Joy Brown installing work for her show at the Tremaine Art Gallery at Hotchkiss.
Natalia Zukerman
Natalia Zukerman
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Yale professor Elihu Rubin led discussions before and after “The Brutalist” screening at Triplex Cinema on Feb. 2. He highlighted how the film brings architecture into focus, inviting the audience to explore Brutalism as both a style and a theme.
L. Tomaino
A special screening of “The Brutalist” was held on Feb. 2 at the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington. Elihu Rubin, a Henry Hart Rice Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at Yale, led discussions both before and after the film.
“The Brutalist” stars Adrien Brody as fictional character, architect Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian-born Jewish architect. Toth trained at the Bauhaus and was interred at the concentration camp Buchenwald during World War II. The film tells of his struggle as an immigrant to gain back his standing and respect as an architect. Brody was winner of the Best Actor Golden Globe, while Bradley Corbet, director of the film, won best director and the film took home the Golden Globe for Best Film Drama. They have been nominated again for Academy Awards.
Laszlo Toth goes to work in his cousin’s furniture store when he arrives in New York, living in the storeroom and helping his cousin build up the business. When his cousin’s wife falsely accuses him of making a pass at her, he ends up living in a homeless shelter.
A would-be patron tracks him down, finds him working construction—the only job he can get—and asks, “Tell me, why is an accomplished foreign architect shoveling coal here in Philadelphia?”
Eventually, Toth gains a commission but faces prejudice as a foreigner and Jew, even though he and his wife, who he reunites with after she’d been in the concentration camp, Dachau, are both highly educated—she is an Oxford graduate and an established writer in their home country of Hungary.
Rubin began his discussion before the screening by saying, “I am thrilled this film has brought architecture to the forefront. There is something so fascinating and robust about the space Brutalist architecture creates.”
Brutalism is known for using “raw materials,” such as brick and concrete in ways that leave them visible. Rubin said that concrete is “incredibly expressive. It comes to the building site as mud and becomes what it is poured out as.”
“At first,” said Rubin, “optimism was associated with Brutalism.”
Brutalism came to the forefront of architecture in the 1950’s when it was used to reconstruct housing in the United Kingdom after WWII.
Some prime examples of Brutalist architecture include Boston City Hall, Rudolph Hall at Yale University, and the Temple Street Parking Garage in New Haven.
Rubin commented, “Brutalist architecture became the de-facto language of government and institutional architecture.”
Rubin said Brutalism began to fall out of favor in the 1970’s when it began to be associated with urban decay and totalitarian governments, who used it extensively.
Rubin asked the audience to consider two questions as they watched the film: “Why is the main character an architect… what does it bring to the emotional core?” and, “Who or what is the Brutalist in the film?”
After the screening, Rubin commentedtha Brutalist architecture is about “Getting an object to, ultimately, stand by itself.” Rubin explained that Brutalism “Throws off shadows of the past. No extraneous detail is left.” Audience members discussed how this could also be true of the character of Laszlo.
Rubin explained that architects face the challenge of “how to express themselves through someone else’s commission.” Discussion involved how Laszlo finds a way to achieve this.
The audience agreed that the film brought up some timely issues about immigration, class awareness, and acceptance, while asking them to consider how Brutalism applies to these subjects. The movie is at times, as rawly constructed as a brutalist building.
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Breece Meadow
Jeb Breece
Chances are you know or have heard of Jeb Breece.He is one of a handful of the Northwest Corner’s “new guard”—young, talented and interesting people with can-do spirit — whose creative output makes life here even nicer than it already is.
Breece’s outward low-key nature belies his achievements which would appear ambitious even for a person without a full-time job and a family.The third season of his “Bad Grass” speaker series is designed with the dual purpose of reviving us from winter doldrums and illuminating us on a topic of contemporary gardening — by which I mean gardening that does not sacrifice the environment for the sake of beauty nor vice versa. There are two upcoming talks taking place at the White Hart:Feb. 20 featuring Richard Hayden from New York City’s High Line and March 6 where Christopher Koppel will riff on nativars. You won’t want to miss either.
