The Carriage Barn Arts Center is set to host a unique celebration Sunday of the life and art of a beloved member of the New Canaan community.
Norm Jensen at the Carriage Barn, where a celebration of his life and work will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 30.
Norm Jensen, a Brooklyn, N.Y. native and 30-year town resident who worked as a graphic artist and was prolific in painting, ceramics and photography, died Feb. 13 at 84.
A member of the Carriage Barn, Jensen “was always showing art at the Carriage Barn and all the other neighboring centers—Rowayton Arts Center, Ridgefield, Wilton,” according to his daughter, Laura Jensen.
At those places, “most people know him,” Jensen told NewCanaanite.com
Jensen experimented with various kinds of art during his lifetime, she said.
“He originally did photography and also some painting, like oils and acrylic,” she said. “He also did sculpture, computer art, and then he got into making diorama boxes.”
Norman A. Jensen
From 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday, the Carriage Barn is hosting “The Life & Artwork of Norman A. Jensen,” where guests will be invited to take home a piece of Jensen’s art to remember him by, and may leave a donation in his honor.
“We love Norm—he’s part of the Carriage Barn community,” the organization’s executive director, Hilary Wittmann, said.
“He has been involved here as a member, as an artist, as a volunteer,” she said. “In fact, he helped build the walls of the Carriage Barn that we move in and out for our exhibitions. So he’s had a long history here and contributed so much. He was an incredibly prolific artist in many different mediums.”
Following his passing, Laura Jensen came into possession of what Wittmann called “an amazing body of his work.”
“She thought it would be wonderful to invite people to come and honor and celebrate his life, and take a piece of his work as something to remember him by,” Wittmann said. “The main point is to come and see his work and to—if you choose—select a piece to take home to remember him.”
Jensen said her dad drew much of his artistic inspiration from the world around him.
“He was inspired by nature and things like odd objects that he would find,” she said. “He would do a lot of antiquing and find odd objects. People would also give him a lot of different things and when he was into his diorama boxes,” she said. “He also had a big draw to Egypt because he went to Egypt in the 1990s and he even made a lot of Native American art.”
Art was not simply her dad’s passion, but it was also his job.
“Art was his profession for a while,” Jensen said, adding that her father “went to the New York School of Visual Arts and was a graphic artist for many years before going freelance.”
“Once he retired, he started getting more into his own artwork—painting and photography, she said.
Asked to describe Norm’s art in one word, Jensen said, “eclectic.”
“A little bit of everything,” she said.
Jensen added: “Art was his whole life. He was very creative and was always working on some piece of artwork – it was his outlet for just being creative and expressing himself.”
Regarding Sunday’s celebration at the Carriage Barn, she said, “All are welcome. This is a way to pay tribute to him and for the artist community to get together.”