Southwick Cultural Council hosting 24th Annual Fine Art Exhibition Show and Sale Exhibition

SOUTHWICK — After months of planning the Southwick Cultural Council is hosting its 24th Annual Fine Art Exhibition Show and Sale at Town Hall on Saturday and Sunday, April 26-27, and one of its organizers is excited to feature some of the region’s best artists.

“We only take the best of the best,” said Council member Susan Kochanski about the jury process the council uses to choose which artists will be featured during this free event.

Returning to the show this year is the Southwick artist Pauline Thomas, who Kochanski described as a “perennial favorite” of the hundreds of art lovers who will stream through the front hall of Town Hall from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.

Kochanski said the poster the council used this year to advertise the event included Thomas’ art of two goldfinches among a bright display of red carnations.

Thomas, whose medium is watercolors, will host a demonstration of her work, she said.

Another favorite, Koshanski said, is Westfield’s watercolorist Marie Flahive.

“She been at the show since we started,” Kochanski said, adding that while this is the 24th show, it actually started 26 years ago, but the pandemic forced the council to cancel it for two years.

Also, an “art show favorite, Richard Nowak, who hails from Westfield and uses oils, acrylics, and watercolors as mediums, will have his work, which he describes as having a realist style with an impressionist flair, to show and sell.

An art teacher at a Connecticut high school, Sarah Asplund will be offering showgoers a ceramic art demonstration, Kochanski said.

“She not a traditional potter but uses ceramics as a medium,” she said.

Fiber Artist Tracy Kochanski (yes, she is related to Susan) will have a workshop to introduce registered participants to learn needle felting.

“It’s called sculpting with wool,” said Susan Kochanski.

Only a limited number can participate in the workshop which will be held on each day of the show, Kochanski said. To register, email cultural@southwickma.gov.

Kochanski said one of the region’s most acclaimed artists, Mary Jane Q Cross, is returning to the show after a five-year hiatus.

“People are really into collecting her art,” she said.

Returning to the show is council member Bruce Kulas, who is a soapstone carver, and plays a “mean harmonica,” said Kochanski.

She expects Kulas to demonstrate his harmonica skills with the Piper-Hopkins Band, who will be performing on Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. Kochanski also expects her husband Dennis Clark to be on the bass during the show.

Returning from last year is the jazz trio, Sarah Clay and The StarCats, whose performances have been described as “delightfully eclectic.”

The show always features authors, and this year Joe Adomavicia and Gail Ward Olmsted will showcase and sign their books.

Adomavicia is a Connecticut poet who was twice recognized as one of the state’s best emerging poets. Interestingly, he is a licensed CNC machinist.

Olmsted, a former marketing executive and college professor, was inspired to begin fiction writing after a trip to Arizona. She’s written four novels, including “Jeep Tour” and “Landscape of a Marriage,” which is a biographical novel featuring internationally famous landscape Frederick Law Olmsted, who co-designed New York’s Central Park and is a distant cousin of Gail Ward Olmsted.

And back, as in past years, is the Southwick Historical Society who will have an exhibit and photo essay.