is giving a talk at the opening reception, from 4 to 7 p.m. Oct. 17.

Bug Eyes By M.G. (Trudy) Martin | Photo by Marc Chabot

Van Vleck cut an androgynous figure in Woodbury. Chabot remembers seeing her in the mid-1960s “dressed like a man” and “driving an old jalopy around town.” By that time, three decades had intervened since she essentially stopped painting; she had immersed herself in raising turkeys and sheep and become a pioneering environmentalist.

Van Vleck founded Flanders Nature Center & Land Trust in 1963, and Flanders preserves her legacy as a “one of the very few cutting-edge women artists who worked in a progressive style.”

She had passed over Bryn Mawr College to study full-time at the Art Students League under Ashcan School legend Robert Henri and Max Weber, who proved more of an influence in her embrace of Cubism.

In the early 1930s in Woodbury, Van Vleck’s painting, the Flanders website notes, changed “to a regionalist, precisionist style with hard-edged forms and rounded volumes, evoking a machine-age esthetic.”

Profile By Gertrude Barrer | Photo by Deborah Lloyd

“There’s always a selection of her work hanging at Flanders. We have an incredible collection,” says Chabot, its curator. “People can request an appointment to see the work.”

Chabot is discussing 20th-century art movements this month over hot mulled cider in the Natalie Van Vleck Studio. The topic Oct. 21, at 7 p.m., is “Regionalism & The American Scene,” focusing on Georgia O’Keefe, Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood.

While Chabot doesn’t have talks on Trudy Martin scheduled, he has hundreds of works from her estate for interested collectors. Martin, who studied at the Art Students League, translated her signature organic abstract forms across a variety of media, including prints, ceramics, textiles, and tiles. She chaired the art department at Westover School, where she exhibited Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” the “epic feminist artwork” offering a symbolic history of women in the Western world.

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