Stanley-Whitman House Announces the Opening of INDIGO: An Exploration of Genealogy and Place.

The exhibit, February 25 through May 20, 2023, features collage, drawing and installation work by Lucinda Bliss. On opening day of the exhibit, at 2 pm, there will be an artist talk. The talk is free; registration is requested.

FARMINGTON, Conn. – Stanley-Whitman House, located in the historic village of Farmington, is pleased to present a new exhibit featuring the work of Hartford-born artist and teacher Lucinda Bliss. Opening February 25 and running through May 20, Indigo: An Exploration of Genealogy and Place explores colonialism, Farmington history, and the partial and false narratives of American identity that continue to permeate the ways we conceptualize national identity and our experience of place. The works are exhibited in the Lidgerwood Education Building’s Spear Community Art Gallery, with three structural pieces installed in the historic house.
Literature and art are the storytelling vehicles through which we narrate our history, yet the depictions that have shaped American identity often disappear the experiences of Indigenous and Black Americans, as well as those of women. Through her collage, drawing, and installation work, Lucinda Bliss sets out to invert and distort this imagery and poke holes in seemingly benign narratives.

“An examination of the colonial era is necessarily an examination of our relationship to the land,” Bliss states. Using a range of sources that include fragments from Currier & Ives calendars, early Farmington property maps and tax documents, drawings of colonial-era ships, and photographs of the body in the landscape, Bliss manipulates problematic imagery in order to make its subtext visible. The artist’s explorations also reveal her own genealogy as deeply linked to colonial settlers in the area. In addition, the work pulls text from previously unknown letters held in the Stanley-Whitman House archive, the study of which planted the seed for the work in the exhibit. The final collection of drawings in the exhibit roots the body of work in the landscape and demonstrates Bliss’s process of research and discovery.

Lucinda Bliss is an American artist and teacher, born in 1965 in Hartford, CT. Her painting, collage, and installation work has been shown at Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy, The Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Aucocisco Gallery, Rose Contemporary, Common Street Arts, Landmark College, University of New England, Bates College Museum of Art, The University of Arizona, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Slippery Rock University, Dinnerware Gallery, Miranda Fine Arts, and the Boston Center for the Arts, among others. Bliss currently serves as Associate Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Stanley-Whitman House, a National Historic Landmark, is a living history center and museum that teaches through the collection, preservation, research, and dynamic interpretation of the history and culture of 17th- to 19th-Century Farmington, Connecticut. Visitors of all ages are encouraged to immerse themselves in history by doing, acting, questioning, and engaging in colonial life and the ideas that formed the foundation of that culture. The museum facility is centered on a ca. 1720 house furnished with period antiques. Surrounding the house are period-raised bed gardens, an apple orchard, and heritage stone walls. The museum manages Memento Mori, Farmington’s ancient cemetery on Main Street, Scott Swamp Cemetery, and the Village Green, located at the intersection of Rtes. 4 and 10. Stanley-Whitman House is supported in part by the Farmington Village Green and Library Association. Hours of operation are Wednesday through Saturday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, and by appointment. Last tour leaves at 3:00 pm. For more information, visit https://s-wh.org/.