WAG May 2019

Tracee Ellis Ross

The grace of a tulip, the strength of a tree

THE PEONY

Pleasantville event honors a classic

THE POPPY

A crusade to remember veterans ORCHIDS, ROSES, TULIPS… Scenes from the Lyndhurst Flower Show DAHLIAS, DAFFODILS, WATER LILIES… New books in bloom DOGWOOD AND MAGNOLIA Jackie Battenfield’s luminous paintings FLOWERS ON FILM The legacy of Beatrix Farrand

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fascinating botanicals

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FEATURES M AY 2 0 1 9

12

A paean to the peony

16

A botanical paradise unearthed

44

Branching out

48

Crowning achievement

52

20

A mother’s legacy of love

24

Petal pushers

28

Call of the wild

32

Incredible edibles

Artist of Eden Turning the tide

Gilded Age gardener

Poppies, for remembrance

34

A brush with history

56

60 62

64

Fights of fancy

66

36

Art, naturally

38

Olive oy!

42

Home design – inside and out

Puttin’ down new roots

Beyond fine Bloody relations

72

COVER STORY

TRACEE ELLIS ROSS – DOWN TO EARTH

80 82

THIS PAGE:

Joshua Werber’s floral headpieces were a highlight of the Lyndhurst Flower Show. See story on page 48.

Photograph by Bob Rozycki.

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128

WHEN & WHERE Upcoming events

132

WATCH We’re out and about

144

WIT What’s your favorite flower?

Tracee Ellis Ross

The grace of a tulip, the strength of a tree

THE PEONY

Pleasantville event honors a classic

THE POPPY

A crusade to remember veterans ORCHIDS, ROSES, TULIPS… Scenes from the Lyndhurst Flower Show DAHLIAS, DAFFODILS, WATER LILIES… New books in bloom DOGWOOD AND MAGNOLIA Jackie Battenfield’s luminous paintings FLOWERS ON FILM The legacy of Beatrix Farrand

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fascinating botanicals

COVER: Tracee Ellis Ross.

Photograph by John Rizzo.

See story on page 72.

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We certainly cover both. But mostly, a WAG is a wit and that’s how we think of ourselves, serving up piquant stories and photos to set your own tongues wagging.

HEADQUARTERS A division of Westfair Communications Inc., 701 Westchester Ave., White Plains, NY 10604 Telephone: 914-694-3600 | Facsimile: 914-694-3699 Website: wagmag.com | Email: ggouveia@westfairinc.com All news, comments, opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations in WAG are those of the authors and do not constitute opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations of the publication, its publisher and its editorial staff. No portion of WAG may be reproduced without permission.WAG is distributed at select locations, mailed directly and is available at $24 a year for home or office delivery. To subscribe, call 914-694-3600, ext. 3020. All advertising inquiries should be directed to Anne Jordan at 914694-3600, ext. 3032 or email anne@westfairinc.com. Advertisements are subject to review by the publisher and acceptance for WAG does not constitute an endorsement of the product or service. WAG (Issn: 1931-6364) is published monthly and is owned and published by Westfair Communications Inc. Dee DelBello, CEO, dee@westfairinc.com

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ROBIN COSTELLO

ALEESIA FORNI

GINA GOUVEIA

PHIL HALL

DEBBI K. KICKHAM

MEGHAN MCSHARRY

DOUG PAULDING

JENNIFER PITMAN

JOHN RIZZO

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COVER STORY: GEORGETTE GOUVEIA PAGE 72

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WAG’S A WINNER Oops, we did it again.

The New York Press Association recognized WAG with an Excellence Award last month in its nationally judged competition, the fourth time it has done so.

Among the comments from the judges were, “Great work and beautiful pieces. The cross-culture content, variety of topics, inviting and engaging photos make these fun to read. Handsome design between layout and advertising really set you apart from the pack! Good job!”

We’d just like to add that we couldn’t do this without you – our subjects, our advertisers and our readers.

You are our inspiration!

Oops!

In our write-up on WAG alumna Aleesia Forni’s wedding (Page, 126, April WAG), we neglected to credit photographer Tim Naujoks, who’s at tnphotographics.com. Our apologies to Naujoks.

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t

GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

his month we expand our annual flora and gardens issue to consider the landscapes of “Fascinating Botanicals.” Few have been more intriguing than the New York metro area and the Hudson Valley, which we explore in a group of related stories that take us from our opening essay, inspired by Rockefeller State Park Preserve’s Peony Celebration, to our story on the first American botanical garden, which now lies beneath Rockefeller Center; to the New York Botanical Garden, where you’ll enjoy the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, created by Beatrix Farrand (Laura’s story) and a summertime show on the protean Brazilian Modernist Roberto Burle Marx. (The Brazilians are indeed marvelous landscape architects as Mary discovers in a piece that looks in part on a new book about Hamptons designer Frederico Azevedo.)

Mary is also front and center for the New-York Historical Society’s blockbuster show “Hudson Rising,” which considers the river that has been so important to the science and culture of the valley that bears its name.

We continue our exploration of landscapes with “LandEscape,” a new exhibit of Modern and contemporary landscape painting at the Katonah Museum of Art (Jena’s story) and her profile of Brittany and Matthew Bromley, a Bedford-based interior designer and landscape architect who believe home and gardens go hand in hand.

Many of the people you’ll encounter in these pages are garden pros, like landscaper, restaurateur and, now, olive oil producer Val Morano Sagliocco, who weighs in on the olive oil crisis in Italy; and Sal Gilbertie, who takes Gina on a tour of Gilbertie’s Organic Petite Edibles and Herb Gardens in Easton. Others, like singer-songwriter Amy Ray of Indigo Girls, who’ll be performing in Fairfield and Pawling (Gregg’s story), and Bill Ruhrkraut, the new vice president and general manager of Bloomingdale’s White Plains, are gardening enthusiasts who have spent their share of time creating vegetable and Japanese gardens respectively.

Still others find inspiration in botanicals for art (Mary’s piece on Jackie Battenfield, whose blossom paintings are represented by Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont and, soon, Kent); home design (Mary’s story on Voutsa and our take on Insidherland); jewelry (Tiffany & Co.’s new Return to Tiffany Love Bugs Collection); skincare (Meghan’s look at Glow Recipe) and our report on Beauty Made in Italy); travel (Barbara’s visit to 10

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Peonies are among the most popular of flowers and a favorite of Wag alumna Ronni Diamondstein, who took this photograph.

Kauai, Hawaii’s garden island and Jeremy’s journey to the Cotswolds in his native England) and, of course, food (Aleesia’s visit to Aesop’s Fable in Chappaqua, her last piece for WAG before moving on to a new job. How we will miss this rose.)

With Mother’s Day set for May 12, the floral tributes will no doubt be flowing. We have two Mother’s Day stories for you. Debbi and her sister Christine take the Big Apple where their 101-year-old mom Joanna steals the spotlight (and they wouldn’t have it any other way.) Then Jena talks with Ann Mara Cacase about her late mother, Ann T. Mara, the First Lady of Football and a formidable philanthropist.

If there is a subtheme this month, it’s that the land is dotted by meaning as each kind of plant has come to symbolize something special.

Though cover subject Tracee Ellis Ross — who lent her vibrant presence to the recent benefit for Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, The Fund for Women & Girls — says her favorite flower is the tulip, she finds meaning in the strength and flexibility of trees, with their deep roots and adaptability to each season.

There is perhaps no more poignant expression of floral symbolism than in the poppy, emblem of our soldiers living and dead, as Phil reveals in one of his patented off-the-beaten path stories about Moina Michael, the Georgia woman who ensured the war dead would be honored and the living served through the poppy’s promotion.

We chart the pages of history for the flower-powered Plantagenets, the English royal dynasty named for the yellow broom flower their founder sported in his cap and brought to an end by the Wars of the Roses. Put it this way: “Game of Thrones” had nothing on them.

Even the peony has proved to be a protean symbol of war and peace, male and female.

It turns up three times as the favorite flower of our Wits. And speaking of our Wit column, which always ends our book, I’d like to give a shout-out to our associate publisher Anne Jordan Duffy, who went beyond the call of duty this month to ask the Wit question for us among the Badass Women of Fairfield County, founded by Mia Schipani, April 2 at The J House Greenwich.

There were no roses among the 12 answers to “What’s Your Favorite Flower?” — only among the respondents.

A 2018 Folio Women in Media Award winner, WAG magazine editor in chief Georgette Gouveia is the author of the new “The Penalty for Holding” (Less Than Three Press), a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and “Water Music” (Greenleaf Book Group). They’re part of her series of novels, “The Games Men Play,” also the name of the sports/culture blog she writes weekly installments of her “Daimon: A Novel of Alexander the Great” on wattpad.com.

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a paean to the peony

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

It has been beloved by everyone from the philosopher Confucius to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. It has become a symbol of mighty opposites – male and female, war and peace – and a perennial tribute to beauty’s infinite variety and mystery.

And while it is native to Asia, Europe and western North America — with late bloomers basking in the long sunlit hours of Alaska mid to late summer — this is the peony’s moment in WAG country.

On May 9, the Friends of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve in Pleasantville will host its 2019 Peony Celebration. A fundraiser for the organization and projects in the preserve, the evening will feature a fine art exhibit and a flower show presented by gardening clubs under a tent in the visitors center courtyard at the entrance to the preserve.

There you will find the Tree Peony Garden, teeming with 500 peonies in crimson, mauve, hot pink, white and pale yellow for a brief but stunning moment from about the first week in May through Mother’s Day. The shrubs were given to the United States

by Yatsuka Cho, a town in Shimane Prefecture in southern Japan, as a gesture of healing and solidarity after Sept. 11.

Flowers, of course, have always been a source of comfort and refreshment for the spirit. But the peony seems particularly suited to its role as a f loral bridge over troubled water. In Serbia, red peonies are said to memorialize the Serbians fallen in the Battle of Kosovo ( June 1389) between the defending Serbs and the invading forces of the Ottoman Empire. The bloom’s very name represents a resolution of conf lict. The ancient Greeks were fond of associating f lowers with tragic mythological figures — think of the solipsistic Narcissus, pining away for his own ref lect-

ed beauty, and the tender Hyacinth, lover of the sun god Apollo, killed by the jealous West Wind, Zephyrus. So it is with the peony, whose name comes from Paean, from which we get our word for a “hymn of praise.” Paean was a student of one of Apollo’s sons, Asclepius, the god of medicine. But though he was a compassionate physician, Asclepius was not above being jealous of Paean — perhaps because “Paean,” meaning “the healer,” was also an epithet of Apollo and Asclepius. (Subsequently, the Romans called hymns to Apollo “paeans.”)

In any event, Zeus — king of the Olympian gods, father of Apollo and grandfather of Asclepius — turned Paean into a peony so he would be protected.

Simultaneously, the Chinese were cultivating the peony — whose approximately 35 species can be either herbaceous perennial plants or woody shrubs — for its medicinal and culinary properties.

The philosopher Confucius was said to eat nothing that was not flavored by peonies. Soon peony fever spread from the imperial gardens of China to Japan, which developed a number of species. Ultimately, some of the Asian cousins made their way to Europe — with the tree peony being planted in Kew Gardens in London in 1789 and intense cultivation taking off in the 19th century.

Today, the peony is also a bridge between East and West as it remains the de facto official flower of China (and the state flower of Indiana), while

Sunlight adds a glow to this white peony. Photograph by Bob Rozycki.

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Peonies have graced the entrance to Rockefeller State Park Preserve in Pleasantville since they were given to the United States by Yatsuka Cho, a town in Shimane Prefecture in southern Japan, as a gesture of healing and solidarity after Sept. 11. Photograph by Joe Golden.

the Netherlands, land of the tulip, nonetheless is the top producer of cut stems, selling 50 million a year — with the pink, cabbage-like Sarah Bernhardt, named for the incandescent 19th-century French actress, the most popular (more than 20 million stems).

From the Bernhardt to the buttercup-ful daurica to the poppy-like tenuifolia, the peony enchants with its variety of textures and pastel and jewel-like colors. No wonder it has been a favorite of artists, including the 18th-century Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione, who painted in the court of China’s Qianlong Emperor; Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the Napoleonic botanical painter better-known for his roses; French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir; and Japanese woodblock print master Utagawa Kuniyoshi, whose paintings of warriors with peony tattoos gave the flower a breezy masculinity and reconnected it with its early militaristic roots.

In the design world, the peony has had a more traditionally feminine energy. Barnes & Noble has carried throw pillows featuring botanical prints of the bloom and couturier Monique

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Flowers, of course, have always been a source of comfort and refreshment for the spirit.

But the peony seems particularly suited to its role as a floral bridge over troubled water.

Lhuillier has used peachy pink ones in her silk flower collections for Pottery Barn, while the delicately sweet scent has inspired a 2015 collaboration between the New York Botanical Garden and Chesapeake Bay Candle as well as the Markle Sparkle Candle in honor of the former Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, and Jo

Malone’s Peony & Blush Suede fragrance.

For many, the evanescent peony is personal.

“I can’t remember a time that I didn’t love this glorious flower,” says Ronni Diamondstein, a writer and award-winning photographer who lives in Chappaqua and has written for WAG, among other publications. “My fondness is attached to a memory that I can still picture today. We had peonies in our garden when I was a child. They bloomed in June just in time for my mother to pin a delicate blossom on me for my birthday, which she did every year. To this day whether pale pink, bubblegum or coral charm, I fill my home with beautiful bouquets of a much beloved flower through their season and especially on my birthday.”

For lovers of the peony — blossom of transformation — every day is a birthday.

The 2019 Peony Celebration at Rockefeller State Park Preserve in Pleasantville on May 9 from 6 to 9 p.m. includes a Champagne toast, cocktails, savory food and a silent auction. Tickets are $125. For more, visit friendsrock.org.

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Roberto Burle Marx during a botanical expedition in Ecuador, 1974. Photograph by JohnKnud Trumbull’s Hosack” (circaLuiz 1810), oil Luiz Correia“David de Araújo, archive Knud on canvas.

Courtesy The Linnean Society.

Correia de Araújo.

16 WAGMAG.COM MAY 2019

a botanical paradise unearthed

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

For years, he has been a proverbial footnote in American history, best known as the doctor who witnessed the duel between his friends Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr — attending the mortally wounded Hamilton and earning a shout-out in “Hamilton.”

Yet in the decades following the American Revolution, Dr. David Hosack was the new nation’s answer to the mother country’s Sir Joseph Banks — its premier botanist and one of its leading citizens. In creating the United States’ first botanic garden, in Manhattan, Hosack not only had a front row seat to American and New York history, but played a crucial role in shaping both.

He springs brilliantly to life in Victoria Johnson’s sympathetic, absorbing “American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic” (Liveright Publishing Corp./W.W. Norton & Co., $29.95, 461 pages), a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. (Recently, Johnson brought her book to the Jay Heritage Center in Rye — the home of America’s first chief justice, John Jay, a Hosack peer — amid an 80-city international tour.)

“American Eden” will have lovers of plants, the Big Apple and history from its velvety cover, with its reproduction of Hosack’s Elgin Botanic Garden, now buried in time beneath the limestone and steel of Rockefeller Center. (Its soil would be used to create Central Park’s Great Lawn.)

An associate professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College in Manhattan, where she

The book cover shows an unknown artist’s rendering of “The Elgin Botanic Garden” (circa 1810), courtesy the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, the New York Botanical Garden/Art Resource NY; flower illustrations from “Flora Londinensis” (1777), Smithsonian Libraries/Biodiversity Heritage Library; and bottles from the 18th-century Bartam family medicine chest, courtesy The John Bartram Association, Bartram’s Garden, Philadelphia. Jacket design

by Nicole Caputo. Photograph courtesy Markley Boyer.

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teaches the history of New York City, Johnson came across a reference to the garden while preparing an academic article on botanical gardens.

“I couldn’t believe one of the most iconic buildings in the world was the site of America’s first botanic garden,” she says. “I sensed it was a great New York story.”

In telling that story, Johnson resurrects the garden and its creator to paint a complex portrait of a man who was a set of fascinating contradictions — humble and haughty, immediate and remote. Above all else, he was a gentleman of his time and a scholar who presaged our own, particularly in his quest to find botanical remedies for the diseases he encountered.

“Today we’ve circled back to the value of plants in medicine,” she says.

The native peoples used medicinal plants. The European settlers added that knowledge to their own folk remedies. For instance, Peruvian bark — a bitter powder made from the cinchona tree, native to the Andes — was used in treating a variety of fever-characterized diseases, especially malaria, on both sides of the Atlantic after Jesuit missionaries introduced it to Europe in the 1630s, Johnson writes.

(Only later was it discovered to contain quinine, the standard treatment for malaria.) The bark plays a dramatic role in the opening of the book as Johnson describes Hosack preparing bath after bath of it in a desperate but successful effort to save the life of Hamilton’s 15-year-old son, Philip.

Yet medicine was still a profession of what she calls “targeting illnesses broadly,” with doctors prescribing mercury and performing bloodletting for a host of ailments.

“What (Hosack) was trying to do was identify specific plants for specific illnesses,” Johnson says, “to systemize the study of native plant species.”

The problem was there was no research facility, no public botanic garden, in which to do this. Despite impeccable training in this country — Columbia College, Princeton, a University of Pennsylvania medical degree and a practice that would take him from Alexandria, Virginia, back to his native Manhattan — Hosack believed that he needed the deeper knowledge that plant-crazed Great Britain could provide. His time there (1792-94), which included study at the University of Edinburgh, fired his desire to learn all he could about botany, heretofore a hole in his education. Returning to the U.S. and establishing his practice in Manhattan, where he would become a professor at Columbia College, Hosack threw himself into creating a botanic garden that would rival those he saw in Europe.

He used his own money to acquire 20 acres of land 3½ miles north of the city limits on Middle Road (Fifth Avenue) for $100,000 — or $1 million in today’s money, Johnson says. The Elgin Botanic Garden — named for his merchant-father’s hometown in Scotland — would become at the 19thcentury’s dawn a mecca for plant lovers, scientists and medical students, with a 200-foot-long

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Victoria Johnson. Photograph by Yanka Kostova.

glasshouse containing jungle and desert species, while poppies, chamomile, feverfew, ginseng and other medicinal plants lined walkways; and carnations and daffodils bloomed amid apple, pear and apricot trees.

This was not, however, Johnson says, a garden as we think of the New York Botanical Garden, as much aesthetic as it is scientific. Rather, it was more akin to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health today. It would not be Hosack’s only medical accomplishment as he helped pioneer the use of the stethoscope as well as the procedure for relieving hydrocele, an inflammation of the scrotum, and advanced a holistic, compassionate approach to health care, particularly with regard to women and children. (This was born in part from the tragic loss of his wife, Catherine, and their two children in his first marriage. His second, to Mary Eddy, would produce nine children, seven of whom survived. After Mary’s death in 1824, he married the widow Magdalena Coster, blending his family with her brood of seven.)

Yet this is, astonishingly enough, only half of “American Eden’s” story. Hosack not only engaged with many of the political luminaries of his day; he managed to bridge the often conflicting interests of, say, a Hamilton and a Thomas Jefferson.

“This is something I love,” Johnson says. “Hosack said, ‘Science knows not party politics.’ His attitude was this is all for the benefit of all of us.”

It was an attitude that was both pragmatic and idealistic. He didn’t want to alienate anyone from contributing to scientific understanding. So it is not surprising then that Hosack could attend Hamilton after he was fatally shot by hated rival Burr in an 1804 duel but later loan Burr money for his selfimposed exile after he was acquitted in a conspir-

acy trial to form a new country in the Louisiana Territory and Spanish Texas.

Approached to stand for office himself, Hosack declined. Instead he would nurture the city that nurtured him, co-founding such cultural institutions as the New-York Historical Society. His garden, alas, would not survive — passing into the hands of New York state and then Columbia College in 1814, which leased the property to John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1928.

(Though the Rockefeller Group would build Rockefeller Center in the 1930s, it would not actually buy the land until 1985.) Nonetheless, Johnson says, it was Hosack’s preservation of that prime parcel that would give rise to one of the world’s great financial and cultural complexes.

She thinks it’s because Hosack’s accomplishments were many and varied — as opposed to his name being attached to curing one disease — that he isn’t better known today. But she’s doing what she can to change that. The Ithaca-born daughter of a retired professor of urban planning who specialized in New York, Johnson was in love with the city before she ever called Manhattan home. “I feel giddy to live here,” she says.

Now she’s working on events at NYBG and Rockefeller Center celebrating the 250th anniversary of Hosack’s Aug. 31 birth and a virtual tour of the Elgin garden. She’s also helped with the décor of The Elgin, a Rockefeller Center restaurant scheduled to open in early summer that will feature framed specimens of the kinds that were in the Elgin Botanic Garden as well as portraits of the movers and shakers of Hosack’s day.

It’s only fitting, Johnson says, that he be remembered in what is sure to be a city hotspot as “he helped make New York New York.”

For more, visit americaneden.org.

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Roberto Burle Marx during a botanical expedition in Ecuador, 1974. Photograph by Luiz Knud Correia de AraĂşjo, archive Luiz Knud Correia de AraĂşjo.

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Roberto Burle Marx with giant elephant ear plants (colocasia) in Brazil. Courtesy the New York Botanical Garden.

artist of eden

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

Claude Monet. Frida Kahlo. Dale Chihuly. Roberto Burle Marx. Roberto who?

Over the years, the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx has celebrated a number of famed artists with deep connections to the land. But for its year of #plantlove — in which it is exploring the absolute necessity of botanicals in our lives at a moment when they are under increasing threat — the garden is creating a show about a landscape architect/artist who, while well-known in his own day, is hardly a household name today.

And yet, Roberto Burle Marx (1909-94) put his stamp on the Americas in private and public spaces that melded his protean creativity; his love of key isms — Modernism, Cubism, Abstractionism; his passion for the flora, fauna and folk art of his native Brazil; and his fascination with the sculptural quality of plants, the mosaic potential of pavement and the reflective capability of water.

“Burle Marx embodied plant love in every aspect of his life,” says Joanna Groarke, the garden’s director of public engagements and curator of library exhibitions. “Whether it was the boardwalk on Copacabana Beach or private and public gardens in his native São Paulo, his sculpture, jewelry and tapestries, he was constantly creating. His love of the natural world permeated every aspect of his art, and that’s seen in his love of gardens.”

The botanical garden plumbs that love in its “The Living Art of Roberto Burle Marx,” on view June 8 through Sept. 29. For the exhibit, it will not be recreating any one garden by Burle Marx, whose work includes the landscape design for Itamarty Palace, headquarters of the Ministry of External Relations in Brasília, Brazil; the colorfully patterned sidewalks and medians of Biscayne Boulevard in Miami; and

the Cascade Garden, offering a touch of South America at Pennsylvania’s Longwood Gardens; as well as the wavy Copacabana promenade.

Rather, the garden has worked with landscape designer Raymond Jungles, a friend and admirer of Burle Marx’s, to transform the green expanse outside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. There will be undulating pathways, rich patterns, water features, architectural elements and, of course, plants, including Burle Marx’s beloved brilliant bromeliads. “(Burle Marx) was an ardent advocate for conservation,” Groarke says. “That’s another part of the story” — one that will be addressed in a June 7 symposium. There will also be music and culinary offerings as well as an exhibit of his increasingly abstract drawings, paintings, prints and tapestries of his last 30 years in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, curated by Edward Sullivan, deputy director of New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts; and a Poetry Walk, featuring the works of the peripatetic Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop, who translated Brazil’s João Cabral de Melo Neto and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, among other Latin American poets.

All of which would’ve been music to the ears of the multitalented Burle Marx, who once studied opera. (His oldest sibling was the pianist, composer conductor Walter Burle Marx, who guested with the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland, Detroit and Washington symphony orchestras.) Situated in Rio de Janeiro, theirs was a musical, linguistic family, headed by their father, Wilhelm Marx, a German-

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Jewish entrepreneur; and their mother, the former Rebecca Cecília Burle, a music teacher from an old Brazilian Roman Catholic family of FrenchPortuguese-Dutch descent.

Groarke says that a nanny first introduced the young Burle Marx to the native plants of his homeland. But sometimes you have to step away from something close to you to understand what you have. It wasn’t until Burle Marx visited the Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum, while studying painting and opera in Germany, that the varied beauty of the flora of his country really hit him.

Returning to Brazil in 1930, he began collecting plants and attended the National School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, where he soaked up whatever he could from botanists as well as artists and architects. He did his first landscape, for a private residence, in 1932. Five years later, he garnered international acclaim for his dramatic roof garden for the Ministry of Education building in Brasília.

He is, however, one of those artists/landscapers who is as well-known for the way he lived as for the work he did. In 1949, he acquired an estate in Rio that would become the base for his artwork, cultural salons and excursions into the rainforest with scientists, landscape designers and other guests to col-

Roberto Burle Marx painting at home. Photograph by Ayrton Camargo/Tyba.

lect plant specimens — for which, Groarke says, he was a generous host.

Today, the Sítio Roberto Burle Marx, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a 40.7-acre complex that includes Burle Marx’s home and library and a collection of more than 3,000 items set amid his land-

scaping and gardens.

It, along with his other garden designs worldwide is, Groarke says, the legacy of a man of “creative vision, who thought in a way that surpasses any one discipline.”

For more, visit nybg.org.

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Riverkeeper John Cronin, 1983. Photo, Don Nice. Courtesy of Riverkeeper.

Beginning in 1972, the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association began a “Riverkeeper” program to patrol the river. Ten years later, Riverkeeper John Cronin and his boat were monitoring the river full-time. On Cronin’s first day, he confronted an Exxon tanker discharging polluted ballast water into the river. In 1986, the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association merged with its Riverkeeper program to form one group to protect the river. Images courtesy New-York Historical Society Museum & Library.

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turning the tide

BY MARY SHUSTACK

We didn’t expect to turn a corner in the museum gallery and see a tank filled with fish — but quickly realized those Atlantic striped bass made perfect sense.

