Library Plans Winter Art Show Fundraiser

Library Plans Winter Art Show
Fundraiser

The Easton Public Library is gearing up for an Art Show Fundraiser in early 2021 to
benefit the Children’s Expansion Fund. Library Director Lynn Zaffino was recently
approached by Keri English-Giddes, Founder/Director of the Easton Arts Center and
Owner of LaLaPicasso LLC. English-Giddes made the generous offer to create an art
show with some of her work, including pieces from her “Housepaint” series and demos
from her remote lessons, to help raise money for the library.

“I was just blown away by Keri’s offer,” Zaffino said. “I’ve known Keri for years, and she
is such a warm, caring, energetic person. I so appreciate the fact that she wants to do
this for the library.”

“The Easton Public Library is the heart of the community, and has been an important

aspect in the upbringing of my children,” said English-Giddes. “When my children were
small, we attended every event possible. We’ve met some of our closest friends in town
during these years. When I heard about the plans for the addition, it only made sense to
have the proceeds from our next Easton Arts Center Children’s Art Exhibition and Silent
Auction benefit the library and the new children’s expansion.”

Due to COVID, not only was the auction canceled, but the kids lost the opportunity to
create art. Since the special needs’ students needed their lessons and routine, English-
Giddes began teaching online. Therefore, she needed to experiment with the “process”
prior to their lessons as opposed to with them.

As a result, she has “gessoed” over canvas time and time again and then realized that
she could be saving this work. “Gesso” is a hard compound of plaster of
Paris or whiting in glue, used in sculpture or as a base for gilding or painting on wood.

English-Giddes would like this work to be her contribution to the library, the Easton Arts
Center’s contribution, to say thank you. According to her, “The work represents the art
that is fluid, has movement, no end, art that continues: ‘the process.’”

The show is expected to begin in late January, and it will take place in the library
community room. More details will be announced at a later date. To learn more about
Keri English-Giddes and the Easton Arts Center, visit The Easton Arts Center’s Facebook
page or LaLa Picasso – School of Art and Music.

Monuments Men

One of the challenges in writing a weekly history column is constantly coming up with
new ideas about old things. Today’s subject was inspired by the Getty Museum in Los
Angeles which recently called on its online followers to re-create master artworks using
ordinary household items. The internet responded with thousands of home quarantine
masterpieces. One of my many artistically talented friends posted her creation on
Facebook. It was her version of Leonardo da Vinci’s A Lady with an Ermine. That was all
I needed. It sent me searching for an old photograph I recalled seeing of that particular
painting being returned to its rightful owner, the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow, Poland
way back in 1946.

And the Easton connection? Frederick Charles Shrady, a world-renowned sculptor and
artist who lived in Easton for over thirty years, from 1959 until his death in 1990. Shrady
was the first American artist to receive a papal commission for his work. His ten-foot
high bronze statue of Our Lady of Fatima has adorned the gardens in the Vatican since
1983. Shrady’s home and studio were originally built by author Edna Ferber and the
estate was known as Treasure Hill. During World War II, Shrady was part of the group
officially labeled as the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program (MFAA) but known
widely as the Monuments Men, an assemblage of 345 men and women representing
fourteen different nations that located, identified, and saved some of the greatest artistic
masterpieces ever created.

Frederick Charles Shrady in his Easton studio at Treasure Hill
A Lady with an Ermine is a painting created by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci
sometime around 1489 or 1490. The subject of the portrait has been reported to be
Cecelia Gallerani, the mistress of da Vinci’s employer at the time, Ludovico Sforza, the
Duke of Milan. She was one of only four women whom da Vinci painted during his entire
lifetime. The painting was acquired in Italy in 1798 by Prince Adam George Czartoryski
and then added to the family’s extensive art collection in Poland.

When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the painting was seized and sent to the Kaiser
Friederich Museum in Berlin. In 1940, the governor of then German occupied Poland
had the painting brought to Krackow where it hung in his office at Wawel Castle for
nearly a year before being transferred to a warehouse containing hundreds of other
precious pieces of artwork that had been plundered by the Germans in their march
across Europe.

