‘Life’s A Circus’: A Look At The American Circus & Its Families

BRIDGEPORT — New York artist Marilyn Cohen spent two years interviewing circus families and owners across the country in preparation for creating the paintings that are now being exhibited at the Barnum Museum. “Life’s A Circus” remains on view through January 21 at the 820 Main Street institution that was the final gift to the city by its namesake, P.T. Barnum.

The exhibit explores the unique community that is the American circus, says the artist.

“This is a community where age and experience are respected and many generations live, work, and travel side by side with parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, sisters and brothers passing on to the children their art, discipline, and a love for the life of the circus,” said Ms Cohen.

“Few of us today follow in the footsteps of our parents,” she went on. “Yet children born into the circus seldom leave the circus. ‘Life’s A Circus’ explores the unique community that is the American circus.” Informed by the memories of circus people, the artist’s visual impressions and interpretive narrative text explore the American traditions of family and circus.

Ms Cohen’s works contain an element of surprise for viewers who discover that what appear on first look to be watercolor paintings are actually works of collage created from torn bits of brilliantly dyed paper. Each work celebrates a specific circus family, with brief bits of American and circus history scattered among the paintings, placing each family with the context of its times.

Accompanying text also offers each family’s story through several generations. Familiar names include the Flying Wallendas, Cristianis, Hannefords, Zacchinias, and the Carson & Barnes Circus, which performed a two-day stint in Trumbull last July as an event coordinated for the annual Barnum Festival through the Barnum Museum.

Also portrayed in the works are wild animal trainers, clowns, daredevils, and aerialists; elephants, dancing bears, horses, tigers, and lions; the Big Apple and Vidbel’s Old Tyme circuses; and the late circus owner and performer D.R. Miller, whose funeral consisted of a circus parade.

The artist describes her works, each of which is made of paper, color, and glue, as “a painting that is a collage; a collage that is a painting. Like a sculptor working in clay, I work with paper because I like the feel of it.

“The layers of papers and colors and textures I assemble echo the layers and colors and textures in the lives of the people who inhabit my paintings,” she continued.

Marilyn Cohen is a graduate of New York School of Visual Arts. During a career as an illustrator and designer she began to experiment with collage as fine art. Her first solo exhibit, in 1982, was at Paperwork Gallery in Larchmont, N.Y.

In 1990 Ms Cohen began combining folk history with narrative collage paintings, celebrating American history through the lives of real people. From 1991 to 1994 the exhibit “Where Did They Go When They Came to America?” which originated at Hebrew Union College in New York City, traveled through several states along the Eastern Seaboard.

Another Cohen exhibit, “Teach Me the Songs My Mother Sang: A Celebration of American Women,” opened in 1998 at Fairfield University’s Quick Center for the Arts and then toured New York and Rhode Island.

Hours at the Barnum Museum are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 4:30 pm; and Sunday, noon to 4:30 pm. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and college students, $3 for children ages 4 to 18; and free for age four and under. For additional information the museum can be contacted at 203/331-1104.