Unveiling Celebration | Piecing Together a New Britain Story

ALL FESTIVITIES WILL BE INSIDE THE AIR CONDITIONING TONIGHT!

Join us for the unveiling of the series of collages created by Rashmi Talpade in collaboration with the Museum community. 

This event will be a part of Art Summer Nights on July 21. Click here to see a full schedule for Art Summer Nights. 

Piecing Together a New Britain Story: The NBMAA Cityscape Project

Museum artist Rashmi Talpade was awarded the Artists Respond Grant by the Connecticut Office of the Arts for a city-wide community art project. The Artists Respond Grant funds art projects that provide access to the creative experience and engage the community in an innovative manner.

The grant project was to create a series of 48” x 32” sized photo-collages, in collaboration with local residents, depicting the City of New Britain. The collage is comprised of images cut from assorted photo prints to create an artistic cityscape, composed of fragments of photographic prints that resembles a single image of an imaginary but familiar landscape of the City of New Britain. 

The collage project was meant to motivate residents to take interest and pride in their community, develop an appreciation for the visual arts, and explore their artistic potential. Under the guidance of the artist, residents have been involved from the beginning of the creative process by taking photographs of New Britain, emailing in their new and old photographs, and finally creating the collage itself over the 13-week period.

About Rashmi Talpade:

Rashmi Talpade has been involved with the Museum for the past 8 years and is an award-winning artist whose work is in the permanent collection of New Britain Museum of American Art. A recipient of a 2006 grant from the Connecticut Commission of the Arts, her work has been displayed within and outside the State of Connecticut. In addition to being a well-respected artist, Rashmi is the Art Supervisor at Wallingford Parks and Recreation. She has been instrumental in creating educational art programs for various age groups from elementary school children to community college students and seniors at the Wallingford Senior Center. She has successfully completed similar projects with the Southington School district, Essex Elementary School, the Wallingford Public Library, the New Haven Public Library, a school in Mumbai, India, and the Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. Her role as the coordinator and creative talent behind the project will be to teach participants how to form a collage, and she will make final touches to ensure that the final piece is of museum quality and be a part of the Museum’s collection.