“A Lady with an Ermine” in 1946 when it was returned to the Czartoryski Museum in

Poland. A Smithsonian Photograph
On June 23, 1943, President Roosevelt approved the formation of the “American
Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War
Areas.” The group of men and women assigned to locating and protecting the artist
treasures of Europe quickly became known as the Monuments Men. When A Lady with
an Ermine was recovered, it was repatriated to its rightful owners by members of this
very dedicated group of art saviors in 1946.

From the Monuments Men Foundation biography on member Lt. Frederick Charles
Shrady: Shrady’s already impressive career as an artist was placed on hold with his
enlistment in the U.S. Army in June 1943. In July he was appointed the head of the Fine
Arts Department at Camp Upton in New York. In addition to a brief assignment with the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Washington, D.C., Shrady served with the Model
Making Detachment of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. Due
to his fluency in French, he was selected as a liaison officer to the Free French Forces.

In August 1944 Shrady applied for an assignment with the MFAA. He was eventually
attached to U.S. Third Army in Germany. In June 1945 he assisted Monuments Men Lt.
Cdr. Thomas Howe, Jr., Lt. Cdr. George Stout, Lt. Stephen Kovalyak, and Lt. Lamont
Moore with the evacuation of the mine at Altaussee, Austria. Together, they carefully
packed Michelangelo’s Bruges Madonna, Vermeer’s The Artist’s Studio, and the Ghent
Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck. Shrady and the Monuments Men evacuated these great
works of art, along with over 15,000 other works of art and cultural objects, to the
Munich Central Collecting Point. In the following months, Shrady conducted inspections
of churches, castles, and museums in Wiesbaden, Germany. While serving in Vienna,
Austria, he met his wife, Maria Louise Likar-Waltersdorff, who was an interpreter for the
MFAA. They married in 1946.

Lt. Frederick Shrady c.1943 Photo courtesy of the Monuments Men Foundation
Altaussee had been chosen for its bunker-like attributes. Hidden deep within an Austrian
mountain, it was veritable fortress, impervious to aerial bombing raids. It also had all the
characteristics of a climate-controlled vault in that the temperature and humidity were
perfect for preserving the artistic treasures hidden within. The artwork stored there was
all destined to go to Hilter’s Führermuseum, a museum complex Hitler had planned to
open in Linz, Austria after the war’s end.

As the war raged on and it became apparent that the Nazi regime would likely be
toppled, the Altaussee depot was to be destroyed with its hidden art treasures buried

and forever lost to the rest of the world. Provincial governor August Eigruber stored
enough explosives there to do the job. The plan was part of Hitler’s Nero Decree, a
diabolical scheme, whereby the Nazi leader ordered the destruction of German
infrastructure to make it unusable to the victors as the Third Reich failed.

Perhaps Eigruber had second thoughts, or maybe the local workers sabotaged his plans
by using far less explosives to create the illusion that the mines had been destroyed. But
on May 17, 1945, only days after Nazi forces had surrendered, miners using nothing
more than picks and shovels dug through the wall of rubble at Altaussee. After moving
through a 12-meter thick layer of debris blocking the entrance to the salt mines, inside,
they discovered one of the largest caches of stolen artwork ever amassed. Once the
Monuments Men entered the Altaussee Salt Mine, they found hidden inside its 137
tunnels more than 6,500 paintings and in excess of 170 sculptures including such
masterpieces as Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges and the Ghent Altarpiece.

Lt. Frederick Shrady with “The Astronomer” a 1668 painting by Johannes Vermeer. To
his right is Rembrandt’s 1635 portrait of Antoine Coopal. Taken at Altaussee in 1945. A
Smithsonian Photograph.
Lt. Frederick Shrady was among the men and women who made that discovery and then
worked to inventory it and then move it out. Their abilities to identify and preserve some
of the greatest art treasures ever created have made them true heroes in the minds of
grateful art lovers from all over the world.

CANCELLED: Artist Reception: Donna
Albano

Join us for a reception showcasing the watercolor and ink art of Donna Albano, a teacher
at JBHS and an adjunct instructor at a local university. Donna’s art will be on exhibit
through March 30.

LaLa Picasso – How it Began and
Evolved

LaLa Picasso began as an art studio based in Easton, Conn. and founded in 2010. In
December 2012, with the help of former Gary Simone, former Easton Park and
Recreation Department director, and Tom Hermann, former first selectman, LaLa
Picasso partnered with Easton Park and Rec and opened The Easton Arts Center at 652
Morehouse Road in Easton, CT.

