Public Art West Hartford
"The Bear" by Peter Busby
Steel rods. Installed in April, 2008.
About: Busby and his family have lived in Cornwall, CT since 1991. peterbusby.com
"Broken Symmetry" by Charles O. Perry
Aluminum. Installed on loan in September, 2008.
About: Charles Owen Perry (1929-2011) was an American sculptor particularly known for his large-scale monumental works which celebrate and question the laws of nature. Perry studied art and architecture at Yale University and lived in Norwalk, CT. charlesperry.com
"Chaos" by Tim Prentice
Steel. Installed on loan in September, 2008.
About: Tim Prentice is a kinetic sculptor. He received a master's degree in architecture from the Yale School of Architecture in 1960 and founded the award-winning company of Prentice & Chan in 1965. He resides in Cornwall, CT. timprentice.com
"Three Horses" by Karen Petersen
Bronze. Installed on loan in September, 2008. Purchased in September 2013.
About: Petersen lived in Kent, Connecticut and spent 25 years as an Assistant Professor of Art at Hartford College for Women, a division of the University of Hartford, and where she established and directed the college’s Butterworth Art Gallery. petersensculpture.com
"Susan" by Philip Grausman
Fiberglass. Installed in September, 2012.
About: Philip Grausman is an American sculptor who continues to push the limits of the time-honored portrait in art. Grausman has had a successful career teaching at Yale University. His work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum. He currently resides in Washington, CT.
Bus Shelter by Anna Loewenthal
Location: bus shelter on Farmington Avenue at the intersection of North Main Street, in front of Chase Bank
About: Loewenthal is a New Haven based visual artist who grew up in West Hartford, and has been working in oil pastel and acrylic paint since 1992. She was classically trained in painting and photography at The Pratt Institute, but did not work professionally in the creative field until 2011 when she began taking on pet portraits clients while working at a veterinary hospital. Anna’s inspirations are often motivated by sentiment; places she’s lived and loved, animals she’s worked with and the people who love them, bold colors, and her own young children who often make requests for work they’d like to see. aloeartwork.com
Bus Shelter by Diane Alderete
Location: bus shelter on New Britain Avenue by Newington Road intersection, on the same side of the street as CVS.
About: Alderete’s poem and the subsequent project came naturally because of her dependence on public transport here and abroad throughout her life. There is a real, yet seemingly unrecognized need for such a simple service in its various available forms. The inspiration is the potential promise of transit systems as equalizers that promote socialization and economic opportunities and, in another importance, a cleaner environment.
Bus Shelter by Ian Nicastro
Location: bus shelter on Starkel Road, near the North Main Street intersection, on the same side of the street as Big Y Supermarket
About: Nicastro is a 17 year old artist from Conard High School in West Hartford, CT. He has taken art classes at the West Hartford Art League, CCSU, and SCAD and hopes to pursue a career in the arts and attend an art school in 2021. www.nicastroartwork.weebly.com
Bus Shelter by Jana Ireijo
Location: bus shelter on North Main Street in front of Marshalls/Homegoods
About: Ireijo lives and works in Westport, CT. She is originally from Hawaii, and moved to NYC to obtain an MFA in Painting from the Pratt Institute in 1999. She works in the style of contemporary pop art, and is currently completing a series of murals dedicated to climate change and conservation. Ireijo has exhibited her work internationally, and is a member of the Artist Collective of Westport, and the Silvermine Artists Guild. janaireijoart.com
Bus Shelter by Kelly Smurthwaite
Location: bus shelter on New Britain Avenue in Wolcott Park
About: Smurthwaite was born in California, grew up in Hawaii, and raised her 3 children in Connecticut. She has been teaching art for 33 years at all levels. Her last school was Bristow Middle School in West Hartford, CT. Smurthwaite and her husband retired last year and she took a job in northern California organizing “Teaching Science through Art” in 26 Elementary Schools. They are now living in Utah and she can’t wait to camp in the red rocks and paint the desert colors.
