"David Hartt: A Colored Garden"

Now in its second season, David Hartt: A Colored Garden  has expanded to include a new exhibition of paintings and video alongside the first artist-designed garden to activate the 49-acre historic site. While the garden will bloom in summer, a selection of nine paintings by Charles Ethan Porter will hang in the Painting Gallery alongside Et in Arcadia Ego, a new film by Hartt. Connecticut-born Porter (1847-1923) was among the first Black American artists to exhibit his work nationally and the only such artist that has been recorded to specialize in still lifes at the turn of the century.Et in Arcadia Ego, centers on Olympia, played by cellist Tomeka Reid, who also scored the film, as well as Orion, the blind giant, recast as a Black woman in glimmering chainmail. In the film, Hartt synthesizes the historical context and creative potential of The Glass House site with Greek legends to produce contemporary mythology.