We were, after all, in the midst of “Hudson Rising,” a sweeping exhibition exploring 200 years of ecological change and environmental activism along the Hudson River.

The tour-de-force show at the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library in Manhattan includes not only these living examples of the river’s inhabitants but also an array of artifacts, media and artwork brought together in a thoughtful exploration of the 315-mile waterway.

It’s a pointed journey, though, offering a story about change that is artfully developed through the inclusion of everything from Hudson River School paintings to music

by Hudson Valley activist Pete Seeger, from steamboat models to oyster shells, from vintage tourist brochures to media coverage of pivotal environmental battles.

In short, the expansive exhibition that continues through Aug. 4 at the Manhattan institution is designed to encourage the visitor to rethink life on and around the river that continues to be integral to our region in so many ways.

“Hudson Rising” is presented in themed sections, starting with the historic “Journeys Upriver: The 1800s” and concluding with “A Rising Tide: Today,” a captivating finale showcasing innovative projects addressing climate change.

“Hudson Rising,” is much more than a lazy paddle on the river, as Louise Mirrer, the society’s president and CEO, noted during the exhibit press preview’s opening remarks.

As she said, “The exhibition addresses important

environmental issues of the past 200 years, many of which continue to resonate today.”

She offered her remarks amid the show’s prelude, a lobby installation featuring Thomas Cole’s five-part “The Course of Empire” series, a panoramic work from 1833 to ’36. This historical society treasure sets the tone for a cautionary tale about the transformation of a bucolic landscape into a kind of ancient Rome that experiences a dramatic destruction and, finally, a return to its natural state. Cole’s questioning of the cost of progress hints as to what will follow in “Hudson Rising,” to be sure.

“We really hope the exhibition will inspire our visitors to see the river differently,” Mirrer added.

Curated by Marci Reaven, the society’s vice president of history exhibitions, and Jeanne Haffner, associate curator, “Hudson Rising’s” five sections spotlight significant locations and events in the environmental history of the Hudson.

“Journeys Upriver: The 1800s” offers a steamboat trip up the river from New York Harbor to Albany.

Here, we see natural wonders, explore Hudson Valley industries such as brick making and admire paintings such as Robert Havell Jr.’s “View of Hudson River From Near Sing Sing, New York” (circa 1850).

Next, we visit “The Adirondacks: 1870s-1890s,” which examines the creation of the Adirondack Park, established to save the source of the river and combat deforestation, a necessary step to protect the viability of the entire Hudson watershed.

“All of these uses and values start to come into conflict with each other,” curator Reaven noted as she walked a group through the show.

We continued to “The Palisades: 1890s-1950s”

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as forests and cliffs of the natural beauty are protected and citizen-activists work to save the scenery. “The Palisades were actually being blown to bits,” Reaven noted.

Palisades Park, celebrated through tourist brochures and evocative imagery, emerged at the time, encouraging city dwellers to spend time outdoors.

“The Hudson Highlands: 1960s-1980s” explores the way in which activism along the river sparked the modern American environmental movement.

Discussed here are river pollutants, power plants rising along the river banks and the threats to so many classic scenic views. In this section, we heard not only music from Seeger but also saw a photograph of John Cronin, river patroller for the environmental watchdog group Hudson River Fishermen’s Association (now Riverkeeper) confronting an Exxon tanker discharging pollution into the river.

Finally, “A Rising Tide: Today” brought us to the forefront of the process of reimagining and reclaiming the Hudson, spotlighting cutting-edge responses to climate change.

“We tried to examine the legacy of many challenges and achievements we talked about earlier in the exhibit,” Reaven said.

Here, displays address restoring aquatic habitats and shorelines and lessening the eroding effects of massive waves.

The exhibition's conclusion provided a perfect moment to remember — and reflect on — words

7.75 x 4.75

Robert Havell Jr. (1793–1878), “View of Hudson River from near Sing Sing, New York,” ca. 1850. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Purchase, Watson Fund, 1971.14 Robert Havell Jr.’s view from Sing Sing shows a landscape crafted by human hands for human use. Nineteenth-century Americans called such development, “improvement.” Havell’s southwardfacing scene does not show the Sing Sing quarry, where prisoners excavated stone for Grace Church in Manhattan and other prominent buildings

from Cole’s 1836 “Essay on American Scenery” that are posted on the wall near the artist’s prelude panorama: “Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it?”

“Hudson Rising” continues through Aug. 4 at the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, at 170 Central Park West in Manhattan.

For more, including details of related programming, visit nyhistory.org.

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gilded age gardener

BY LAURA JOSEPH MOGIL

“Gardens are good for the soul,” New York City public garden designer Lynden B. Miller observes in the newly released documentary “Beatrix Farrand’s American Landscapes.”

Narrated by Miller, the film charts the life and career of America’s first female landscape architect (1872-1959), who designed gardens for the private estates of East Coast society and served as a consultant for some of the country’s most prestigious private universities and colleges.

The film features several of her best-known extant public masterpieces, including the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor, Maine, and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Garrison resident Anne Cleves Symmes — one of the producers of the film and the current garden educator for the Beatrix Farrand Garden Association at the Bellefield mansion in Hyde Park — spent 20 years leading the team that restored the property’s Farrand garden (built in 1911-12 for her cousin Thomas Newbold and his wife, Sarah).

The garden is on the property of the Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site on Route 9 in the Dutchess County town.

“I’ve always been so in love with Farrand and amazed by her career, both as a pioneering woman and as innovator in the field of planting design,” Symmes says. “She broke down barriers and did work that women had not been able to do, and she really advocated and believed in the importance of public landscapes and parks.”

Symmes’ husband is Stephen Ives, founder of the historical documentary film company Insignia Films. “I said to Steve over and over, ‘We’ve got to make a movie about Beatrix Farrand. She’s such an incredible person and everybody needs to know about her legacy,’” Symmes recalls. “He hemmed and hawed, because he worried that we didn’t have enough archival material and there were no moving images of her. He was afraid it wasn’t going to have that certain dynamic.”

That all changed when Miller came to Hyde Park to lecture on how Farrand had mentored her in her career in public horticulture and garden design. Among her many projects, Miller oversaw the restoration of Central Park’s Conservatory Garden. “Lynden did such a dynamic and wonderful talk that Steve fell in love with her and said we could do the film through her eyes and through her journey to learn more about Farrand,” Symmes says.

The film, which took three years to produce, begins with Farrand’s The Abby Aldrich early life. She grew up in high society — Edith Wharton, the novelist Rockefeller Garden and stiletto-sharp chronicler of the 1 percent of the Gilded Age, was in Seal Harbor, Maine. Buddy Squires her aunt — and came from a family of five generations of garden lovers. for Insignia Films Her own passion for it was born at age 11 when her parents bought a photograph. house on Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine.

“Farrand grew up treasuring the property’s little woodland plants and was always digging them up and bringing them close to the house to add to her own gardens,” Symmes says.

Farrand was determined to pursue a career in horticulture, a challenge since the profession was not open to women. No universities would take her, so she studied privately with Charles Sprague Sargent — one of the foremost botanists of his day, who was the first director of The Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University and a cousin of the Gilded Age portrait painter John Singer Sargent. She then hired a tutor from the School of Mines of Columbia University to teach her surveying skills.

In 1895, Farrand went on a five-month trip with her mother to visit almost 150 gardens around the world, from Versailles in Paris to the Jardin d’Essai in Algiers.

“What makes Farrand stand out is the way she was able to combine styles and to bring ideas from Europe — including Italian and French gardens — and mix those with the wild gardens and landscape gardens of England as well as the Hudson River tradition of romantic landscapes,” Symmes says. “She took all those influences and combined them in new ways, and she was a big champion of native American plants.”

In 1916, she started work on what became New York Botanical Garden’s Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden.

“Farrand designed the Rose Garden with a natural, beautiful plan in a triangular form and with great attention to the scientific layout. She grouped the roses by families, with wilder roses farther out than those in the more formal structure,” Symmes says.

Farrand was up against a difficult time, because while botanical garden board members were excited about her ideas and plans, they had a lot of difficulty raising the money to bring them to completion.

“She had these amazing iron gates, a pergola and all these wonderful support structures for the roses.

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None of that could be built because there were no funds,” Symmes says.

In 1988, David Rockefeller, the youngest of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s six children, made a donation in honor of his wife Peggy — a horticulturalist and conservationist who adored roses — that enabled the rose garden to be completed. It has gone on to become an important teaching garden, featuring many new roses that hadn’t been cultivated in Farrand’s day, along with old-fashioned roses that she would have been very familiar with. “It’s a recreation of her original design in terms of the structure of the garden, but it now features a modern curation of some 650 different varieties of roses,” Symmes says.

For the Dumbarton Oaks estate of American diplomat Robert Bliss and his wife, Mildred, now an historic site in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood — Farrand designed the gardens covering their hilly, 53-acre property, which featured a 100-foot descent down to Rock Creek. Beginning in 1921, Farrand worked closely with Mildred Bliss for almost 30 years to achieve their vision of terraced gardens and vistas, orchards and kitchen gardens and an array of meadows and wooded pathways. They also collaborated on the design and choice of the garden’s ornaments, from benches and gates to finials and sculptures.

With all its retaining walls and terracing, it was a complex engineering feat and an opportunity for Farrand to incorporate many of the styles and influ-

Beatrix Farrand.

Courtesy The Beatrix Farrand Society.

ences that she had absorbed during her work and travels.

“It’s a garden that has beautiful flowers, but it’s really about the stage and the structure and the experience,” Symmes says. “What’s great is you can wander through that garden and you are drawn down the steps and through the garden ‘rooms’ but you don’t really break a sweat. You can walk all the way down to the bottom and all the way back up and feel comfortable, because it’s so beautifully designed in terms of places to rest and stop. It’s almost like a choreography through the garden that allows you to just get lost in it and not even be aware of the incredible slope.”

It offers a delightful contrast to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden. Created between 1926 and

1930 by Farrand and its namesake, the garden is set amid acres of moss-carpeted woods. The “Spirit Path” on the west side of the garden invites visitors to stroll past six pairs of Korean tomb figures.

These pieces, along with other Asian sculptures from Japan, China and Korea, are integral components of the garden. They are thoughtfully placed to evoke a contemplative quality.

“At the end you come to a gate and then there is this most breathtaking, drop-dead flower garden you’ve ever seen,” Symmes says. Among the 600 plants on Farrand’s design list were delphiniums, foxgloves, hollyhock and lilies, along with thousands of annuals that make the garden still explode in color. “The scale of it is so enormous that it’s hard to fathom,” Symmes adds.

“I think she was always trying to draw you from one part of the garden into the next. There was a progression from the built landscape into nature. Her ultimate idea was to get people out of the house and into nature. Her gardens were designed to have these beautiful formal spaces near the house and then you would see something that would draw you and make you want to continue on and ultimately find yourself in the wild landscapes and closer to nature.”

“Beatrix Farrand’s American Landscapes” will be shown across the country and locally at an upcoming symposium on Farrand hosted by the Beatrix Farrand Garden Association at Bellefield at Historic Hyde Park June 1 and 2. For more, visit beatrixfarrandgardenhydepark.org.

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POPPIES, FOR REMEMBRANCE

BY PHIL HALL

d

uring this month, members of the American Legion will fan out across the country distributing poppies made from fabric and crepe paper in exchange for donations to support the organization’s veterans relief program. Using the poppy as the symbol of remembrance for servicemen was the idea of a sensitive-yet-indefatigable woman who made it her mission to ensure the heroes of the battlefield would not be forgotten in death or ignored in life.

Moina Michael was born in 1869 in Good Hope, Georgia. Her father, John Michael Marion, was a cotton plantation owner and a veteran of the Confederate Army. As a young girl, she received an education at Braswell Academy in neighboring Morgan County and at the Martin Institute in Jefferson, Georgia.

During the hardship of the post-Civil War years, Michael’s hometown was unable to afford its own schoolteacher. At the urging of her mother, the 15-year-old took on the task of teaching youngsters.

Michael devoted her life to teaching at schools across Georgia, offering instructions in settings that ranged from a simple small-town church school to a teacher’s college called the State Normal School. She left Georgia to complete her own education at Columbia University in New York in 1912-13.

Michael was on a vacation tour of Europe in the summer of 1914 when World War I broke out. Her traveling party made its way from Germany to Rome where Michael volunteered to work with the American Committee at the U.S. Embassy to assist her fellow countrymen stranded in Europe who were trying to get back home.

In her first two weeks in Rome, Michael helped to collate information for more than 12,000 Americans. She returned home and resumed teaching at the Normal School, later transferring to the University of Georgia in Athens — no mean feat for a female academic in that unenlightened era.

When the nation entered World War I in April 1917, Michael was eager to be part of the war effort and sought to

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volunteer with the YMCA Overseas War Workers.

At 47 years old, she was considered too senior to be sent to the front line, but through perseverance she was called to New York to assist at the training headquarters set up at Columbia University.

In November 1918, prior to the armistice that brought the war to a close, Michael was on duty at the Twenty-fifth Conference of the Overseas YMCA in New York. To pass the time, she thumbed through a copy of Ladies’ Home Journal that included a copy of the poem “We Shall Not Sleep!” by Col. John McCrae, a Canadian physician who was killed in battle. (The poem is now known as “In

The poppy has become a symbol of remembrance of soldiers living and dead, thanks to Moina Michael, who was inspired by John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields.”

Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library/ University of Georgia Libraries.

Flanders Fields.”)

As she recalled in her 1941 autobiography, “The Miracle Poppy,” Michael felt McCrae’s poetry was “a full spiritual experience. It seemed as though the silent voices again were vocal, whispering, in sighs of anxiety unto anguish, ‘To you from failing hands we throw the Torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders Fields.’

Alone, again, in a high moment of white resolve I pledged to KEEP THE FAITH and always to wear a red poppy of Flanders Fields as a sign of remembrance and the emblem of ‘keeping the faith with all who died.’”

Michael rushed from the conference and went to the Wanamaker’s department store, where she bought two dozen small silk red four-petaled poppies that resembled the Flanders poppies of McCrae’s poem. She returned to the conference and asked the attendees to wear them in tribute of the American casualties of the just-concluded war.

The attendees followed her request and the first remembrance poppies were worn in tribute to the fallen servicemen.

Michael returned to the University of Georgia in 1919, wearing the silk poppy. She was cognizant of the struggles that wounded veterans faced

in returning from service and she focused her teaching on helping the ex-soldiers acclimate to civilian life. Since relatively few companies were eager to hire disabled veterans, she petitioned the American Legion to have them assemble poppies for distribution, which could be used for fundraising to help veterans in need. She encouraged people to wear the poppy, which was significant because many Americans were eager to put the war behind them and not be reminded of its carnage and casualties.

The American Legion adopted the poppy as its symbol of remembrance in 1920, with the American Legion Auxiliary following suit in 1921. Veterans associations in Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand took note of Michael’s work and adapted the poppy as their memorial symbol in 1921. Even the British royal family took its cue from Michael: Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth II has worn a bright ceramic red poppy each Nov. 11 during the ceremony at The Cenotaph in London honoring the British war dead.

According to Ann Fournier, secretary for the American Legion Auxiliary — Department of Massachusetts, between 5 million and 10 million poppies are distributed annually, which generate more than $1 million annually to help finance

health care, housing and occupational training for disabled and hospitalized veterans. “We don’t sell them,” she adds. “We distribute them and ask for a donation.”

Celebrated in her life as “The Poppy Lady” for her advocacy of improving the lives of veterans, Michael passed away in May 1944 in the age of 74.

In 1948, on the 30th anniversary of her decision to start the poppy campaign, the U.S. Postal Service honored her with a bright red and white commemorative stamp. The eye-catching stamp was one of the most popular issues of its era and reaffirmed Michael’s place in history.

Today, the American Legion Auxiliary keeps alive Michael’s story in the promotion of its poppy program. A Georgia nonprofit called The Moina Michael Poppy Project began in 2013 and hosts seminars for schools and historical societies on Michael’s life and mission.

After Michael read the McCrae poem, she penned her own poem to guarantee that the slain of World War I would not be forgotten. Her glorious mission could best be summed up by her own verse: “We cherish too, the Poppy red / That grows on fields where valor led, / It seems to signal to the skies / That blood of heroes never dies.”

For more, visit moinamichaelpoppyproject.com.

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A BRUSH WITH HISTORY STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS

BY BOB ROZYCKI

e

ver try to put on an art show at a national historic landmark? No easy task. Just ask Susan Gilgore and Gail Ingis.

Gilgore — Susy to her friends — is executive director of Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk. Ingis is a mansion trustee and the curator of the juried show on exhibit through June 23 titled, “Historic Grounds & Modern Gardens.”

A national historic landmark comes with a lot of “can’ts,” as in can’t touch the walls, can’t touch the lighting, can’t touch anything.

And so, Gilgore says, it’s a challenge to stage an art exhibition.

“We don’t have the walls that you would find in an art gallery, so we can’t paint them. If they’re painted they have to be painted with the paint that was used back then” — “back then” being 1868, when the house was completed — the middle of the Victorian Era. Staying historically accurate costs tens of thousands of dollars, she says.

“And we can’t put any holes in the walls,” Gilgore adds, which provides Ingis and her husband, Tom (he’s on the ladder as his wife directs), the challenge of perfectly placing the show’s paintings with the home’s original hanging devices — wires suspended from attachments secured near the ceiling.

But on this early April day, just prior to the opening of the exhibit to the public, WAG was afforded a special private tour of the exhibit.

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“Nature’s Confetti,” a painting by Joan Poarch.

Ingis, as curator, took the lead, unveiling a bit about herself along the way, the same as a painting — slowly, subtly and symbolically, until you “see” the entire picture.

Ingis’ Coney Island upbringing rings true in her voice as she describes the paintings on exhibit — oil, pastels, watercolors and acrylics. “I am pleased the way it came together,” she says, after putting out the call in mid-January and whittling down dozens of applicants to a baker’s dozen.

A longtime artist herself, we ask Ingis where her paintings are. “I don’t hang anymore. I hang someone else’s works.”

But four years ago was a different story.

“I did 48 paintings of Coney Island. I’m a Coney Island girl. I spent years there. And even after I got married we were always there playing handball with the old men in Washington Baths. (Washington Baths was on West 21st Street, between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk.)

“I’m an author now, I do historic romance ... 19th century, but I’m going to go back to painting because a lot of my friends said to me ‘We miss you, we want you, come and paint.’

“My husband retired — you don’t need to know all this — but I want to play with my husband, I want to finish my book and I’ll do a little bit of painting. I don’t

Gail Ingis, mansion trustee, and Susan Gilgore, executive director of Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum.

need to hang my art ... I’m happy doing this.” (But do check out gailingis.com.)

Her choice of art, its placement — Ingis didn’t go wrong. But she didn’t do it alone.

“Susy is a very big part of why we bring and what we bring in. She said ‘Let’s do historic grounds and gardens.’ Susy and I work together on every single show… I wouldn’t do it without her.”

But how does the museum capitalize on a show?

Ingis says more than asks, “See that red dot? That’s the one! That one already sold.”

Gilgore says, “This is a great way to be part of the artistic communities of our region, but also it is a great way for us to fundraise. We get 30% of proceeds and they go to the cultural and educational programs.”

But an exhibition comes with agita, she adds: “I’m always nervous about a juried show because it’s a bit of a gamble for a museum. You don’t know how many will apply, who will apply, is the art going to be in keeping with the parameters that were set?

So it is not until the last minute do you know if you

have a show or not. (Nervous laughter.) But it all worked out. We had a lot of submissions from New York artists and throughout Connecticut.” She finally concedes that she’s happy with what she sees.

The tour continues. We stop in front of a large colorful painting whose colors alone brighten a corner of the billiards room and its dark wood. It’s “Nature’s Confetti.” Ingis fills in the rest extemporaneously.

“This is Joan Poarch. She is a fantastic artist and she has a little gallery in Southport. Her son bought the building, he’s a real estate guy, and invited his mother to show her work. …I love her work. Her work is so beautiful. She does landscapes that would knock your socks off. And this is a very beautiful painting.

She’s a pro. Not everybody here is a pro.”

Among the 13 artists, the split is about 50-50 of professionals and nonprofessionals.

“This is an opportunity for artists to show their work and to get exposure and, as an institution and in representing that institution, I’d like to give exposure to as many artists as I can,” Gilgore says.

Back to the tour.

Ingis gestures, “This young lady here she does murals. I have no idea who she is, I have no idea how old she is, but I wrote to her and I said please Maya (Santangelo) can you send me your bio in a doc. All it says in five lines is ‘I love to paint. I feel so good when I paint. Painting is my favorite thing.” Ingis smiles at the powerful statement of those concise, simple sentences.

“I put her other painting up there. I’ll tell you why I put it up there. It’s a powerhouse of color. And if it was down here it would steal the viewer’s attention.

But up there it comes forward because it has warm colors in it.”

As we come to another painting, like and dislikes are broached.

Ingis says: “I’m an interior designer. So I have to have very diversified tastes. I’m retired, I did work for 50 years in the field with all different people who were clients. Art is the same thing. …Emerson, the young man who works here, said it’s his favorite. I don’t really like it, but it meets my criteria of art.”

“When I was growing up, my father was an art dealer in New York and my uncle was the curator of MoMA and then he became one of the directors,” Gilgore says. “I always heard the artists talking and my father talking about artists and one of the things that I always heard was that an artist needs to grow and change. And so if you do the same painting over and over again it’s not necessarily a good thing. So you can see a lot of the contemporary artists I knew growing up — like Frank Stella and Bob Motherwell — they all evolved. So that’s important.”

And as evolution is important for artists, it goes for Lockwood-Mathews as well.

Gilgore, who is marking her 10th year as executive director, said historic places remain static if there are no programs. She says exhibits that keep rekindling an interest in the public are necessary.

“A lot of people feel, ‘Well I’ve seen that historic place already.’ But if you keep refreshing and coming up with new ideas and ideas that really resonate with the general public, with your audience, then they keep coming back and they usually bring other people. And so the support and admissions, they keep growing.”

She says that is why she and Ingis bring in art exhibitions such as the current one: “It’s an opportunity for us to show lovely work that is pleasing to the eye and that the visitor will enjoy. …Visitors I think will come in here and start a conversation about this with the docent and with each other. So it’s a way to continue enjoying the mansion in a different dimension that’s more contemporary. …It’s reaching out to the communities and bringing visitors in and see the mansion and support it, so the mansion can continue to live for many generations to come. That is why we do this.”

And is it working?

“We just analyzed the admissions from 2013 and 2018 and we have grown 60%, which is remarkable.

All of this plays a role and I am very excited and delighted to know that what we are doing here obviously works.”

When you head over to check out the show, ask for Ingis to give you the tour. And if she’s not available, ask for Gilgore. If both are available, leave a sizable tip/ donation.

For more, lockwoodmathewsmansion.com.

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PUTTIN’ DOWN NEW ROOTS

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

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b

ill Ruhrkraut is a man who savors gardens. At his former home in Vienna, Virginia — not far from where he served for four years as vice president and general manager of Bloomingdale’s in Tysons Corner Center, one of the largest malls in America — he created a small Japanese garden, complete with reed grasses and a waterfall — but no koi. Bloomingdale’s also has a tradition of giving new executives orchids, because of their enduring beauty. So when he recently became vice president and general manager of Bloomingdale’s White Plains — “It was a great opportunity to be in the metro area,” he says — the White Plains executive team gave him a white orchid in a matching square pot, which complements his sleek black office on the fourth floor of the glass box standalone store.

Bill Ruhrkraut. Photograph by Bob Rozycki.

It’s not the last flower you’ll find blooming at Bloomie’s. “One of the big trends this season is florals, in everything from ready-to-wear to home design,” he says over decaf in his office. In person, Ruhrkraut is, well, personable — warm and friendly, immediately offering refreshments — just the type of individual you’d imagine the company would want at the helm of the 44-year-old store, particularly in our Amazon-ian age.

“It’s a challenge,” he says of retaining traditional shoppers while drawing in their online counterparts. But that’s what he likes about retail. “No two days are the same.”

So how does Bloomingdale’s appeal to those who’ve pretty much abandoned brick-and-mortar stores while enlarging a clientele that simply must feel those 600-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets before purchasing them? Blooming-

dale’s — which is owned by Macy’s Inc. — does this with something called “hyperlocalization — finding out what the local market is and catering to the local market.” In Westchester County, that means appealing to a sophisticated shopper of luxury goods in part with its semiannual Mix Masters campaign, which encourages individual style through its influencers — this spring ranging from TV’s Joy Bryant to microbiologist-turned-fitness pro Grece Ghanem — and its 100% Bloomingdale’s campaign, featuring thousands of items exclusive to the retailer.

Among those items, Ruhrkraut says, shoppers will discern a number of trends — clear vinyl totes, handbags and other accessories; animal prints, particular snakeskin, as in a gray snakeskin Hudson Park duvet cover; neon-colored accessories; and light-washed, wide-legged denim.

But Bloomingdale’s customers also know that what makes it “like no other store in the world” is the concept of retail as theater that the company pioneered in the 1960s and ’70s. Today, the store supports Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October — and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, The Carey Foundation and the Marisa Acocella Foundation — with special promotions and Satur-

But Bloomingdale’s customers also know that what makes it “like no other store in the world”

is the concept of retail as theater that the company pioneered in the 1960s and ’70s. day morning fitness classes as part of its “Give Pink Get More” campaign and packs them in for its November “Makeup Date,” with raffles, giveaways and celebrity hosts.

To celebrate Mother’s Day, the store will hold a “Fragrance Fair” on May 10 and 11 and a “Momhood Through the Years” fashion show, also on May 11.

Both will feature nibbles, bubbly, a DJ, gifts, offers

and more.

Such “animation,” as it’s called in the business, “is in our DNA,” Ruhrkraut says.

It might be in his DNA as well. Indeed, his first job out of college — Ohio State, where he earned a business degree — was in a retail executive training program at Marshall Field’s in Chicago. From trainee, he became a manager and a buyer, then did a stint in wholesale. He spent 31 years in the Windy City, 21 of them at Bloomingdale’s.