What started as a visual art program, quickly evolved into a center that encompassed all

of the arts and catered to children and young adults of all levels and ability, including
those with special needs. With the help of Don Cooper, Eric Donnelly, David Harewood
and Ariadna SK, The Easton Arts Center (TEAC) music program was founded. They’ve all
since moved on, but have left our town with such a gift.

We soon had over 30 private lessons and no longer had the studio space to accommodate
our children. Gary Simone had sacrificed his own office so the children could learn. We
had to find a solution. That’s when LaLa Picasso decided to begin our “at home” music
and art program.

We currently serve over 80 at home music and art students and have 12 instructors in
our network. We also run an art program as well as a music program at the Speech
Academy,- a private school that provides a speech and language based-academic
program.

The Easton Arts Center — as always — invites you to visit, create and learn. LaLa
Picasso – School of Art and Music allows us to visit, mentor and instruct.

Artists Rebel Against Victorian Status
Quo

Radicalism is a term we hear a lot lately, especially in politics, but a quick trip to New
Haven’s Yale Center for British Art and its current exhibition “Victorian Radicals: From
the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement” shows us that radicalism is
nothing new — not in politics, religion and certainly not in the arts.

Don’t think that this is just another museum exhibition. This is a show stopper. It’s the
kind of exhibit that stops you dead in your tracks. You want to stand in front of paintings
that are so powerfully detailed you can’t just take a quick look and walk by. You are
pulled in to the vibrant natural colors, and you’ll want to examine more closely the
subjects of these works that subtly display class structure, religion, and sexuality in
Victorian Britain.

This exhibit belies the saying that “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” because anyone
and everyone seeing these works cannot deny their beauty. These unique works
transcend texture, shadow, line, and shape. They take you to another place in time
where textiles experience newly discovered colors, where common men and women are
no longer common and where finely crafted metal works and jewelry are so stunning, it’s
difficult to walk away from them.

Focusing on three generations of rebellious artists and designers who revolted against
industrial-made objects that took Victorian Britain by storm, the artists in this exhibit

rejected the established ideas of what paintings should look like and what they should
say. The Pre-Raphaelites broke away from convention and industrialization. Designers
like William Morris, cast aside machine-made materials and how fast they could be
produced and concentrated instead on the beauty of artistically handmade objects.

Right from the start, the entrance to this powerful exhibit is quite telling with a machine-
made carpet that was made quickly, though gaudily, on one side of the entrance, to the
elegant, handmade, hand-dyed, linen embroidered “Bedcover” by Mary Jane Newill,
which is displayed on the opposite side from the carpet. The difference makes one
appreciative for this particular radicalism. Happily there are approximately 145 works
from the collections of the city of Birmingham, UK on view including work by Ford
Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, William
Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddall.

Everything from paintings, drawings, textiles, metalwork, jewelry and ceramics
emphasizes the Pre-Raphaelites’ and Arts and Crafts Movement’s ideas on the
“relationship between art and nature; questions of class and gender identity; the value of
the handmade versus machine production; and the search for beauty in an age of
industry — issues that remain relevant and actively debated today (Yale Center for
British Art).”

While it’s one thing to look at Ford Madox Brown’s painting “Work,” which is described
as the most ambitious Pre-Raphaelite painting, it’s another thing to study how the artist
centers the laborers smack in the center of the painting. He places the middle class on
one side, the poor on the other side and the aristocrats are designated to the back.
Victorian convention would not have focused on these life-like laborers. That would
have been considered vulgar, and Brown’s realistic representation tells quite a story
about Victorian life and class structure.

One of the most beautiful paintings in the exhibit is John Everett Millais’ “The Blind
Girl.” Here’s an oil painting that immediately captures the colors of the natural

landscape while focusing on a peasant girl rather than a Madonna. Though the girl
cannot see, Millais focused on the other senses. He shows us the blind girl touching and
feeling the grass. We see that she is surrounded by sounds by the birds and animals
alive on the pasture behind her and the music that would come from the accordion on
her lap. She also seems to be inhaling the scent left by a storm that has passed. She
cannot see the gorgeous double rainbow that the other younger girl can see, but she
experiences a world that Millais has brought to vivid life through senses other than
sight.

