Jeanne McDonagh

‘The Art of Drawing’: New Exhibition at New Canaan Library

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The New Canaanite 2024 Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Karp Associates. Beyond the pristine sliding glass doors, boundless shelves of books and sunlit cafe, the New Canaan Library offers more: community creativity. 

This spring, the library hosted a seven-week drawing workshop for adults called “Art of Drawing.” The workshop was led by retired New Canaan High School art teacher Jeanne McDonagh, an educator here for 32 years. Held on the third floor of the library in the Tate Room, participants received a comprehensive foundation in drawing catered to both beginners and those who wished to enhance their drawing skills further. They learned the vocabulary of drawing and how to work with composition, proportion, perspective, line, gesture, value, and texture. 

Students also learned how to use and explore these concepts to create original works of art. “I would base each week on a skill that would build to the next skill,” McDonagh said.

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Jeanne McDonagh Retires from NCHS, Leaving an Art Legacy

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After 32 years of dedicated service, art teacher Jeanne McDonagh is retiring at the end of this school year. Known for completing numerous projects not just within the high school but throughout the whole community, McDonagh once hosted a photo exchange with Afghan girls who forbidden from taking photos by the Taliban, filmed videos for the entrance of the Glass House and created a mural for the school cafeteria. 

“I started to put up anything that was posted in the newspaper about what we are doing in the arts on a bulletin board outside my classroom,” she said. “There is no room on the board because we just keep adding what we have shared with the community and connecting with them on a lot of different levels.”

Seven of McDonagh’s students have earned National Scholastic Art Awards and she has been honored by the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society as one of 19 local women to have made a major difference in New Canaan. 

“I always say ‘yes’ when someone asks if I want to be involved in something,” she said. “It opens up a world and you learn, you do, and you work. The results are always very surprising.”

McDonagh started her career in art as a teacher in New York City. 

“I walked into the classroom and thought these kids were so lovely and polite,” she said.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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For the first time ever, May Fair will open its rides to visitors on the Friday night of the weekend that the hugely popular event runs. “Friday Night Lights” will run from 5 to 9 p.m. on May 8—featuring just the rides, a performance stage and select food vendors Baskin-Robbins, Joe’s Pizza and Chicken Joe’s—and the full, cherished annual fair running about 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. the following day, said Richard DePatie, parish administrator at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. “We’ve been talking about it, off and on, for a number of years, and weather is a factor,” DePatie told NewCanaanite.com. He explained that in recent years, foul weather has caused organizers to hit pause on May Fair for periods of time on the selected Saturday, and that affects how much money can be raised (the fair benefits charities through the St.