Kemba Walker’s play this season was truly remarkable, as was his admission that he read his first book this year, his last at the University of Connecticut.Remarkable too, and more than a little sad, is that so few — hardly a fan and only one or two reporters — seemed to notice or care. The thinking seems to be, “He’s going to earn about $2 million next year, so why be concerned with his reading habits?”Felicia Crump, Walker’s campus-assigned tutor, told Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated she had encouraged Walker to read “Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete,” by New York Times columnist William Rhoden, during the season. The book, on the exploitation of black athletes, was part of an independent study course Walker was taking on racism in sports as Crump tried to help him graduate in three years by doing extra work. “Before the Final Four, Crump suggested that Rhoden’s book would be the first that Walker had ever made it through cover to cover,” Layden reported. “After the win over Kentucky, Walker confirmed this. ‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘You can write that. It is the first book I’ve ever read.’”I didn’t read the Sports Illustrated story but I saw Layden quoted in The Brooks File, NBC30 anchor Gerry Brooks’ website. “Everyone who follows UConn admires Walker for the season he had and for his effort to graduate in three years,” Brooks wrote. “But I’m wondering how you graduate from college (in three years no less) having read one book in your life. And I’m hoping Kemba’s quote reflects pride in that he actually finally read a book from cover to cover. And that he plans to read another one.“Because if he’s proud never to have read a book …” That was apparently enough to cause Walker to back off a bit, telling The Hartford Courant’s Jeff Jacobs, “I read a lot of books, but not just start to finish. I might have skipped some chapters.” Brooks and Jacobs were the only Connecticut journalists I found who thought Walker’s reading habits merited mention.Jacobs acknowledged, “Cynics undoubtedly will raise an eyebrow on how this could be at a major university.”Not only cynics. UConn, at 31 percent, had the third worst graduation rate of all the teams in the NCAA tournament, only superior to Arizona and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. First-round opponent Bucknell has a rate of 100 percent, as does Notre Dame and other big-time teams, which means graduating one’s athletes isn’t an impossible dream.Walker plans to “walk” in this spring’s commencement procession, but still has to “finish two or three online classes” and an internship, so he won’t be exactly graduating. But if he almost makes it in three years and actually does it in four, he’ll be an exception.“We’re talking about a young man who was an average high school student, at best, and who had always been more concerned with basketball” at Harlem’s Rice High School, academic counselor Crump told Sports Illustrated. It is disappointing that there wasn’t a teacher at Walker’s high school able or perhaps, willing, to inspire him to read a book all the way through as he worked to achieve the minimum results needed for a star athlete to gain admission to a basketball college like UConn. But it is dismaying that it took a one-on-one tutor to get him to read a book for the first time at our highly regarded state university. It makes you wonder how much reading other “scholar athletes” do as they pursue an education and work at a job as demanding as playing basketball for half of the school year. The problem isn’t new or just for athletes. More than 30 years ago, I did a TV documentary on kids getting into schools like UConn with reading skills that were mediocre and writing that was worse. I remember a UConn economics professor saying he stopped giving essay tests because reading them was so painful. I’m sure things haven’t gotten better.I hope Kemba Walker graduates soon and enjoys great success in the NBA, but mostly, I hope he’ll find more books worth reading all the way through. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.
Latest News
“I don’t really consider myself a traditional gallerist,” explained Terzian, a Southern California native who moved to Connecticut in 2008. “I see myself more as an artist advocate.”
Established in 2021 as a platform to promote the work of emerging and mid-career artists, Terzian’s gallery has grown into one of Litchfield County’s most compelling launching pads for contemporary art. Focusing on drawing, works on paper and paintings in ambitiously varied visual vocabularies, the gallery has built a reputation for its devotion to the artists’ methods, tools, materials and critical thinking. Terzian has also cultivated a niche rooted in an ethos that favors intense tactile engagement over sheer wall acreage.
“The gallery is really meant to create a very intimate relationship with the artist and the story behind their work,” said Terzian, who has spent two decades organizing exhibitions in galleries and museums and taught art history and museum studies at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington for six years. “It’s always very much about the process and I think the artists and the visitors to the gallery really recognize and appreciate that focus.”
That commitment to creative rigor is raising Terzian’s profile among art institutions. The gallery’s acceptance into the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) earlier this year marked a significant milestone, cementing its place within an international network of contemporary galleries and arts professionals dedicated to supporting vanguard talent.
“Her innate enthusiasm allows artists to test out new bodies of work on the walls in a supportive environment, creating space for both joy and growth,” explained Rebecca McNamara, chief curator at the Mattatuck Museum.
Jenny Kemp, whose solo exhibition “Reverbs” runs through Dec. 12, echoes that sentiment: “She encourages artists to lead in shaping their exhibitions and the installation, giving them the freedom to respond to the space and bring their own vision to it.”
While Litchfield County has long attracted creative minds, Terzian’s arrival in 2021 coincided with a period of cultural momentum, allowing her to tap into an expanding cadre of local talent. The gallery’s roster bridges mid-career artists such as Fritz Horstman, Kristin Lamb and Richard Pasquarelli, who have exhibited their work in museums, galleries and art fairs throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Yet her programming also crosses geographic boundaries seamlessly, bringing work by painters and paper-makers from Brooklyn, Providence, Berlin as well as artists working in established studios across Connecticut.
Jennifer Terzian’s gallery showcases emerging and mid-career artists, with a focus on drawing, works on paper and painting.Provided
Recent exhibitions highlight Terzian’s curatorial leanings toward precision and patience over hyper-commerciality. Jessica Smolinski’s mixed-media works probed memory and time through photography and textiles, while Aliza Morell employed holographic streamers against flat fields of color transferred to canvas via a layered material process. China-born artist Jenny Wu, who studied studio art at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and American University, poured and layered liquid paint until it took on dense, sculptural forms.