Because the Pre-Raphaelites wanted to be as exact as possible in their details, William
Holman Hunt who wanted to paint the life of Christ actually traveled to Jerusalem and
to the locations that were where it was believed Christ’s life unfolded. In his oil painting
“The Finding of the Savior in the Temple,” a religious painting, Christ is depicted as a
young boy in a Temple filled with rabbis. Joseph and Mary are holding him as if they are
relieved that they have finally found him. Inscribed on the frame are the words: “How is
it that ye sought me?” Jesus responds. “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s
business?”

The beautiful catalogue that accompanies this exhibit describes the work as a visual
confrontation between the “old dispensation of Judaism and New Testament.” The
elderly rabbis look rigid in their beliefs with sacred scrolls and objects in their hands,
while the young Christ and his vital parents are depicted as vibrant, alert, and full of life.
Hence, Hunt created a canvas portrayal celebrating the New Testament.

The radical artists and designers in this unforgettable exhibit wanted a more truthful
and beautiful world. They dismissed the fast and furious industrialized products and
sought the more unique and personal works. The stained glass, the elaborate textiles
decked out in brand new dyes, the variety of metal works and so much more are not only
the makings of this memorable experience, but an inspiration and realization
that radicalism that questions the norm is often beneficial.

Try to spend an hour or so at this remarkable exhibit and you’re bound to stay longer.
It’s almost too good to be true, but it is very true and very good.

This exhibition is on view through May 10, 2020 at the Yale Center for British Art. Tim
Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University and exhibition
curator said, “This exhibition reveals the unruly and vibrant culture of Victorian Britain.
The world’s first industrial nation was the site of a rebellion against machine and
against artistic convention. We are delighted to bring to the USA for the first time a
superb range of objects from Birmingham Museums Trust, the finest of all collections of
Victorian art and design.”

Mary-Jane Newill bedcover.

Easton Democrats Celebrate First
Selectman at Inaugural Ball

Easton residents, friends, and community leaders gathered together to honor the
historic win of David Bindelglass as the Town of Easton’s First Selectman, and to thank
Bob Lessler for his twenty years of service as Selectman. (L – R) Michelle Lapine
McCabe, Anne Hughes, Bob Lessler, and David Bindelglass at the First Selectman’s
Inaugural Ball on January 18th in Easton, CT.
Photography by: Lillie Fortino.

Bindelglass, an orthopedic surgeon from Easton, Connecticut, was elected this
November as the Town’s first Democratic First Selectman in 36 years. Along with
Selectman Bob Lessler, who was re-elected to his eleventh term as Selectman, the two
have formed the first Democratic majority on the town board since 2003. The election is
also historic because it is the first time since 1983 that Easton has elected a Democratic
First Selectman as well as a Democratic majority to the three member board.

Despite the inclement weather on Saturday, January 18th, approximately 70 guests
arrived at the private estate of longtime residents and art collectors, Elliot Leonard and
Roger Litz, who graciously hosted the Inaugural Ball for Bindelglass. “Easton is here
tonight, and we’re bringing change,” said Leonard as he welcomed guests to the party
that evening. “Smart and hard work led us to the first board control since 1983, and

hopefully will help to bring change nationally in 2020.”

The attendees celebrated the collective achievements of the long serving Democrats in
Easton, with remarks from State Rep. Anne Hughes, State Senatorial candidate Michelle
Lapine McCabe, Selectman Lessler, and First Selectman Bindelglass. The event doubled
as a fundraiser for 2020 campaigns and leadership initiatives supported by the Easton
Democratic Town Committee (EDTC) and its members.

“Easton residents want to be informed and valued no matter their age, race, or gender.
Our neighbors want to feel safe, heard, and like they belong in this community, and we
will continue to be guided by our vision that upholds the quality of life and prosperity of
each of our citizens. The EDTC is working hard to be an example of how a town can
positively collaborate for the greater good of all of its residents. We are grateful for the
support of our state representatives and leaders, and we are looking forward to even
more success for Democrats in 2020,” stated Nanette DeWester, Chairperson of the
EDTC.

To learn more about how you can serve alongside the Democratic town leadership, build
community, and participate in planning for Easton’s future, please visit the EDTC
website and attend an upcoming monthly meeting. The EDTC is an inclusive, engaged,
and welcoming group of residents who believe in public involvement, as well as a
proactive and solutions-oriented approach to town government.