During his time in Chicago, Ruhrkraut — who grew up in suburban Cleveland — lived in highrises. It wasn’t until he moved to suburban Washington, D.C., that the garden bug bit him.

With the move north, he’s been living in a rental in White Plains as his wife prepares to join him.

(Their son is off to college so it’s a perfect moment for transitions.)

He’s missed cherry blossom season there but timed his arrival perfectly for the cherry blossoms here. As he house-hunts, one feature is a must: “I don’t intend to give up on a yard.”

For more on the “Fragrance Fair” (May 10 and 11) and the “Momhood Through the Years” fashion show (May 11), email whiteplainsrsvp@ bloomingdales.com.

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MAY 2019

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beyond fine

BY GREGG SHAPIRO

Years in the making, “Indigo Girls Live with the University of Colorado Symphony Orchestra” (Rounder) is a breathtaking experience. Even if you don’t like live albums (you weren’t there, were you?), this one is an exception.

Comprising 22 songs, representing nine of the Indigo Girls’ (Amy Ray and Emily Saliers) baker’s dozen studio albums, the live album does an excellent job of representing the expected hits (“Power of Two,” “Galileo,” “Kid Fears,” “Go”) and popular deep cuts, as well as a generous supply of more recent numbers (“Sugar Tongue,” “Able To Sing,” “War Rugs,” “Happy in the Sorrow Key”). Not surprisingly, the stunning symphonic set closes with a rousing rendition of “Closer To Fine” (complete with sing-along). As familiar as your oldest friends, the songs nevertheless sound fresh in a once-in-a-lifetime performance.

You’ll never hear these songs the same way again.

Never one to sit idle, Ray released a new solo record last September, her sixth. “Holler” (Compass/ Daemon) continues in a similar countrified vain as 2014’s “Goodnight Tender.” “Holler” is another powerful musical statement from Ray, who talked with us prior to gigs in Fairfield and Pawling: Indigo Girls are no strangers to live albums, with at least two such previous releases — 1995’s “1200 Curfews” and 2010’s “Staring Down the Brilliant Dream.”

Why was now the right time for a new live album such as “Live With the University of Colorado Symphony Orchestra”?

“Mostly because we’ve been touring with symphonies for about four or five years now. We felt like we’d gotten to a place where we knew the material well enough and wanted to doc-

Amy Ray. Photograph by Brian Fisher.

ument it. When we came upon a symphony that fit all the parameters that we needed to make a live record with a symphony that was the University of Colorado Symphony. So, it worked out. It was kind of a long process. We had been hoping to get it done for a couple of years.”

Your new solo album “Holler” continues the country-oriented style of your 2014 solo album “Goodnight Tender.” Is this a direction you see yourself going in for the near future?

“I don’t know. This was just what I was writing.

I have a band that I’ve been touring with for four or five years. This is really a strong suit for them and for us together. As we tour and get more and more in the groove with them, we’ve been working in old songs from the rock and punkier stuff.

It’s adaptable to that. When I was writing ‘Stag’ and ‘Prom,’ I was playing a lot with the Butchies and I was writing to their style. My collaborators typically have a lot of influence over what I’m writing. They’re who I’m creating with, touring with, playing with from day to day. I like a lot of different kinds of music. I don’t prefer this to that, it’s where I’m at. This record has a little more of the earlier, punky, eclectic style mixed in with traditional country. I think I was crossing over into that line in my writing a little bit.”

I’m glad you mentioned collaboration. As always, you have a stellar lineup of guest musicians on the new album, including

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The Amy Ray Band. Photograph by Cowtownchad.

Brandi Carlile, Vince Gill, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Lucy Wainwright Roche and Rutha Mae Harris of The Freedom Singers.

When you are writing a song — “Last Taxi Fare,” for example — do you hear the guest artist’s voice, in this case Brandi Carlile, as part of the process?

“Sometimes. On that particular song, as I was finishing it, believe it or not, I actually did hear Brandi, and I did hear Vince. I wrote that song over a very long period of time. I think I had watched a CMT award show or something and Vince was singing with Taylor Swift and Alison Krauss and a few other people. I’ve always loved him, but in that moment, I was like, ‘That guy can really sing harmony.’ In any situation. I was working on that song and it was in my fantasy head that Brandi and Vince would form a trio with me.

“It’s the weirdest thing, but Alison Brown, who plays banjo on the record, happens to be friends with Vince. It was like one of those moments where it was like, ‘I can’t believe this is going to work out.’ In that case, I was definitely hearing them. Vince was an ‘if you could have anything in the world’ kind of thing.

“I did hear Justin and Phil Cook when I wrote ‘Didn’t Know A Damn Thing.’ I had played with them, so it was an easier thing to hear. That

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really informed that song. When I first wrote it, that version was harmony the whole way through, because I was thinking of them. Then I decided to change it up to make it more effective when they came in. Lucy Wainwright Roche tends to be a muse, with Indigo Girls, as well. I’ll be working on a song and, in my head, I’ll use her as a harmony singer for inspiration as to where to go musically.”

In the four years between the release of “Holler” and “Goodnight Tender,” we have had the election of President Donald J. Trump and all that came with it. Am I on the right track when I say it sounds to me like you address that somewhat in the songs “Sure Feels Good” and “Didn’t Know A Damn Thing”?

“Yes, for sure. I don’t know if it was so much affected specifically by the presidential election as more of the whole vibe of the country and my own community. The polarization and thinking about issues around being a Southerner. Trying to take on some accountability myself and to try to understand where people are coming from, as well. ‘Sure Feels Good’ is my song of where I live and the dynamics of people like me that are coming from a different place than other folks.

How do we rectify that? How do we understand

each other? It’s easy to dismiss people, because they don’t agree with you about things, because you dogmatically think they’re going to feel a certain way about things. Or it’s not possible for them to come around to a place of tolerance or understanding.

“That’s not where I exist. I exist in a place where you get to know your neighbors and you help each other out, regardless of where you come from. Eventually those barriers start to fall away and you begin to understand each other.

Hopefully, things change. Racism is the hardest thing to change in the South. But I’ve found that there are still people who do change. I’ve also found that there are people who have a kneejerk reaction, because of the way we’re put into niches and demographics, who aren’t being their best selves all the time, and I say, ‘I know you’re a better person than this. I’ve seen you in my community. I’ve seen the things you do to help other people. And I’ve seen you at church. I know you have it in you to be better than this.’ We all can be better than this.”

A few years ago, I attended an Indigo Girls concert at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois. Indigo Girls have also performed at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. What is the appeal for you of performing in these types of settings?

“They feel good because of these shows seem to draw a really cool cross-section of our audience — young and old, straight, queer, families, friends. They are more relaxed than most shows and we always get to go see a bunch of cool plants.”

Do you consider yourself to be a gardener?

“Yes, I do. I love growing things, but still (I’m) learning. I grew up with a dad that was an intense gardener. We had about a quarter-acre of flat land by a creek (in Decatur, Georgia) and we grew everything from blueberries to peaches and pecans, squash and tomatoes and beans — all the summer stuff. Plus, we raised bees for a while, too. So I am all about the garden. We worked alongside him for years, weeding and picking.

Now I am trying to cultivate some decent apple and pear trees, but I am losing the game. Blueberries are my best crop. I am trying to teach my 5-year-old patience by planting summer veggies and waiting for them to be ripe enough to eat.

Of course, she eats everything straight from the vine, before it even hits the table.”

Amy Ray performs with her band in support of her new solo album “Holler” May 25 at (Le)Poisson Rouge in Manhattan, May 26 at StageOne at FTC in Fairfield and May 30 at Daryl’s House in Pawling. For more, visit amy-ray.com.

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A framed print of "Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens" after a 1910 fresco painting by Henry Albert Payne, based upon a scene in William Shakespeare's “Henry VI.”

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bloody relations

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

HBO’s “Game of Thrones” — which runs through May 19 — has nothing on the Plantagenets, the Rolls-Royce of English royal families. Indeed, it’s fair to say that the Plantagenets would’ve eaten the fictional characters for breakfast, spit them out and then chewed the leftover bits — all to music.

Brilliant and beautiful, cultured and sophisticated, they shared a passionate hatred of their enemies rivaled only by their hatred of one another. Sons against fathers, wives against husbands, brothers against brothers, uncles against nephews, cousins against cousins, they nonetheless managed to rule England — and, at times, parts of Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France — longer than any other royal house, more than 300 years from Henry II to Richard III (1154-1485).

The key to understanding the Plantagenets is that they weren’t really English at all, but French. They loved France so much that they kept conquering and losing parts of it, while marrying members of the French royal family to underscore their need to stay in the game. Incandescent warriors, the Plantagenets nonetheless understood that sometimes the best way to torture your archenemy was to make love not war with them.

They, their golden boy/girl looks and unusual name were derived from Geoffrey the Handsome, Count of Anjou, who wore the buttercup-colored common broom flower (in Latin, planta genista) in his cap. As Rex Hubbard writes in “The Plantagenets” (Amber Books, 2018), Geoffrey was said to have been descended from the devil’s daughter, one of whose sons — Fulk the Black, a rapist and murderer — burned his wife at the stake in her wedding dress for having the effrontery to cheat on him.

The legend stuck. “From the devil we sprang and to the devil we shall go,” joked Geoffrey’s romantic grandson, Richard the Lionheart, who would help make good on the claim by taking part with two of his brothers in a rebellion against his father, Henry II, which was abetted by their bewitching mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Richard, who succeeded his father, would in turn see baby bro John undermine his kingship while he was away at the Crusades. John would murder their equally power-hungry nephew, Arthur, to ensure his own claim to the throne and that of his son, who would become Henry III. This set in motion three centuries of backstabbing, usurpation, deposition and regicide, culminating in the Wars of the Roses (1455-87) — with the Lancastrian branch of the family, headed by the mentally unstable but well-meaning Henry VI and symbolized by the red rose; and the Yorkist branch, led by its duke, Richard, a cousin of Henry’s who governed as lord protector during his mad state, and symbolized by the white rose.

Ultimately, white defeated red, with Richard’s son succeeding Henry as Edward IV. But the Yorks’ triumph would be shortlived as Edward’s sons — Edward V and his kid brother, Richard — were allegedly murdered in the Tower of London by his brother,

Richard, who became Richard III. The defeat of this Richard by Lancastrian relation Henry Tudor and his subsequent marriage to Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s daughter, united the red and the white rose in one bouquet. But it ended the Plantagenet dynasty.

So many ironies here. For all their intrigue, the Plantagenets actually knew how to reign and govern. For all their French ancestry, they made England England, with a judicial system we would recognize today. (Some of this was by default. The weakness of the treacherous King John led to the baronial bill of rights known as the Magna Carta, an inspiration for our own Declaration of Independence and Constitution.)

Under the charismatic Henry V — perhaps the dynasty’s greatest warrior king, who at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt reclaimed French lands that had been lost — English became the language of everyday business. It was the language in which William Shakespeare would enshrine this Henry’s shrewdly inclusive rallying cry (“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”) as well as the family’s other triumphs and tragedies in a series of “Henry” and “Richard” plays. (While the Plantagenets are no Tudors when it comes to Hollywood, they nonetheless hold their own, with Timothée Chalamet starring as Henry V in the upcoming film “The King.”)

We can only imagine what might have happened to the dynasty had this Henry lived beyond his 35 years or not married Catherine of Valois, daughter of France’s mad Charles VI. What if his son had not succeeded to the throne as Henry VI as a baby?

What if he had not been mentally unstable? Might the War of the Roses have been avoided and the Plantagenets have remained on the throne?

They remain a strong genetic component of England. Ian Mortimer — biographer of the great Plantagenet king Edward III — has estimated that between 80% and 95 % of the English-descended population of England has some Plantagenet blood.

More important, this medieval flower, which grew into two rival gardens, continues to bloom in the imagination.

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Roberto Burle Marx during a botanical expedition in Ecuador, 1974. Photograph by Jackie Battenfield in her Brooklyn studio.

Luiz Knud Correia de Araújo, archive Luiz Knud Photograph

by Cindy Qiao.

Correia de Araújo.

44 WAGMAG.COM MAY 2019

branching out

BY MARY SHUSTACK

The late January afternoon was a study in contrasts.

We practically ran into Kenise Barnes Fine Art to escape the biting wind — and were immediately warmed by the luminosity of the Jackie Battenfield works on display. In a moment, we were swept into a world of not only branches, buds and blooms but also of shimmering light — and color, such intriguing color.

That the paintings carried evocative names ranging from “Tickled Pink” to “Under A Cloud,” “Coral Fling” to “Sing Song,” “Blue Wash” to “Rowdy Fall” only added to the splendor.

These paintings were, fittingly, what had brought us to the Larchmont gallery, where Battenfield’s solo show, “One Fine Day,” was underway.

Then-gallery manager Lani Holloway shared that Battenfield was one of the gallery’s artists that “people really respond to.”

“You really get that depth in person,” Holloway, now associate director, observed of the work’s effect.

Fast forward to early April and we are again at the gallery, this time sitting at a conference table opposite Battenfield herself, the artist having come up from her Brooklyn studio to discuss her work with WAG. The paintings, we find out, are certainly about light and form and color — but also about the very branches and buds.

“Look up — that’s what these are about,” Battenfield says of her paintings. “My job is to reanimate and make us look at trees differently.”

What she’s doing now is rooted in her earlier days, though her path was not direct.

To this day, she says, her work elicits “powerful memories for me.”

Battenfield grew up north of Pittsburgh, what she describes as on the “edges of suburbia.”

“It was a kind of crazy, raucous house,” one surrounded by fallow fields and forests, she says. “You could get lost in them if you wanted to.”

And Battenfield, then a “voracious reader,” would often do just that, taking a book and disappearing, she says with a laugh, “in order to escape my family — and my chores.”

She would spend time reading, which gave her the chance to “imagine other worlds.”

“I can remember my back against a tree, book in hand.”

It would be a while before she found her true calling, which came during her student days at Pennsylvania State University.

“I was always creative but I didn’t become an art major until my junior year in college,” Battenfield says. “I tried everything else and nothing seemed to fit.”

A boyfriend suggested she pursue her creativity in art and, she says, “It was just like rockets went off in my head.” She would go on to earn an MFA in Visual Art from Syracuse University.

While Battenfield says that her early paintings were often abstract, “they had a landscape orientation” as well. Though she says she loves design and color, she still found herself less than thrilled with her direction.

“I got bored. I didn’t know how I was making one decision over another.”

A trip to Japan, where she had the chance to

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The Arts & Design program of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority commissioned four paintings by Jackie Battenfield for the Avenue P station on the F line in Brooklyn. “Dogwood,” “Crabapple,” “Gingko” and “Maple” are each comprised of seven 48 x 30 inch panels of laminated glass. Artwork fabrication by Depp Glass, Long Island City. Here, “Dogwood” (night view).

Photograph by Dario Lasagni.

exhibit, was pivotal.

“Talking about your work for three weeks, you get really tired of it,” she says with another laugh.

“When I came back, something had changed.”

A silent meditation retreat in the Berkshires — a week-plus that found her observing a huge elm tree — was another turning point.

Watching that tree for hours a day, she noticed subtle — and eventually dramatic — changes as it came into full bloom.

“I started photographing trees, painting in a different way.”

And, as they say, she hasn’t looked back, now having worked with tree imagery for some 15 years.

A COLORFUL APPROACH Battenfield’s distinctive acrylic-on-Mylar work provides a technical challenge in itself, as she works from reference photographs to draw the images onto large sheets of translucent Mylar before adding the paint.

“Color is the hardest part for me in a painting,” Battenfield says. “You don’t know what’s going to happen with the paint until it dries.”

But there is a precision that cannot be denied.

“Each leaf gets painted individually, and it becomes its own little abstraction… The interpretation comes with how I’ve chosen to crop the image and the colors I’ll choose.”

After all, she must give nature — and its individuality — its due. As she says, there is never going to be another leaf exactly the same.

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“Never has been, never will be. For me, it’s cosmic.”

Battenfield works all year, though not surprisingly spring and fall provide optimum time in the field. She talks of dogwoods and magnolias, cherry blossoms and London planes.

“I love blossoming trees, anything that has kind of a big, gesture-y bloom” Battenfield, though, is not trained in botany. Her work, she says, develops “just by observation.”

And that comes often. She will reference Storm King Art Center in Orange County, the Tuileries Garden in Paris and Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where she was headed the next day.

“There’s no garden that I don’t love,” she says.

Inspiration, though, also comes through the everyday.

“We live on streets with trees,” says Battenfield, who’s been known to step into the middle of a street to take a photograph — or even “lay down on the sidewalk.

“I’m attracted by the way the branch is gesturing,” she says.

IN FULL BLOOM These days, with her children grown, Battenfield has plenty of time to paint.

She says some of her recent work has given her particular satisfaction, from her public art commissions creating work for the New York University Langone Medical Center’s radiation treatment suite and for the MTA through its Arts & Design

program, with her work featured permanently in the Avenue P elevated subway station of the F line in Brooklyn.

In addition to Kenise Barnes Fine Art, where Battenfield is one of more than 50 contemporary artists the gallery represents, she is represented by galleries in Chicago and Washington, D.C., and her work is part of more than 1,000 collections worldwide, including the New York Public Library, the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey and the United States Embassy Collections in numerous countries.

Back in Larchmont, namesake gallery director Kenise Barnes joins the conversation, saying Battenfield’s work not only “feels very fresh” but also exemplifies what she thinks a work of art should be.

“The painting has to be generous,” Barnes says.

“It has to continue to give you something every time you look at it.”

A sign of continuing support, Barnes will include Battenfield’s work in the opening show of Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Kent, a second gallery set to open May 11 in Litchfield County.

Reflecting for a moment on where she is today, Battenfield notes that developing her signature style was a lifelong process.

“I couldn’t do it a minute before I did it,” says Battenfield, who is truly savoring the work, far from ready to move on.

“Not yet, I’m so full of ideas.”

For more, visit jackiebattenfield.com or kbfa. com.

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crowning achievement

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY BOB ROZYCKI

The willowy female figures were languishing in the reception room of the hillside mansion above the Hudson River on a dreary, early April evening.

Their period clothing was as monochromatic as their porcelain complexions. But that all changed in a flourish.

Joshua Werber rushed in from a tortuous drive from Brooklyn and placed a colorful floral headpiece on one and then another, until all the mannequins were adorned with his unique art.

After some readjusting, Werber was done and in so doing the annual Lyndhurst Flower Show was complete with decoration.

Werber said his work “draws from the natural world and is an exploration of emotion through the act of creation.” He was recently featured in The New York Times Style section as well as in Vogue magazine.

Now in its third year, Werber’s #FloralTeteATete project began as an Instagram challenge to design “exciting and structural flower crowns, hats and headpieces.” He said his work is “driven by a desire to create unique environments through which the participant can experience transformation.”

And that’s exactly what he accomplished at the Lyndhurst mansion in Tarrytown.

Florists and Lyndhurst supporters Ned Kelly of Ned Kelly & Co. and Gerald Palumbo of Seasons On the Hudson are credited with the creation of the show.

Kelly again had the front of the house as he did a year earlier. This year it was to be the flower of springtime, tulips, he pronounced. Reds, whites and purples, “which of course is pretty royal,” he said, rightfully befitting the Gothic Revival mansion that was once home to New York City Mayor William Paulding, merchant George Merritt and railroad ty-

coon Jay Gould and his wife, Helen.

Flower show co-founder Palumbo took time from setting up the outdoor pop-up garden shop to take in the scene.

Speaking on behalf of Kelly, he said, “It was our vision from the beginning to let people feel, to be able to have that feeling of stepping back into time to experience the Gilded Age.” The mansion is more fortress in appearance than homelike, but Palumbo assured that it was anything but when the owner brightened it with flowers.

“Jay Gould was a famous collector of orchids. He traveled around the world,” seeking them out. His home would have been filled with flowers “and you can imagine what it looked like,” Palumbo said.

“Our goal was to give you that sense of what it would be like to be at a party with the Goulds in its heyday. They were famous to share their house with their neighbors. They opened their grounds.” And, “They offered …. a sense of community,” Kelly added.

And on this cold, rainy night, the community was out in force coming through the front door to “ooh” and “ahh” at 20 rooms, hallways and stairwells filled with tulips, roses and orchids, as well as a three-storylong tapestry and a colorful window shade.

Howard Zar, executive director of Lyndhurst, looked happy moving among the home’s visitors.

He extolled the artistry of Whitney Crutchfield and her weaving of flower and fabric in the window of the sitting room on the second floor; the terrariums of Paula Hayes in the cabinet room — “they were shown in MoMA,” he said — and Portia Munson’s flowing tapestry.

“All Hudson Valley artists, doing major things

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that we were able to bring here,” he said. “Everybody can find something unique here at the show.”

With money being raised and the warmweather seasons ahead, Zar will next turn his attention to outside endeavors.

With its expansive grounds (67 acres), and near isolation from the rest of the world, Lyndhurst served as Gould’s country retreat, a place to escape the pressures of running the New York Elevated Railway, the Union Pacific Railroad and Western Union Telegraph.

When he was stricken with tuberculosis, Lyndhurst remained his oasis until he died in 1892.

It was then that eldest daughter, Helen, began overseeing the property. She had craftsmen build a bowling pavilion and recreation center in 1894 down by the river. The building included space for a sewing school that taught local women a trade.

What Zar now has planned for the grounds is to create a cement pathway — complete with shaded rockeries — from the house to the bowling alley.

Working from archival photographs, he said, “We know exactly where the path goes.”

“The footprints of the old rockeries still can be identified on the property but were not maintained over time and were partially removed,” said Maura Bekelja, a spokeswoman for Lyndhurst. “So, while it is a restoration to their

Joshua Werber adjusts a headpiece on a mannequin at the preview of the Lyndhurst Flower Show April 5.

historic appearance, much will be recreated and in this case will be done with consideration for ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) concerns as well.”

A fountain by artist Frederick William MacMonnies called “Boy and Duck,” a gift to Lyndhurst, will be placed in a seating area that held a similar

bronze fountain by the sculptor. “Boy and Duck” was originally designed in 1895 for Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

As for the work ahead at historic Lyndhurst, “There’s a lot of landscaping — a decade of landscaping — ahead of us,” Zar said.

For more, visit Lyndhurst.org.

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Roberto Burle Marx during a botanical expedition in Ecuador, 1974. Photograph by Luiz Knud Correia de Araújo, archive Luiz Knud Correia de Araújo.

52 WAGMAG.COM MAY 2019

a mother’s legacy of love

BY JENA BUTTERFIELD

Spring is the season that carries with it the rebirth of life all over the planet. This year, women’s eternal role in that unfolding will be celebrated on May 12.

In honor of Mother’s Day, we at WAG decided to pay tribute to the late Ann T. Mara of Rye, a woman who embraced motherhood in all of its manifestations and inspired her children to do the same.

The occasion also gives us an opportunity to shine a light on an organization that captured Mara’s heart through focusing on the support and education of underprivileged children — a mission that encapsulates the influence of mothers on society.

Mara was best-known for her role as the matriarch of the dynastic family that owns the New York Giants. Her late husband, Wellington (son of Giants’ founder, Tim), was considered to be one of the most influential figures in NFL history.

But as their daughter, Ann Mara Cacase, recalls: “Nobody loved football as well as my mother did.”

Mara, known as the First Lady of Football, embraced the role of mother hen to generations of Giants players as well as to the wider Giants community.

But her own brood could rival them in number. Until her death in 2014, Mara nurtured 11 children, 43 grandchildren, including actresses Rooney and Kate Mara; and 16 great-grandchildren.

(There are now 25.)

“She loved us all unconditionally,” Cacase says.

Mara’s philanthropic support of organizations such as Boys Hope Girls Hope; Inner City Scholarship Fund, St. Vincent’s Hospital Westchester and Ronald McDonald House of New York was an extension of that maternal love. Then, in her final years, a group of boys in Newburgh and the school that saved them caught Mara’s attention.

San Miguel Academy of Newburgh is a faith-based, tuition-free middle school for boys located in what has been deemed “the murFrom left: Ann T. Mara andAnn Mara-Cacase.

Courtesy Ann Mara Cacase.

der capital of New York.”

Rev. Mark Connell, a school founder, introduced Mara to his students. Many of them faced a future of gang activity, low expectation and crime. San Miguel provides a haven where these at-risk kids can begin to feel a sense of stability and self-worth.

“She was just so impressed by Father Mark’s passion for this,” Cacase says, adding that Connell stays involved in the boy’s lives long after graduation.

There’s a need for continued support.

In order to qualify, families have to fall below the poverty line. In most cases, English is not their first language. The school relies largely on donations to survive.

Mara’s devotion to the school was so steadfast, “We ended up naming the Family and Children’s Services Program after her,” says Melissa Paul, San Miguel’s director of development.

Now, Cacase, her siblings and their children follow in Mara's footsteps. Cacase remembers the moment the family’s commitment to the school’s success was sealed.

Mara had just returned from the opening ceremony of a new playground at San Miguel when Cacase dropped by for a visit. She vividly remembers how happy her mother looked. “‘I had the best day,” the elder Mara said. “I had one of the best days since your father has passed.”

That was the last time Mara visited San Miguel Academy. “She passed away right after,” Cacase says. Soon after, family members held a meeting.

They felt compelled to continue the family involvement with San Miguel.

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“She showed us (philanthropy) is not always about giving money,” Cacase says. “It’s about giving your time.”

Cacase is setting the example. She starting visiting San Miguel herself. “I got very attached to (the kids),” she says.

She brings boys to sit in her family box at MetLife Stadium, visit the field and meet iconic players. This year, Cacase brought some of the boys to the Giants’ training camp.

“They loved it,” she says, “just to see these kid’s eyes light up.”

It’s a feeling that her mother knew well. She would often say: “If you believe in your heart that you can make a difference, beautiful things can happen.”

All three of Cacase’s children volunteer for the summer program at San Miguel. And a recent conversation with her brother led to the donation of extra Giants equipment. “They were able to give not only to the boys but to their families and the community,” Paul says. “We had three different shipments. We look like a retail stock store.”

