DERBY — Selections from late artist Woldemar Neufeld’s ambitious Bicentennial project, Bridges Across the Housatonic, will be on view for a limited time beginning this October at the Kellogg Environmental Center in Derby.
Fifty years after their completion, the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA) presents Neufeld’s original watercolor and ink paintings and sketches, including some that have never been exhibited before, alongside his 1970s reference photographs and a modern-day look at historic locations along the southern stretch of the Housatonic River. The opening reception will take place on October 31 at 1 p.m. at the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection’s Kellogg Environmental Center.
Woldemar Neufeld (1909-2002) established his reputation in the mid-20th century as a talented block print maker, sculptor and painter in oils and watercolors. A trained draftsman as well as painter, his subjects included scenes from Waterloo, Ontario, where his family arrived as Ukrainian immigrants in the early 1920s; the architecture of lower Manhattan; and the villages and rural landscapes of Connecticut’s Housatonic River valley, where he made his home. Some of his impressive body of work has been collected by institutions as varied as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the New Britain Museum of American Art and Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital.
In 1974, to celebrate America’s 200th birthday, Neufeld set out to capture every bridge that he and his wife could locate crossing the 149-mile Housatonic River, from its source in the Berkshires to Long Island Sound. They ultimately located 65 automobile bridges and two pedestrian bridges, which he rendered in watercolor and ink paintings and sketches over a three-year period, often more than once and as both smaller color sketches and full-sized paintings. They are a snapshot of human-nature interactions, as farmers, fishermen and recreators go about their daily lives along the river.
Fifty years later, this art is a time capsule, helping to pull decades of infrastructure and environmental change into focus. HVA owns the greater part of the Neufeld’s Housatonic Bridges collection, a gift from the artist and his son Laurence, who also donated Neufeld’s research notes on each bridge, location photographs and snapshots of nearly every painting in the series. This gallery will be the first public showing of this selection of paintings since 2004.
“Neufeld was a realistic and sensitive portrayer of the connections between the built environment and the natural world,” says Tim Abbott, HVA’s Executive Director. “He understood that even mundane structures with a functional purpose like highway bridges had a form and elegance that not only help convey us over the river but become part of how we experience the landscape.”
The display in Derby will feature 11 bridges along the stretch of the Housatonic River from New Milford, Connecticut, south to Stratford, where the river empties into Long Island Sound. There have been notable changes in some of the locations that Neufeld depicted, with others seemingly untouched by the passage of time. Viewers may be prompted to reflect on their own history of interactions with the river at a time when preserving our natural resources and access to open spaces is more important than ever.
Celebrating its 85th anniversary this year, the Housatonic Valley Association has a long legacy of environmental stewardship in the tristate Housatonic River watershed, facilitating river restoration, forest conservation, and education projects from the Berkshires, through eastern New York and western Connecticut, down to Long Island Sound. All aspects of this important stewardship work, from water quality improvement testing and planning to riparian buffer restoration and open space protection, impact the downstream health of the river and those living in southwest Connecticut. Neufeld’s paintings serve as a reminder of the region’s history as a natural resource and provide hope for a future of sustained human and nature interactions.
The public is invited to join HVA staff on a hike in nearby Shelton, Connecticut, through Tahmore Preserve and Paugussett Trails, venturing toward beautiful Indian Well Falls, at 10 a.m. on October 31, before attending the gallery open reception at the Kellogg Environmental Center (500 Hawthorne Ave, Derby, CT) from 1 – 4 p.m. Attendees can RSVP for both events online at hvatoday.org. The gallery will be open to the public during the Kellogg Environmental Center’s open hours, Tuesday – Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., through early December.