Shaping history: students step up as documentarians
HVRHS seniors Ellie Wolgemuth, left, and Tess Marks were panelists for “Students as Historians: A Community-based Approach to History.”
Patrick L. Sullivan
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The new mural painted by students at Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut.
Photo by Kristy Barto, owner of The Nutmeg Fudge Company
Thanks to a unique collaboration between The Nutmeg Fudge Company, local artist Gerald Incandela, and Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut a mural — designed and painted entirely by students — now graces the interior of the fudge company.
The Nutmeg Fudge Company owner Kristy Barto was looking to brighten her party space with a mural that celebrated both old and new Torrington. She worked with school board member Susan Cook and Incandela to reach out to the Academy’s art teacher, Rachael Martinelli.
“When Susan and Gerald brought this to me, I immediately saw it as a chance for my students to make something meaningful and lasting,” said Martinelli. “It wasn’t just about painting a wall, it was about teaching kids to serve their community through their art.”
Martinelli introduced the project as an after-school club for grades four through eight. “I wanted students who were truly committed,” she explained. Interest was so high that she had to divide participants into rotating grade-level groups, with occasional full-team days for collaboration. The mural became a long-term endeavor, stretching across a school year and a half.
The painting was created on canvas, a nearly 4’ x 27’ roll, donated by Incandela. The paint came courtesy of school principal Ed Goad. With materials secured, the students dove into research, studying maps, landmarks, and city history to inform their designs. “They worked to capture the spirit of Torrington,” Martinelli said. “But also, to match the whimsy of a candy shop.”
The result is a mural that features a playful “candyland” version of the city, where important buildings and landmarks are sized according to their importance to both the client and the community. “They created this hierarchy of bubbles and buildings, this joyful visual story,” Martinelli said. “It’s full of life.”
Beyond art skills, Martinelli witnessed her students develop qualities often harder to teach: teamwork, communication, resilience. “They learned to scale up sketches, mix large batches of paint for consistency, and adapt their work when it overlapped with someone else’s. They really respected each other’s contributions.”
The project also reflected the Academy’s Catholic STREAM (Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Arts, and Math) approach to education. “This was STREAM in action,” Martinelli explained. “They used technology to scale and transfer designs, applied math for proportions and spacing, and worked collaboratively to problem-solve. But they also lived their faith — through service, solidarity, and joy.”
Martinelli believes the mural speaks as much to the process as it does to the final product. “Some of the kids who worked on it have already graduated, but they’re coming back for the unveiling. That says something.”
The unveiling of the mural will take place at The Nutmeg Fudge Company on June 11, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., where families, friends, and community members are invited to celebrate the students’ achievement.
Asked what stood out most from the experience, Martinelli said, “For me, the most rewarding part was watching a diverse group of kids work together — different grades, different friend groups — all collaborating with respect, flexibility, and positivity. They created something beautiful, together.”
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In the company of artists
Jun 18, 2025
Curator Henry Klimowicz, left, with artists Brigitta Varadi and Amy Podmore at The Re Institute
Aida Laleian
For anyone who wants a deeper glimpse into how art comes about, an on-site artist talk is a rich experience worth the trip.On Saturday, June 14, Henry Klimowicz’s cavernous Re Institute — a vast, converted 1960’s barn north of Millerton — hosted Amy Podmore and Brigitta Varadi, who elucidated their process to a small but engaged crowd amid the installation of sculptures and two remarkable videos.
Though they were all there at different times, a common thread among Klimowicz, Podmore and Varadi is their experience of New Hampshire’s famed MacDowell Colony. The silence, the safety of being able to walk in the woods at night, and the camaraderie of other working artists are precious goads to hardworking creativity. For his part, for fifteen years, Klimowicz has promoted community among thousands of participating artists, in the hope that the pairs or groups he shows together will always be linked. “To be an artist,” he stressed, “is to be among other artists.”
Curator and owner Klimowicz and both artists spoke of the physicality of making art, revealing an abounding intimacy with their materials. Podmore recounted seeking the perfect bare branches to use in her “Fall,” the piece that dominates the center of the space.She would find those that most suggested figures slipping into a fall, and mimic them herself, as animators do for accuracy, before admitting them into the crew now lying on the floor.Each isunique, but all are united by their red-socked feet, which, though tiny, are touchingly rendered in adult proportions. For art professor Podmore, they signal how “failing in public” is a phenomenon today’s students must learn to navigate.
