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April showers brought a special bloom to the Eli Whitney Museum last Thursday. Just over the Hamden-New Haven border, champagne popped, lights twinkled and hundreds of viewers and artists stopped to smell the roses and other flora made of near-endlessly various media, including concrete, barbed wire, yarn, neon gas and, occasionally, actual petals.
It was the fundraising gala for the museumās 23rd annual Leonardo Challenge, and it was both familiar and distinctive. Each year, museum director Bill Brown and associate director Sally Hill pluck a theme from among the many skills and passions once pursued by the great Leonardo da Vinci. The theme then inspires artists to contribute appropriate works, which, after being sold during the silent auction portion of the gala, stay up for public viewingāthis year, until May 14. āThe first
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Hill, the art showās lead organizer, says that while this yearās floral theme might seem like an easy provocation, itās not. āThe whole idea of the assignment is to throw it on its headā¦ Translate it in some way thatās special to you.ā The effect of seeing well over a hundred of those special translations, across textiles, woods, clays, metals, paints, inks and photos, is dazzlement. Hill says she contributes a lamp each year, a fitting tradition considering da Vinciās love of light. This time, it was a small neon flower bulb surrounded by a custom Kiara Matos ceramic. āItās not about a flower,ā Hill says enigmatically about the Challenge as a whole. āItās about the bloom.ā
Sheri McGregor, one of the artists in attendance, says that when she first got the Challengeās invitationāwhich read, in part, āevolve a flower in paper, steel, glass or any improbable medium. Arrange a flower in an unexpected bouquet or myth. Plant a flower in a fresh and unexpected gardenāāshe āthought it was kind of boring,ā but it grew into a worthy dare the more she considered it. Tianna Romo Kurek also found the theme fertile, saying she āwent through a bunch of ideas,ā before landing on a wire apple tree twining up out of a burl of driftwood.
Some designs are cheeky, like Molly Gambardellaās wispy metal dandelion titled Blow Me, or It May Flower, Mark McCarthyās miniature Pilgrim ship laden with spirea blossoms. Elliot Rama Kurekās Madera Rosa is an elegant, minimalist meditation in wood, while Keith Murray and Delari Johnstonās Leo Bloom, a book that traces its own creation for the Leonardo Challenge, is playful and sweet. Betsy Golden Kellemās single-panel cartoon Maybe You Shouldnāt Stop to Smell The Rosesā¦ is dark and funny, issuing a warning against carelessly savoring nature, lest you be savored in turn.
āThe most valuable export New Haven has is design,ā Brown says. Heād taken a moment to talk with me but, in a packed crowd of hundreds, was interrupted by kisses, handshakes and well-wishes at a near constant pace. The Challenge aims to reacquaint artists with the feeling of starting from scratch, of having to draw raw inspiration from an unexpected source and form their piece with the kind of āimprovisational creativityā Brown sees throughout da Vinciās work. āLeonardo saw so much,ā Brown says. āThere are so many ways in which he gets to the threshold of modernityā¦ He erases the boundaries between all disciplines. His music informs his physics, and thatās a good thing.ā
Outdoors on the museumās grounds, attendees ate, drank and ambled along the Mill River, passing beneath the flowering cherry, dogwood and magnolia trees whose blooms will depart much earlier than those made of sterner stuff.
But for the evening, the focus was on the present. Asked about next yearās Challenge theme, Hill shivers. āWe donāt even know. We try not to think about it before the night is over,ā she says.
As Sandy Rhodesās Retablo: Retabloom has it, āFlowers / A day is all we last, A breath!ā Until next yearās invitation, anyway, when perennial inspiration will sprout again.
23rd Annual Leonardo Challenge: Leonardo in Bloom
Eli Whitney Museum ā 915 Whitney Ave, Hamden (map)
Sat 10am-3pm, Sun noon-5pm through May 14
(203) 777-1833
www.eliwhitney.org/7/exhibitions/leonardo-bloom
Written by Sorrel Westbrook. Image, featuring Sarah Afragolaās Imagination in Bloom, photographed by Dan Mims.