Cacase says, “Nothing makes me happier than that.” The outpouring of gratitude included a father of triplets who was moved to tears by receiving sneakers from the shipment. “That just made my life,” she says.

Cacase is filling the role laid out for her by her

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Students Brandon Miller, from left, Sa’heed Dabbs with Ann T. Mara and fellow student Daniel Ruiz at San Miguel Academy of Newburgh in November 2014. Photograph by Simon Feldman.

father in a speech he gave on her wedding day: “If Reggie Jackson was really the straw that stirred the Yankees’ drink, then Ann Marie is the Cuisinart and Mixmaster of the Maras.”

Now she’s helping to continue the legacy of her mother. “She was smart, generous, fearless, loyal and so full of energy,” Cacase says.

On Oct. 25, Cacase will be accepting the IMPACT Award of 2019 from San Miguel Academy, in a ceremony at the Westchester Country Club.

“I’m very humbled by the honor. I’m not sure I’m worthy of it,” Cacase says. “But I know my mother is.”

For more, visit newburghsanmiguel.org.

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petal pushers

BY MARY SHUSTACK

If someone doesn’t have a green thumb — who, me? — but loves flowers and gardens, books offer a lovely entrée into the botanical world.

So it was with excitement that I spent some time with two new books devoted to flora, one recently published and a sneak peek at a forthcoming title.

First up is “The Flower Expert: Ideas and Inspiration for a Life with Flowers” by Fleur McHarg, (224 pages, $39.95), which was published in March by Thames & Hudson.

McHarg is an Australia-based celebrity florist, one who shares her thoughts not only on creating floral designs for most every occasion but also her long-considered ideas on flowers themselves. As she tells us in the introduction, “I’ve been obsessed with flowers for as long as I can remember. I love the colors, the endless variety of forms and their unique energy.”

Apparently, that energy spoke to her quite loudly at least once, as she also writes of being arrested at age 19 for swiping magnolias — with the help of a ladder — from a historic house and garden. Now, with some 25 years in the business, her daring is more often channeled into her designs.

As the daughter of a noted milliner and great-niece of a fashion editor for British Vogue, McHarg writes that she was destined for an artistic life and began as a painter before transitioning to the medium of flowers.

The book, McHarg writes, “is a collection of my most-loved flower friends and some of my favorite arrangements, interspersed with stories from my life and work.”

McHarg has what she calls an “unusual way” of understanding and perceiving color, something that affects everything she does — including working with flowers. We get a glimpse As Fleur McHarg writes in “The Flower Expert: Ideas and Inspirations into her creativity as she takes us on a floral journey from for a Life with Flowers” (Thames & roses to dahlias, peonies to water lilies, sweet peas to poppies Hudson), “Spring is the time to style and nearly two dozen more. She offers thoughts on each’s atbright pastels. In this arrangement, I wanted to create a modern Aussie tributes and associations while also discussing how they fit feel by offsetting the bright pastel into gardens and floral arrangements. flowers against a blue backdrop.

We hear about creating arrangements, from a broad Because it’s a ‘hot’ arrangement, I chose a summer-sky blue to make the perspective down to the actual nuts-and-bolts of a project, flowers really pop. If I’d used a cool china-blue or dark-blue backdrop, it would have dulled the impact of the flowers rather than enhancing it.” Photograph © Kirsty Macafee.

Courtesy Thames & Hudson.

practical tips with detailed accompanying photographs.

As McHarg says, “My philosophy for creating flower arrangements is always the same, whether I’m decorating my own home or working for a client: let the flower be the star.”

Breathtaking examples fill the pages and pages that follow, showcasing some of her signature creations, all the while taking the reader further into McHarg’s captivating world.

As intimate and intense as McHarg’s book is, “Bloom: The Luminous Gardens of Frederico Azevedo” is sweeping and bold.

Set for a June 22 release by Pointed Leaf Press ($75), the book, written by the award-winning landscape designer along with Camille Coy, will offer 200 pages devoted to his garden work, which has been called a study in the art of seduction.

Again, color is key in the world of the Hamptons-based designer, who launched his career in the United States with the 1993 founding of Unlimited Earth Care Inc. He received early attention for the lushness of his work, which was quite the contrast to the minimalist look so popular at the time.

“I was coming from Brazil and England, thinking in full color,” the Brazilian-born Azevedo has said, an approach that has continued. Today, Unlimited Earth Care is headquartered in Bridgehampton in a space that’s not only a destination for cutting-edge landscape design but also curated goods.

“Bloom,” his first book, invites readers to experience gardens with a fresh eye by directing us to the signatures of Azevedo’s work, including

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curving floral borders, the integration of native plants and, often, dramatic perspectives. Sometimes appearing outwardly simple, a closer look at a garden reveals a sophisticated approach designed to create a most romantic effect, one no doubt influenced by a life spent among New York, Miami and Los Angeles.

“Creating a landscape requires weaving intentionality into the unpredictability of nature in a way that creates something new, something that is alive in a different way,” Azevedo writes in the book’s introduction.

And as we savor “Bloom,” we see those new things come to life, from an early spring meadow where crocuses, narcissuses, daffodils, tulips and muscari offer the promise of a new season to the way flower beds play off — and truly enhance — a quietly elegant swimming pool.

But it’s one scene created by Azevedo that captures my imagination, one in which stone steps and an adjacent curving retaining wall divide a garden into two levels. It’s in this outdoor room of sorts, one filled with evocative shadows and a serenity encouraged by white and green hues, where I decide I’d most like to settle in for an afternoon.

For more, visit thamesandhudsonusa.com or pointedleafpress.com.

This scene, as described in “Bloom: The Luminous Gardens of Frederico Azevedo” (Pointed Leaf Press) by the designer himself: “This antique bronze fountain that we bought in Vermont was such a great find that I designed a small stone pool as its base. The three tiers bring movement and sound to the surrounding gardens, and the stone addition acts as a reflecting pool for the flowers.” Photographs, above and book cover, by Frederico Azevedo.

Courtesy Pointed Leaf Press.

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Children participating in one of the New Canaan Nature Center’s many events. Images courtesy New Canaan Nature Center.

CALL OF THE WILD

t

BY GINA GOUVEIA he services and benefits of a community nature center go well beyond the delightful aspect of providing a floral form of “eye candy” for visitors.

They are neighborhood “parks” with a purpose, affording their residents — the plants and trees as well as two- and four-footed creatures — with a natural habitat in which to grow and learn. They also offer miniature ecosystems that contribute to a healthy planet and keep our pollinators happy.

In the case of New Canaan Nature Center (NCNC), the traditional mission is further expanded by educational opportunities for all ages through events and programming. Its preschool program, which began in 1960, is the oldest, nature-based program in the country, says Executive Director Bill Flynn.

The roughly 40 acres of land on which

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the center was established, also in 1960, was a gift to the town by the estate’s former owner, Susan White Bliss, for the expressed purpose of making it a parkland for the community. The town of New Canaan owns the land, provides utilities and contributes baseline maintenance services. Overall, the center’s staff is relatively small, as this is mostly a volunteer-driven enterprise.

The nearby residents who enjoy visiting, planting or walking the nicely manicured 2-mile trail, give back in hours of work and devotion to their neighborhood haven. It was New Canaan artist — and October 2017 WAG subject — Olga Sweet, a tireless volunteer trimming strangling vines from trees when she and her son William are not releasing butterflies on the property, who suggested the visit and profile for this issue.

Speaking of the connection that she and William have come to relish over the years, Olga says, “I cannot think of a better way to teach a child how to be kind than to have him care for trees, animals, butterflies and anything else that needs our aid. William’s love of plants and animals has grown into a passion for defending endangered species throughout the world.”

It’s a sentiment that’s music to the ears of Flynn, a wildlife biologist who has been the director of the NCNC for the past two years, coming East about eight

years ago after running a residential, outdoor camp in the mountains of Southern California, about two hours outside of Los Angeles. His wife, Anna Zielinski, is the art director of the preschool, and, together with Bill they are raising their toddler-aged son, Henry, in the caretaker’s house on the property. Flynn tells me he is fond of Connecticut — and of its winters an avid ice hockey player himself — adding, “We couldn’t be more invested in this place.”

And it shows as we tour much of the 13 developed acres and walk part of the trails, peeking inside a 1980s-vintage greenhouse, currently home to classrooms and a succulent garden; the sugaring shed, recently closed for the season; and visiting all the winged and four-legged resident creatures that call NCNC home.

There is an aviary that includes a bald eagle, a vulture, a hawk and an owl. The center was recently given four donkeys from a resident who relocated her animals and their barn to the property, and there are goats and chickens, reptiles and other species in the mix. There’s enough to interest the young and young at heart but not overwhelm.

Many beautiful specimen trees are longtime residents of this storied estate. And, adjacent to the formal garden up front is a robust herb garden, tended by volunteers. It may be early in the season, but much activity is underway at NCNC. There are

plans to further utilize other unused greenhouses on the property. One has community garden plots for vegetable and flower growing.

Ponds and benches also dot this slice of landscape, for visitors who seek refuge from their busy lives and stresses to relax and enjoy the tranquility.

They include students and out-of-towners.

Flynn is particularly proud of the educational component the center offers the community via not only the preschool but the programming for adults, truly making it nature’s classroom. This summer, it will be partnering with the New York Botanical Garden to offer programs in gardening, floral design, landscape design, botanical art and illustration and horticultural therapy.

One last important highlight of the center is that it participates in a program called “Pollinator Pathway,” which, as its name implies, links commercial and residential properties throughout the region, providing a chain of gardens in which pollinators can make their way through the seasons up and down the Northeast corridor.

Adds Flynn, “We are all about celebrating nature and providing environmental education. First and foremost, we provide opportunities for people to make a connection to the land. Then the advocacy and protection (of it) follows.”

For more, visit newcanaannature.org.

The New Canaan Nature Center offers visitors of all ages the chance to connect with the outdoors.

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INCREDIBLE EDIBLES STORY AND PHOTOGRAPH

BY GINA GOUVEIA

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u

Sal Gilbertie at Gilbertie's Organic Petite Edibles and Herb Gardens in Easton.

p in the rolling hills of Easton sits a modest farmhouse that fronts the formidable operations of Gilbertie’s Organic Petite Edibles and Herb Gardens under the able stewardship of Sal Gilbertie, a wholesale grower of considerable renown, particularly in this niche business.

The name may be more familiar to locals from their experiences at Gilbertie’s Herbs & Garden Center, a family-owned business that began operations on Sylvan Lane in Westport more than 90 years ago. This is a full-service garden center that sells many of the products grown in Easton, along with a fanciful assortment of garden center necessities and luxuries alike.

In addition to being a sizable retail operation, the center offers events and acts as the winter host of the Westport Farmers Market, much to the delight of the community.

The garden center and its operations are run by Carrie Gilbertie, Sal’s daughter-in-law, who suggests the tour of the impressive operation, about 15 minutes outside of town.

Gilbertie’s Organic Petite Edibles and Herb Gardens have a long and storied history — and a passionate proprietor. “I’m a (third-generation) grower. I’ve always been a grower — that’s what I do,” he says. And it shows in the warmth of his weathered face and hands. Together with about 30 employees, he produces an abundant variety of herbs, microgreens and petite edibles and vegetables within their 27 greenhouses yearround, and spread across their outdoor acreage, the former property of the Keller Farm.

In these early days of April, the tables are bursting with color, as they produce 2,000 flats a week of about 38 different varieties of crops — the numbers roll easily off Sal’s tongue. They are currently harvesting the cold crops for distribution to their commercial clients — local boutique markets and chain grocers among them, together with restaurant suppliers.

Gilbertie lives and breathes on this property and tends to every aspect of the business. “I love what I do,” he says, “and I live here because things happen — pipes burst overnight and I have to tend to it.” Throughout the Northeast’s culinary community he’s a legend — but hearing his telling is an education.

As our first order of business, we sit in his “open office” in the midst of one of the greenhouses — well, I sit, and he tells me the fascinating history of this family business, one whose ebbs and flows followed the cycles in the cut flower and herb businesses of industrial America.

His grandfather, Antonio Gilbertie, came from Italy to the United States in 1901, together with his pregnant wife and three brothers. The name had been changed, as many were upon entry, from Gilaberti. Antonio came specifically to work for the Fillow Flower Co. in Westport, which employed many Italian, Irish and English immigrants.

The company grew cut flowers of the typical garden variety — roses, tulips and the like — that were sent by rail to commercial customers across the Northeast. In 1919, Antonio bought the property on Sylvan Lane in Westport that is home to the family’s garden center and started building greenhouses, with A. Gilbertie Flowers established by 1922. He grew more ornamental, exotic varieties of flowers such as anemones and ranunculus. With his expertise in greenhouse growing, he was able to “pre-cool” bulbs like iris, daffodils and tulips and get them into the New York metro market two months ahead of everyone else.

The business flourished, Gilbertie says, particularly with “victory gardens” spurring the seedling movement during World War II. Postwar, the increasing ability to ship goods by air changed

the dynamic of the cut-flower market, with the explosion of the Holland bulb in the 1950s. So growers had to diversify into seasonal potted plants like kalanchoës, geraniums, petunias and poinsettias.

The business was booming in the late ’50s, doing more contract work, providing plants for estates — one, in particular, being that of Baroness Gabriele von Langendorff in Westport. But in February of 1959, Gilbertie’s father died prematurely. He credits Edna Percy Cashmore of the Herb Society of America, with whom he had become acquainted through their board meetings, with turning his life around. “She taught me everything I know about herbs — sourcing and identification — and she introduced me to experts in the business,” who enabled his growth, he says.

Gilbertie’s became the only grower in the Northeast producing herbs in large volume. The ecology boom of the 1970s brought further good fortune and the purchase of the land where Gilbertie’s Organic Petite Edibles and Herb Gardens operate today.

Among Gilbertie’s petite edibles of the floral variety are the nasturtium plants whose leaves and yellow and orange flowers are not only beautiful, but nutritious.

As we walk through the greenhouses, he

pinches off a small section of a low-hanging branch and hands it to me with the simple command, “eat it.” It’s soft and tender, but unexpectedly tasty and mildly peppery. I basically want to eat my way through the greenhouse like one of the rabbits he raises on the property, solely for fun, he says.

No surprise that these tender flowers and their leaves are tossed into salads, used to garnish artful plates and even wedding cakes.

Martha Stewart, a longtime fan who hosted Gilbertie on her show, offers recipes for everything from nasturtium pesto to risotto on her website. Its taste is otherworldly, as are its benefits. Nasturtium is high in vitamin C, along with manganese, iron, flavonoids and beta carotene, so it is widely found in herbal remedies for everything from hair loss to boosting the immune system.

It was humbling to have had this private lesson from Gilbertie, who doesn’t bring up his books — turns out he has written five on the topic of organic growing — or his brushes with culinary luminaries. Rather, he tells me to look at the turn of events that propelled his business and enabled his success.

His fastidiousness didn’t hurt either, or his concerted decision to be an organic grower, go-

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ing fully organic in 2002 and adhering to the arduous protocols that this designation mandates, if followed properly. He cultivates his own soil — pointing to the soil barn during our tour — with natural fungicides like long-needle, yellow pine bark from North Carolina and specially created organic peat moss from Canada.

We have seen the benefits of eating organic, he says, and we have seen the abatement of allergies and many other conditions as a result of eliminating the toxicity of pesticides from our diets. The products are more expensive — Gilbertie cites his adherence to the practice of conducting additional, elective audits by certified specialists, undertaken at much expense — in order to maintain his high organic standards, a doctrine to which he firmly subscribes and one he will not relinquish.

It’s apparent that Gilbertie is happy in his world among his seedlings in Easton — telling me a mantra heard often and again from those who succeed: You have to be happy in what you do.

Recalling the stories he shared of the people who came into his life and bolstered his business, especially after losing his father, he ponders, “Had these events not happened, would I have been so lucky?” Then he quickly restates his question, “No, not lucky, blessed.”

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Marsden Hartley’s “Give Us This Day” (1938), oil on canvas. 30 x 40 inches. Art Bridges.

Photograph by Edward C. Robison III. 64

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flights of fancy

BY JENA BUTTERFIELD

The art critic Robert Hughes once said, “Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel” — in other words, ubiquitous and part of the country’s zeitgeist.

In “LandEscape: New Visions of the Landscape from the Early 20th and 21st Centuries,” at the Katonah Museum of Art through June 16, viewers can immerse themselves in works from two seminal moments in art history when painters reimagined an ancient art form that has helped define our identity as a nation.

The exhibition includes roughly 30 paintings that bridge a century. The earlier works represent a revolutionary moment in the Modern art movement and are juxtaposed with those by contemporary artists who continue to evolve the genre from its humble beginnings.

Landscape painting was transformed in the mid-19th century when the practice of painting en plein air (outdoors) was made possible by the invention of paint tubes, the portable French box easel and the self-contained pochade box — to say nothing of electric light. Suddenly, artists could capture natural light and weather outside the confines of a studio by day and the newfangled electric light by night.

They included Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Postimpressionists like Vincent van Gogh and Fauvists like Henri Matisse.

“It’s interesting to me that artists went outside to do the painting,” says associate curator Michele Wijegoonaratna, “but were creating something that didn’t quite reflect what they were looking at.”

American artists traveling abroad observed the radical choices these artists were making in regards to light and color.

“It was a shocking thing when these artists came back from Europe,” Wijegoonaratna adds. Their paintings captured “how they felt compared to what they saw. They were more interested in the way the landscape made them feel.”

Their inspired works were shown at New York’s now famous Armory Show of 1913 where radical depictions of light and color shocked the public and ushered in the Modern art movement.

A century later, contemporary artists of the early 21st century (no longer motivated by the plein air approach) were returning to the studio where they could transform their memories of the landscape to convey spirit and emotion free from the confines of their subject.

Where the early-20th century artists were driven to the countryside as an escape from urbanization and industrialization, the artists of the early-21st century returned in part to urban landscapes and industrial environments.

Their motivations may have been different but these two eras of artists relate to each other with metaphor, flights of fancy, large-scaled mindscapes and multilayered perceptions of the landscape as felt and influenced by the artist.

Marguerite Thompson Zorach’s “Man Among Redwoods” (1932) was the impetus for the Katonah exhibit. Curator Olga Dekalo was inspired by the painting, which depicts a distinctly Californian landscape of towering trees and the dwarfed figure of a man. “It’s a romantic trope,” Wijegoonaratna says, “nature as greater than being human.” The exhibition grew from there.

In John Marin’s “Wave on Rock” (1937), a rugged seascape conveys the immense force of nature. In Marsden Hartley’s 1938 work, “Give Us This Day,” creatures of the sea and air unite in a cool palette to give the composition a spiritual quality. Conversely, Hartley’s bold, thickly applied colors and rough shapes in “Dogtown” (1934) suggest a subjective response to the wild moors of Gloucester, Massachusetts, rather than a literal representation.

“It was precisely the point not to have any Realist paintings,” Wijegoonaratna says.

Shara Hughes uses texture and a lack of perspective to depict an imagined, hallucinatory beach scene in “The Not Dark Dark Spots” (2017). And a sense of quiet pervades Lois Dodd’s “Water Gap, Last Snowfall” (2003), with its thinly applied, muted palette, stark trees and receding footprints.

As Wijegoonaratna describes in an essay: “For both the Modern and contemporary artists in this exhibition, the depiction of landscape can exist as a way to escape the boundaries of the physical environment and allow us to relate to the places we know as well as the ones that we imagine.”

Taken as a whole, these curated works provide a strong perspective on the evolution of landscape painting and how it has represented both our inner and outer worlds in new and innovative ways over the course of a century.”

For more, visit katonahmuseum.org.

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ART, NATURALLY

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BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

hen it comes to nature, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in Manhattan is all in.

Indeed, nature is the theme of its sixth triennial of nine exhibits, which are rolling out through May of next year.

Featuring more than 210,000 examples of textiles, jewelry, furniture, cutlery and more from the museum’s collection, “Nature — Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial” is all about “how designers engage with nature,” said Julia Siemon, the museum’s assistant curator of drawings, prints and graphic design, who toured us through two of the shows recently. “I think there’s a sense of emergency and immersion in nature in the shows,” she added, but not in a doom-and-gloom kind of way.

While acknowledging the environmental challenges the world now faces, she called the relationship between the shows’ artisans and nature one of “optimistic engagement.”

Clearly that is true in the two shows we saw, which represent a pair of complements — East and West; the everyday and the aristocratic. “Katagami” (through Oct. 27) explores the traditional (17th through 20th century) and contemporary practice of creating stencils to depict irises, bamboo, hollyhocks and other botanicals on fabric for the workaday Japanese, who were forbidden the loftier art of embroidery, Siemon said. The stencils — carved out of pounded mulberry bark treated with fermented persimmon juice for strong, waterproof flexibility — are placed on a prepared fabric and covered in a “resist,” or dye-resistant rice paste. The fabric is then dyed, usually with natural indigo, with the color adhering only to the areas not protected by the resist. When it’s washed away, all that remains on the textile is the stencil’s design.

In contrast to the simple beauty of “Katagami,” “Embroidered and Embellished” (through Oct. 27) conjures the fanciful, formalized world of 18th-century French nobility, in which an embroidered silk waistcoat was not merely a waistcoat, but an emblem of power, status, respect and wealth. The properly attired aristocrat needed hundreds of them for different occasions, not the least of which was the hunt, in which the waistcoat might depict the particular animal being hunted.

Fauna both imaginary and realistic

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Theobroma cacao Model (1875-98), manufactured by R. Brendel & Co. (Berlin, Germany); wood, papiermâché, cardboard, plaster, reed pith, metal, string, feathers, gelatin, glass and bone glue beads, cloth, metallic thread, horsehair, hemp, or silk threads, paint, and shellac varnish.

Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Image © Smithsonian Institution.

meets flora, along with frolicking nymphs and other figures in these designs, in which the threads still gleam on pristine creamy backgrounds, thanks to Richard C. Greenleaf. In the early 20th century, he assembled one of the most significant collections of European textiles and lace in the United States. A majority of the waistcoats and samples on view were bequeathed by him to the museum, which was founded in 1897 by sisters Sarah Cooper Hewitt and Eleanor Garnier Hewitt and, since 1970, has been located in the Georgian Revival Andrew Carnegie House, whose charming courtyard garden was just beginning to stir when we visited.

Our deadlines for this issue prohibited us from getting more than a glimpse between the partitions that signaled an installation in progress for “Paisley” (through Nov. 11), which explores the irresistible tear-drop motif’s relationship with flowering plants, Persia, India, Kashmir shawls and the Scottish town — famed for its imitation Kashmir shawls in the 18th and 19th centuries — from which it gets its name. Shimmering designs by clothing, home and fragrance powerhouse Etro bring this favorite pattern up to date.

June finds plant life and coral going underwater for “Bathing Beautiful” (June 8 through May 3, 2020). It considers the use of marine designs in bathroom wallcoverings, which began to move from the sterile and hygienic to the playful and aquatic around 1910 as the large-scale, watercolor-

Rosa canina Model (1875-98), manufactured by R. Brendel & Co. (Berlin, Germany); wood, papier-mâché, cardboard, plaster, reed pith, metal, string, feathers, gelatin, glass and bone glue beads, cloth, metallic thread, horsehair, hemp, or silk threads, paint, and shellac varnish. Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Image © Smithsonian Institution.

like design — albeit with waterproof, oil-based inks — for an alcove gallery suggests.

Running concurrently is “Natural Plastics,” which gets to the heart of what Siemon was talking about in our tour of “Katagami” and “Embroidered and Embellished.” Designers have celebrated nature through their creations and use of natural materials, included malleable tortoiseshell, vulcanized rubber, bioplastic pellets, strong leather and semi-synthetics like rayon and celluloid.

But the popularity and depletion of organic plastics led to the creation of new synthetic versions that have created environmental hazards. Today, designers have gone back to the future, using traditional and nontraditional natural materials for biodegradable and renewable bioplastics in everything from packaging to home goods.

Cooper Hewitt continues its triennial with “Cochineal” (Nov. 9 through Jan. 3, 2020), which looks at the use of the cochineal insect from preHispanic times to the mid-19th century to create the spectrum of reddish pigments that helped define the textiles, lacquered furnishings and works on paper of the Americas; and the concurrent “After Icebergs,” celebrating the 160th anniversary of Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church’s Newfoundland expedition and the magisterial works it produced.

The triennial closes with “Botanical Expressions” (Dec. 7 through June 14, 2020), centering on key figures in the decorative arts from the 18th through early 20th centuries — Christopher Dresser, Emile Gallé, William Morris, and Louis Comfort Tiffany — who drew on a passion for the natural sciences and love of gardening in their textiles, ceramics, glassworks and wallcoverings.

Among the loans from Smithsonian Libraries are the illustrated guidebooks that the designers used for reference.

For more, visit cooperhewitt.org.

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BIRDS ’N’ BEES

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arling ladybugs cozy up to glistening petals while enchanting butterflies alight on shimmering rocks. But these are no ordinary flora and fauna. Rather, they gleam on the finger and play at the throat as they delight the imagination and warm the heart.

At Tiffany & Co., everything old is new again as the silver and jewelry emporium’s signature tag shape-shifts in an urban garden for its new Return to Tiffany Love Bugs Collection.

“This jewelry collection is broader than the original Return to Tiffany in its look, in its materials and in its attitude,” says Reed Krakoff, chief artistic officer for the 182-year-old store.

And how. The “Please Return to Tiffany & Co.” disc or heart tag has been deconstructed, morphing into a pair of lovebirds brooch, bee pendants, butterfly rings and daisy petals in 18-karat yellow or rose gold and sterling silver.

The fauna frolic on amethysts, blue topazes and yellow and green quartzes in a springtime palette. But there’s something else at work here: By integrating sculpted organic forms with square- and emerald-cut stones in saturated colors, Tiffany pays homage to some of its greatest pieces, including Jean Schlumberger’s “Bird on a Rock” brooch.

