From architecture to sculpture, it’s a new path for innovative Cornwall artist Lisa Keskinen

CORNWALL — A couple of years ago, Lisa Keskinen was hit by the reality of the recession. Her two decades-long career as an architect in New Haven was the victim of the hard times. Her response was to take it as an opportunity. Back on Town Street, where she grew up, she is already testing the spatial limits of her small studio. “One of my first thoughts after being laid off was,” Keskinen says now, “was that now I’d have more time for my art.”Her work will be featured at The Wish House Gallery from Memorial Day weekend through the end of July.She paints, but it is her collage and sculpture work that have been growing, literally and figuratively. S he finds inspiration in items mangled or worn by time, and in natural structures found in nature. She might, for instance, take metal scraps and connect them to resemble a huge, undulating leaf.While she works a couple of part-time jobs to help pay the bills, Keskinen is letting her art evolve and lead her where it wants to go. It is beginning to sell, which is grand motivation to keep going. She doesn’t miss city life much, but is grateful that the Internet allows her to stay connected. On the positive side of the new ledger of her life, the connection with peace and nature and the support Cornwall offers its artists have become vital to her. Her focus at the moment is largely on paper weavings, which allow her to let her imagination soar in limited space. “The first ones I did were not unlike what you would do in grade school,” she said. “But it’s about using basic materials and what’s on hand. It speaks to the problem-solving architect in me.”Keskinen started weaving images and text, and was fascinated with the effect gained from using images with gradient color, like the sky changing from light to dark blue. She began printing her own gradient images, weaving them into abstracts, landscapes and pictures.She is also using her model-making expertise to explore scale and pieces that might be public art projects down the road. Wherever her art leads her, she mused, “I’m open to going bigger. I could always move out some of my furniture.”For more on her work, go to www.lisakeskinen.com.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less