Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.

Suzan Scott on wonder and seeing

Suzan Scott on wonder and seeing

Suzan Scott discusses color, words, wonder and seeing at the Hunt Library on March 12.

L. Tomaino

FALLS VILLAGE — Painter Suzan Scott’s comparison of words to colors explained the visual language she has developed over many years. “I love the thesaurus.” When she chooses a color, it is like finding a word in the thesaurus. And to her “words have color, and tone, and weight. Finding the right word, is like finding the right color.”

Attendees at her talk looked with interest through a notebook she passed around, a kind of catalog of color, two or three rectangles on each page which she painted in solid, subtle tones using gouache. This was one of her books of visual syntax, demonstrating how sets of colors come together into an image the way words do in a sentence. “My language is line and color and shape. They are my voice made visible.”

How has she built her visual language? She remembers her delight when, as a child she finally was given“ a pad, a book of blank paper!” “All of this is very personal to me.” “I paint wonder. It’s really a landscape, but I paint wonder.”

“There is so much more here than what we can see, if I can step back, maybe not try to name things but just experience them.”

She will often start a canvas in orange, her color for the earth under the grass. Her process becomes a meditation “about layers under the hill, layers of time, life lived there”, by “digging holes into hills with color.” And about clouds, trees, the seasons, weather, and the night sky. She has created a series of paintings on each. When she arranged in sequence 365 paintings she had done one year, she saw the sweep of color of the sky and earth over time.

She spoke of the artist Sol Lewitt with whom she had contact while organizing slides as Assistant to the Curator of the LeWitt Collection in Chester, Connecticut. She described him as a gentle, approachable man whose work with sequences, minimalism, and conceptual art deepened her realization of what can be represented in her work, “simplifying to get the essence of a thing.”

“Wonders are there — we just have to look. Each one of us has a specific view. Individual vision is a gift.”

Her show at Hunt Library, in Falls Village, This Beautiful Place, ended on March 13. Her website is www.suzanscott.com. Hunt Library: www.huntlibrary.org

Latest News

Motorcycle crash near Route 7 prompts Life Star landing at HVRHS

Motorcycle crash near Route 7 prompts Life Star landing at HVRHS

A Life Star helicopter lands on the front lawn of Housatonic Valley Regional High School on Saturday, May 16, to transport a motorcycle crash victim to a hospital.

Aly Morrissey

LIME ROCK — A motorcycle crash involving a car temporarily shut down a section of Route 112 near the intersection with Route 7 on Saturday afternoon, drawing a large emergency response and prompting a Life Star helicopter landing at Housatonic Valley Regional High School.

Emergency responders at the scene confirmed the incident involved a motorcycle and passenger vehicle. Route 7 was closed from Dugway Road to the intersection of Routes 7 and 112 while crews responded.

Keep ReadingShow less
Van strikes utility pole, closes Route 112 for hours

Traffic was diverted near Wells Hill Road after a crash closed part of Route 112 Friday afternoon.

By James H. Clark

A van crashed into a utility pole on Route 112 near Wells Hill Road Friday afternoon, leaving the driver hospitalized in serious condition and forcing the highway to close for several hours.

The crash was reported at approximately 3:20 p.m., according to Connecticut State Police Troop B.

Keep ReadingShow less
Voices from our Salisbury community about the housing we need for a healthy, economically vibrant future

Renee Wilcox

If you’ve ever wandered through Paley’s Farm Market, you probably know Renee Wilcox. For thirty years, she has been greeting you with unmistakable warmth—always ready with a smile. Renee grew up in Millerton, but it was in Salisbury that her family found something they’d never had before: a true sense of home. In 2003, she and her husband Bill were living in Millerton, but Bill—a volunteer with the Lakeville Hose Company—was already part of Salisbury life. When the Salisbury Housing Trust finished eight new homes on East Main Street (Dunham Drive), Renee and Bill were the first to sign on.

The story of those houses is really a story about the best parts of our community. Richard Dunham and his wife, Inge, along with the Housing Trust board, poured years of energy and hope into the project. Renee can’t help but light up when she talks about the people who helped her family settle in. Digby Brown came by to install appliances and bathroom cabinets; Barbara Niles spent hours painting; Carl Williams assembled bunk beds for the kids. Rick Cantele, at Salisbury Bank, helped them with their finances so they could qualify for a mortgage, while neighbors arrived at their door with fruit baskets and welcoming words.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

Trade Secrets: a glamorous garden event with a deeper mission

Heavy stone garden ornaments, a specialty of Judy Milne Antiques from Kingston, at Trade Secrets 2025.

Christine Bates

Tucked away on Porter Street in downtown Lakeville, Project SAGE is an unassuming building from a street view. But cross the threshold a week before Trade Secrets — one of the region’s biggest gardening events, long associated with Martha Stewart and glamorous plants of all varieties — and you’ll find a bustling world of employees and volunteers getting ready for the organization’s most important event of the year.

“It’s not usually like this,’ laughed Project SAGE director Kristen van Ginhoven. “But with Trade Secrets just around the corner, it’s definitely like this.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Two artists, two Hartford stages, one shared life

Caroline Kinsolving and Gary Capozzielo at home in Salisbury with their dogs, Petruchio and Beatrice

Provided
"He played his violin, I worked on my lines, we walked the dog, and suddenly we were circling each other perfectly."
Caroline Kinsolving

Actor Caroline Kinsolving and violinist Gary Capozziello enjoy their quiet life with their two dogs in Salisbury, yet are often pulled apart to perform on distant stages in far-flung cities. Currently, the planets have aligned, and both are working in Hartford, across Bushnell Park from one another. Bridgewater native Kinsolving is starring in “Circus Fire,” the current production of TheaterWorks Hartford, while Capozziello is a violinist and assistant concertmaster of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. While Kinsolving hates being away from home, she feels the distance nourishes their relationship.

“We are guardians of each other’s confidence and self-esteem,” she said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Local filmmaker turns spotlight back on Hollywood’s Mermaid

Esther Williams in “Million Dollar Mermaid” (1952).

Provided

For decades, Esther Williams was one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, but the swimming sensation of the silver screen has largely faded from public memory — a disappearance that intrigued Millerton filmmaker Brian Gersten and inspired him to revisit her legacy.

As a millennial, Gersten grew up largely unaware of Williams’ influential career. His teen years in Chicago were spent with friends who obsessed over movies, spending hours at their local independent video store,and watching anything that caught their eye. Somehow, though, they never ventured into the glossy world of synchronized-swimming musicals of the 1940s and ‘50s.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.