EAST HADDAM—I-Park, a nonprofit artists’ colony set within a 450-acre nature preserve in East Haddam, will hold its first Open Studios event of the season from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, June 29.
The organization in a press release said artists will be in their studios, or at their artworks, from 2 to 4 p.m. to share glimpses into their creative process and the work they’ve developed during their time at I-Park. Visitors should try to arrive at 2 p.m. to experience all of the art, including the inaugural public launch of Ted Efremoff’s Floating Living Room.
Tickets are free at i-park.org.
The artists’ colony adjoining Devil’s Hopyard State Park is generally closed to visitors to give the artists undisturbed time to work on their creative endeavors. I-Park opens its grounds at the conclusion of each four-week residency.
Visitors will have the opportunity to meet the following eight artists:
New York-based visual artist Stephanie Beck earned an M.F.A. from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally. Most recently she presented a solo exhibition at the Wave Hill Sunroom Project Space.
David Crowell is a composer and instrumentalist (saxophones, guitar) based in New York City. His work crosses stylistic boundaries encompassing contemporary classical composition, improvisation, jazz and experimental rock and pop. David received a PhD in composition at Stony Brook University and a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Saxophone Performance from the Eastman School of Music. He has studied improvisation with Ralph Alessi, Don Byron, Peter Epstein, Steve Coleman and Ravi Coltrane.
Ian Dippo is a multidisciplinary artist, landscape designer and arborist born in Michigan and based in Austin, Texas. He received a BS in Landscape Architecture from Michigan State University. I-Park is his first residency.
CT-based interdisciplinary artist Ted Efremoff is a professor of Art and Design at CCSU. His work deals with issues of displacement, marginalization and integration. It extends beyond explorations of human societies to the influence humans have on nature. His suspicion is that human creativity is not attached solely to the handle of art, but to ordinary activities that intersect every aspect of our lives. He is interested in the kind of literal and metaphoric travel through space and time that storytelling allows us to experience. The stories he tells focus on the creative solutions people find in living their daily lives.
Margaret Gerhardt is a transdisciplinary designer and registered landscape architect whose work bridges the digital and analog, the permanent and the impermanent, the familiar and the unknown. She holds a BFA in Industrial Design from Carnegie Mellon and a dual M.Arch/M.L.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Virginia-based visual artist Foon Sham holds a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a professor of Art at the University of Maryland, College Park and has had 50 solo exhibitions in the US and abroad, including the National Building Museum and the Smithsonian Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.
NYC-based composer Elise Morris is a professional stage/studio musician and vocalist. She has composed numerous underscores for Scholas=c Audio Books, for documentary film shorts, dance performances, sound design for plays as well as music and lyrics for musicals. In 2023, her musical “MADam LUCY, deceased” was performed at The College of William and Mary. Her 2020 album Dancin’ With The Boys, released the single “Mardi Gras” reaching #1 on US iTunes Jazz charts – and “Unto Light Unbroken” reached #37 on US singer/songwriter charts and #7 in Canada.
Sarah Wang teaches writing at Barnard College. She is a MacDowell Fellow, a NYSCA/NYFA Nonfiction Fellow, a PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow, a Center for Fiction Fellow, a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, a Kenyon Review Workshop Scholar, a Tin House Scholar, and the winner of a Nelson Algren prize for fiction. Her writing appears in The New Yorker; The Atlantic; London Review of Books; The Nation; The New Republic; Harper’s Bazaar; n+1; BOMB; and McSweeney’s. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2026.
Due to the fragility of the artworks and the natural features at I-Park, pets are not permitted on the grounds. Only part of the campus is wheelchair accessible at this time.
For more information, call 860-873-2468 or email events@i-park.org.
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