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.
This workshop is the perfect setting for theater lovers and budding thespians to discuss – and try their hand at performing- Shakespeare’s best-known play. Those who appreciate the abundance of memorable quotes found in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet can enjoy meeting other theater lovers to talk about favorite scenes and passages. If the stage beckons, attendees can also try their hand at reading, performing and unpacking some of the many great speeches in the play. This lively workshop will be led by Shakespeare on the Sound’s board member and Shakespeare teacher John Love, in celebration of the company’s summer performance of Romeo & Juliet, running June 12-30th at Rowayton’s Pinkney Park.
When summer temperatures soar, who wants to turn on the oven or fire up the stove? Chef Caryn Antonini shows how to keep it cool with fabulous no-heat recipes! At this fun evening event Caryn will demonstrate several mouth-watering dishes in New Canaan Library’s state-of-the-art kitchen, from a fresh, home-made hummus to a chopped Mexican summer salad with honey-lime vinaigrette, topped off with a frozen meringue key lime pie! Caryn Antonini is at the forefront of lifestyle advice and guidance. Cooking, decorating tips, wellness and overall good living are just some of the topics Caryn discusses on television and in interviews across the country.
New Canaan Library hosts a discussion by The Foodshed Forum and Connecticut Food System Alliance on New England’s potential to be more resilient against climate change and more racially and economically equitable through food. The speakers will present research from, “New England Feeding New England: A Regional Approach to Food System Resilience.”
Meg Hourigan, Coordinator of Connecticut Food System Alliance, will outline the opportunities and challenges in our regional food supply chains and employment, and the need to transition to climate-smart and adaptive food production processes that can increase food security. Also to be addressed is how to create more local, sustainable, and equitable stewardship of land and water. Ali Ghiorse, Co-Founder of The Foodshed Forum, will provide context about the industrial food system’s dependency on practices that contribute to racial and economic injustice, diet-related disease, biodiversity loss, water pollution and depletion, soil erosion and degradation, and climate change. Please register to attend.
Get your summer of love started with authors Annabel Monaghan and Amy Poeppel, in conversation about Monaghan’s new novel Summer Romance! Set in a fictional Long Island beach town, readers follow a recent divorcee and professional organizer whose life is a mess, and the summer in which she gets unstuck with the help of an unexpected person from her past. Don’t miss Annabel and Amy as they dish about the novel Country Living called the “ultimate summer beach read.”
Annabel Monaghan is the author of LibraryReads pick Same Time Next Summer and Indie Next pick Nora Goes Off Script, as well as two young adult novels and Does This Volvo Make My Butt Look Big?, a selection of laugh-out-loud columns that appeared in the Huffington Post, The Week, and the Rye Record. Amy Poeppel is the author of The Sweet Spot, Musical Chairs, Limelight, and Small Admissions. Amy’s writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Rumpus, LitHub, Working Mother, Points In Case, and The Belladonna.
