In just nine years, the Kent Gingerbread Festival in Kent, Conn., has gone from being just fun to being quite a big deal. It’s one of the biggest gingerbread festivals in the region and has become a big draw to town, even in years when there’s a pandemic quarantine. This year, to make it easier to access the houses, the festival organizers used space in a retail area in the center of town owned by Rocco and Candi Valeri, that was converted for the holiday season to Gingerbread Station.
The cookie creations were on display for the month of December. Awards were announced Jan. 1; the judging this year was by state Rep. Maria Horn (D-64) and Jill Owens Zinzi, of Kent Coffee and Chocolate Co., described as “the mother of the Kent Gingerbread Festival herself.”
The grand prize winner this year was Brittany Hrabcsak, who has been an award winner in the festival for several years in a row now (for her first foray into gingerbread decoration she was young enough to qualify for the Youth Award). This year, Hrabcsak created Whoville from Dr. Seuss’ holiday tale, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
Sue Hanneman won second place for her recreation of Rapunzel in her castle tower.
Third place was awarded to the Swyft restaurant team.
The people’s choice award went to Denise Howard, Teddie Miner, Cat Heidel, Karen Heuvel, and Janette Ireland.
“Social Media’s most loved creation” went to Isabel Carrington and Emily Creighton, whose post of their gingerbread Warner Theatre reached 19,200 followers and elicited 3,100 comments.
The Youth Award was won this year by Jordana Berman, Abby Berman and Alexander Berman, who recreated the Kent train station (now home to the Kent Station Pharmacy).
The prize for Most Realistic creation went to Tom Doyle, for building a fully edible cookie version of the exterior AND interior of Foreign Cargo.
Just starting out this year, the Salisbury, Conn., gingerbread festival and holiday decorating competition announced two winners at the end of December. Heidi Hoeller and Wanda Hoeller won the gingerbread contest with their Gingerville Ski Chalet; and the Hussey Family of Lakeville won first place in the Light Up Salisbury contest. Both contests were sponsored by the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance and Salisbury Recreation.
Isabel Carrington and Emily Creighton not only know how to bake and decorate like pros, they also collected tens of thousands of views on social media for their cookie version of the Warner Theatre in Torrington, Conn. Photo by Melissa Roth Chernisk
Rapunzel and her tower were captured in cookies by Sue Hanneman, whose baking and decorating efforts won her second place in the Kent, Conn., Gingerbread Festival. Photo by Melissa Roth Chernisk
Travel league baseball came to Torrington Thursday, June 26, when the Berkshire Bears Select Team played the Connecticut Moose 18U squad. The Moose won 6-4 in a back-and-forth game. Two players on the Bears play varsity ball at Housatonic Valley Regional High School: shortstop Anthony Foley and first baseman Wes Allyn. Foley went 1-for-3 at bat with an RBI in the game at Fuessenich Park.
Anthony Foley, rising senior at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, went 1-for-3 at bat for the Bears June 26.Photo by Riley Klein
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.
Pearson first encountered the world of alternative publications — magazines filled with experimental writing, artworks in the form of a book, and samizdat literature — as a young writer living in Berlin just before The Wall came down in 1989. Later, in New York City, she spent a great deal of time with artists “who were always making and assembling, whose continuous art-making made the thin membrane between art and life even more porous,” she explained.
Pearson traces the idea of publishing to a 2001 exhibition of artist-poet Joe Brainard. That show led to “The Nancy Book,” Siglio’s debut title in 2008, and she’s never looked back. The book contains over fifty full-page reproductions of Brainard’s dazzlingly accomplished and witty drawings of the cartoon strip character, Nancy. It includes essays and contributions by Robert Creeley, Ann Lauterbach, Frank O’Hara, Ron Padgett, and other poets of great renown, all thrilled to celebrate and remember Brainard (sometimes called “a poet’s artist”) who died of AIDS in 1994. Pearson said, ‘My first project with Brainard was such a good experience, I kept going. “
Since then, Pearson, the sole proprietor of Siglio, has designed, edited, and published over 40 books and other printed editions. Her books are characterized by unexpected juxtapositions of texts and images and collage-like assemblages, as well as for carefully designed and gorgeously printed volumes. Her list includes many “rediscoveries” of unpublished manuscripts and little-known publications. At the same time, she has commissioned new work from an impressive array of artists and writers such as Christian Marclay, Sophie Calle and Cecilia Vicinua among others.
Uncommon books at the intersection of art and literature.Richard Kraft
Though most Siglio books feature work by artists and writers from the 1960s to today, one standout— “Tantra Song” (2011) — showcases vibrant 17th-century Indian tantric paintings collected by poet-ethnographer Franck André Jammes, their modernist feel echoing Hilma af Klint or Brice Marden. Siglio also frequently draws on the spirit of the Fluxus movement, reissuing works by figures like John Cage and Ray Johnson with editions that honor their playful, ephemeral, and poetic origins.
Siglio also excels at photo-narratives rooted in highly specific, often eccentric concepts. “Memory” (2020), by avant-garde writer Bernadette Mayer, reproduces her journal and daily rolls of 35mm film from a month in the Berkshires in 1971, capturing the texture of each day. “Call and Response” (2022), created during COVID lockdown by composer and visual artist Christian Marclay, pairs his photographs of London’s quieted streets with musical scores composed in reply by his friend Bruce Beresford—each image in dialogue with sound.
Siglio books are sold through it’s website (sigliopress.com), as well as museum or specialty bookshops. (The Lenox Bookstore represents a number of Siglio books; the newly opened Lakeville Books & Stationery has copies of “Tantra Song.”) In all cases, Pearson strives to make “two or three degrees of connection” with each book buyer, including a “special gift” — often a piece of printed ephemera — with each purchase.
