Compass A&E

Now on display at Five Points Gallery in Torrington, Conn., “Ukraine Flower Series: The Power of Defiance” is a collection of violent black and white florals by painter Sandra Filippucci.

If your green thumb pales at the very thought of houseplants, then the advice offered during a recent upbeat presentation by noted gardening author, horticulturist, photographer, and avid fan of houseplants, Tovah Martin, could be just what you need.

Anyone who has attended high school has felt like an outsider at one point or another — but there may be only one student at Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village, Conn., who is making outsider art.

In its seventh year, A Weekend in Norfolk (WIN) is a celebration of the creative community in Norfolk, Conn. In keeping with the historical legacy of Ellen Battell Stoeckel, who helped bring the arts to Norfolk by donating portions of her 78-acre estate to Yale University’s School of Music, A Weekend In Norfolk was first conceived by women.

Those who suspect that they are living today in an endangered democracy would do well to read Richard Haass’ latest best-selling book, “The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.”

In honor of Black History Month, The Falls Village Equity Project (FVEP) will host a film discussion on Zoom on Thursday, Feb. 23.

The subject will be Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s, “Making Black America,” a PBS documentary series about the richness and resilience of Black culture despite the oppression faced by Black Americans.

As the adage goes, history is written by the victors — and in art, portraiture is the visual history told to us by the financial victors, the wealthiest and most influential who sought to immortalize their faces. Art can tell stories, but it can also obscure them.

Sally Van Doren is the Walt Whitman Award-winning author of three volumes of poetry whose carefully chosen words tempt readers toward interpretations, but as an emerging painter, her work is purposefully inscrutable.