March 25, 2010
At the suggestion of a friend, I stopped by the Pia Sjolin Design Gallery in Canton to look at a “Fabulous Fish for the Farmington” folk-art exhibit sponsored by the Farmington River Watershed Association, the environmental group that keeps its toe in the waters of the Farmington.
Working mostly from wooden blanks in the shape of fish, about 200 artists and craftspeople let their imaginations loose, producing a most eclectic school of fish to be auctioned off April 16 as a fund-raiser.
The Van Gogh Fish. Art imitating art?
There is a “Van Gogh Fish” by Amy O’Meara, that, on one side, was painted with a likeness of Van Gogh’s famous “Starry Night.” There is a pink fish adorned with flowers, another fish covered with holly leaves and berries. There are even some literal works – like Lee Ora’s rainbow trout, a likeness of a fish actually found in the Farmington, which, by the way, is the state’s premier trout stream. You won’t find Leslie Gordon’s fish in the Farmington, though. Her “Fancy Frannie the Funny Flying Fish,” is a wild and whimsical creation fashioned from materials like feathers, beads, wire and shreds of newspaper. Recycling as art.
More serious, was Sally Sargent Markey’s “Macroinvertibrates Are the Key (to Healthy Waterways,)” in which the torso of her fish is a vignette with rocky river flowing through woodland, a little frog assessing it all from a shoreline rock.
The gallery is off Route 44 in The Shoppes at Farmington Valley if you happen to be in the area. More information at www.frwa.org.