Her paintings represent her experiences – where she’s lived and traveled. She loves nature, architecture, and the seashore, so she mainly focuses on landscapes. However she does enjoy painting the odd cow - she’s had 3 cows in West Hartford’s Cow Parade. She has also painted a horse for the town of Granby, a dog for New Hartford, 2 dogs for Windsor, a giant heart for Danbury Hospital, and a bass violin for West Hartford Symphony. It’s fun for her to think that people will be standing in front of her art waiting for the bus.
Bus Shelter by The Marvelous Mark Makers
Location: bus shelter on Farmington Avenue on the corner of Mountain Road
About: The Marvelous Mark Makers is a group of artists who met while taking Dianne Zweig's class "Making your Mark in Contemporary Abstract Art and Collage" at the West Hartford Art League. Some members been making, selling, showing, and teaching art for years, while others have just begun their art journeys. Over the past few years they have gone from classmates, to friends, to collaborators on this project. Their cityscape bus shelter design evolved from a class assignment to create a piece based on Paul Klee's Castle and Sun.
Artists in the group include: Michelle Peterson, Bloomfield; Shari Cassutt, Simsbury; Joanna Eickenhorst, West Hartford; Lynn Katz, Avon; Rabbi Debra Cantor, Bloomfield; Heather Satlof, Avon; Nicole Leavens, Avon; Kathleen McKay, West Hartford; Heston Clapp, Southbury; Dianne Zweig, Avon; Nada Zecevic, Meriden; Susan Spaniol, Hartford; and Harriet Schneider, West Hartford.
Bus Shelter by Michelle Hawran
Location: bus shelter on Farmington Avenue by North Main Street intersection, on the same side of the street as Bank of America.
About: Hawran is a painter from Windsor, CT. Accompanied by her studio assistants (her cats Diego and Stu), she creates fun, vintage inspired art with a humorous twist. Bold color, retro patterns, and flowers take center stage in her work, feeding a portfolio that is unapologetically eccentric but always appealing to the eye. When not painting in her studio, you can find her teaching adult and kids art classes at the Windsor Art Center and trying fruitlessly to figure out the Instagram algorithm.
Instagram: @mhawranillustration
Etsy Shop: www.etsy.com/shop/MHawranIllustration
Bus Shelter by Trae Brooks
Location: bus shelter on Farmington Avenue, at the intersection of South Main Street, across the street from Bank of America
About: Brooks is an artist from Windsor, CT who has a BFA in painting from the University of Hartford. His primary interests are in ideas and themes related to family and personal identity. Through his work, he explores his family history and dynamic to learn where he comes from. From this, he hopes to better understand who he is. Brooks processes these familial relationships and how they impact his interpersonal relationships and his understanding of the world. traebrooksart.com Instagram: @traesart
Bus Shelter by Wing Na Wong
Location: bus shelter on New Britain Avenue, at the Newington Road intersection, across the street from CVS
About: Wong is a photorealist painter. Her specialty is portraiture, depicting people or animals with expressive details. She is a recipient of the Antonio Alberetti Excellence in Painting Award, The City of Danbury Proclamation from Mayor of City of Danbury Mark Boughton and the #1 Painting Award, Juried Fine Art & Crafts Show in Danbury, CT. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows, group shows and juried exhibition shows in CT, MA, NY, and PA, as well as viewed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She has paintings in the government offices of Mark Boughton, Mayor of Danbury, and Jahana Hayes, U.S. Congressional Representative in Waterbury, CT. wingnawong.com
Bus Shelter by Yashika Singh
Location: bus shelter on the corner of Park Road and Prospect Avenue, across the street from Prospect Cafe
About: Singh is a Hartford, CT based Abstract Painter inspired by nature who is pursuing her Masters in Architecture from the University of Hartford. She is a self taught artist with nature being her greatest mentor. Singh has been painting since she was thirteen, and turned professional at the age of twenty one. She primarily paints in acrylics and oil, and she creates to evoke feelings rather than represent what already exists. Through her art, she explores the limitless possibilities that colors and a blank canvas can help us see in a world full of rush around us. artyashika.com