As Krakoff observes, “With Return to Tiffany Love Bugs, we created a new iteration of an iconic collection that starts in a familiar place but ends up in a wider world.”

For more, visit tiffany.com.

— Georgette Gouveia

Love Bugs bee pendant in sterling silver and 18-karat yellow gold with a yellow quartz, ladybug ring in sterling silver and 18-karat rose gold and ladybug ring in sterling silver and 18-karat rose gold with a green quartz. Courtesy Tiffany & Co.

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down to earth

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

Though her favorite flower is the tulip, trees are what moves Tracee Ellis Ross most in nature.

“Trees are so rooted and grounded,” she told Girl Scouts of Stamford and Bridgeport after a luncheon at the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich last month. “And yet, they change with the seasons.”

Earlier at that luncheon — an annual benefit for Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, The Fund for Women & Girls — she had introduced the theme of trees, comparing women, and no doubt herself, to a sequoia sapling.

“It takes time for those roots to grow,” she told the more than 800 attendees. “But that tree has now turned into a redwood.”

If there is one quality that defines Ross, the Golden Globe Awardwinning star of the hit NBC sitcom “black-ish,” it is her understanding that who you are, no matter how anxious or insecure at present, is the wonderful person you can become. Or as she put it, “All the things you think are not great will be your aces in the deck.”

Tracee Ellis Ross Photograph by John Rizzo.

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Tracee Ellis Ross at the second annual Essence Black Women in Hollywood Awards Luncheon.

Tracee Ellis Ross talks with members of the Girl Scouts of Stamford and Bridgeport. Photograph by John Rizzo.

Ross’ pithy comments exemplify her powerful, vibrant presence, one eminently suited to her role as co-founder of Time’s Up, Hollywood’s proactive response to #MeToo, and as keynote speaker for the fund’s luncheon, which raised nearly $600,000. (Since 1998, the fund has invested more than $6.5 million in programs for girls and women — and men, too — enabling them to receive educations, job training and support for careers they would not otherwise have had. Recipients include Rebecca and Richard DelValle, who described for the audience how they have overcome addiction and incarceration respectively to build a life together with their blended family of six through the fund’s Family Economic Security Program at Housatonic Community College.

At the press conference that followed the luncheon, Ross took a moment to salute the couple who received a standing ovation at the event.

“Just the way you touched her back and called her ‘my love,’” Ross said, complimenting Richard.

Family and friends are essential, Ross told Juanita T. James, the fund’s president and CEO, during the luncheon’s onstage interview.

“They keep me afloat,” she said. “It takes a tribe to do this thing called life.”

Her mother, Diana Ross — one of entertainment’s greatest stars and most glamorous women — has always been a parent first, Ross said.

“She taught me the value of family, the value of hard work. She was a mother before she was Diana Ross. …I don’t remember her saying, ‘I don’t have time.’ She has a vast capacity for love.”

Today, Ross says, she is happy to see her mother, 75, “age so gracefully and with such joy.”

Her father, music executive and businessman Robert Ellis (né Silberstein), has been no less a fixture in his daughter’s life, evidenced by his attending the luncheon. He received this onstage shout-out from Ross: “When the world sees me, they’re also getting to know his kid.” Her professional name — she was born Tracee Joy Silberstein — is, she adds, a tribute to them.

Both parents and assorted siblings and friends are always just a call away for Ross, who counts phone time, bath time and a glass of wine among her evening rituals, wherever she is — although the glass of wine must be between 4 and 6 p.m.

“As I get older, I prefer to drink earlier, otherwise I’ll be up at night,” says Ross, who doesn’t look 46. Still, aging has its advantages, she says.

“I think the eyes start to go first for a reason.

Things start to look softer, like an Instagram filter,” she adds to audience laughter.

That self-deprecating humor suggests a woman completely comfortable in her own skin. But it wasn’t always so. Growing up in Greenwich —“Maybe I’ve seen you at Whole Foods or CVS or on the ave,” she wondered at the audience, referring to Greenwich Avenue — she was eager to please and uncertain of her looks and herself.

“My job was to take the weather in the room,” she recalled. And act accordingly.

She tried to corral her ebony curls and make her lips thinner — the same lips that now rock red lipstick — by curling her top lip under. Maybe this was because although she admired performers like Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, feminist Gloria Steinem and female buddy shows like “Cagney & Lacey” and “Kate & Allie,” the faces she saw there

didn’t usually reflect her own.

Today, Ross’ phone saver is a photograph of her 6-year-old self, a reminder “that I was cuter than I felt.” She learned to let herself take root, blossom and adapt to the seasons, to wait to become what she had always been.

At Brown University — from which she received a degree in theater in 1994 after attending The Dalton School in Manhattan, Riverdale Country Day School in the Bronx and the Institut Le Rosey in Rolle, Switzerland — she discovered acting was fun.

Auditioning taught her it could be disappointing.

She was fired from one guest stint. But she persisted to conquer stage (“Love, Loss, and What I Wore”) and screens big (“Hanging Up”) and small (“Girlfriends”). A host of accolades, including eight NAACP Awards and a 2015 honorary doctorate in fine arts from Brown, have followed.

A model in her teens, Ross’ 2017 limited-edition capsule collection of essential women’s apparel, accessories and home décor for JCPenney proved to be one of the retailer’s most successful capsule launches. A year later, she became the first black woman to open a TED Conference with her talk “A Woman’s Fury Holds Lifetimes of Wisdom.”

We saw a bit of that fury as she bristled at a reporter who asked her why she never married and had children when she’s such a loving person.

“That’s such a personal question,” Ross said pointedly. “I have a life filled with love.”

And one whose success she is happy to share, particularly with other actresses. Female competition is in part a myth, she said.

“There’s enough sun for everybody.”

For more, visit traceeellisross.com.

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The olive trees of Val Morano Sagliocco family’s Calabrian estate. The trees remain unaffected by the recent bacterium and erratic weather that have plagued olive trees in other parts of Italy. Courtesy Val Morano Sagliocco.

OLIVE OY!

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

sk Val Morano Sagliocco — director of Morano Landscape Garden Design in Mamaroneck; president of Weaver Gardens in Larchmont and Ridgeway Garden Center in White Plains; and managing partner of Lago restaurant in West Harrison — about the current olive oil crisis and he doesn’t mince words.

“Oh my God, it’s a catastrophic nightmare,” he says of the situation in which Italy was scheduled to run out of its homegrown product by last month.

“And it’s a global problem,” adds Sagliocco, who introduced his own brand — Oliveto Morano, a crisp, nutty oil produced on the family’s estate in Calabria — to Lago patrons last month.

Olive oil production, which dates from 6500

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B.C. in what is now Haifa, Israel, has long been a cyclical business in the Mediterranean basin, with some years yielding greater crops than others in the top producers — in order, Spain, Italy and Greece, with Morocco and Turkey alternating places at numbers four and five. But the recent sharp decline in Italian production is not about the cyclical narrative.

What’s at work here? Curtis Cord — founding publisher of Olive Oil Times and subject of a WAG profile last August — told National Public Radio in March that the bacterium xylella fastidiosa has destroyed more than 4 million trees on a half-million acres over the last seven years in Puglia — Italy’s prime olive oil-producing region in the high heel of the Italian boot. Add to this an early deep freeze and freak rains last year that wreaked havoc with many olive trees, which generally cannot survive below 10 degrees Fahrenheit. But Sagliocco thinks that bacteria and pests like the olive fly that has adversely affected the quality of Greece’s oil are not on parallel tracks with changes in weather patterns. Rather, it’s a case of cause and effect, he says — “Erratic weather forces problems with bacteria and insects.”

In any event, the combination of mercurial weather and infestations has spurred a 57 percent decline

in the Italian olive harvest to 185,000 tons, the country’s worst in a quarter-century. Coldiretti, the Italian farmers’ organization, estimates a loss of $1.1 billion as a result of that precipitous drop.

Elsewhere, the olive oil picture has been a mixed bag, with Greece and Portugal also suffering production declines of 35 and 20 percent, respectively. An early thaw followed by a cold snap in California saw the olive harvest decline 25 to 50 percent with a 30 percent drop in oil yield. But cold and heat proved an effective mix in Spain, which has more modern, droughtresistant groves than Italy and Greece and where a bumper crop will see olive oil production increase 25 percent. So Italians will be doing the unthinkable — importing Spanish oil.

Meanwhile, Sagliocco says that his estate in Calabria, the toe of the Italian boot, has not been affected by bacteria, pests or bad weather. There, amid more than 2,500 olive trees on 35 acres of groves, he has produced 20,000 liters of olive oil in three years.

Now it’s just a waiting game, he says, to see what the fall harvest will bring.

Oliveto Morano will be available for purchase by midsummer at olivetomorano.com.

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HOME DESIGN – INSIDE AND OUT

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BY JENA A. BUTTERFIELD t feels good to be back outdoors – grilling, partying and puttering around. But we take advantage of it more readily when our outdoor spaces feel inviting.

Great landscape design has the potential to enrich your life like good soil enriches the boxwood topiaries flanking your patio. And no one knows this better than the sought-after design couple, Brittany and Matthew Bromley, whose creative passion in life and in business intersects at the threshold of home.

The classic, modern and curated approach of the Bedford-based firm Brittany Bromley Interiors has earned the interior design maven her reputation among luxury clients. Brittany’s beautiful rooms have garnered attention – and projects – across the country. And ,increasingly, garden design has become a natural extension of the Bromley business.

Brittany and Matthew, a landscaping aficionado, believe the way people live in their homes translates to how they want to live outside. Almost four years ago, Matthew joined Brittany in response to growing requests for the same quality landscape design that would reflect the Bromley interior style outdoors.

And – just like in their marriage – one picks up where the other leaves off. Bromley projects have a textured, layered and curated feel, even in the garden.

The couple’s fortuitous collaboration can benefit their clients. “You get a really good result when one hand is helping the other,” Brittany says. “(But Matthew) also does projects that don’t include me.”

As a designer, Matthew comes from a similar creative perspective to his wife’s so adapting her established model for interiors was a natural fit.

“It’s so important to be rooted in the history of classical design,” he says. “And something I learned early from Brittany is that empathy is a big part of the project.”

First, for the client. “And second, you need to have empathy for the landscape itself,” he says, “whether it’s pastoral or an urban courtyard.”

Principles of landscape and interior design overlap in some key areas such as framing views and planning movement that will lead naturally from one environment to another. Getting your eye to travel around a room and placing things at various heights are classic tenets that are as important outside as they are in.

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“The discussion of outdoor rooms is a great starting point,” says Matthew, whose master’s from the New York Botanical Garden was the culmination of years of toil and passion. “It gave me something to hang my hat on.”

“And proportion is essential,” he adds. Texture, height, symmetry and color are important. “But the structure is more important (than color),” he says.

“How a viewer progresses through (the garden).

You can layer the color palette on top of that. It’s more about texture – deciduous juxtaposed with evergreen….You can have an all green garden but still have a dynamic experience.”

Brittany notes, “Our main objective is for these rooms to be collected and curated, even if the proj-

ect was just completed on Tuesday. It needs to look as though it’s been there forever, rooted in the landscape.”

That’s a look that can’t be achieved, she says, “If we’re being led by trends. We don’t consider trends when we design.” Though she adds it does help when trends align with a design they are pitching.

Matthew agrees: “We are grateful when something we love gains a wide audience” For example, Brittany says she loves unlacquered brass and the way it patinas. Now that brass is on trend, they get the go-ahead to use it more readily.

The couple’s collaboration began when they bought their historic home. “We were both longtime gardeners at our own 5-acre property in Bedford,” Matthew says.

Adds Brittany: “The affair with our house began the creative dialogue. It was an eight- to 10-year project and a real education.”

That education paid off: Now the firm has projects in markets including Greenwich, Nantucket, Palm Beach, Chicago, Wyoming, Montana and Northern and Southern California. And every new climate is a different challenge. “What you might do in New England is different in Palm Beach,” Brittany says. But they’re not daunted by any of it. “We are absolutely growing,” she adds. “We have wonderful, well-established contractors and we’re excited about the opportunity to be everywhere.”

Matthew says having projects in many states means he’s never bored. One week he may be standing in super sandy soil on Cape Cod and the next week he’s dealing with tarantulas in Palm Beach. “If you’re not thrilled by that,” he says. “You’re not in the right business.”

But the couple clearly are in the right business – their passions have aligned.

“We develop our ideas simultaneously,” Brittany says. “And we’re both inspired by each other.”

Matthew adds, “She may be reaching and trying something new.” Creatively, he can understand what she’s trying to achieve. And it works both ways. “You can get creative tunnel vision,” he says. He’s been working on a project in Martha’s Vineyard and recently showed his plans to Brittany. “I said, ‘What do you feel about the access going here or there?’ And she said ‘Why don’t you do both?’ A lot of artistic endeavors happen alone. So, to be able to collaborate is priceless.”

Brittany notes, though, “But we cannot talk about our creative projects after 7 p.m. It’s a rule, otherwise we’ll be up all night.”

As Matthew says, “We love working together. “It’s a perfect synergy.”

Brittany adds a caveat: “But we still can’t decide what we want for dinner.”

For more visit Bromleylandscapedesign.com and bbromleyinteriors.com Matthew Bromley’s landscape design has a textured, layered and curated feel. Here, Matthew and Brittany Bromley, whose company is Brittany Bromley Interiors. Photographs courtesy Bromley Landscape Design.

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Diana wallpaper and linen-upholstered screen by Voutsa. The screen is a collaborative screen with Patrick Mele. Images courtesy Voutsa.

GO FLORAL â&#x20AC;&#x201C; OR GO HOME

BY MARY SHUSTACK

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n the world of Voutsa, everything is connected.

And this season, that connection is rooted in flowers.

Blooms abound in the new Spring 2019 Floral Collection from the savvy New York company that develops, produces and manufactures seasonal collections of made-to-order wallpaper (produced in America) and fabric (produced in Italy), as well as lifestyle products.

Bianca, for example, is an explosion of influences with an iris taking center stage surrounded by a variety of blue-toned flowers and geometric patterns. Diana, on the other hand, seems to be a step into a vintage boudoir, a rich-yet-subdued take filled with understated pinks, muted reds

All artwork for patterns is developed in the Hudson Valley,

a studio right in Columbia Countyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Claverack.

and soothing beiges. And when it comes to Guinevere’s Chinoiserie design, it’s all rambling delicacy and meandering vines dotted with more muted blooms, a study in pinks and green.

The vibrant designs are also translated to products, with the company manufacturing handcrafted luggage and trunks, limited-edition collaborative furniture and luxury lounge and swimwear. These lifestyle products are available through the New York showroom and select luxury retailers.

We’ve already fallen for the slipper chairs and upholstered screens (how retro), while also noting the distinctive luggage receiving a nod in a recent Town & Country feature.

Voutsa, established in 2014 by George Venson, continues to operate in an evergrowing manner that encompasses product design, customization, commissions, collaborations (from Anthropologie to Savoir Beds), hospitality (from The Peninsula New York to Bergdorf Goodman), licensing and more.

But, we are pleased to note, all artwork for patterns is developed in the Hudson Valley, a studio right in Columbia County’s Claverack.

Nothing like having such a stunning garden of design in our own backyard.

For more, visit voutsa.com.

A hatbox in Poppy-printed suede by Voutsa.

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WARES

EARTHLY INSPIRED

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BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

he Pantone color of the year is living coral — chosen by the New Jersey-based color printing company for its lively yet soft quality — and InsidherLand has picked up that ball to run with it.

The Portuguese home and jewelry design brand — created in 2012 by architect Joana Santos Barbosa — takes its cue from natural forms for its new coral-colored collection.

The Figueroa Armchair is named for and inspired by the mountain in Santa Barbara County, California, known for its steep curves and undulating sides. This is captured in the chair’s high, sweeping back and grooved arms. The Azores Wall Lamp captures in handcrafted bronze the cascading leaves of the willows on luxuriant São Miguel Island, the largest in the Portuguese Azores. A series of overlapping rectangles in brushed brass with a gloss varnish recreates the layered effect of a leafy treetop in the Inspiring Trees Wall Lamp, while The Wave, a striated sandstone formation in Arizona, spurs the layered, irregularly shaped Arizona Mirror.

These are not imitations of nature, however, but intimations of what nature can be.

As Barbosa says, “I’m a strong believer that I’m not a creator of objects but a fearless sculptor of dreams.”

For more, visit insidherland.com.

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InsidherLand designs, from top, include the Azores wall lamp; the Figueroa arm chair; and the Perspective dining chair.

Courtesy InsidherLand.

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WHAT'S COLLECTIBLE

SPOTLIGHT ON LIGHTING DESIGN

BY JENNIFER PITMAN

l

ighting is one area of the auction business that has always intrigued me — specifically the large sums of money achieved at auction — whether it’s a six-figure Tiffany lamp or Georg Jensen silver chandelier or a pair of triton-riding marble turtle lamps that fetched nearly $30,000. Many designers have turned their creative powers to lighting design. But what of those designers who focused exclusively or primarily on lighting? Gino Sarfatti of Arteluce and Angelo Lelii of Arredoluce were Italian lighting designers and manufacturers who flourished during Italy’s postwar design boom. They are celebrated for their iconic designs and both firms have been the subjects of recent monographs. A number of their designs are still in production and vintage models are highly collectible today. While collectors can expect to pay large sums for the period works, newer examples are accessible at a fraction of the period pieces.

Venetian-born Gino Sarfatti (1912-1985) built one of Italy’s most important firms for modern architectural lighting design. Like so many of his peers, his path was shaped by the war years.

Sarfatti studied aeronautical engineering until his education was curtailed by the failure of his father’s business, a victim of prewar sanctions.

Sarfatti moved to Milan, working first for the lighting company Lumen and then striking out on his own, founding Arteluce in 1939. During World War II, he fled to Switzerland, because of his Jewish heritage.

Postwar, Sarfatti returned to Milan where his stylish retail shop and his lighting designs gained international attention. His designs were widely published and awarded honors at the Milan Triennials, the highly influential art and design exhibitions.

Sarfatti’s firm also commissioned lighting from preeminent Italian designers. The firm expanded to encompass wholesale and large-scale lighting projects, such as lighting for postwar Italian luxury ocean liners

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Angelo Lelii’s Cobra lamp, 1960s, sold for $4,688.

Courtesy Rago Auctions.

and Turin’s Teatro Regio, where his cumulus cloud installation consisted of hundreds of Plexiglas pipes. Sarfatti retired in 1973, selling Arteluce to the Italian lighting firm Flos, which still produces a number of Sarfatti designs today.

Early Sarffati works focused on directional lighting that was used to create a mood in a room or fulfill a specific lighting task. Sarfatti’s innovations leveraged new technologies to expand the scope of his designs, such as the use of Plexiglas or new lighting sources like halogen.

Sarfatti’s designs were referred to by number.

Model 1063 was a floor lamp designed in 1954 and is now part of The Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. Minimalist in its design, Model 1063 featured a slender rectangular box that highlighted the then-novel fluorescent tubular bulb. Model 2097, a chandelier designed in 1958, broke down the centuries-old form to its essential

parts. The chandelier features bare individual lights that are linked by an exposed electrical cord.

The swaged cord cleverly mimics the traditional chandelier shape.

Angelo Lelii (1915—1987) was born in the Adriatic coastal town of Ancona and founded the firm Arredoluce in 1943 in Monza, northeast of Milan. Lelii’s career had a number of parallels to Sarfatti's.

Lelii not only produced his own designs, but collaborated with other designers, most notably Gio Ponti and Etorre Sottsass Jr. The firm was a regular exhibitor at the Milan Triennials and Lelii’s works were featured in the cinema of the day, including “Roman Holiday” (1953). The firm gained lucrative lighting commissions from hotels throughout Italy and the Middle and Far East while also distributing its products in the United States.

Lelii’s involvement in the business began to wane in the 1970s and the firm gradually retrenched until activity ceased in 1994.

Lelii’s best-known design is the floor lamp Model 12128, first exhibited at the 1947 Milan Triennale. Now known as the Triennale lamp, it was widely imitated and has become an icon of ’50s lighting design. The lamp featured three adjustable colored cones in primary hues (apparently in a nod to painter Piet Mondrian) on a tripod base. Later versions included monochrome cones and a marble base. Today, examples with colored cones and tripod bases are the most desired by collectors.

Truly sculptural in form is Lelii’s 1962 “Il Cobra” table lamp, Model 12919, which like many other iconic designs was sketched on a napkin during a transatlantic flight. The polished brass lamp featured a central magnetized sphere that focused an adjustable light beam with great precision. It was also one of the first usages of low voltage for a lamp, achieved by embedding a transformer in its base.

According to Jad Attal, Rago Auction’s modern design specialist, Sarfatti’s and Lelii’s works are so appealing because their designs were novel, clever, contraption-like and employed the most modern technology of the era. Yet these pieces also reflected impeccable workmanship, one of the great traditions of Italian craftsmanship. Their lamps were highly “machined,” that is, wrought by skilled workmen. So while uniform in design, the lamps exhibit the slight irregularities indicative of their individualized production.

For further reading, check out Anty Pansera et al.’s “Arredoluce: Catalogue Raisonne,” (2018); and Marco Romanelli and Sandra Severi’s “Gino Sarfatti: Selected Works 1938-1973,” (2012).

Jennifer Pitman writes about the jewelry, fine art and modern design she encounters as Rago Auction’s senior account manager for Westchester and Connecticut. For more, contactjenny@ragoarts.com or 917-745-2730.

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WARES

FUN WITH FLOWERS

BY CAMI WEINSTEIN

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love it when the days turn warmer, the sun shines longer and everything starts growing and blooming. Spring makes us want to throw open the windows and refresh our homes. The fastest way to do that is with a vase of fresh flowers, an instant redecorating tool. I always have fresh flowers in my home and, as the seasons change, so do my flower choices. Spring brings the bulb plants first — tulips, daffodils and hyacinths.

As summer draws closer, lilacs, roses and other garden flowers fill my vases, many handpicked from my gardens.

Sometimes I like to quiet down the color in my home and select all single-color flowers to decorate with. Other times I love to mix a riot of colors to give my home a more bohemian vibe. I also love mixing two intense colors in one vase. One of my all-time favorite combinations is fuchsia and orange roses mixed together. All of these options allow us to give our homes a fresh update with minimal cost and within a short time frame that we can continue to enjoy as the seasons change.

Fashion in clothing and home also changes over time. We all get tired of gray homes and minimal patterns. Home design is becoming colorful and patterned again with traditional wallpapers, many of which are floral. These designs, many reworked from older traditional designs in newer updated colors, are giving home decorating new life. Walking into a wallpapered, floral patterned bedroom always makes me smile. It reminds me of the beautiful English countryside and creates a deep sense of home and relaxation. For me, it creates that personal oasis away from the world.

If you are afraid to go floral in your bedroom, start with a powder room or guest bedroom.

Another great place to bring the garden indoors is the dining room. A vase of fresh flowers works wonders for your dining table. Floral window treatments are another way

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Mimosa yellow spring flowers surround a Buddha, a scene designed to encourage reflection.

to keep the garden blooming all year long.

Floral wallpaper evokes the feeling of dining in a garden and without pesky insects. Does a completely floral room overwhelm your senses?

If so, look for artwork that is floral- or gardeninspired to bring life into minimalist spaces.

There are so many artists who are inspired by flowers and nature and incorporate them into their artwork. Collect paintings, photographs and sculpture that depict or evoke nature. Are you still not letting go of your neutral grays? Then continue the neutral theme with beautiful black and white photographs of flowers or landscapes

that may be the way to bring the garden into your home in a more modern graphic way.

If your home is already colorful, just continue with lush peonies and roses. Heavily scented flowers can be overwhelming so it’s best to leave highly fragrant blossoms out of the dining room because floral scents can interfere with gastronomic ones.

Still, don’t be afraid to experiment with flowers in your home. Bring them in — cut, potted or framed — and enjoy the way they make you feel.

For more, visit camidesigns.com.

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WANDERS

HAVE MOM, WILL TRAVEL

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BY DEBBI K. KICKHAM o you know what makes a great trip?

When you never want to leave your hotel, because it offers you so much of everything.

That is how my sister, my 101-yearold mother and I felt about our recent stay in Manhattan at the JW Marriott Essex House New York on Central Park South.

My family and I decided on a multigenerational trip, which is also a hot new trend. Millennials and baby boomers alike want shared experiences — as opposed to merely buying each other gifts — as they create memories to last forever. A recent study has even shown that when senior citizens enjoy the company of other people, they live much longer and happier. So, we went as a family to New York to take a big bite out of the Big Apple and to celebrate Mother’s Day in advance.

The Essex House most definitely caters to families like ours, with stellar service. At Thanksgiving especially, the Macy’s Parade goes right in front of the hotel, and kids from all over, with their parents, delight in the private viewing area. The hotel can also arrange, say, a pizza-making class for kids, or use of a posh pop-up tent in their guest room. (Bring on the S’mores.) What also makes the Essex House unusual, General Manager John Rieman told me, is that the hotel enables its employees to make memories for the guests. One morning we were warmly greeted at breakfast in the Executive Lounge by Julette Johnson, whose bright personality shone like sunshine. We had a lovely conversation in which I told her that my mom is 101 years young. Before you can say, “Happy Birthday,” she entered the kitchen and exited with three boxes of chocolate for all of us. To say it was special was an understatement.

But the hotel offers more than that to keep you entertained. We all had spa treatments in the Primp Spa, although mom lucked out and had a deluxe manicure in the privacy of our hotel room. (Which, incidentally, was the best room in the house, Number 2411, complete with its own private outdoor terrace.) Then there was dinner in Southgate, a delightful restaurant with its own craft cocktail bar (you read that right — the bartender pulls the lever for your choice of three designer

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The author’s Pop Bag in pink.

Courtesy Margaret Pattilo.

drinks), and delicious cuisine. (We fell hook, line and sinker for the Atlantic salmon with salsa verde and an incredibly delicious tomato quinoa risotto.)

