Every year the Florence Griswold Museum celebrates the magic of the holiday season by transforming the Griswold House—Miss Florence’s turn-of-the-century boarding house for American Impressionist artists—into a Christmas wonderland decorated in traditional and contemporary art and crafts.
This year, for the first time, four Connecticut artists were invited to create handmade decorations, each for their own tree, displayed in the second floor galleries of the Griswold House. The artists selected for the new Handmade for the Holidays theme include paper cutter Dottie Netherton of Pawcatuck, woodworker Craig Nelson of Gales Ferry, illustrator/printmaker James Polisky of New Haven, and glass artist Jeffrey P’an of Stonington.
David Rau, the museum’s director of education, says he chose the artists based on their “fine craftsmanship and infectious eagerness to be pioneers for such a new program.”
“Not all of these artists make traditional ornaments, but each were willing to take on the project and use the Christmas tree as a new form to express their artistry,” Rau notes.
Netherton has been working for 25 years in the time-honored tradition of paper cutting, or scherenschnitte, which started in an area north of Philadelphia. She sells her framed cut paper designs and cards, professionally printed from her designs, in museum shops and at historic sites. For this event, Netherton, says she wanted to break out of the traditional mode she normally works in and come up with some imaginative and creative ornaments.
“I came up with mermaids with fishy scaly bodies using scraps of wallpaper samples for their tails,” she says. “I took brown paper and ran it through the shredder to make their hair. I also used shredded paper to make hair for angels and birds in nests.”
Netherton says one of her favorite ornaments is a garland made of colored paper mittens attached with brown paper clothespins to a string of raffia to simulate a clothesline.
“I don’t normally do ornaments, but it was fun to do,” Netherton says. “Our house has been in turmoil for months. There’s paper everywhere!”
Nelson is a woodworker whose company, Nelson Designs, LLC, of Gales Ferry does custom woodworking and makes furniture and built-ins. Nelson started a tradition making wooden snowflakes about 20 years ago to give to family members and friends at the holidays. He also started selling them about nine years ago. When the Amistad was being built at Mystic Seaport, he acquired a lot of the left-over scraps, and the snowflakes evolved from there. He mills his own wood and has even made special tools for creating the snowflakes.
“It’s wood, so every grain is different,” Nelson points out. “There are about 70 different shapes, colors, woods—African wood and local woods.”
Nelson says doing the tree at the Florence Griswold is “a great opportunity to give them something different and unique and a great opportunity for local craftsman to show their work.”
Nelson will also have snowflake trees on display at the Mystic Art Center and Hygienic Gallery in New London.
James Polisky’s background as a printmaker started when he blended his love of drawing and design, and combined it with his experience in graphic design and color separation in the textile and wall-covering field.
“I took a print-making course a few years back at Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven and made the transition of making art and working as a freelance illustrator/designer along with keeping my day job in graphic arts,” Polisky says. “I show my work in galleries, cafes, city art shows, and wherever it has a chance to make a positive impact.”
Polisky has created hundreds of hand-screened pieces as ornaments to decorate his tree. Themes include snowmen, birds, reindeer, cats, dogs, little monsters, elves, candy canes, as well as wording, textures, and abstract lines and shapes, all in various color combinations.
Glass artist Jeffrey P’an owns Prescient Studios, a glassblowing studio and gallery in Stonington. He specializes in fusing and blowing glass mosaic into vessel forms, hand making all the elements of his designs. He describes his work as based on the “reinvention of Old World techniques in the design of modern objects.”
Rather than do individual glass blown ornaments, P’an decided to create a seven-foot-tall blown glass sculpture that resembles a tree.
“It’s all clear, white, gold, and silver glass,” P’an says. “I made it from individual plates of glass that are curved and hang on a tree-shaped frame. There are about 100 different plates—all hand blown—that make up the tree.”
Ornaments and other gift items by all four artists are on sale in the Florence Griswold Museum gift shop.
Painted Palettes
A mainstay of the holiday celebration for the past five years is a tree hung with one-of-a-kind palettes painted by fine artists. The tree is displayed on the main floor of the Griswold House, which is decorated for a festive 1910 Christmas in a boardinghouse for artists. A dozen or so new palettes have been added to this year’s Miss Florence Artist Tree, bringing the number to about 100 pieces of artwork donated by artists from all over the country.
Rau says the Artist Tree was conceived when the Florence Griswold was looking to create a tradition like “the incredible tree at New York’s Metropolitan Museum” that would draw people to the museum year after year. The idea of artists painting on palettes relates directly to the museum’s history as the center for the Lyme Art Colony and alludes to the doors and wooden wall panels the artists painted throughout Miss Florence’s house.
Rau originally sent 50 artists each a palette and asked them to paint their signature style, something appropriate for a tree dedicated to Miss Florence.
“There were no rules per se,” he says. “The palettes started rolling in. Sometimes the hole was at the top, sometimes at the bottom. Lots of artists have really knocked themselves out.”
Rau says subject matter ranges from a photographic realism of cardinals on a Christmas tree to abstract colors and swirls.
Among this year’s new palettes is one that’s painted by Paul Lipp of Old Lyme with a basket of cherries.
“It looks so real you want to take a bite out of the cherries.” Rau says.
A clever idea by Kat Murphy of New London was to use the hole in the palette like the opening of a birdhouse and paint it to resemble Miss Florence’s house with two birds on the outside looking in.
We’re looking for more artists each year,” Rau says. “Now people are waiting for our phone call.
“What’s so great about this project,” he adds, “is people come back each year to look at what’s new. We see people going around and around the tree, mesmerized. We even give out little binoculars so they can study the top of the tree...It’s a great way to work with contemporary artists in the area and a positive experience for everyone.”
A Festive Holiday Celebration opens Nov. 22 and continues through Jan. 4 at the Florence Griswold Museum on Lyme Street in Old Lyme. On Friday, Nov. 28, museum admission includes free horse-drawn carriage rides with Santa from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., visitors can meet the four artists whose work decorates the Handmade for the Holidays trees in the Griswold House.
By Amy J. Barry
Special to the Times
For a complete list of holiday programming, call 860-434-5542 or visit www.florencegriswoldmuseum.org.