Kenise Barnes Fine Art is honored to present an exhibition featuring hand-painted cyanotypes by Julia Whitney Barnes and drawings by Sarah Morejohn.

Julia Whitney Barnes is well known for her innovations in Cyanotype (camera-less photographic printing process) paintings. Whitney Barnes’ multi-step process includes harvesting flora (flowers and weeds being equally important) and combining several species into a single composition on photo sensitive cotton paper. After exposing the work to UV light, the resulting blue and white image is carefully hand-painted in many layers of watercolor, gouache, and ink, reanimating the vitality to the ghost of the objects. The artist is most interested in creating work that feels both beautiful and mysterious. Her artwork symbolizes resilience and are the records of the historical moment in which they were made, the process, and the artist’s will and interest in reasserting the presence of the image.

Whitney Barnes recently completed permanent public installations in The Botanist’s Mural, Vassar College/Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, Brooklyn Botanical: PS 253 (glass commission), Public Art in Public Schools/Percent for Art, Brooklyn, NY, Planting Utopia (interior installation), Albany International Airport, Albany, NY, Planting Utopia (interior and exterior installation), Shaker Heritage Society, Albany, NY. The artist has received the following honors and awards; Maker-Creator Research Fellowship, Winterthur Museum, Library & Garden (2024-25), Individual Artist Grant, (partnering with Shaker Heritage Society), New York State Council on the Arts (2018), Individual Artist Commission, NY State Decentralization Grant, Arts Mid-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, NY (2015), Gowanus Public Arts Initiative Grant (ArtsGowanus, The Old Stone House & District 39), Brooklyn, NY, Residency with Site-Specific Installation & Fellowship, Fjellerup I Bund I Grund, Fjellerup, Denmark, to name a few. Her work has been featured in Architectural Record, Times Union, The B Magazine, The Jealous Curator, Create Magazine, American Art Collector Magazine and many other publications and podcasts. Julia Whitney Barnes earned her BFA Fine Arts, Painting, Parsons the New School for Design, New York, NY and her MFA Fine Arts, Painting & Combined Media, Hunter College, CUNY, New York, NY. The artist lives and works in NY.

Sarah Morejohn’s fascination with non-linear patterns in nature drives her work. Through drawing, she considers how the relationship to nature is mediated both by objective understanding and subjective imagining of it. Considering the symbolic connections between nature, the body, and climate change Morejohn draws partial six-fold symmetries. By building a drawing line by line, sharp angles soften and wiggle, cell-like shapes minnow along while branches and flowers become a part of the flotsam disconnected from the earth. Figurative snow crystals become interlaced with one another and their environment, jumbling towards their own future transformations. Morejohn’s drawing process is intuitive and organic, artifacts of the process, drips, spills, flaws and mistakes are embraced. By collaging the imperfect pieces of her drawings together the work becomes a metaphor for the ever-changing uncertainties of life.

Sarah Morejohn’s work in in the collections of Heustis Hall, 1% for Art Oregon Arts Commission, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, Echo Laboratory, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, Ursell Laboratory, Physics Department, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, Project Art & Medical Museum, University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, Iowa City, IA. She was awarded residencies at Jentel Artist Residency, Banner, WY and Playa Art and Science Residency, Summer Lake, OR. Morejohn earned her BFA in Painting and Drawing, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. The artist lives and works in CA.

Please contact Lani Ming Holloway, Associate Director, Lani@kbfa.com, 860 560 3085 with inquires or to arrange a preview of the exhibition.

Meeting will be held in the Jamie Gagarin Community Room

Book to be discussed:

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow 

by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution. But if emancipation sparked "a new birth of freedom" in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? This history moves from the Reconstruction Era to Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. 

Book groups are open to all - books are available to borrow at the library

Meeting in the Jamie Gagarin Community Room

Book to be discussed:

Acts of Forgiveness by Maura Cheeks 

Will the country’s first female president pass the Forgiveness Act, giving Black families $175,000 if they Maura Cheeks are the descendants of slaves? For an ambitious single mother, the bill could be a long-awaited form of redemption. She’s living with her parents and daughter while trying to help run her father’s struggling construction company from going into bankruptcy. Could the Forgiveness Act uncover her forgotten roots while also helping save their beloved home and her father’s life’s work?