For Varadi, whose background is Rusyn-Carpathian, the main medium is Karakul sheep’s wool, a particularly robust variety used in Persian carpets. Her process of felting the fiber involves extremely hard labor; she wryly expressed hope that technology would ease the burden of this long-term project, best seen in her huge wall piece, “With Their Backs to the Mountains.” The title refers to the staunch resilience of her ancestors — stateless but proud, subject to historical violence.
In Varadi’s video “Hunia-Permission to Be,” the color red amid the chiaroscuro of snowy winter forests offers a mesmerizing counterpart to Podmore’s floorpiece.Wearing the traditional, oversized red felted coat called the Hunia, the artist silently plods through the lovely scene, suggesting cycles of effort, disappearing and reappearing.
Podmore’s video adds the aural element, with the creaking of trees rubbing against each other at various tilts.The title “Fifteen Degrees” indicates a tree’s maximum safe angle from vertical. Reflecting this, two silhouetted jointed figures lean against each other — by turns intimate and aggressive — a shockingly apt metaphor for current society.
“As a younger artist,” Podmore observed, “I was very serious about the human condition; now I see that it is just bizarre.”
Another of Podmore’s works, “Audience” — now on view at Mass MoCA — gives a nod and a wink to our strange time.Hundreds of unique plaster-cast baskets mounted along an 85-foot wall, some fitted with single mechanical eyes, offer viewers the experience of being viewed, to the quiet cacophony of eyes popping open.A must-see through Nov. 30.
The Re Institute exhibition can be seen through July 5, with hours Saturdays 1 to 4 p.m. and by appointment.More information at the reinstitute.com.
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Sophie Eisner in her studio in Kingston, New York.
Hannah Vaughan
Sophie Eisner is a mixed media artist working in steel, fabric, concrete, silicone and other materials. Her solo show “Holding Patterns” at the Norfolk Library will be on view through July 1.
Thematically, “Holding Patterns” explores the energy of potential and how the human body holds emotional experience. Her work often depicts empty vessels and uses negative space to explore tension between objects.
Inspired by the memory of a traumatic childhood injury at her family home in Norfolk, Eisner remembers how her father took care of her.
“When I was three years old, I fell and cut my knee badly. My dad picked me up and put me in the kitchen sink. I think about that in terms of objects and the relationship between space, feelings and memories. Physical space and emotional quality are very merged,” she said.
Perhaps due to this experience, sinks and empty vessels figure frequently in Eisner’s work. She has a fondness for the smoothness and utility of their design as well as empty bowls. But Eisner explores other ideas and works in different mediums, often welding metal coils.
“If we take that into the metaphorical range, it’s like a human where we’re not all made at once but who you are grows out of this accumulation of experiences and events that sort of mark you over time. So, that’s another way that I’ve explored ideas of memory,” she said.
While Eisner’s work deals with personal experiences, it is open to viewer interpretation, often in a non-linear fashion.
“It is like when you have a dream, you forget about it and then you remember it later. There’s enough logic or structure there that it feels familiar or like it could be known, even though it’s not necessarily nameable,” she said.
Blue velvet is one of Eisner’s preferred fabrics, which she uses to convey value. She was attracted to the material after seeing an empty violin case and was struck by the beauty of the velvet as well as the absence of the object, which is as of much interest to Eisner as what is present.
“Building those narratives, the loose idea of how one thing starts to ‘talk to the other’ and that vibration between them can change really dramatically depending on where they’re placed. The sweet spot between harmony and tension as I’m working in the studio is an opportunity to do more of a meditative practice,” she said.
Up next, Eisner will be showing at the new O+ Headquarters in Kingston in July and August. O+ is an organization that facilitates artists getting healthcare in exchange for their work. She will also be part of a pop-up exhibition at Atlas Studios in Newburgh, New York for Upstate Art Weekend July 17 through 21.
This story has been corrected to fix the end date of Eisner's solo show at the Norfolk Library (July 1) and that she works with many materials, including silicone.
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