The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Arts Center shows its stuff at age 50
Nonprofit looking to raise $500,000 in anniversary year
GUILFORD » The latest exhibit in this art-loving shoreline town is “The Friday Night Painters Show Their Stuff” in the Mill Gallery at the Guilford Art Center, which gives us works by “a feisty, dedicated, closeknit group of painters, some of whom have been working at GAC since the mid-1970s,” says a GAC release.
And speaking of history, GAC is celebrating is 50th anniversary this year and all the ways it has provided opportunities for anyone to experience the benefit of the creative arts.
If you’re looking to grow a local arts organization, you might want to start with a look at the Guilford Art Center.
GAC kicked off its anniversary celebrations with a reception in February, has had a series of community workshops and events, including a June gala, gallery openings and is planning a GAC birthday party in the fall.
In honor of the milestone anniversary, GAC has set a fundraising goal of $500,000. To help, the Stoddard Family and an anonymous donor are matching all contributions up to $100,000, GAC says in the release.
Money will go to physical improvements to the campus facilities, provide new equipment, and strengthen programming in the arts. Donations can be made on the GAC website at guilfordartcenter.org, mailed in, or dropped at the office at 411 Church St.
GAC officials know that their work, in the words of this year’s slogan, is “Creating Art & Community.”
“Guilford Art Center provides a vital forum for community creativity,” says Executive Director Maureen Belden, “and promotes the many benefits of arts education.”
Little kids love GAC activities and classes, but it’s for adults, too.
“Through our school, gallery and shop, we invite people to engage with the arts through classroom learning, viewing exhibitions and becoming inspired by works in our shop and by events such as Craft Expo,” Belden said. “These opportunities for creative expression help to develop critical-thinking skills, promote tolerance and encourage mindfulness, among other benefits to both individuals and their community.”
Those are heady and worthy goals in an age of mean tweets, online echo chambers, addiction crises and short attention spans.
But back to the FNPs. The story of Friday Night Painters mirrors that of the art center itself, which began as Guilford Handcrafts in 1967, under the auspices of the Chamber of Commerce. (That group evolved from the first Handcraft Exposition on the Guilford Green in 1957).
In the mid-1970s, some members began taking painting and drawing classes at the Guilford Handcraft Center with Dan Rice, the mentor and inspiration for the FNPs. Rice was an abstract expressionist painter who was an active member of the postwar New York art world — friends with Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg and Jackson Pollack.
The group had to disband when Rice moved back to New York City in the early 1980s, but they reassembled when Rice returned a few years later — living in a large studio overlooking a salt marsh in Madison, as GAC tells it. In the early 1990s, the original group convinced Rice to begin hosting open-studio sessions on Friday nights, and the group grew to 14 painters.
Eventually the group took on the name “Friday Night Painters.” They held several exhibitions a year at Rice’s studio throughout the 1990s, sometimes attended by up to 200 people, says GAC.
After Rice died in 2003, a number of the painters relocated to GAC to continue painting together on Friday nights — and for several years contin-
ued a tradition of painting in Maine in the summer. Today, seven FNPs meet on Friday nights in Studio 6, which the group rents from GAC.
The exhibition includes works by 21 FNPs, current and past: Lexi McCrady Axon; Bernie Braverman; Edward Casey; Catherine Ferguson; Virginia Foster; Shirley Gonzales; Timothee Graze; Gwen Gunn; Alice Hayden; Ed Horan; Ellen Lowe; Christina Maile; Molly McDonald; Julanne Meyers; Frank Modell; Parviz Mohassel; Scott Paterson; Diana Perron; Dan Rice; Rex Walden; and Marja Watson, says GAC.
The opening reception for “The Friday Night Painters Show Their Stuff” (which runs through Aug. 11) is July 28 from 5-7 p.m. A gallery talk will be held July 30 from 2-4 p.m. Admission to the gallery and both events is free.
As for nonprofit GAC itself, it serves 2,000 students of all ages and abilities — in more than 500 classes. There are 70 faculty members, 400 American artists and 2,500 visitors to the gallery, shop and community programs each year, not to mention another 7,500 visitors to the annual Craft Expo on the Green held earlier this month.
And with its new initiative, the one-time, small handcraft exposition from the mid-20th century has creative designs on growth in the 21st.