Book groups are open to all - books are available to borrow at the library

STEVE PARLATO BIO

Middlebury artist Steven Parlato’s work has graced theater posters and book covers, and he’s exhibited his collage series, They Are Not Disposable, throughout CT and in NJ, PA, and OH. An award-winning poet and college professor emeritus, Parlato is the author of two young adult novels, The Namesake (winner of the 2011 Tassy Walden Award for New Voices in YA Fiction) and The Precious Dreadful. Both explore grief, loss, and hope. His poetry has appeared in Freshwater, MARGIE, Borderlands, Peregrine, CT River Review, and other journals. On stage, he’s played roles ranging from the Scarecrow to Macbeth. Parlato offers writing workshops at venues throughout CT and creates artwork on commission. Follow him on FB at Steven Parlato Author and IG: @stevenparlato.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

They Are Not Disposable should not need to exist. However, the persistent plague of systemic racism in America (and beyond) makes this artwork necessary. With the collage series complete, the sixteen initials within the works unite to make the declaration, “BLACK LIVES MATTER.” It is absurd this statement should need to be made; tragic it should still be met with resistance. 

Since this is the reality of our world, I ask that you meet threats to justice with your own resistance, in whatever creative form you choose. The only wrong way to approach racism, and all other forms of evil, is to remain silent. As I reflect on the creation of these images, I’m daunted by the work to be done—and overwhelmed by the fact that there are a near-infinite number of potential subjects, countless lives stolen by the evil of white supremacy. 

My hope is that this work leaves an impression, reminding viewers of the intrinsic humanity of each subject, and that of each individual we encounter. If my portraits of the stolen have touched you, I encourage you to learn more about these sixteen people, to keep their memories alive as I’ve attempted to do. And together, let’s confront the issues of inequity and racial violence that continue to claim innocent lives.

STEVE PARLATO BIO

Middlebury artist Steven Parlato’s work has graced theater posters and book covers, and he’s exhibited his collage series, They Are Not Disposable, throughout CT and in NJ, PA, and OH. An award-winning poet and college professor emeritus, Parlato is the author of two young adult novels, The Namesake (winner of the 2011 Tassy Walden Award for New Voices in YA Fiction) and The Precious Dreadful. Both explore grief, loss, and hope. His poetry has appeared in Freshwater, MARGIE, Borderlands, Peregrine, CT River Review, and other journals. On stage, he’s played roles ranging from the Scarecrow to Macbeth. Parlato offers writing workshops at venues throughout CT and creates artwork on commission. Follow him on FB at Steven Parlato Author and IG: @stevenparlato.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

They Are Not Disposable should not need to exist. However, the persistent plague of systemic racism in America (and beyond) makes this artwork necessary. With the collage series complete, the sixteen initials within the works unite to make the declaration, “BLACK LIVES MATTER.” It is absurd this statement should need to be made; tragic it should still be met with resistance. 

Since this is the reality of our world, I ask that you meet threats to justice with your own resistance, in whatever creative form you choose. The only wrong way to approach racism, and all other forms of evil, is to remain silent. As I reflect on the creation of these images, I’m daunted by the work to be done—and overwhelmed by the fact that there are a near-infinite number of potential subjects, countless lives stolen by the evil of white supremacy. 

My hope is that this work leaves an impression, reminding viewers of the intrinsic humanity of each subject, and that of each individual we encounter. If my portraits of the stolen have touched you, I encourage you to learn more about these sixteen people, to keep their memories alive as I’ve attempted to do. And together, let’s confront the issues of inequity and racial violence that continue to claim innocent lives.

Thursday, May 8th, at 6:30, 2nd Home welcomes back the DenMar Jazz Trio. The trio is Dennis Marolda on drums, Dawn Zukowski on flugelhorn and trumpet, and Austin Tewksbury on guitar. We are thrilled to have the Trio back for our Thursday Jazz/Blues nights, and hope you will come down to enjoy what we know will be a night of great jazz.

