Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Friends Plan Fundraiser to Help Connecticut Artist David Brown Rebuild the Hay House Art Studio

Friends Plan Fundraiser to Help Connecticut Artist David Brown Rebuild the Hay House Art Studio

Benefit Dinner, Music, Silent Auction Planned for Saturday, May 19, at Old Lyme Congregational Church


[Old Saybrook, CT] In the past several weeks, well known Connecticut artist and farmer David Brown has been no stranger to publicity.

On Sunday, April 22, he hosted a five-hour dedication of a stupa in his field at the Hay House farm. The festivities were attended by more than 1000 people, and speakers included state and local dignitaries, and ministers of most of the world’s major religious traditions. The stupa is a symbolic structure in Buddhist spiritual tradition, a tradition that has much to say about the importance of nonattachment to the material world.

Just after midnight on Wednesday morning, May 2, Brown’s dogs woke him to the spectre of his burning barn and art studio — a blaze that took with it almost all the tools he needs to practice his two professions, organic farming and painting, as well as a large number of his acclaimed paintings and a number of works-in-progress. The exact loss is not known at this point.

Most notably, the Hay House “installation”—a 3-D replica painting of his off-the-grid, 12’ x 20’, hay-and-stucco home—was a casualty. His actual home, widely known and the subject of many articles and a documentary film, was untouched by the fire. Brown was unhurt.

The Hay House installation has been displayed at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, CT, the New Britain Museum of American Art, in New Britain, CT, and at the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, CT, and has been widely reviewed in the New York Times and other major newspapers and magazines.

A group of his friends are planning a fundraiser for Saturday, May 19, at the Old Lyme Congregational Church, Old Lyme, CT at 6 p.m. The event will include dinner, musical entertainment and a silent auction. The minimum donation for dinner is $10. Reservations are not required. For more information or to donate items to the silent auction, contact Mariette or Dave at 388-9887.

David Brown can be reached at hayhouseonline@gmail.com.