Everyone working in the hotel was aware of my mother’s age and all commented and wished her well. It was quite extraordinary. At dinner one night, our server, Marcela, also took it upon herself to present mom and my sister (whose actual birthday we were celebrating ) with two small plush bears wearing Marriott T-shirts, as gifts. My mother was moved to tears. The result? We didn’t want to leave — and that’s the sign of a great hotel.

We enjoyed other delights that were made just for the three of us. We visited Shespoke — a fabulous shop offering custom-made lipsticks created right in front of you. The process of adding and subtracting colors and mixing in metallics if you want is the very essence of bespoke. We all received custom-colored lipsticks and gloss that even comes in a white case engraved with the name you create for your formula. (Mine is “Deb’s Rose Gold.”) The experience is meant to be shared, and the store hosts birthday and bachelorette parties galore.

Next door is the pharmacy of pharmacies — a small European-concept apothecary called Thompson Chemists. Here you will find high-end health and beauty products from around the world, many of which are cult items. I discovered the “Four-Minute Magic,” created by Nicole Bryl, a makeup artist who has been pampering Kathie Lee Gifford and scores of celebrities for years. If you want a complexion that is red-carpet ready, these are the miracle products for you. They feature a vitamin C mask, exfoliator, liquid and serum. They work on your skin as a primer would work on a wall, creating the perfect palette for a glowing look.

Next stop: Pop Bag, in the Time Warner Building. What a find this was. Wouldn’t you love to have an Italian purse or tote, made of gorgeous high-quality leather, which you can customize in about five minutes? These are the travel bags to

end all bags. What you’ll find are leather panels in a rainbow of colors and leathers, which you snap together to create your bespoke bag. You can easily fold different panels into your suitcase to assemble for instant versatility on the road. You can even swap out the panels depending on the season. I got a pink crocodile tote bag, with a white leather back panel, and white leather straps — perfect for my next cruise. When winter comes, I’ll switch the pink front panel for one in chocolatebrown with white piping. And the price is right: Small bags start at around $100 and large bags cost about $350. You’ll carry it off — stunningly.

Our favorite stop was at Bumble and bumble, where we all enjoyed our various hair appointments. The bustling salon is famous for its cuts and color, and our experiences showcased that. My mother and sister got beautiful blow-drys, and I received a color from Pauline and a cut from Todor. We were just thrilled with this shared experience. If you want to look like an A-list beauty editor from New York (or Boston, my hometown), Bumble and bumble is the hair salon for you Being interested in all-things-lovely, we, quite naturally, went to the Broadway show “Beautiful” and cried all the way through it. This delightful production showcases the life of musical composer Carole King, and her trials and tribulation as she became wildly successful. Actress Sara Sheperd gave a charismatic performance, and we especially loved the music, as performed by actors appearing as The Shirelles, The Righteous Brothers and Neil Sedaka. It was great fun.

Our fill of the Big Apple only whetted our appetite for our next visit. As mom said so eloquently, “Debbi, next year, for my 102nd, we are coming to New York again and only staying at the Essex House.” Here, here.

See Debbi’s complete New York tour at wagmag.com. And for more on Debbi, visit gorgeousglobetrotter.com and marketingauthor.com.

WANDERS

THE COUNTRYSIDE AWAITS

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BY JEREMY WAYNE

he Cotswolds, that large cluster of ravishingly lovely small towns and villages less than 100 miles from London, seem to be everybody’s dream vision of the countryside. And it’s true: rural England doesn’t get much better. Think of the Cotswolds and what comes to mind are winding lanes, manicured lawns, houses and cottages of warm, honeyed stone. (It’s the region’s bedrock of golden Jurassic limestone we have to thank for those.) Primped hedgerows, ancient stone walls, great canopies of willow and curving oak trees, along with gurgling brooks and streams, complete the picture.

But if, apart from their sheer loveliness alone, the Cotswolds have any singular claim to fame, it would surely have to be their magnificent gardens. From Blenheim Palace in the north down to Prince Charles’ weekend place, Highgrove, in the south, the Cotswolds have glorious gardens galore.

Blenheim Palace, dating from 1705, was built by the Duke of Marlborough, its gardens designed by Capability Brown.

After touring the palace (one of the largest houses in England), save some energy for the sumptuous gardens — the water terraces, the arboretum, the rose garden and the Temple of Diana. Still on your feet? Take the miniature train to explore the pleasure gardens and the world’s second largest hedge maze, which lie on the far side of the vast estate. Blenheim, by the way, has impeccable American connections — it was saved from certain ruin by the 9th Duke of Marlborough’s propitious (if loveless) marriage to the American railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt back in 1895.

Over to the west, another American émigré, the horticulturalist Lawrence Johnston, was responsible for Hidcote Manor Garden, with its magnificent “green architecture of garden rooms,” including the breathtakingly lovely circular raised pool, many “secret”

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Gardens at Whatley Manor. Photographs courtesy Whatley Manor.

gardens, and stunning vistas. Born into a family of wealthy Baltimore stockbrokers, Johnston — whose passion for plants, it’s said, bordered, no pun intended, on the fanatical — also helped his friend Heather Muir create the Arts & Craftsinspired Kiftsgate Court Gardens, near Chipping Campden, a few miles south of Hidcote. Go soon to enjoy Kiftsgate’s glorious bluebell woods, because by the end of May they will be over for another year.

An hour’s drive from Chipping Campden brings you to Westonbirt, near Tetbury, the most important arboretum in England, with more than 25,000 plant species and 15,000 trees from the far-flung corners of the earth. And just a few miles away from Westonbirt is Highgrove.

Open to the public between April and October, Highgrove represents a 35-year odyssey for HRH The Prince of Wales, aka Prince Charles, to transform the gardens into what they are today. From the classic Cottage Garden to the wildflower Meadow, quite apart from their knockyour-socks-off loveliness, the Highgrove gardens, like the rest of the estate, are an object lesson in sustainability and organic methods, which have always been a passion of the prescient prince.

If you’ve never experienced the southern English countryside in summer, this is something you need to do. The air is not as soft or scented as Tuscany or the Mediterranean, perhaps, and the night sky neither as starry nor velvety as Provence. But an ancient, Arthurian magic seems to hang in the air like a whisper or spell, and for a calm and stillness broken only by a distant church bell, the thwack of a cricket ball on the village green, a hay-cart rattling along a country road, or the nighttime to-whit-tu-whoo of a wise old English owl, there is nowhere like it.

A Cotswold garden is a thing of beauty all right, but any keen gardener needs somewhere to hang her or his hat. Twelve minutes drive from Highgrove, a mere six from Westonbirt, lies wonderful Whatley Manor, a Relais & Châteaux property and one of England’s loveliest country house hotels.

Whatley is traditional without being stuffy, secluded without being remote, proper without being pretentious, highborn with a highly developed sense of noblesse oblige and, best of all, rather good fun. Rooms and suites are vast, all looking spruce after a light reno earlier this year, suite bathrooms are large enough to host a sizable dinner party in, and the superb Aquarias spa features luxurious Natura Bissé products.

What’s more, Whatley has gardens of its own is spades — 26 gardens of immense beauty, along with expansive lawns, which compete with the

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Whatley Manor drawing room.

best the Cotswolds have to offer.

Great food, too, is an integral part of the Whatley experience. Chef Niall Keating has a résumé as long as both your arms (including a year spent as chef de partie at three-Michelin-starred Benu in San Francisco) and has been building on Whatley’s formidable kitchen reputation since taking up the whites here three years ago.

Breakfast is superb. I like the “back” dining room, flooded with cheery morning light, where you can feast on a “full English,” the crispest local bacon and plumpest Wiltshire sausages, or porridge, lusciously smooth, served healthily with berries or made extra rich (for cream-nuts like me) with a swirl of decadent Somerset cream.

Lunch could be a couple of courses in Grey’s brasserie, Whatley’s informal brasserie, or a luxurious club sandwich with a soft-boiled egg and skinny fries overlooking the croquet lawn, to the gentle sound of babbling water running along the low stone walls that border the grass.

Enjoy your Wiltshire cream tea, with its sandwiches, cakes and scones, early in the

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afternoon, because trust me, you will need to pace yourself for Keating’s 12-course dinner.

Early evening is a magical time at Whatley.

The roses in the rose garden seem fuller and blowsier at the day’s end than at any other time, and the deep, herbaceous borders seem to sigh almost audibly as dusk falls, the exigencies of the day over, the afternoon heat diminishing now. It’s watering time at last, when the sprinklers come on at the end of the day, which I like to think is the cocktail hour of the plant world. Lupins, hollyhocks, lilies and hydrangeas, delphiniums and coneflowers all running riot, running wild — wild, yet tamed by legions of gardeners. “Nature to advantage dressed” as Alexander Pope, poet of the Enlightenment, might have expressed it.

You’ll want to walk at Whatley, and after all this food you’ll need to. Up to the Loggia Garden at the top of the tiered terraces, with its long, limpid pond, Giacometti-like, sculptural reed fountains and ornamental lily pads. Or down to the river, with its wild flowers running

along the banks, bosky and buzzing with vernal insects today. I first walked along the bank here 15 years ago, in heavy boots on a bitter January day, sinking into the mud and long grass, raw to the bone and only too happy to climb the hill again, to Whatley’s warmth, a crackling fire in the drawing room grate.

Yes, winter too has its story at Whatley, but no one’s thinking of the cold tonight, sitting on the divine terrace around the olive tree, feasting on tempura of eel with citrus aigre-doux — which, by the way, goes great with Bacchus, an awardwinning white wine from the local Maud Heath vineyard — or on Keating’s lobster custard, or his peerless local spring lamb. “It’s the best in the world,” says Whatley’s head sommelier, Daniel Davies, as he passes, placing a basket of 18-hour proved sourdough on the table. In truth, I’m not sure if he’s talking about the bread, or the wine, or the tempura, or the night, or the place, but I am not going to disagree with him.

For more, visit blenheimpalace.com, highgrovegardens.com and whatleymanor.com.

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WANDERS

HAWAII’S GARDEN ISLAND

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BY BARBARA BARTON SLOANE he Hawaiian words Aloha Aina, Aloha Kai translate to “Love of the Land, Love of the Sea,” and nowhere do they sound as true and authentic as on the island of Kauai, the Garden Island. There, beauty is palpable. You can feel it in the elements of nature and the quality of the air and the ocean. Then there is this: No building is higher than a coconut tree, streams and rivers provide myriad possibilities for recreation and, with 553 square miles of white sand shoreline, Kauai has more beach than any of its sister islands.

Kauai is the fourth-largest, oldest and northernmost island in the Hawaiian chain. So why is it the Garden Island? Because 97% of its land is composed of undeveloped mountain ranges and rainforests. Parts of Kauai are only accessible by sea or air. But more than just sheer beauty, the island is home to a variety of activities from kayaking the Wailua River to snorkeling on Poipu Beach or hiking the trails of Kōke‘e State Park.

Kauai is known as The Land of a Thousand Waterfalls, some tumbling hundreds of feet out of the jungle, some small enough to walk across and then jump into a lagoon and swim directly under a symphony of rushing water. The island has jungle, desert, mountains and plains, and the sheer diversity of the climate is mind-blowing.

At Mount Wai‘ale‘ale it rains nearly every day, making it one of the wettest places on earth, yet travel just a few miles and rain is rare. The North Shore is lush while the South Shore is a sunny playground. Above all, what you take away from a visit is Kauai’s laid-back atmosphere and rich culture found in small villages well off the beaten path.

To get the most out of a garden isle visit, it’s important to be in harmony with the principles of old Hawaii.

Islanders respect the land, care for the land and give back to the land.

Ecotourism is large here, as I found out. Given work gloves, sunscreen and a rake, I joined a busy group and for the next three hours we cleaned that beach to within an inch of its life. On

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Monk Seal on Kauai beach. Courtesy Kauai Tourist Board.

my ride back to the hotel, I felt a curious, happy glow. I chalked it up to having just cleaned a tiny portion of paradise and, in my small (very small) way, I’d made a contribution to one of the most sacred spots on earth.

No visit is complete without a tour of the 17-mile Napali Coast, a place defined by extraordinary natural beauty. Na pali means “the cliffs,” and it’s easy to see why: Razor-sharp ridges tower above the Pacific revealing beaches, a thick jungle canopy and waterfalls that plunge 4,000 feet to the lush valley below. Hollywood has taken notice here. Many films have showcased the Napali coast, from “Avatar” and “King Kong” to “Pirates of the Caribbean.” I sailed along the coast on a catamaran kitted out with all the modern amenities — a large snorkel platform, fresh water shower, a spacious restroom and a cushioned and shaded seating. We anchored long enough to allow snorkeling and this, then, put the icing on our sumptuous Napali cake.

I was told that to see some of the most iconic sunsets ever — anywhere — I had to set my compass for Princeville, a picturesque location with cliffside views overlooking the sea. In 1869, the area was named in honor of Prince Kamehameha and had its beginnings in sugarcane, later becoming a cattle ranch and developing today into a remarkable resort community. I had the unique pleasure of sitting on a terrace of the St. Regis Princeville Resort with an impeccable view of Makana mountain (also known as Bali Hai) and experiencing a special event that’s celebrated each evening — toasting the sunset with a Champagne-sabering ritual (popping off the cork with a saber). If ever a Kauai sunset could be made more special, this kind of did it, the cherry on top if you will.

Out of the many activities I indulged in, from horseback riding through areas reminiscent of “Jurassic World” (yes, the movie was filmed there) to hiking up Namolokama Mountain to

photograph its cascading waterfalls, my favorite fun pursuit was cycling. Run by Outfitters Kauai, whose claim is “Our business is going downhill,” my ride was indeed downhill for the entire 12 easy, breezy miles (scarcely a car on the road). It took about 45 minutes, sometimes reaching speeds up to 40 mph. I stopped several times to gaze at the green/gray canyons and the sea just beyond.

This cycle journey was enlivened by van driver Ka Pono, who also played “sweep," following the group to make sure no one was left behind.

He told stories of his Samoan ancestors and his having held the title of four-time champion bull rider. It was all downhill and all terrific fun, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I took a stroll along the beach and was startled to see, just a few feet from me, a fat gray monk seal, sunning himself. He was so adorable I wanted to reach out and pet him but not a chance. The Hawaiian monk seal is among the most endangered creatures on earth. Often referred to as “living fossils,” this animal has remained relatively unchanged for more than 15 million years. There are less than 30 of these guys on Kauai and both state and federal laws prohibit touching or harassing them in any way. Another interesting fact: Kauai is relatively insect free.

Whether in dense jungle or arid plains — no bugs.

Another comforting thought: no snakes. I’m not quite sure why, but knowing this made me happy.

No doubt, Kauai astounds with its physical beauty, its geological drama of cliffs, rivers and waterfalls. Yet by far my deepest experience of the Garden Island was from its ancient legends, its history, its archaeology, and above all, its ubiquitous oral tradition. The very meaning of the island’s greeting bears this out: A: Akahai: Kindness, L, Lokahi: Unity, O, Olu’Olu: Pleasing, H, Ha’Aha’A: Humility, A, Ahonui: Patience = Aloha.

Hawaiians believe that the spirit of Aloha starts within each of us — that it starts in the heart.

For more, visit gohawaii.com/kauai.

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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

SHADE SAVVY

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BY MEGHAN MCSHARRY

regory Sahagian is a guy on the go.

He just finished getting his daughter and second-eldest child through the college application process, and it’s the busiest season of the year at his custom residential and commercial awning company, Gregory Sahagian & Son Inc. We first featured Sahagian in the May 2013 issue of WAG. Gregory Sahagian & Son went on to win one of Westfair Communications’ family-owned business awards in 2017. But the business wasn’t always a family affair. Sahagian built it himself from the ground up.

He developed a strong work ethic while working for his father in the Oriental rug business as a young man. Then, he set off on his own path.

“I had many jobs – good ones, too. I worked for an Italian makeup company. I worked for Pirelli,” he says.

Eventually, he shifted to working for a New York-based Italian awning business.

“Every three years they have an international awning expo. So, my first day on the job I was in Stuttgart, Germany. I went there knowing nothing. My boss said to just come, be our liaison between some of the American dealers we’re inviting,” Sahagian says. After the expo, his team went to tour the awning factory in Italy. “My mind was absolutely blown away.”

And that’s where the journey began. In 1990, after working for a couple of years for wholesale awning companies, Sahagian wanted to go out on his own. He saw a demand for awnings, still a relatively new idea, and knew he’d be able to make it in the local market.

“I didn’t really like the direction the business was going in, so I thought, if I can do this for someone else, I can do it for myself,” he recalled.

Gregory Sahagian & Son was established in November of 1990, in the exact same Hartsdale space the company calls home today.

“I started with $25,000, a used

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Shade sails provide elegant-looking sun protection on this rooftop in Brooklyn. Courtesy Gregory Sahagian & Son.

Gregory Sahagian

pickup truck, a couple of hand tools and some word-of-mouth sales because this was before internet advertisements. I had missed the yellow pages. I mean, it was the perfect storm in the wrong direction.”

With the help of a few of his former coworkers, his small business was up and running.

“We struggled a little in the beginning, but we persevered and we were flying high,” Sahagian says.

Now, his two sons have joined the family business. His elder son, Greg Jr., is 31 years old and on track to one day take over the company.

The youngest child, is 15 and just worked his first summer with his father last year.

“He says to me, ‘Dad, we have to change the name of the company. It’s Gregory Sahagian & Sons now.”

Excited to be a part of the family’s profession, Robert hands out his own business cards – but not without scribbling an ‘S’ at the end of the company name on each.

In addition to his two sons, Sahagian’s cousin

Paul “Uncle Paulie” Mazzacane is a part of the GS&S team. Two of Greg’s nephews, Greg and Scott Bartholdi, are full-time school teachers but assist the company on the weekends and during the summer.

Ariella Arias, one of Westfair Communications’ 2018 Milli Award winners, works in the office and is “like a part of the family” to them.

The team members have completed state-of-the-art projects, such as louvered awnings (which are motorized awnings that can transform a pergola into a waterproof structure with the flip of a switch). With all their experience, they are able to identify what will and what will not work with certain property designs.

“Architects and designers are creating unusual spaces where conventional awnings don’t work,” Sahagian explains.

“The concepts are always changing. Every day we get new ideas, new technology, new fabrics.”

And all of that knowledge is being ingrained in his sons, cousin and nephews, ensuring success for the future of Gregory Sahagian & Son(s) Awnings.

For more, visit gssawning.com or call 914949-9877.

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WHAT'S NEW AGAIN

OUTDOOR LIVING

BY KATIE BANSER-WHITTLE

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arm breezes and soft sunshine have always lured people to work, play, socialize and relax in the fresh air.

Happily there is an abundance of furniture and accessories to make plein air living comfortable, convenient and stylish.

Cave dwellers probably sat on a favorite sunny rock or stump near the entrance to their dark homes. The ancient Egyptians made outdoor furniture of swamp grasses. The Greeks and Romans enjoyed garden benches of stone, while in the Middle Ages turf benches were the fashion. In more recent times, the Windsor chair — portable, inexpensive, sturdy — was designed for outdoor use in 18th century English gardens.

Since the Industrial Revolution, outdoor furniture has come into its own. That movement created successive new technologies and materials to make pieces that could withstand a shower or a spell of cold weather as well as an economy that made possible the leisure to enjoy sitting in gardens and parks.

Beginning in the 19th century, massproduced metal furniture and lawn ornaments became widely fashionable. Wrought iron, popular in the early 1800s, was succeeded by less expensive cast iron. The manufacturing process allowed for an endless variety of forms and shapes. Motifs from nature such as fruits and flowers were especially popular.

Admirers of the Victorian and Edwardian look can find fine antique examples of period garden furnishings. In addition to iron, there is also abundant vintage wicker and rattan outdoor furniture. Lightweight, attractive and often whimsical in shape, it frequently has condition issues that can be difficult and expensive to repair.

Garden furniture blossomed anew in the mid-20th century. “Patio living” became an important part of the informal lifestyles that evolved after World War II. Modern technology supplied materials that were more durable and versatile than ever.

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Painted cast iron "Laurel Pattern" bench (late 19th century), attributed to Coalbrookdale Iron Foundry, England. Sold at Skinner Inc. for $3,690.

Courtesy Skinner Inc.

Steel, plastics and aluminum gave designers the freedom to invent new shapes and to create pieces that could be used indoors as well as out.

Among the leading midcentury trendsetters whose pieces are much sought after today were John Salterini, Frank Gehry and Russell Woodward. John Risley was another notable midmod furniture designer whose whimsical figural pieces are much in demand. Walter Lamb’s iconic outdoor furniture of the 1940s and ’50s featured an innovative combination of heavyweight cotton cording used on yachts and bronze tubing from U.S. Navy surplus.

Knoll, founded in 1938 and still active today, produced some of the most famous and influential furniture of American Modernism.

Harry Bertoia, Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen and Marcel Breuer all contributed to Knoll’s sleek functional aesthetic. Many of the designs they created in the 1950s were intended for outdoor as well as indoor use and have remained in continuous production.

Age matters. Pieces produced before 1970 bear labels saying “Knoll Associates.” Later examples are labeled “Knoll International.”

Chairs, ottomans, tables and lounges in every conceivable combination of metal, resin and glass are the mainstays of garden furniture, but there are other choices, too. Durable waterproof

ceramic is an enduring favorite for outdoor use, especially in the form of garden seats. Barrelshaped Chinese examples — traditional blue and white or decorated with richly colored enamels — are the most familiar.

Ceramic garden seats were also made by many American and European potteries. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading English firms such as Mintons, Wedgwood, George Jones and Wardle & Co. produced large numbers of garden seats. As well the traditional cylindrical forms decorated with floral themes, there are those with figures such as sturdy elephants and playful monkeys.

Patios and gardens are outdoor living rooms.

Like indoor spaces these fresh-air retreats ask to be accessorized. In addition to stone, metal, and ceramic statuary, there are garden orbs, armillary spheres, sundials, fountains, niches — the list is practically limitless.

Outdoor living has delighted people throughout history. Furniture and accessories in the styles of every era from antiquity to today are available to be enjoyed in the fresh air. Traditional, Modernist, Futurist — whatever your taste, it can be reflected in the outdoors as well as in the interior of your home.

Visit Skinnerinc.com to explore available garden furniture at auction.

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WONDERFUL DINING

‘FABLED’ DINING STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS

BY ALEESIA FORNI

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f you ask Tonin Veshta why he opened the doors of his restaurant, Aesop’s Fable, he’ll tell you the answer is simple: He wanted to create a restaurant that placed a strong focus on locally sourced, seasonal ingredients.

The result of that vision is Aesop’s Fable, a quaint eatery just steps from the Chappaqua train station. There, Veshta, who has more than two decades of experience in the restaurant world, puts his skills to work by creating the restaurant’s pastas and fresh cheeses.

Opened in the summer of 2017, this cozy spot features deep green walls and oversized chandeliers that mimic candles flickering in the breeze. There’s even a pair of shelves near a tall wooden wine rack, stacked with copies of wellloved children's’ books, thrillers and nonfiction pieces aimed at wine enthusiasts.

But there’s a good chance that on your visit, you won’t have too much time to focus on reading. You’ll be too busy savoring every bite of your meal.

The restaurant’s menu, along with being emblazoned with the lion from one of the Aesop’s Fables, “The Lion and The Mouse,” shows the restaurant’s commitment to vegetables as the stars of each dish. An entire section is devoted to vegan, plant-based recipes, from crispy tofu tacos with pickled onions and picante to a cashew and cilantro curry served over wild rice and kale.

On our visit, a rainy weekend afternoon is instantly brightened by a pair of delicious craft cocktails. A Maple Bourbon Smash is served in a stemmed glass and garnished with a slice of orange. An Aesop’s Mule, a twist on the typical Moscow mule, is a tease for warmer spring weather, with cinnamon and apple-infused vodka.

Our meal starts with fire-roasted cauliflower, both zesty and flavorful,

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A trio of brisket tacos, left, and mushroom waffles topped with poached eggs.

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Crispy calamari with sundried tomatoes and peppers

sprinkled with Parmesan, chili and capers. In another appetizer, calamari is lightly breaded and brightened with sundried tomatoes, olives, pepperoncini (hot chili peppers) and a romesco sauce.

Taking advantage of a wood-fired oven, the restaurant offers a range of pizzas, from a classic Margherita with house-made mozzarella to a cauliflower pizza with ricotta, caramelized onions and truffle.

We switch over to the restaurant’s brunch menu for our main courses. A traditional brunch staple is given a twist, with a Gruyere and mushroom waffle topped with poached eggs and an outrageously tasty hollandaise sauce. Brisket tacos are also given the brunch treatment, topped with red onions, avocado,

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Taking advantage of a woodfired oven, the restaurant offers a range of pizzas,

from a classic Margherita with house-made mozzarella to a cauliflower pizza with ricotta, caramelized onions and truffle.

chopped tomatoes and crème fraîche. Other options include a challah French toast, topped with butter, strawberries and whipped cream.

Cattleman's Eggs are served over a crispy tortilla with braised brisket, cheddar and sriracha, a Thai hot sauce The rear of the restaurant is home to an outdoor dining area, one with a fire pit, wooden seating and plenty of greenery. But the most important aspect of that area is a bountiful garden, where the chef regularly forages for organic tomatoes, herbs and cucumbers, all of which are used in many of the restaurant’s offerings.

“The concept of this restaurant is to bring back the old ways of dining,” Veshta says.

For more, visit aesopsfablerestaurant.com.

OPEN

Monday thrugh Friday from 12:00 pm to 10:00 pm Saturday from 1:00 pm to 10:00 pm Sunday from 2:00 pm to 9:00 pm

2047 Boston Post Road Larchmont, NY (914) 630 7800 www.lennyssteakhouse.com

386 Main Street Armonk, NY (914) 273 8686 www.lennysnorth.com

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RISTORANTE

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DINNER Tuesday Thru Saturday 5:00 pm to 11:00 pm Sunday 2:00 pm to 9:00 pm

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WINE & DINE

‘BOBAL’-ICIOUS

BY DOUG PAULDING

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he email started like this: “Hello Doug, On behalf of the DO (Denominación de Origen) Utiel Requena, we are extending an invitation to visit the region.” Well, I guess I had some homework to do, because I had not yet heard of this Spanish wine region. As it turns out, seven journalists from across the United States were invited to participate in this inaugural wine media trip specific to Utiel-Requena, in the province of Valencia. More media trips are in the works involving other export markets, as they should be.

