Creative Community

Art Show | written by: PAMELA DEY VOSSLER  

Selected works from Concepts Group artists (Not pictured here: Carol Conze)

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ONE OF THE MORE FASCINATING ASPECTS OF LIFE is how differently creativity manifests itself for each of us. From finance to farming, fine art to gardening and everything in between, it’s how the neurons in our minds line up to tackle what we put before them. Whatever our calling or passion, however we spend our days, it comes out, as different for each of us as our fingerprints. And as inexorable.

It’s what is so clearly on display in the Concepts Group, a collective of 10 local artists formed out of a Darien Arts Center (DAC) conceptual art class that started more than 30 years ago after DAC founder Roz Emmons hired renowned artist and instructor Constance Kiermaier to lead it, which she did until she moved to a retirement community in Maine in 2016. In weekly classes and on summer retreats for most of its first 30 years, the artists would respond to a prompt, a concept of some sort, each in their own way, holding each other accountable to productivity and results through the community that formed around their collective aim.  

“The group is a great source of inspiration,” said Lisa Thorén, a second-generation Darien resident, mixed-media artist and daughter of Roz, who joined the class in 2001. It is also a way for each artist to improve their work, as they respond to the constructive feedback they give each other. “We respect one another’s critiques,” Lisa added. “We give each other a little bit of advice. It helps your piece get stronger. If you paint in isolation, that doesn’t happen,” she continued. It is also a way to stay on track. “It’s very hard to get started once you stop. We keep each other going,” said Lisa.

Though the group started as a class, it has become a means to communicate what members feel, and evoke that feeling in others, a push to see things from new points of view – still using various prompts, which more often in recent years have been inspired by the annual art shows they stage in support of local nonprofits. Last fall, six artists in the group created pieces based on poems that were part of the “You are Here: Poetry in the Parks” initiative sponsored by the National Park Service. The Mather Homestead, former home of Stephen Tyng Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, hosted a showing of the art. The artists donated a portion of all sales to the Mather Homestead. 

The Concepts Group now meets monthly. Its retreats are more sporadic and informal, and Constance – though going strong at 98 years old, supports them only from afar. Still, the bonds remain because ultimately, the Concepts Group is about community, and how it can form from the most disparate groups of people—artists called to different mediums, different ways of seeing the world and the subjects they tackle; people who might not know each other but for their common interest, people who form a collective best friend for each other in the shared space they occupy—with plenty of room to be together, and apart, made stronger by their differences.

“You don’t necessarily know everybody’s spouse’s name or their kids’ names, but you know their journey,” Lisa said of the group. And that journey is a fascinating kaleidoscope of angles, each unique, brave and committed, united by common themes, propelled by community.  

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