Art exhibit launch stirs memories of Apollo 11

FALLS VILLAGE — On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon, an epic moment broadcast live on television and radio to more than 500 million viewers and listeners worldwide.

Fast forward to this past Saturday, July 20, at 4 p.m., exactly 50 years, to the day and time, of that historic lunar landing. To coincide with the event’s golden anniversary, the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village launched a group exhibition, “One Small Step: 50 years of Art & The Moon Landing.” 

Artists and visitors filled every corner of the library at the reception for the show. They came together to view the 53 works created by 35 artists and recall their reactions from Earth exactly a half century ago.

One Small Step features artworks from all disciplines, including painting, drawing, photography and sculpture. They range from Leonard Evans’ photograph of his baby daughter watching the moon landing on TV and Victor Valla’s homage to Stanley Kubrick’s movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” to Karen LeSage’s imposing oil paintings showing the earth from a lunar perspective.

A drama in black and white

Robert Andrew Parker recalled watching the 1969 moon landing with his family at a friend’s house in Ireland. “My friend said, ‘You must be very proud about being an American tonight.’ And it’s funny because I hadn’t thought of it that way. There was so much going on with Nixon, the Vietnam War, L.A. riots.” 

Parker, of West Cornwall, exhibited four moody etchings and watercolors in which moonlight played a key role.

Lou Timolat, a retired pilot and Falls Village resident, said he was visiting his wife’s Hungarian-born grandmother in Pennsylvania as the drama unfolded.  He recalled watching the live feed on a small television and thinking of his own grandmother, who was born in Spain “and handled a six-horse team. I thought, what a gap within one lifetime. It was a huge progression from the previous 50 or 60 years.”

More tech in your phone 

With his trio of moon-themed watercolors hanging nearby on the Hunt Art Wall, Falls Village artist Sergei Fedorjacenko, who co-curated the exhibit, said the events of the moon landing had a profound influence on him. He was 23 at the time, and visiting friends in Greenwich, Conn., for the weekend.

 “I had been following the space program since I was a kid. I had an interest in building rockets, and shooting them off,” said Fedorjacenko, who had originally set his sights on becoming an engineer, but instead followed a career path that led him to industrial design. 

“It was an unbelievable technological achievement,” he recalled. “When I think about where technology is now, compared to what it was then … we have more technology in this,” he said, holding up his cell phone, “than they had for the whole mission.”

Ken Musselman grew up in the era of Tang, Buck Rogers, Star Trek, Star Wars and Pink Floyd’s “Dark side of the Moon” — all of which and more are represented in his detailed painting depicting the space mission. The Falls Village artist spent almost 200 hours on the piece, he said. 

“The composition alone took three months” of research, and also included a clock within the painting depicting a cow jumping over the moon at exactly 8:17 Greenwich Mean Time, coinciding with the lunar landing.

Exhibit co-curator Garth Kobal said the Hunt Art Wall, which was the brainchild of Fedorjaczenko about nine years ago, has proven to be the perfect backdrop for group exhibitions illustrating the cultural role artists play in expressing historical events or themes. 

The 50th anniversary of the moon landing, he said, is no exception. 

“The moon has such a primal and physical hold on us that there’s enough on just that subject alone to inspire endless possibilities.”

Even though Kobal was only 4 when Armstrong took that “giant leap for mankind,” he said the historic event “had a big impact on me, culturally, growing up.” He believes the reason it continues to stir strong emotions is because of its positive impact.

 “It wasn’t an event of tragedy or loss, like so many in that era, but one of accomplishment and hope, inspiring technological advances in physics, mathematics, space exploration, medicine and computing.” 

Over the last half century, he said, the moon landing also elicited an “eruption of creativity” in film, music and writing.

For more information, call 860-824-7424 or go to www.huntlibrary.org. Hours are Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday 3 to 7 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.