An investment manager by trade, Breece and his wife Sabina rented a weekend house in Kent in 2011 just after they had their first child.Soon after he began to volunteer at a nearby farm and then started to cultivate a small cutting flower bed.Breece’s insight — that it is a rare farmer who is great at both growing and selling — led him in 2020 to aggregate demand and supply for cutting flowers by creating a monthly flower market at Kent Barns in collaboration with RT Facts. Coinciding with Covid, the outdoor market became, in many ways, a respite during a challenging time.
Covid provoked Breece and Sabina to move full time to Salisbury.Soon after, he met Page Dickey who had just published her book “Uprooted.” Had it not been for this book and his friendship with Dickey, Breece admits that his front yard would have been landscaped with a version of boxwood and liatris and the existing grass lawn would have been maintained at great expense.Dickey introduced him to organic landscaper Mike Nadeau and a meadow was born.
Meadows.I have written quite a bit about them in this column, in part because a meadow can be a wholesale solution to the lawn issue.It is by no means the only solution but, for a large expanse, it can be extraordinary to behold.The creation of a biodiverse native habitat where there was only a version of grass and weed is a sensation-filled wonder, but it does take a while to achieve this graceful state unless you have the wisdom of Nadeau — and his machinery — behind you.Now going into its fourth year, the Breece meadow has evolved as new native perennials and grasses show up.“It is beautiful to look at from the house but is best experienced from its interior where you can see, hear and feel the life around you.”
While his world view on gardening has changed, Breece doesn’t think of himself as an advocate of native habitats.But he is.The proceeds from Bad Grass this year will go to its 2025 partner project, Steep Rock Preserve’s “Holiday House” project to transform the space into a “ruin garden,” preserving its historical significance while enhancing its natural beauty and restoring native vegetation.
The spongy moth infestation of 2021 and 2022 feels both a long time ago and like yesterday.Walking in the woods, as I did this morning, the effects of spongy moth are more visible than they were last year; the winter winds have blown off the dead limbs from trees that succumbed to the voracious moths’ leaf-eating appetites.On our property we were able to save many trees using BtK and trunk wraps.But most of the truly glorious giant oaks – some well over 70 feet tall and almost as wide - succumbed.Now, several years later, these limbs are taking down smaller trees as they fall to the ground.There is not much to do about it right now unless you can safely relocate a fallen branch that has landed on and distorted an otherwise living tree. Events like this are a reminder of how many young tree recruits we need to ensure the viability of a woodland. This spring there will be quite a bit more light reaching the woodland floor as a result of the dead trees. The open canopy means an opportunity for growth.It is up to us to decide what will grow in these spaces as, without our intervention, they will be overgrown with invasives, prohibiting native trees from growing and destroying a previously viable habitat.Look for these spaces and pull out the invasives as they grow in.For more on the topic go to www.theungardener.com/articles/the-over-under-a-bet-on-the-future-of-the-woods
Dee Salomon ‘ungardens’ in Litchfield County.
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Jessi Chacho allowed children to gently pet a rescued kitten.
Patrick L. Sullivan
Jenia Booth of Warren, Connecticut, runs a kitten rescue organization, Sophia L’Orange Kitten Rescue.She came to the David M. Hunt Library Saturday morning, Feb. 1, to tell an audience of mostly small children what the work entails.
From her website: “Our mission is to take in pregnant cats, nursing cats with kittens, and orphan kittens who are in need of a safe haven; foster them in a home environment, provide vet care, and adopt them out to loving families.”
Accompanying Booth were two women who have fostered cats, Laura Ledan of Litchfield and Jessi Chacho of New Fairfield. The latter had a black kitten handy for the youngsters to pet.
Jenia Booth explained how cat rescue works.Patrick L. Sullivan
Booth emphasized several times how critical it is to be patient with rescued cats and kittens.
“You have to learn how to let the kitty get used to things.
“Start off slowly. Be gentle. Let the kitty come to you.”
She said the hardest part of fostering cats is knowing when to let them move on.
“I can’t have eight cats, but I can find eight loving families.”
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