Art At The Blue Z:

Adam Z’s Got The Hang Of It

By Shannon Hicks

A light green wall off to the left of the entrance of The Blue Z Coffee Shop on Main Street South is what Adam Zuckerman likes to refer to as “the signature wall.” That is the spot that the eye will be drawn toward first when visiting the coffee shop, and so it is there that Mr Zuckerman likes to hang a work that deserves to be spotlighted each time he curates a show for Blue Z owners Lauren and Steve Baluzy.

Mr Zuckerman, who lives in Sandy Hook and was recently promoted to exhibitions director at The Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, has been the sole curator for The Blue Z since its opening in January 2009. In that time he has organized and hung exhibitions for the father-daughter owners of the coffee shop, which is the only gathering place on Route 6 between the Bethel and Monroe town lines offering free Wi-Fi, open mic nights, sweet desserts, and a variety of stimulating hot and cold beverages.

About once each month the front door of The Blue Z stays open long past closing. The business isn’t open for customers, but lights stay on and Mr Zuckerman spends a few hours working with the next featured artist to hang a new show. Work begins around 6 pm with taking down a previous month’s show, and often finishes around 11 or midnight.

“Newtown Police officers will pay a visit from time to time,” Mr Zuckerman said with a laugh. “I wound up working past 1 am with one artist, and the police officer who checked on us that night was a little edgier than usual. He thought for sure something was up.

“They’re starting to recognize me now, though,” he continued. “They know who I am and why I’m here.”

While visitors to the coffee shop may not always recognize Mr Zuckerman if he is sitting among them enjoying the coffee-scented air of The Blue Z, they certainly appreciate the work he has done.

“By 7 o’clock [on the nights he hangs shows] we’re pretty well cranking along,” he said, “figuring out what goes where.

“The fun is getting introduced to new art and finding where each piece is going to be happy.”

Sometimes a piece of art — Mr Zuckerman prefers works “with fuller dimensions,” larger photos, paintings, or mixed media works, for instance (“There isn’t a lot of room for sculpture,” he pointed out, although a collection of “natural sculpture” by Newtown resident Jessica Gaddis was worked into the available exhibition space for a December 2009 exhibition) — finds its temporary home easily. The curator prefers pieces to be at least 16 by 20 inches in order to show well, and he tells artists to bring up to two dozen works with them when it is time to hang a show.

“Each show has between 12 and 15 pieces, so they know that at least a half dozen of the works they bring aren’t going to make it into the show,” he said. Mr Zuckerman is contacted by artists, or receives suggestions, a few months in advance of a show’s presentation. He will look at slides or a website to consider work, and then accepts or declines a proposed collection.

“It’s really fun and exciting,” said Mr Zuckerman, who admits he is a little picky about the work he accepts for the space at The Z. “We’re looking for things a little more bohemian, less folky, country, and small town. We’re trying to avoid the typical New England art.

“The Blue Z,” he added, “is the little island of bohemia in the big area of suburbia.”

Previous exhibitions curated by Mr Zuckerman have included “Rememoration,” a unique collection of award-winning fine art photography by the Newtown resident C.M. Chapman that combined photos with items that had been left by a late school teacher from Rochester, N.Y.; “Art For Autism,” photos by behavior analyst J. Tyler Fovel; acrylic paintings “created from the imagination” by Susan Washburn; and “Inside Missions,” a collection of photos by former New Milford resident Richard Close, half of which showed clients of Bridgeport Rescue Mission and the other half showing poor but proud residents of Kenya taken while Mr Close was working in Africa.

“Pieces sometimes fall into place easily,” Mr Zuckerman said. “Photos done by a former missionary included a shot of a choir. That one, I felt immediately, had to go up near the stage. It looked like they were singing with whoever was performing [at The Blue Z] each time the stage area was being used.”

A few weeks ago Mr Zuckerman spent his Tuesday evening with Michael Florio, a Danbury photographer who loves “scenes that are calm, or spark emotions, or questions,” he said. “I love the idea of people looking at my art and wondering what’s happening.”

Mr Florio’s photos are manipulated in Photoshop, sometime merging elements from separate photos and other times to highlight contrast of different areas within a single frame. As their core, however, they are always strong images by a self-taught photographer (“The Internet is a great tool,” he said) who is now celebrating his first exhibition of work.

Most of Mr Florio’s scenes are just that: scenes, unpopulated with faces when possible. He also prefers to leave his works unnamed.

“I want to leave it up to each person. A name may lead them somewhere, and I don’t want to ruin it for them if they’re starting down one path and then by reading a name of description from me it leads them elsewhere,” said Mr Florio, who compares his untitled photos to music videos. “You can listen to a song and have an idea about it, and then you see a video and think, ‘Oh, that’s what you’re trying to do here?’”

On view at The Blue Z is a variety of Mr Florio’s images, among them a self-portrait of the photographer on an abandoned couch discovered in Wingdale, N.Y., with astrophotography (done with a telescope) placing the moon and the evening sky over the roof line of a barn behind the couch; an infrared photo shot at Tarrywile Park in Danbury with hints of red-orange in the sky and the sky and clouds reflected in water; and one, shot this past June, that captures a World War II Corsair and the Statue of Liberty during the Red Bull Air Race.

“I really enjoy doing this,” Mr Zuckerman said. “It’s a challenge, that’s for sure,” he added with a laugh. “I see samples of work online, usually five or six pieces from an artist, to decide if this is the right stuff for The Blue Z. Sometimes those aren’t even the pieces the artists decide to bring on hanging night, so there is an element of learning the artist’s work on the fly.”

In contrast, when working at a museum Mr Zuckerman often has weeks — sometimes months — to contemplate pieces and their eventual placement for a show. The Sandy Hook resident has previously worked at The Maritime Aquarium, Worcester Historical Museum, Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia History, and The Museum of Flight in Seattle, among others.

He is the owner of A-Z Museum Services (www.A-ZMuseumSvc.com), a consulting business that has worked with Bristol (Conn.) Historical Society, Stamford Museum & Nature Center, The Children’s Museum of Seattle, and Sandy Springs (Md.) Museum.

Mr Zuckerman became the curator for Steve and Lauren Baluzy after becoming a frequent customer at the South Main Street coffee shop. Through conversations between the three, a mutual love of well-placed art was found and Mr Zuckerman was eventually appointed the venue’s curator.

“I love this work,” he said. “This place is really championing the young art scene in Newtown. It’s giving them a place to perform music, and it’s given them a chance to show their art.”

Artists who would like to have their work considered for an exhibition at The Blue Z are invited to contact Adam Zuckerman at AdamZ@A-ZmuseumSvc.com or through his website, www.A-ZmuseumSvc.com.