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The Litchfield Art Festival will take place at Lawrence Field in North Canaan Saturday, May 18 and Sunday, May 19, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The festival features painting, sculpture, mixed media, digital art, graphics, drawing, printmaking, photography, ceramics, glass, leather, fiber/paper art, woodworks, metal, and jewelry by artists from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
The Tasty Empanada food truck from Watertown will offer culinary options, and Homegrown Café will serve drinks and desserts from their stand under the pavilion. There will be a raffle as well. The festival is free and open to the public.
The Litchfield Art Festival, now branded as (LAF), intends to become the best outdoor juried fine art show in the region.
LAF is organized by The Voice of Art (TVOA), a nonprofit visual art organization founded in 2017 whose mission is “to integrate arts and cultural community-building activities for residents of the Litchfield community.”
Director/Artist-in-Residence Hannah Jung founded The Voice of Art in 2017. Born in South Korea, Jung came to the U.S. for graduate study after obtaining her BFA in Painting from Seoul National University in 2000.
Jung has been an exhibiting artist in Connecticut and has taught at Housatonic Community College, Albertus Magnus College, as well as public and private schools. Her work has been exhibited at the Promenade Gallery at the Bushnell (Hartford), the Korean Embassy (Washington D.C.), Vision Gallery (NYC), and The White Gallery (Lakeville).
She explained the organization’s growth and movement, “After two years of operating The Voice of Art Gallery & Studio in Cheshire, we moved to Litchfield in 2020 to be more closely connected to a community with a deep appreciation of the fine arts and artists.”
During the pandemic, TVOA started their annual outdoor fine art show to reach a wider and more diverse audience.
“The festival was not really planned until we realized that the pandemic would not go away. I needed to be connected to the community. I’ve been in the U.S. for 20 years, but never thought about doing a festival until that moment. In a way, the pandemic gave us a great opportunity, and it’s been quite successful. I’ve been able to get to know many professional artists from other states. There are many recurring artists, and we keep growing,” Jung said.
“By managing a gallery, I learned that you have to understand both sides, the artists and the community. You have to understand what the community enjoys and why they should support the arts. This kind of event really connects with the community,” she added.
When asked about the decision to hold the festival in Canaan this year, Jung said, “Canaan is great because Route 44 and 7 connect providing easy access to everybody. We have 100 artists and patrons coming from far away. We’ve been impressed by the great support from the Town of North Canaan. First Selectman Brian Ohler has been actively supportive of our needs as well as many business owners.”
Looking toward the future, TVOA is seeking to establish a permanent home in the Tri-State region. Their five-year plan is to secure a property where they can continue to grow through indoor and outdoor art shows as well as studio programs specifically tailored to the residents of this region.
“Through our programs such as art festivals, therapeutic art, workshops, master class series, artist residency programs, and summer camps, TVOA will offer entertaining, educational, and self-healing art experiences. Local arts are critical to everyone’s mental and spiritual well-being,” Jung said.
In addition, The Voice of Art offers classes, workshops, and health-related studio art programs for seniors during the day. TVOA is hoping their programs can serve as a second act for seniors.
“Canaan provides what we need, so we’re very happy to be here,” Jung said.
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Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.