“The space feels like you are leaving the day’s responsibilities behind and entering a world of serenity,” said Wu, whose paintings explore composition, color and materiality. “Stand there, look at the works, feel them, and let them consume you for once.”
Terzian advocates for a more intimate scale to help amplify impact and says the diversity of aesthetics allows her to build a space tailored to creative rhythms of the artist. “It fosters a better dialogue between artist, curator and collector.”
The gallery’s momentum coincides with a broader revival across Litchfield. The recent arrival of three boutique hotels — The Abner, Belden House and Lost Fox Inn — has brought a steady influx of younger, design-conscious travelers to Connecticut’s northwest corner, energizing the town’s cultural landscape.
“I love for people who are new to Litchfield to walk down those stairs to my gallery and just come inside and just be educated about the artists and their work,” Terzian reflected. “Whether or not they walk away with purchasing something, I just think the experience of coming into a space and not feeling intimidated is valuable.”
For more information, visit jenniferterziangallery.com.
Troy McMullen is a former Wall Street Journal reporter in Berlin and New York and currently an executive editor at ABC News. His arts and culture reporting appears in several New England publications, including Litchfield Magazine, New England Home and Connecticut Magazine. He splits his time between Manhattan and a weekend home in Litchfield, adjacent to the Hauser Nature Preserve.
Cusack recently moved his painting practice from Torrington into the former church at 58 Main Street. The move came about somewhat unexpectedly, after a change in ownership made his previous studio untenable.
“At first I thought it was just gonna be too much,” Cusack said. When he first saw it, the building still looked unmistakably like a church, with its vaulted ceiling, stained glass and architectural details intact. It had served as a place of worship for generations before closing roughly 12 years ago.
But the space began to make sense.
“I’m very philosophical, very spiritual, very humanistic,” said Cusack. “And so for me to be in a church sort of fits.”
Cusack still lives in West Cornwall, where he has a garden he describes as mature and beautiful, along with a saltwater pool. The church is strictly a working studio, though he hopes to bring students in and occasionally invite other artists to exhibit alongside him.
“From Ground to Gravity,” 2026, Oil on Canvas, 77 x 65 inchesProvided
As with every studio, Cusack says, there is a particular direction and position that feels right for painting. In the church, he gravitated toward a spot where the geometry of the building creates a distinct rhythm, near where the pews once ended, before the altar.
“I can already see the arc of the dome involved in my work,” he said.
The first painting he made in the new space, “Prophets and Proverbs,” grew out of three forms he encountered during his morning meditation at home. After drawing and reflecting on them, he came to understand them as expressions of different aspects of maturity: “ego, strategy, agency.”
The exhibition’s title comes from “Nature Eternal,” a painting of a young nude figure in a pink field that evokes, for Cusack, the Garden of Eden and an idea of bliss and perfection. “The Narcissist,” by contrast, considers what happens after that innocence is lost: the arrival of consciousness, self-awareness and the search for identity.
Two paintings of swimmers explore another dimension of that relationship. In “I Will Love You Completely,” Cusack sees a figure reaching outward from the canvas almost like an angel. “It’s a message from the divine,” he said. In another painting, the swimmer appears to be held by the water, suggesting the possibility of being held by something larger than ourselves.
Having grown up in New York, Cusack says his relationship with the natural world has deepened since moving to northwest Connecticut. He thinks about the glacier that passed through this region, leaving stones behind that have remained through countless chapters of human history. In a painting of stones, Cusack considers the wisdom of the landscape and the extraordinary passage of time. “To me, that’s an eternal wisdom.”
Cusack regularly visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he sits in the sculpture galleries, contemplating and drawing the figures.
“Drawing is just a way of looking and continuing to look,” he said. “It just helps me ground myself and be very present.”
“Nature Eternal,” 2026, Oil on Canvas, 77 x 47 inches.Provided
That practice of extended observation can be seen in the paintings. At first glance, Cusack’s color palettes can appear remarkably simple, sometimes almost monochromatic. But the longer one spends with them, the more they open up. Subtle shifts in tone and color begin to emerge, deepening and expanding the visual experience. What initially seems restrained becomes increasingly expansive as the viewer gives the work time and attention.
Before turning fully to painting, Cusack spent 12 years as a commercial artist represented by Morgan Gaynin Inc., where his work became known for its emotive storytelling. His paintings have appeared in Architectural Digest, Veranda, New England Home and Litchfield Magazine, among other publications, and are held in the collections of the United States Air Force, the New York Transit Museum and the Society of Illustrators. His training included an MA at Syracuse University and a year of classical study in France’s Loire Valley with a master painter who was also a former Zen monk.
The church, meanwhile, has its own layers of history. During the many repairs required after Cusack moved in, a plumber mentioned that he had been married there. His wife had since died, and Cusack asked whether he was sure he wanted to return to the building. He was.
It is a small story, but one that seems to resonate with Cusack’s interest in the passage of time and the histories held by places and objects. Although he says he doesn’t feel a particular presence in the church, he is conscious of its history and of the community for whom it was once a gathering place.
For now, he is looking forward to welcoming people into his new studio and seeing how they respond to the paintings. “Interacting with the work” is important, he said. “It always feels good to have people in your studio space.”
“Eternal: New, Recent and Near Distant Paintings” will be on view Nov. 13–15, from 1 to 5 p.m., at 58 Main Street (the Stone Church) in North Canaan. An opening reception will take place Saturday, Nov. 14, from 4 to 7 p.m.
Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.