It is a wine region composed of nine towns, Utiel and Requena being the largest. Utiel-Requena has been quietly making wines for 2,700 years as evidenced by discovered documents, wine amphorae, stone presses, grape seeds and other carbon-dated items related to wine production.

Most of the region’s wine production has been consumed locally or has been used to blend with other wines from outside. As in many wine regions, longtime producers and newly minted makers from other occupations are on a mission to make and promote better wines. Bobal is the grape that defines the region, representing more than 80 % of the vines planted in 34,000 hectares (84,000 acres). It was heavily planted in the early 1900s, largely because it grew well in local soils, needed very little vineyard manipulation and made sturdy, thick-skinned tannic grape clusters that withstand drought, big rains, insects and disease. Bobal shows a great balance between acidity and potential alcohol with the thick skins contributing brilliant color to the wine.

As in other regions of the wine world, recent major improvements include better pruning techniques designed to reduce yields to make a more flavorful grape, moving toward or fully embracing sustainable or organic vineyard practices, understanding optimum harvest times, employing better winery techniques, including modern-day cleanliness and proper yeast selections for the best fermentation of that particular grape type. And, as in other regions of Spain, there is a quality designation on the bottle that means something. I have been to regions of the world where a winemaker can 110

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Julián López Peidro, winemaker at Pago Chozas Carrascal, in his certified organic vineyard in Utiel-Requena, Spain.

call his wine a Grand Riserva, which essentially means “This is my best effort.” In Spain, the terms Crianza, Riserva and Grand Riserva each carry with it quality of fruit requirements and different minimum oak aging times with many producers exceeding the minimum aging requirements.

The Utiel-Requena region has both Continental and Mediterranean influences, meaning the heat and soils of the mainland are tempered by cool breezes from the sea. This allows for an extended hang time of the grapes, which helps to contribute flavor, color, depth and complexity. Red Grapes grown locally are Tempranillo, Garnacha, Cabernet Sauvivgnon, Merlot, Syrah, Pinot Noir, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. For whites you will find Macabeo, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Verdejo, alongside relatively unknown regional grapes, Merserguera, Tardana and Parellada.

More than 6,000 families and 100 wineries are regionally active in grape growing and winemaking. This is an indication of the number of grape growers contributing their harvest to local cooperatives, which have the winemaking equipment necessary to bring wine to market.

As the regional wines become better known and growers seek to create wines from bud to bottle, these numbers will inevitably change. We had the opportunity to meet and taste the wines of Clos de San Juan, a project of the Valsangiacomo family that involves marrying old vines with Bobal grapes. The Valsangiacomo family is new to the area with a long history of winemaking. We met Marta Valsangiacomo, the young matriarch of the family. She told me over lunch, “We came to the area to make wine and explored our options. We found a winemaking cooperative and entered into a deal to rent first with an option to buy, which we have now done.” They have a small hotel nearing

completion. And they still employ all the growers from the cooperative days. Next year, they expect to earn their organic wine certification. And the wines are wonderful.

The Pago Chozas Carrascal winery was initiated by the parents of Julián López Peidro, who came to the wine world with euros from a successful cosmetics business. Julian was installed as the winemaker and visionary to grow three white grape and eight red grape varieties. This custombuilt bodegas produces 200,000 bottles per year, along with a very flavorful and light peppery olive oil. It is certified organic and its Bobals show a spiciness and freshness with hints of balsamic and an earthiness akin to forest floor. Dominio de la Vega is another multigenerational winery, situated in an 18th-century château on the Santiago de Compostela, the Christian pilgrimage route that has the city of the same name – home of the Cathedral of St. James the Great – has its destination. We tasted Dominio’s Bobal wines from 2006, 2012 and 2016 and all were full-bodied, showing dark fruit with spiciness, cinnamon, aromatics and the lusciousness of ripe Bobal.

Several of the wines we tried are currently in the U.S., while some producers are looking for importers.

I’m not sure how available any of these wines are in local stores but I would bet some of the bigger stores have or could find a Bobal or two for you to try.

One producer told me, young and underripe Bobal tends to have a ripe Pinot Noir quality. I found the fully ripe Bobal to show a combination of flavors and mouthfeel of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with a touch of Monastrel. Bobal is big and full of ripe dark fruit flavors. It is structured and layerd with a long finish. Look for it. Ask for it. It’s Boba-luscious. And Boba-licious.

Write me at doug@dougpaulding.com.

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Stop in and experience the charm of this historic eatery, a neighborhood favorite since the Roaring ‘20s! Enjoy our cozy tavern where it’s always lively and cheerful or relax on our patio overlooking our horseshoe and bocce ball courts.

Live music on Saturdays and some Fridays On Sundays, enjoy outdoor live music from 4 to 8:30 Happy Hour Daily from 4-6 and again from 9-11 on Thurs, Fri and Saturday nights.

105 Somerstown Turnpike, Katonah, NY (Corner of Rt. 100 and Rt. 35) www.muscoottavern.com 914 • 232 • 2800

WEAR

GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT

BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA

w

hen it comes to fragrance and skincare, botanical elements continue to be a hot trend. And they are certainly key factors in the products we recently sampled from Beauty Made in Italy, a program sponsored by the Italian government and Cosmetica Italia to promote these products in the American market.

Perlier, an anti-aging skincare line, is all about the active ingredients in honey, flowers, plants and fruit. The luscious Shea Butter & Pure Pear Rich Body Cream features 25% shea butter that is enriched with pear extract to moisturize the skin, while the equally luscious Shea Butter & Cotton Blossom Rich Body Cream uses 25% shea butter and cotton blossom extract to give the skin a velvety texture and a crisp linen scent. One colleague who tried the pear body cream said she was captivated by its sweet, creamy fragrance. “Forget applying it,” she said. “I could just eat it.” Perlier.com And speaking of eating, who doesn’t enjoy the pungent taste of truffles? (We’re talking the rare mushroom-like superfood that graces eggs or pasta, not the chocolates, although those are great, too.)

Founded in 1952, Skin&Co Roma is a family-owned beauty business in Umbria with a passion for truffles. On the Skin&Co truffle farm, the family harvests the luxurious black winter truffle used in its skincare products. Sabatino Tartufi Truffles is another division of this family business, selling truffles globally since 1911. This dedication to truffles and the land has led beauty mavens like Oprah Winfrey to visit the family farms every year.

Try the Truffle Therapy Whipped Cleansing Cream, with sweet almond oil, perfect for those who want to cleanse their skin gently and hydrate as well. Skin&Co's newest product, the Truffle Therapy Radiant Dew Mist, is

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designed to rebalance the skin's pH level, tighten pores and set your makeup. It lets you glow and go. skinandcoroma.com.

Jusbox is a line of cutting-edge fragrances — founded by the underground brother-sister duo known as V-Monkeys, who have created fragrances for such international fashion brands as CoSTUME NATIONAL — that is cleverly inspired by music. In Dominique Ropion’s Feather Supreme, mandarin, bergamot and apple joins rose, ylang-ylang, jasmine, tuberose,

From left: Shea Butter & Cotton Blossom Rich Body Cream, Truffle Therapy Radiant Dew Mist and Feather Supreme. Courtesy Beauty Made in Italy.

patchouli heart, labdanum and musk in a dance of soulfulness and strength. Think “the Queen of Soul,” Aretha Franklin. Like that vocal powerhouse, the powdery, intoxicating Feather Supreme commands R-E-S-P-E-C-T. jusboxperfumes.com.

Pledge To Reduce Waist This Year.

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Medical Director: Mitchell Ross, MD, Board Certified Dermatologist Catherine Curtin, APRN Amanda Pucci, APRN • Shilpa Desai, PA P

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GLOW-GETTER

BY MEGHAN MCSHARRY

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he warm weather is here and, now more than ever, we’re looking for ways to make our skin glow.

Enter Korean-inspired skincare brand Glow Recipe, founded by Christine Chang and Sarah Lee in 2014 after the pair realized Korean beauty was only slowly emerging in the United States. Korean beauty, commonly referred to as K-Beauty, has since become a major influence on American skincare, with K-Beauty products putting priority on using good-for-you ingredients that help better your skin in the long run. K-Beauty, including Glow Recipe, has won the hearts of beauty influencers and major retailers such as Sephora.

The brand was kind enough to send over one of its cult favorites, the Watermelon Glow Pink Juice Moisturizer, as well as a new favorite, the Watermelon Glow Ultra-Fine Mist.

Both smell like watermelon candy, yet the scent is subtle enough that it fades

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after application and is unlikely to bother those sensitive to fragrance. The Watermelon Glow Pink Juice Moisturizer has a lightweight, gel-like formula that smoothes over the skin leaving it with a hydrated glow. Containing watermelon, soothing botanicals and hyaluronic acid, this moisturizer is suitable for any skin type or texture, whether you experience dry or oily skin.

The Watermelon Glow Ultra-Fine Mist is just that — ultra fine. Unlike some of the top facial mists on the market, there is absolutely no unpleasant squirting of the liquid onto your face. Instead, the mist forms a gentle fog that is excellent at setting makeup and giving you a refreshing boost of hydration on a warm day. In addition to ingredients such as vitamins, watermelon extract and hyaluronic acid, the Watermelon Glow UltraFine Mist also contains hibiscus flower AHA (alpha hydroxy acid) to smooth the skin’s texture gently, also prepping it for makeup application.

Pick up the Watermelon Glow Pink Juice

The new Glow Recipe Watermelon Glow Ultra-Fine Mist pairs perfectly with the moisturizer for adding a boost of hydration.

Moisturizer and Watermelon Glow Ultra-Fine Mist at your local Sephora or from Glow Recipe’s own site (and make sure to check out the rest of their curated selection of K-Beauty products) as you get glowing for summer.

For more, visit glowrecipe.com.

SPORTS. CULTURE. SEX.

Provocative posts on power thegamesmenplay.com

WELL

RX FOR HAIR DISTRESS

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BY MEGHAN MCSHARRY

ow many times have you looked at the drain after a shower and been shocked at the amount of hair you’ve shed? Shedding is normal — indeed, most people shed between 50 and 100 strands a day, which appears like a lot especially for women with long hair — but when shedding starts to increase, it can be cause for alarm, and sometimes a sign of an underlying health concern.

Enter Medi Tresse, a medical practice specializing in female hair rejuvenation, which opened its Westchester County location in Scarsdale 14 months ago. During a recent visit, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mark DiStefano, MD, medical director of the Scarsdale office, to learn more about the causes of female hair loss as well as the cutting-edge treatments Medi Tresse offers its patients in the tristate area.

DiStefano, a hair transplant surgeon and leading specialist in hair rejuvenation, has treated more than 15,000 patients throughout his career, and, more specifically, around 2,500 women for hair loss. DiStefano — a member of the American Board of Hair Restoration Surgery, the International Board of Hair Restoration Surgery and the European Society of Hair Restoration — said that some 20 years ago, surgery was the main treatment option for hair restoration. Now, with a number of new tools and treatments, many women experiencing hair loss can get the results they’re looking for without going under the knife.

“We’re here to help people who aren’t comfortable with it,” he said, noting that hair loss can be a sensitive topic. “It’s a very embarrassing, emotional thing for women.

“Females don’t want to sit in a waiting room with a bunch of bald men.” Medi Tresse was created with women in mind, tailoring the treatment process to each patient.

What sets Medi Tresse apart from a med spa is that a nurse practitioner or physician diagnoses the client’s condition and carries out treatment. A med spa will not necessarily be able to identify alopecia, female pattern hair loss

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Medi Tresse staff at the Scarsdale office. From left, Mark DiStefano, M.D.; Antonella Montiverdi; Mary Wendel, M.D.; and Kimberly Pryslak, NP. Courtesy Medi Tresse.

or an immunodeficiency disorder, but DiStefano can. He noted that it is important to schedule a consultation as soon as you begin to notice thinning of the hair. Often times we don’t notice the thinning until more than 50% of the hair is lost and, the sooner you begin treatment, the better results you may see.

Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) treatment has recently become widely known for its effectiveness in treating a variety of issues ranging from tendon problems such as tennis elbow to hair loss, and the injections are now even being used in facials (more commonly known to some as the “vampire” facial). PRP has also become one of the most popular and most successful hair-loss therapy treatments offered at Medi Tresse.

Over the past year, Medi Tresse has developed a new variation on the PRP treatment called OPC, or Optimum Platelet Concentration. OPC generates more platelets than traditional PRP and, when injected back into the body, helps to promote angiogenesis, which is the process in

which new blood vessels form from preexisting vessels. Due to this optimal number of platelets, the OPC method has shown successful results in promoting hair growth in patients.

The laser cap is the other most commonly used treatment at Medi Tresse. Patients are fitted with caps that use low-laser light therapy, which they wear for a half-hour a day to promote hair growth.

The cap has shown striking results, especially when used in conjunction with PRP treatment.

Added DiStefano, “Our treatment protocol is the most up-to-date out of anybody.”

Just because one treatment doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean the other won’t, or that they will not be successful when used simultaneously.

DiStefano and the staff at Medi Tresse are committed to leading you through the process and getting you back to your most healthy, confident self, with many patients seeing results within three to six months.

For more, visit meditresse.com or call (914) 704-3070.

MOM, MADRE, MAMMA, MAMAN, MÈRE… Give mom the Mother’s Day she deserves with some of the region’s finest gifts and services.

FASHIONABLE MOM BLOOMINGDALE’S 175 Bloomingdale Road White Plains, NY 10605 914-684-6300 bloomingdales.com CHURCHILLS OF MOUNT KISCO 41 S. Moger Ave. Mount Kisco, NY 10549 914-666-4800 MARY JANE DENZER The Ritz-Carlton, Westchester 7 Renaissance Square White Plains, NY 10601 914-323-0330 mjdenzer.com

NEIMAN MARCUS The Westchester 2 E. Maple Ave. White Plains, NY 10601 914-428-2000 neimanmarcus.com RALPH LAUREN 265 Greenwich Ave. Greenwich, CT 06830 203-869-2054 ralphlauren.com SAKS FIFTH AVENUE 205 Greenwich Ave. Greenwich, CT 06830 203-862-5300 saksfifthavenue.com

PAMPERED MOM CASTLE HOTEL & SPA 400 Benedict Ave. Tarrytown, NY 10591 914-631-1980 castlehotelandspa.com GREENWICH MEDICAL SKINCARE AND LASER SPA 1285 E. Putnam Ave. Riverside, CT 06878 203-779-6309 645 Post Road Westport, CT 203-779-6309 1132 Wilmot Road Scarsdale, NY 10583 914-722-6869 greenwichmedicalspa.com

OASIS DAY SPA 25 Stanley Ave. Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522 914-409-1900 oasisdayspanyc.com TRANSFOME AESTHETICS & REJUVENATION 7-11 South Broadway Suite 100 White Plains, NY 10601 914-723-4900 formeurgentcare.com TRANQUILITY SPA 917 Central Ave. Scarsdale, NY 10583 914-713-0066 tranquilityspa.com

MOST SPECIAL MOM BLOSSOM FLOWERS 275 Mamaroneck Ave. White Plains, NY 10605 914-304-5374 blossomflower.com BRUCE MUSEUM 1 Museum Drive Greenwich CT 06830 203-869-0396 brucemuseum.org GREENWICH POLO CLUB 1 Hurlingham DR Greenwich, CT 06831 203-561-1639 greenwichpoloclub.com LENNY’S SEAFOOD & STEAKHOUSE 2047 Boston Post Road Larchmont, NY 10538 914-630-7800 lennyssteakhouse.com

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PEPE INFINITI 300 Central Ave. White Plains, NY 10606 914-750-4117 pepeinfiniti.com SERAFINA AT THE IC 1620 Newfield Ave. Stamford, CT 06905 203-322-6950 serafinaic.com WESTCHESTER PHILHARMONIC 123 Main St. White Plains, NY 10601 914-682-3707 westchesterphil.org Westport Arts Center 51 Riverside Ave. Westport, CT 06880 203-222-7070 westportartscenter.org

WHITE PLAINS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 11 City Place White Plains, NY 10601 914-328-1600 wppac.com

BEJEWELED MOM BETTERIDGE 239 Greenwich Ave. Greenwich, CT 06830 203-869-0124 betteridge.com D’ERRICO JEWELERS 509 Central Park Ave. Scarsdale, NY 10583 800-325-3935 westchesterjewelers.com LENOX JEWELERS 2379 Black Rock Turnpike Fairfield, CT 06825 203-374-6157 lenox-jewelers.com

MANFREDI JEWELERS 121 Greenwich Ave. Greenwich, CT 06830 203-622-1414 manfredijewels.com R&M WOODROW JEWELERS 21 Purchase St. Rye, NY 10580 914-967-0464 woodrowjewelers.com SHREVE CRUMP & LOW 125 Greenwich Ave. Greenwich, CT 06830 203-622-6205 shrevecrumpandlow.com WILSON & SON JEWELERS 18 Chase Road Scarsdale, NY 10583 914-723-0327 29 S. Moger Ave., Mount Kisco, NY 10549 914-241-4500 wilsonandsonjewelers.com

Mother May I.

www.BlossomFlower.com 914.304.5376 877.458.1709 MAY 2019

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David Erstein, M.D., says allergies needn’t make us sad to be in the great outdoors.

AHH…AHH … AHH-CHOO!

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BY DAVID ERSTEIN, M.D.

ay finds Mother Nature — and allergies — in full bloom.

Allergens — substances that trigger an immune response even though they do not pose an actual risk — can affect a wide range of the body’s systems, including the skin, digestive tract, respiratory pathways, sinuses and eyes.

Extreme reactions can be life threatening.

And less extreme ones can seriously interfere with people’s quality of life. Indeed, allergies are the sixth leading cause of chronic disease in this country.”

Warm-weather triggers are not limited to plants and pollen. Picnics at the park and beach days, fun-time activities, also increase our

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exposure to insects, lotions and sunshine that can cause allergic reactions.

With drugstores offering a dizzying array of anti-allergy products, I want to emphasize the importance of being aware of the range of allergies and the need for customized treatment.

With all this in mind, here are six tips to stay protected from seasonal allergies.

Pay attention to the particular pollen: We’ve all heard of hay fever, but the reality is that there are lots of pollen varieties, at different seasonal periods — spring versus summer versus fall — and also from plant to plant. An allergist can test to see which pollen is causing a patient’s reaction and customize a targeted treatment plan.

Leaves of three? Let them be: Poison ivy,

poison oak and poison sumac all carry the oil urushiol, which can cause an extremely itchy raised rash, a form of allergic contact dermatitis. Serious reactions can include swelling and require medical attention. It’s helpful to learn what these plants look like.

Poison ivy has characteristic three-leaved stems. And it’s important to remember that pets, clothes and garden tools can pick up the oil and be sources of exposure. Burning the plants puts the oil airborne and can cause serious reactions to our airways.

Play it cool — and watch out for the sun: Heat and sweat can exacerbate skin conditions, such as eczema, and also can trigger hives. And skincare products — makeup, lotions — can react to the sun, causing photoallergic rashes. Likewise, some are sensitive to chemical-based sunscreen. They may react to the sunscreen itself or when the product is exposed to the sun. For those who are sensitive, mineral-based products with titanium dioxide or zinc oxide are a safer bet.

Take insect allergies seriously: It’s normal to experience swelling in the area of an insect sting. But once someone has a more generalized response — swelling away from the sting or other systemic symptoms — it indicates a much more serious allergy. People who experience a first-time bee, wasp or fire ant reaction require evaluation, because it is likely to happen again and can be severe, including life-threatening anaphylactic shock. Those with severe allergies need to carry two injectable epinephrine doses and immediately seek follow-up medical care and observation.

Allergies still bad? Talk with your doctor about immunotherapy: Immunotherapy is an extremely effective means of managing debilitating pollen allergies or dangerous insect allergies. Typically, the patient receives a series of injections that gradually introduce the allergen, retraining a healthy immune response. More recently, we’ve had similar success with sublingual treatments for certain pollen allergies.

Pre-vacation to-dos: Check in with your allergist, too: Packing for that summer trip should include allergy meds and, depending on timing, a pre-trip checkup. The same goes for parents sending kids off to camp — as well as letting camp staff know of any allergies.

Warmer days shouldn’t cause allergy anxieties.

We have effective means of alleviating allergies so that everyone can enjoy the season.

David Erstein, M.D., is board-certified in allergy and immunology and internal medicine, with Advanced Dermatology PC. For more, visit advanceddermatologypc.com.

Discover IL FORNO Italian Kitchen & Bar Where Good Vibes meet Italian Inspired Cuisine!

Enjoy a Classic & Crafty Cocktail.

Have your perfect experience!

LUNCH AND DINNER Tuesday - Sunday 343 Route 202, Somers, NY 10589 (914) 277-7575 www.ilfornosomers.com

Private Events and Catering

14TH ANNUAL

Honoring: Susan Fox President and CEO of White Plains Hospital May 8, 2019 Tappan Hill Mansion, Tarrytown, NY Featuring Emcee: Janice Dean Meteorologist for Fox & Friends To register or donate, visit womenonthemovenyc.org.

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The author with golf and fitness expert Brandon Gaydorus. Courtesy Brandon Gaydorus.

GETTING INTO THE SWING OF A NEW SEASON

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BY GIOVANNI ROSELLI t’s that time of year where spring has sprung along with an opportunity for golf enthusiasts to hit the links once again. Golf and fitness expert Brandon Gaydorus has spent the last eight years working with golfers of all ages and experience. He is a certified strength and conditioning specialist, PGA Class A professional, PGM (profession golf management) graduate of Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and has a master’s in exercise science from Concordia University, St. Paul in Minnesota. I met Brandon several years ago and he has been a colleague of mine ever since. For this month’s feature article, I asked him to share some of his extensive knowledge with the readers: What is your main focus when training golfers?

“Whether they are high-level competitor golfers or just looking to play with their friends in their weekly game, the goal is to keep them on the course moving well,

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feeling well and playing to their potential.

“First, I focus on building a strong foundation for golfers through functional strength training and mobility/stability work based on their needs.

I take golfers through a functional movement screen and then if needed, we will go through a golf-specific movement screen, and then a power testing screen to see where the golfer needs to focus more to gain distance. A strong foundation is an important and essential step for long-term speed changes and to help ensure that golfers stay healthy while training.

“After the foundation is built, I then focus on trying to make golfers better athletes, through more dynamic movements, various coordination exercises and then by, of course, bumping up their strength-training work.

“Look at someone like Brooks Koepka, on top of golf he probably could have played football and baseball at very high levels.

“Once those two key elements are set (foundation and athlete), then I focus on golf-

specific exercises. This could depend on their goals, what their golf pro wants and what they are physically capable of doing. This is a very fun phase, but should not be rushed into.”

What is the best advice you can give for golf prep and pre-round exercises?

“There are many different exercises that can benefit golfers. To simplify things, the body moves in three different planes of motion, which are the sagittal plane (forward/backward), transverse plane (rotation) and frontal plane (side to side). When warming up, try to pick exercises that make sure the body is moving smoothly in all three planes of motion.”

Why is it so important to have a team when trying to be a better golfer?

“Well, golf has three main components: the game itself, the mental game and your physical health. It’s important to find professionals who can help you in those fields. Who you pick is up to you.

“When looking for someone to help you play better golf, I recommend finding a teaching professional who teaches 20 hours or more a week or a PGA professional who teaches 10 hours or more a week. It’s important to find someone who has seen and worked with a lot of golfers. The golf professional should be able to help with various parts of your game, including the mental game.

“When looking for someone to help your mental game, look for someone who understands golf and the ups and downs that golfers face.

Books are a good resource for improving your mental game if you can’t find someone locally.

“When looking for someone to help out your physical health, I recommend finding a trainer who is TPI (Titleist Performance Institute)certified and has his CSCS (Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist) or a degree in exercise science.

“When looking for someone to help out with nutrition, I recommend finding a Precision Nutrition-certified professional or reading the book “Hole-In-One Nutrition” by Robert Yang.

“When looking for a medical professional (chiropractor or physical therapist), I’d recommend finding someone who is SFMA (Selective Functional Movement Screen)certified.”

Where can people find you?

“I do in-person personal training in Greenwich.

You can also find my book, “The Ultimate In-Home Golf Fitness Program,” on Amazon.”

For more, visit bggoldandfitness.com.

Reach Giovanni on Twitter @GiovanniRoselli and at his website, GiovanniRoselli.com.

PET OF THE MONTH

BOUNCY BISCUIT PHOTOGRAPH BY SEBASTIÁN FLORES

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f you like pooches with plenty of pep, then you’ll love Biscuit, a 1-year-old Pomeranian-Corgi mix who’s a regular jumping bean.

Rescued from a high-kill shelter, Biscuit has never met a stranger she didn’t like.

She needs some basic obedience training, but other than that you couldn’t find a better pup for a family or someone looking for a new best buddy who will be their little shadow and stick by their side. We know someone’s going to hit the jackpot with this spirited lass.

To meet Biscuit, visit the SPCA of Westchester at 590 N. State Road in Briarcliff Manor.

Founded in 1883, the SPCA is a no-kill shelter and is not affiliated with the ASPCA. The SPCA is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays.

To learn more, call 914- 941-2896 or visit spca914.org.

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PET PORTRAITS

Fala with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House Study, Dec. 20, 1941.

Courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

A FONDNESS FOR FALA

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BY ROBIN COSTELLO his month we pay tribute to “Murray the Outlaw of Falahill,” or simply “Fala”as he was more commonly known to his adoring fans. The beloved Scottish Terrier of Eleanor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fala was arguably the most famous pet that ever lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A celebrity in his own right, Fala had his own “secretary” on the White House staff who answered the many thousands of cards and letters he received annually.

