Silvermine Arts Center Is Celebrating The Holidays

NEW CANAAN — Silvermine Guild Arts Center is celebrating the holidays with the return of its “Artrageous Gifts Holiday Show,” an annual exhibition and sale of fine art and handcrafted gifts, as well as the current Director’s Choice exhibition, “Signs of Life,” featuring works by Miggs Burroughs using lenticular imagery. Both exhibitions have opened and will run through December 22.

The Artrageous Holiday Show offers artwork in a variety of media created by the students and faculty of the Silvermine School of Art. The collection of original works of art at very attractive prices includes ceramics, paintings, prints, sculpture and photography. Other gifts available will be wearable art such as jewelry, scarves, felt hats or handbags.

Guild Artists will continue the holiday spirit with their offerings of original works of art including paintings, prints, photography, small sculpture as well as decorative home accessories such as basketry, ceramic bowls and vases, and works in glass.  Throughout the galleries, visitors will find a great array of special and unique gifts, such as the ornamental eggs hand painted by Roz Chast, the well known New Yorker cartoonist. Proceeds from the gallery exhibit running through December 22 will support the art center.

A solo exhibit featuring the works of Westport resident and Silvermine Guild member Miggs Burroughs, “Signs of Life” is a collection of dynamic, interactive images of people and street scenes that convey the illusion of 3D and/or motion. The style in which Mr Burroughs works allows images to change as they are viewed from different angles.

Lenticular photography allows Mr Burroughs to create his own personal signs, which merge from one image to another in an attempt to understand and convey the changes, transitions and stories that he has encountered in his life.  Lenticular imagery combines two photographic images into a single frame, which shift from one to another as they are passed, creating the illusion of movement or change.

The viewer is enlisted as critical collaborator who controls the speed, sequence, and ultimately the meaning of these changing signs. The images are only as relevant as the stories you are willing to bring to them.

According to Mr Burroughs, he sees “life as a fascinating and infinite gallery of signs. There are real signs we see every day on the street, in stores, throughout the media, and in art galleries. And there are the more abstract and meaningful signs we see in the faces, hands, body language and behavior of the people we live with. Life seems to be a never ending succession of changing signs, put here to stimulate, educate and challenge us.”

Silvermine Guild Arts Center, is one of the oldest artist communities in the United States, is at 1063 Silvermine Road. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm; and Sunday from 1 to 5 pm. For more information, call 203-966-9700 or visit SilvermineArt.org.