For reservations (encouraged but not required) call 860-238-4500 or email us at momanddad@2ndhomelounge.com

See our complete event list - https://2ndhomelounge.com/events/

Our Google Street View is online, and it looks amazing:

https://goo.gl/maps/eC7A4ZDEjenNqzpb6

https://goo.gl/maps/NWGK4NRyk6MNfmWZ6

2nd Home Lounge

524 Main Street, Winsted

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Live, In-Person:

One of Litchfield’s most recognizable buildings is the Historic Courthouse on the Litchfield Green. The courthouse was built it 1889 but now in 2025 the beautiful building has taken on a new function. Join the new owners, David Boyd and Kevin O’Shea as they take us on a visual journey of turning an 1889 building into a 2025 boutique hotel, the Abner.

David and Kevin will also invite you to stroll over to the hotel after their presentation to see the inside of the hotel and to enjoy a cocktail as their guest.

Kenise Barnes Fine Art is honored to present an exhibition featuring hand-painted cyanotypes by Julia Whitney Barnes and drawings by Sarah Morejohn.

Julia Whitney Barnes is well known for her innovations in Cyanotype (camera-less photographic printing process) paintings. Whitney Barnes’ multi-step process includes harvesting flora (flowers and weeds being equally important) and combining several species into a single composition on photo sensitive cotton paper. After exposing the work to UV light, the resulting blue and white image is carefully hand-painted in many layers of watercolor, gouache, and ink, reanimating the vitality to the ghost of the objects. The artist is most interested in creating work that feels both beautiful and mysterious. Her artwork symbolizes resilience and are the records of the historical moment in which they were made, the process, and the artist’s will and interest in reasserting the presence of the image.

Whitney Barnes recently completed permanent public installations in The Botanist’s Mural, Vassar College/Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, Brooklyn Botanical: PS 253 (glass commission), Public Art in Public Schools/Percent for Art, Brooklyn, NY, Planting Utopia (interior installation), Albany International Airport, Albany, NY, Planting Utopia (interior and exterior installation), Shaker Heritage Society, Albany, NY. The artist has received the following honors and awards; Maker-Creator Research Fellowship, Winterthur Museum, Library & Garden (2024-25), Individual Artist Grant, (partnering with Shaker Heritage Society), New York State Council on the Arts (2018), Individual Artist Commission, NY State Decentralization Grant, Arts Mid-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, NY (2015), Gowanus Public Arts Initiative Grant (ArtsGowanus, The Old Stone House & District 39), Brooklyn, NY, Residency with Site-Specific Installation & Fellowship, Fjellerup I Bund I Grund, Fjellerup, Denmark, to name a few. Her work has been featured in Architectural Record, Times Union, The B Magazine, The Jealous Curator, Create Magazine, American Art Collector Magazine and many other publications and podcasts. Julia Whitney Barnes earned her BFA Fine Arts, Painting, Parsons the New School for Design, New York, NY and her MFA Fine Arts, Painting & Combined Media, Hunter College, CUNY, New York, NY. The artist lives and works in NY.

Sarah Morejohn’s fascination with non-linear patterns in nature drives her work. Through drawing, she considers how the relationship to nature is mediated both by objective understanding and subjective imagining of it. Considering the symbolic connections between nature, the body, and climate change Morejohn draws partial six-fold symmetries. By building a drawing line by line, sharp angles soften and wiggle, cell-like shapes minnow along while branches and flowers become a part of the flotsam disconnected from the earth. Figurative snow crystals become interlaced with one another and their environment, jumbling towards their own future transformations. Morejohn’s drawing process is intuitive and organic, artifacts of the process, drips, spills, flaws and mistakes are embraced. By collaging the imperfect pieces of her drawings together the work becomes a metaphor for the ever-changing uncertainties of life.

Sarah Morejohn’s work in in the collections of Heustis Hall, 1% for Art Oregon Arts Commission, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, Echo Laboratory, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, Ursell Laboratory, Physics Department, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, Project Art & Medical Museum, University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, Iowa City, IA. She was awarded residencies at Jentel Artist Residency, Banner, WY and Playa Art and Science Residency, Summer Lake, OR. Morejohn earned her BFA in Painting and Drawing, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. The artist lives and works in CA.

Please contact Lani Ming Holloway, Associate Director, Lani@kbfa.com, 860 560 3085 with inquires or to arrange a preview of the exhibition.

Join us for Cris Caivano's program where she will blend her joy of dance, movement, research and teaching with the practice of Qigong.

This program is made possible by a generous grant from the Northwest CT Community Foundation Khurshed Bhumgara Fund.