Norfolk Artswave! will showcase a town brimming with creative talent

By Bridgette L. Rallo
It all started slowly. A group of local artists with no place to show decided to form an art league. The Yale Summer School of Art offered to help. A local patron of the arts saw a great deal of unfulfilled potential and started a foundation to aid artists dealing with financial hardships. Then Infinity Music Hall opened and began featuring cutting edge music. Little by little, the concept came into focus: Norfolk is a town full of talent.
The realization that Norfolk has more than its share of contemporary musicians, artists and writers-in-residence, coupled with a long history of participation in the arts, gelled in the minds of Economic Development Commission (EDC) members and local arts patron, Francesca Turchiano. Turchiano devised a preliminary plan for a culture-centered weekend to promote the town as a destination for arts-based businesses and tourists. She brought her idea to an EDC meeting for consideration and the idea flew from day one. Acknowledging Turchiano’s organizing skills, EDC Chair Elizabeth Borden said, “We enveloped it, but it originated with Francesca. She has been the moving force behind it.”
Like most small towns, Norfolk has been affected by the current economic downturn and officials are hoping that the August 13-15 art weekend will advance Norfolk’s century-old reputation as a cultural destination. In fact, there actually was an art colony located in town as long ago as 1932, when a New York doctor named Edward Quintard paid the expenses of promising artists while they summered in what was then a haven for prominent East Coast business people. In the mid-1930’s, a widely admired genre painter named Guy Pène Dubois ran an art school in Norfolk, which attracted such well-known painters as Edward Lawson, Leslie Emmett and Louis Aston Knight.
Art-as-lifestyle made its Norfolk debut in 1939 when Ellen Battell-Stoeckel bequeathed her 70-acre estate and a sizable endowment to Yale University on the condition that it be used to promote music, art and literature. Since then, the quaint New England setting and the town’s proximity to New York and Boston have attracted many a cultural luminary such as famed mid-century editors and writers, Brendan Gill (The New Yorker) and James Laughlin (New Directions Publishing). Internationally renowned modern artist Sam Messer calls the town home, as does National Public Radio journalist Anne Garrels and former New York Times foreign correspondent Lloyd Garrison. Acclaimed black and white photographer Michaela Allen Murphy, nationally recognized for her large format, silver gelatin prints, has lived in Norfolk for decades, as has one of the publishing industry’s most successful fine art illustrators, Kinuko Y. Kraft.
With this kind of cultural star power on the town resume, Turchiano and local officials are hoping that Norfolk can escape the economically needy condition that plagues other historically rich small towns and become known instead for its assets.
Norfolk ArtsWave! has garnered an impressive amount of financial support in just one year. To date, the event has attracted eight local underwriters, including the Yale University Summer School of Music and Art, Dan Hincks of Infinity Music Hall and Bistro (who also volunteered his creative team to produce the event brochures), Marie Lowe of M.I. Media and Betsy Little of Betsy Little Real Estate, along with several other local organizations.
The weekend-long festival will feature an array of talent that spans the disciplines of fine art, fine craft, literature, and classical and popular music. Norfolk Artists and Friends, the year-old art league, will host a three-day art show and sale at the Yale Art Barn. The world famous Tokyo String Quartet will play at the Yale School Music Shed. Infinity Music Hall is featuring country star Shelby Lynne, the red-hot Suzy Bogguss and The Waylin’ Jennies, of “A Prairie Home Companion” fame. Various literary events are scheduled throughout the weekend, some with high profile authors like Simon Winchester and Edmund Morris. Also included on the list of things-to-do is Norfolk Farmers Market, which offers local organic produce and crafts, features musicians and will have creative readings this summer. The market has been drawing homegrown fans to Norfolk for the past three years and is one of a bumper crop of similar local produce venues in Connecticut.
“We certainly hope this is successful,” remarked First Selectman Sue Dyer, who requested and received $500 in seed money from town officials to help defray start-up costs. “Economically speaking, it makes good sense: art-based businesses are low-impact, environmentally friendly and culturally attractive. We have so much potential here.” she concluded.
While the larger expenses have been covered by the underwriters, the EDC (which now includes Turchiano as a commission member) is hoping that residents and small businesses will donate whatever they can to pay for smaller ticket items. “We still need funds for honoraria, logistics support and signage, to name but a few,” Turchiano said.
Brochures containing the events calendar are widely available in town and across the region. The ArtsWave! website (www.norfolkartswave.org) will be regularly updated by creator Mary Fanette. Contributions by check can be made out to Battell Arts Foundation, with an ArtsWave! notation, and mailed to Norfolk ArtsWave!, PO Box 581, Norfolk, CT 06058. Specific inquiries should be addressed to the EDC chair at libbygp@aol.com.

Illustration By Mahlon Craft