As the constant and devoted companion of FDR, Fala travelled the globe extensively and met many world leaders, including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho. He dutifully charmed and entertained them with the tricks he had learned as a puppy, the most impressive of which was curling his lip into a smile. Fala loved to travel alongside the president

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on trips by train, car or boat. He was often photographed on these excursions which added to his growing fame.

Fala was considered an unbeatable political weapon. In a September 1944 Democratic presidential campaign speech, Roosevelt addressed accusations that he had purposely left Fala behind on the Aleutian Islands while on tour there and sent a U.S. Navy destroyer to retrieve him at an exorbitant cost to the taxpayers: “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family don't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch and, being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I'd left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find

him — at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or 20 million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself ... But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog.”

After FDR’s death in 1945, Fala went on to live with the widowed Eleanor at Val-Kill in Hyde Park. It was a well-deserved retirement for the pup. He spent his final days chasing squirrels and playing in bucolic pastures and lived to a ripe age of 12.

We are happy to report that the memory of Fala lives on. A beautiful statue of him sitting beside FDR is featured in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. He is the only presidential pet to be so honored.

They say there are dogs in heaven, so no doubt Fala is sitting at the feet of his beloved master.

Happy 79th Birthday, Fala.

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A GREENWICH HOSPITAL ALLIANCE

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WHERE & WHEN

Through May 15 Bedford Playhouse will host a “Game of Thrones” party series for the eighth and final season of the HBO hit of fantasy royal intrigue. The viewing parties, which span six Sundays, will screen new episodes up until the series finale with costume contests and cocktail drinks. 8 p.m., 633 Old Post Road, Bedford; 914-234-6704, bedfordplayhouse.org.

Through July 12 The Gordon Parks Foundation presents “Jamel Shabazz: Honor and Dignity,” a solo exhibition of the work of documentary photographer. For the past 40 years, Shabazz has documented the cultural vibrance of New York City’s communities of color. This exhibition offers a concise view of Shabazz’s wide-ranging work, from photographs of musicians and teenagers with hip-hop style to members of the military and participants in religious and political gatherings.

Times vary, 48 Wheeler Ave., Pleasantville; 914-2382619, gordonparksfoundation.org.

May 2 through Aug 15 “Gay Gatherings: Philip Johnson, David Whitney and the Modern Arts,” an exhibit at the Philip Johnson-designed Glass House that explores the interactions among eight gay men who profoundly shaped 20th-century artistic culture. 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Mondays, Thursdays through Saturdays, 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. Sundays, The Glass House, 199 Elm St., New Canaan; 203-275-7565, theglasshouse.org.

May 2 Opening reception for “Uncovered: What She Hides,” a monthlong pop-up exhibit by nine women artists that exposes works frequently hidden and the creative responses and expressions that are often kept at bay. Opening reception starts at 6 p.m., Exhibition runs through June 1. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays, Former Calypso Space, 1 Main St., Westport; 203-247-3910, uncoveredwestport.com.

Greenwich Arts Council’s annual “Art to the Avenue” successfully mixes art and commerce, turning Greenwich Avenue and adjacent streets into a strolling gallery. Musicians and performers entertain visitors, while stores host receptions. All art is for sale and remains in place through Memorial Day. An after-party at the Greenwich Arts Council features music by Yuri Juarez, 5:30 to 8:00 p.m., Greenwich Avenue, Greenwich; 203-862-6750, greenwichartscouncil.org.

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The BluePath Service Dogs' third annual walkathon will be held May 18 in Yorktown Heights.

May 3, 4, 10, 11 and 12

May 3 and 5

Stepinac Theatre’s national high school premiere of the Broadway musical, “A Bronx Tale.” Set on the stoops of the Bronx in the 1960s, a young man, Calogero, is caught between Lorenzo, the father he loves, and Sonny, the mob boss he’d love to be.

Gabriella Palminteri — the daughter of Chazz Palminteri, who wrote the book for the musical version of his original play —stars in a leading role. All performances are at 7 p.m. except May 12, which is a special Mother’s Day matinee at 2 p.m. Stepinac High School’s Major Bowes Auditorium, 950 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains; 914-946-4800, ext. 200, theatre@stepinac.org.

Legendary singer, songwriter, activist and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Joan Baez will end her “Fare Thee Well” tour with two nights at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester. Baez will perform songs from her new studio album, “Whistle Down the Wind,” as well as a selection of longtime audience favorites. 8 p.m., 149 Westchester Ave.; 877-987-6487, capitoltheater.com.

May 3 The Westport Arts Center presents Trio Solisti. Violinist Maria Bachmann, cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, and pianist Fabio Bidini perform Beethoven, Brahms, Copland and Bernstein. 8 p.m., 51 Riverside Ave., Westport; 203-2227070, westportartscenter.org.

Heather Gaudio Fine Art hosts an opening reception for “Valeria Nascimento: BLOOM.” Running through June 22, the exhibition combines the artist’s delicate porcelain sculptures, which capture the beauty, essence and ephemerality of nature, with two large-scale installations. Reception starts at 5 p.m., exhibit runs 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays, 66 Elm St., New Canaan; 203-801-9590, heathergaudiofineart.com.

May 3 through 5 “Crafts at Lyndhurst” will showcase more than 275 artists and artisans from across the country who will be selling their contemporary creations. This weekend will be filled with art and shopping experiences for the entire family, including interactive kid’s activities, gourmet foods, handson demonstrations and more. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, 635 S. Broadway, Tarrytown; 845-331-7900, lyndhurst.org.

May 4 Emelin Theatre’s “Dance Off the Grid” program presents an evening of multiple performances showcasing the diversity of today’s dance landscape, followed by a Q&A with the artists about what inspires their work. The event features the contemporary ballet of Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance and the abstract dance of Keigwin & Company, as well as Mamaroneck dancer, choreographer and teacher Megan Williams. 8 p.m., 153 Library Lane, Mamaroneck; 914-698-0098, emelin.org.

WHERE & WHEN

May 4 and 5

May 10

May 16

The Taghkanic Chorale presents Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” under the baton of Jason Tramm with 75 singers, two pianos, a children’s choir, and full array of percussion. The program also includes Norman Dello Joio’s “A Jubilant Song,” Charles Ives’ “Psalm 90” and Samuel Barber’s “Reincarnations.” Reception immediately following, 8 pm Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday, The Holy Name of Mary Church, 114 Grand St., Croton-on-Hudson; 800-838-3006, taghkanicchorale.org.

Westchester Photographic Society presents “Alfred Fayemi - On the Road: Life on the Streets in Africa,” featuring images from his documentary work there. 8 p.m., at Westchester Community College, Technology Building, Room 107, Parking Lot 11, Valhalla; 914-827-5353, wpsphoto.org.

ArtsWestchester invites audiences to its annual ArtsBash party. The evening features cocktails and tastings from more than 20 restaurants, open artist studios and “Modern Families,“ a photography exhibit exploring the diverse faces and relationships that represent “family” from the points of view of 11 regional photographers. 6 to 9 p.m., 31 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains; 914-428-4220, artsw.org.

May 4 through 19 Axial Theatre presents the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “August: Osage County.” This dark comedy tells what happens when three sisters return to the home of their acid-tongued, pill-popping, cancer patient mother to attend the funeral of their father and spend time there for several weeks thereafter.

Times vary, St. John’s Episcopal Church, 8 Sunnyside Ave., Pleasantville; 914-286-7680, axialtheatre.org.

May 5 Beechwood Arts and Innovation holds its latest Arts Immersion Salon on the theme of journeys. The salon will explore journeys through music, visual art, sculpture, performance, film and culinary arts. 3 p.m., 52 Weston Road, Westport; 203-226-9462, beechwoodarts.org.

Pelham Art Center’s “Celebrate Ghana!” Folk Art Festival will introduce audiences to Ghanaian culture through traditional folklore, song, dance and hands-on art activities. The event will feature storytelling by award-winning performer Therese Folkes Plair, followed by a traditional drum and dance performance by Dani Criss and workshops exploring Adinkra symbols with teaching artist Becky Mills.

1:30 to 4 p.m., 155 Fifth Ave.; 914-738-2525, pelhamartcenter.org.

May 5 and 12 The Play Group Theatre presents Roald Dahl’s “Matilda,” a musical about a little girl with extraordinary gifts. Based on Dahl’s novel of the same name, this new musical put imagination, wit and heart at the forefront of this story. 2 and 7 p.m., 1 N. Broadway, Suite 111, White Plains; 914-946-4433, playgroup.org.

May 9 Gilles Clement Gallery hosts an opening reception for a solo exhibit “Robert Mars: These Important Years,” which celebrates the commonplace objects, brands and icons of an America long passed, in a thoroughly modern constructed manner. Reception starts at 7 p.m., exhibition continues through June 6. 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 45 East Putnam Ave., Greenwich; 203-489-3556, gclementgallery.com.

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May 11 The Garden Club of Irvington, Hudson Valley Rock Garden Society, Care of Trees and Homegrown Nurseries present their annual Pre-Mother’s Day Garden Fair and Plant Sale Unique plants for your garden and containers, including vegetables and native plants, deer-resistant and shade plants and expert advice. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Lyndhurst Greenhouses, 635 S. Broadway, Tarrytown; 914-589-5589, gcirvington.org.

Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum celebrates the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution with its exhibition, “From Corsets to Suffrage: Victorian Women Trailblazers,” showing local, regional, and national efforts to win the vote for women. Opening reception starts at 5:30 p.m., Exhibit runs through Nov. 3. Noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays to Sundays, 295 West Avenue, Norwalk; 203-838-9799, lockwoodmathewsmansion.com.

May 11 The Bruce Museum’s “Summer with the Averys [Milton | Sally | March]” exhibition focuses on a moment of heightened creativity for the family, as they escaped from their hectic lives in New York and were inspired by the bucolic and sometimes unfamiliar settings they encountered on their frequent travels. The exhibition runs through Sept.

1. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays to Sundays, 1 Museum Drive, Greenwich; 203-413-6537, brucemuseum.org.

Connecticut Ballet presents its spring production of “Old, New, Borrowed & Blue!,” curated by artistic director Brett Raphael. Pre-show reception starts at 6:30 p.m., show begins at 7:30 p.m., Palace Theatre, 61 Atlantic St., Stamford; 203-325-4466, palacestamford.org.

Baroque chamber ensemble REBEL will offer a tribute to Mother's Day and spring with music by Telemann, Vivaldi, Van Eyck, Schwartzkopff and Schmelzer performed on period instruments at the Bedford Presbyterian Church, 4 p.m., Village Green (routes 22 and 172); 914-734-9537, rebel baroque.com.

The 32nd annual Bruce Museum Gala, “An Evening in the Enchanted Garden,” is the museum’s signature event of the year, a black-tie event featuring cocktails, dinner, live and silent auctions and dancing to the sounds of the popular New York City-based “On the Move” band. The evening raises critical funds that support the Bruce’s ongoing art and science exhibitions and educational programs. 6 p.m., Greenwich Country Club, 19 Doubling Road; 203413-6745, brucemuseum.org.

May 15 In “Anka Sings Sinatra — His Songs, My Songs, My Way,” Paul Anka blends Anka favorites (“Diana,” “Puppy Love,” “Put Your Head on my Shoulder”) as well as songs from his inspiration, Frank Sinatra. Tickets include a preshow cocktail party with wine tasting and appetizers. 8 p.m., Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 E. Ridge Road; 203-4385795, ridgefieldplayhouse.org.

May 18 The Norwalk Symphony closes its 79th season with Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. The orchestra will be joined by guest soloists and the Mendelssohn Choir of Connecticut under the direction of Carole Ann Maxwell.

8 p.m., Norwalk Concert Hall, 125 East Ave.; 203-9566771, norwalksymphony.org.

BluePath Service Dogs’ third annual Walkathon — Join the “BluePath” to unlocking life's potential for children and families touched by autism. The Walkathon will raise funds in support of the nonprofit’s mission to provide those in need with autism service dogs, offering safety, companionship and opportunities for independence.

Food, games and fun. Friendly dogs welcomed. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Lot 4 of FDR State Park, 2957 Crompond Road, Yorktown Heights; 845-377-0477, bluepathservicedogs. org/walkathon.

Jacques Pépin.

The Stamford Museum and Nature Center hosts its annual spring benefit, “An Evening with Jacques Pépin,” which includes the opportunity to meet the noted French culinary icon and enjoy a Pépin-inspired four-course dinner, paired with superb wines, prepared by chef Timothy LaBant of the Schoolhouse at Cannondale in Wilton. 6 p.m. 39 Scofieldtown Road, Stamford; 203-977-6523, stamfordmuseum.org.

Presented by ArtsWestchester (artswestchester.org) and The Cultural Alliance of Fairfield County (culturalalliancefc.org/FCBuzz-events).

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BCA IN D.C. On April 10, Breast Cancer Alliance (BCA) headquartered in Greenwich, presented a medical symposium and luncheon at The Hay-Adams in Washington, D.C. Leading breast cancer experts in the area highlighted new advances in breast cancer treatments. The event was moderated by CNN’s Michelle Kosinski, senior diplomatic correspondent covering the State Department, and included Sharad Goyal, M.D. (George Washington University) Kathleen Harnden, M.D. (Inova Schar,) David Song, M.D. and Veronique Weinstein (MedStar Georgetown.) BCA’s partnership with D.C.-area institutions not only helps to educate women and men in the capital region but also brings support to underserved women’s breast health needs in the local community. Photographs by Rodney Choice/ AnnieWatt.com.

1. Colette Pike, Linda, Courie and Justine Weissenborn 2. David Song, M.D., Michelle Kosinski, Kathleen Harnden, M.D.,Veronique Weinstein, Yonni Wattenmaker and Sharad Goyal, M.D. 3. Eleni Tousimis and Alexandra de Borchgrave 4. Christie Manning, Margot Stephenson, Ellen Terry and Elas Walsh 5. Elizabeth Gerber and Susan Gerber 6. Ginny Faucette, Louie Naing and Dorothy Wade 7. Jennifer L. Porter, Gretchen Richards, Pamela Passman and Rita Roy 8. Kenneth Fan, Jodi King, Caroline King and Dana Kuhar 9. Meredith Fox and Yonni Wattenmaker 10. Sahiwn Daniel and Hilary Brandt 11. Trish Shannon, Sharon Dillard and Lisa Walsh

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United Way of Westchester and Putnam’s “Wine and Wonder” gala raised the largest amount of money in the history of the organization, $510,000, as it drew 350 people to the Doral Arrowood Conference Center in Rye Brook recently to honor Ross Buchmueller, president and CEO of Pure Group of Insurance Companies. The evening featured a cocktail hour followed by dinner and entertainment by master illusionist JB Benn, who has performed his magic on several television series. Alana Sweeny, president and CEO of United Way of Westchester and Putnam, gave a special tribute to Buchmueller for his many years of support. Proceeds from the event will go toward United Way’s work on early childhood literacy, stabilizing households and serving the urgent needs of the whole community through its 24/7 help line called “2-1-1.”

12. June Blanc, Ross Buchmueller, Alana Sweeny and Dave Yawman

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AN UPLIFTING EXPERIENCE More than 250 friends, supporters and sponsors came together recently for the Port Chester Carver Center’s “When All Boats Rise” benefit, which was held at the Mamaroneck Beach & Yacht Club. Guests dined, danced and raised their paddles to build brighter futures for the Port Chester community.

Proceeds from this event went to support several programs, such as the Carver Market food pantry; after-school programs that give homework support and access to enrichment opportunities to Port Chester children; and citizenship classes to new immigrants. For more than 75 years, the Carver Center has been committed to serving, educating and empowering families in our community.

1. Raphael Steinberg and Dinah and Jim Howland 2. Claire Steinberg, Darien Rodriguez and Anne Bradner 3. Debra Stokes Kaplan and Robert Kaplan 4. Jim Anderson and Eileen Simon 5. Derek and Molly Mahoney 6. Rodney Baker and John Kettler

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MATCHMAKING

Recently, seniors at New York Medical College (NYMC) School of Medicine (SOM), along with graduating medical students across the nation, found out where they were matched to medical residency programs. Conducted annually by the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP), the match uses a computer algorithm to match the preferences of applicants with the preferences of residency programs, in order to fill the available training positions at U.S. teaching hospitals. This year, NYMC medical students were matched at all of NYMC’s major local partner hospitals, including Westchester Medical Center, Greenwich Hospital and Stamford Hospital.

7. Zahin Huq, Ryan Gannon, Maria Dos Santos, Sierra Vanderkelen and Matthew Ryan Kavalek 8. Ami Trivedi and Ruchik Patel 9. Glory Atuh and Cecilia Assante 10. Marina K. Holz and Jerry L. Nadler, M.D. 11. Shimul Begum, Shannon Chiang and Adrian Wu 12. Suraj Parikh and Liana Grosinger

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RUNWAY READY Richards in Greenwich was the place to be on April when the Breast Cancer Alliance opened the runway to more than 20 area students for a fashion show. Wearing the latest styles from Richards, the teens strutted their stuff like real pros. Schools represented included Brunswick School, Fairfield Prep, Greenwich Academy, Greenwich High School, Hackley School, Harvey School, Iona Prep, Sacred Heart Greenwich and the Stanwich School. Funds raised went to support breast health services for underserved women throughout Connecticut and Westchester.

Photographs by Kathleen Di Giovanna.

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Katia Barker, Elexa Wilson and Valentina Grether Deana McCabe and Christopher McCabe Scott Mitchell Tyler Wilson, Hayley Duffy, Maddy Slattery and Tucker Slattery Phoebe Naughton Bridget Cobb Elexa Wilson Lynn Carnegie

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‘LOVE IS A MASQUERADE’ The Ty Louis Campbell Foundation (TLC), a nonprofit that funds pediatric cancer research, recently hosted its fifth annual gala at the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich. This year’s “Masquerade Gala” kicked off with a cocktail hour followed by dinner, music by NYCE Productions, dancing, live and silent auctions, casino tables and entertainment. The gala included a special award presentation to honoree Lori Pfiefer, who received the TLC “Heart of Gold” award for her exemplary efforts in supporting pediatric cancer research. This year’s gala raised more than $100,000. To date, the TLC Foundation has raised more than $1.7 million for childhood cancer treatment research. Photographs by Donna Tine.

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Carol, Gavin, Louis, Bodhi and Jim Campbell Christopher Tine and Michael Divitto James and Christina Rae Cindy Campbell Lori Pfeiffer Karla Frietze and Carolina Cocito Jana McDonough and Bruce DeFonce

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Your Moments Made Memorable Leave the Cooking To Us!

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CELEBRATING CLIVE

Recently, the Bedford Playhouse hosted a soldout event paying tribute to music producer Clive Davis. The evening kicked off with a reception in the Playhouse Café with guests mingling with the evening’s two headliners — Davis and Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas, who led a Q&A after a screening of the documentary “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives.” The Bedford Playhouse reopened last fall after a more than $5 million state-of-the-art renovation and boasts three theaters, a wine-tasting room, a bar and café and multiple event spaces. The new cultural center offers films, speaker events, musical performances and more. Photographs by Cara Gilbride for Fairfield County LOOK. 1. Shannon and Wayne Cohen 2. Deanna Marano, Lindsay Hearon and Amy Hollander 3. Peter and Amy Santry 4. John Farr, Rob Thomas, Nicole Gardner and Kim Speegle 5. Mikette Dorviles 6. Mamie Thomas, Marisol Maldonado, Rob Thomas, Clive Davis and Greg Schriefer 7. Rob Thomas 8. Stewart and Lori Grover 9. Clive Davis and Rob Thomas

HONORING SERVICE It was a record-breaking event as more than 300 community and business leaders gathered for Westchester Jewish Community Services’ gala at the Brae Burn Country Club in Purchase.

The event featured some of WJCS’ more than 80 programs, with clients sharing personal and moving stories of overcoming the trauma of domestic violence, obtaining the school services needed for children on the autism spectrum, receiving geriatric care to stay safely at home and benefiting from language and early literacy skills so that their preschool children are prepared to enter kindergarten ready to succeed. WJCS is the largest provider of outpatient mental health services and one of the largest human services organizations in Westchester County, benefiting 20,000 individuals of all ages and backgrounds each year. Photographs by Jamie Collins 10. Mindy Feldman, Michelle Brettschneider and Sarah Kayle 11. Terry Clements, Ben Boykin and Rebecca Sigman 12. Bernie Kimberg, Roy Stillman and Seth Diamond

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KENYA, TANZANIA, ETHIOPIA & RWANDA TOURS Exceptional Camps & Lodges | Authentic Experiences Private tours for groups and families with children

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WOMAN POWER It was a day to salute women and address their concerns as business leaders gathered at The Castle Hotel & Spa in Tarrytown to learn more about women’s health, wealth, fashion and skincare. The “Outstanding Women in Business” event — presented by Westfair Communications Inc., parent company of WAG magazine — featured insights from Avideh Safaei, an executive director and financial adviser at J.P. Morgan Securities; Marria Pooya, managing partner of Greenwich Medical Spa; Katherine Vadasdi, M.D., director of the ONS Women’s Sports Medicine; and Hannie Sio-Stellakis, public relations manager for Neiman Marcus Westchester. Dominica Valenti of Lafayette 148 New York, the Manhattan-based women’s fashion brand named after the address in SoHo where it was founded, narrated a fashion show featuring some of the new items for spring.

Pamela S. Pagnani, vice president/brokerage manager of Sotheby’s International Realty in Greenwich, was the moderator of the question and answer portion of the program. The Castle Hotel & Spa was the partnering sponsor for Outstanding Women in Business. The Bronze sponsors were J.P. Morgan; Neiman Marcus; Masterpiece Accounting Services; Greenwich Medical Spa; ONS Orthopaedic & Neurosurgery Specialists; and MYX Fitness. Supporters were: Rajni Meno; Gilda Bonanno LLC; The Kensington; Canyon Ranch; The Bristal Assisted Living; Le Caprice Paris; Professional Women of Westchester; Courtyard Travel; Women’s Enterprise Development Center; Medi Tresse; and Blossom Flower Shops.

Photographs by Bob Rozycki.

1. Lauren Rones-Payne, Millie Becker and Janette Licastrino 2. Lisa Cordasco, Katherine Vadasdi, M.D. and Ruia Ahmadzada 3. Stephanie Oertel, Sofia Guerrero and Marria Pooya 4. Maria Valente and Sylvia Spitalnick 5. Lesley Stern and Dawn Knief 6. Lisa Black and Sheryl Sanford 7. Jennifer Miller and Megan Lucas 8. Sarah Binderberger and Brittany Lynch 9. Ginger Siegel and Andrea Gilman 10. Jewel Kinch-Thomas and Keri Reitman 11. Keren Lai and Lillya Kulinska 12. Leslie Montanile, Suzanne Kelly, Michelle Dejoseph and Shari Miller 13. Antonette Scott and Nancy Panzer 14. Carly and Kathie Anechiarico 15. Hannah Gerety and Christina Rae 16. Cami Weinstein and Dawn Novenstern

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Floral Event Series Presented by:

Into the Wild: Sustainable Flower Arranging Bring home a beautiful, sustainable arrangement created by YOU! Enjoy evenings of conservation discussion over wine, appetizers and floral design sessions at Westmoreland Sanctuary.

Thursday, May 30 FORAGED ARRANGEMENTS – 7pm

Wednesday, June 19 SUMMER BOUQUET – 7pm

Thursday, September 26 FALL WREATHS – 7pm

Tuesday, November 5 FALL TABLESCAPES – 7pm

Thursday, December 3 HOLIDAY WREATHS & ARRANGEMENTS – 7pm Workshop Location: Westmoreland Sanctuary 260 Chestnut Ridge Road Mt. Kisco, NY To register, please visit www.westmorelandsanctuary.org.

Thank you to our sponsors:

WAGVERTISERS M AY 2 0 1 9

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Our WAG-savvy sales team will assist you in optimizing your message to captivate and capture your audience. Contact them at 914-358-0746.

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WE WONDER: WHAT’ S YOU R FAVORITE FLOWER?

Lyndsay Cafagno

Philip Gardiner

Shieva Ghofrany

Meg McAuley Kaicher

Maureen Kaminsky

“Anemone. It’s bold, unique and it goes with any arrangement. It’s the one flower that I try and use in every arrangement. It comes in every color and they are so vibrant. I think they make the arrangements stand out.”

“Azaleas because my mom used to plant them at our summer house and now my wife (Moshgan Rezania, below) paints them.”

“Peony, because it smells lemony and fresh, and that makes people happy. Did you know that? They make people happy.”

“The iris – the special harbinger of spring renewal.”

“Bougainvillea because it represents sea air, freedom and blue skies. It reminds me of Catalina Island.”

Alessandra M. Messineo Long

Jessie Perez

Moshgan Rezania Artist Bronxville resident

Borrelli Partners Insurance Greenwich resident

Jennifer Sisca

Donna VanderPoel

“Peony. First of all, I love the size of them. They’re big and full and they have a gorgeous shape and beautiful scent. And you can put them all together and they are very substantial, hearty flowers.”

“I love the calla lily because it always stands by itself.

It’s beautiful and it comes in elegant colors.”

“Calendula, which actually comes out in May. Orange is my favorite color – and they are orange and they’re very strong. I feel a connection with its strength.”

“My favorite flower is the peony, because they are so full and beautiful.”

“I love wildflowers, because they show up when you least expect them. They’re always a nice surprise.”

The Flower Room Greenwich resident

Attorney Riverside resident

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Vicus Partners LLC Bronxville resident

BMW Darien Norwalk resident

Ob-gyn Rowayton resident

Capital Consulting Group Greenwich resident

Serendipity Labs Weston resident

Mortgage loan officer Stamford resident

*Asked at the kickoff breakfast for the Badass Women of Fairfield County, founded by Mia Schipani, April 2 at The J House Greenwich. The paintings in the backdrop are by Moshgan Rezania.