Sikorsky as seen by Kinuko Craft

HMA Press Archives

Fairfield County Weekly

Sikorsky as seen by Kinuko Craft

MONDAY FEBRUARY 11

Local Art

There is a slight surrealism to Sikorsky by Norfolk-based illustrator Kinuko Craft. It’s a lush painting of a proto-copter flying over the bare landscape that would someday house the aeronautic juggernaut. But what’s most striking about the image is its simple familiarity to anyone who regularly passes the elevated view of the Sikorsky plant and its surroundings from the Merritt Parkway. This feeling of good-hearted recognition seems to be the goal of Illustrating Connecticut at the Housatonic Museum of Art. State artists portraying state people, places and things for statedwellers.

Roast Meat Hill Road is Easton artist Randall Enos’ take on the unusually named residential route in Killingworth. Sugar Time—Maple by Woodbury’s Robert Crawford shows historic sugar harvesting in the state sweeter than, well…New York or New Jersey at least. The crown jewel of the exhibit, donated by the New Britain Museum of American Art, may be Nathan Hale, an image of the Coventry-born Revolutionary War spy by Walter Korder, a Connecticut portrait painter who sold big in the New York City art market in the ’30s. For those who love—or who have at least accrued a pleasant familiarity with—our state, it’s an exhibit not to be missed. Housatonic Museum of Art, Housatonic Community College, 900 Lafayette Blvd., Bridgeport. Mon.-Wed. and Fri. 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Thurs. 8:30 a.m.-7 p.m., Sat. 9 a.m.-3 p.m., and Sun. noon-4 p.m. Free. (203) 332-5052, www.hcc.commnet.edu/artmuseum.