Levitz And Heyman Provide The Art For Two New Shows At Good News Café

WOODBURY — West Hartford artist I.S. Levitz’s multi-layered paintings inspired by her life experiences and Washington (Conn.) photographer Charlie Heyman’s unique lens-eye perspectives on the ordinary and extraordinary are featured in two new exhibitions that begin August 11 at The Good News Cafe & Gallery.

An opening reception for the Levitz and Heyman shows will be on Sunday, August 15, from 3 to 5 pm, at Carole Peck’s Good News Café, 694 Main Street South (Route 6). The reception is free and open to the public. It will offer an excellent opportunity to view the exhibitions at leisure, meet the artists, and learn more about their works and philosophy. Complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served in the bar area. Both exhibits will remain on view until October 4.

Ms Levitz’s exhibition, “House and Garden,” offers a selection of recent paintings depicting her vibrantly multi-hued vision of commonplace subjects from her world, transformed by her palate as she layers images in a fresh exploration of everyday reality. Subjects such as flags, game boards, and the domestic scenes portrayed in works such as “Home Is Where the Heart Is” represent autobiographical expressions that serve as “metaphors for a moment in time,” she says.

“The color and rhythmic mark-making give the painting a voice,” Ms Levitz observes. “This is the visual dialogue that brings sensibility and feeling to the surface of the painting. The work is layered, as is life. Each layer visually informs the next, until the final painting emerges.”

In his new show, “Moment Captured,” featured in the Radio Room of the restaurant-gallery, Charlie Heyman displays his original and eclectic photographs of landscape, architecture, still life and other subjects.

“I feel I see the world differently when I have my camera in hand,” he says. “I believe I have always had a creative eye, and photography gives me the opportunity to share my visions of ordinary and sometimes extraordinary scenes.”

Mr Heyman, who has been the general manager of Washington Supply Co. for the past 20 years, notes that he has been interested in photography “ever since I won a Kodak Brownie as a 4-H meeting door prize” in his childhood. After returning to photography as a hobby during the 1980s, he was inspired by the arrival of his first granddaughter in the late 1990s to take the artistic plunge into digital photography.

 “The arrival of digital technology allowed me to experience the full creative potential of photography,” Mr Heyman says. He now does all of his own digital darkroom work and printing, printing his photographs with archival inks and papers.

His new show features a selection of his photographic perspectives on the ordinary and extraordinary.

The restaurant and its galleries are open Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 11:30 am to 10 pm, and Sunday from noon to 10 pm. For more information call 203-266-4663.