Program Description
Event Details
Blackstone Artists Circle Gallery Reception. This artwork will be on display in the upper rotunda gallery for November & December.
Day Trip to Little Gull Island: Photographs by Lisa Kereszi
In August of 2023, I embarked on a special trip out to Little Gull Island with the New London Maritime Society/Custom House Maritime Museum. The Custom House Museum made a limited number of spaces available to visit this tiny speck of an island, capped with a Stony Creek granite lighthouse built in 1868-69. The isle is paired in Long Island Sound with Great Gull (owned and managed by the Museum of Natural History in New York) and sits between New York’s Fisher’s Island and Plum Island (a currently preserved, former research station operated by the U.S. Agriculture Department.) 37 miles from here, the museum put in a bid to buy it in 2012, and the most recent, now previous, owner who had the highest bid had intended to preserve it. Before the island changed hands, for 5 or so hours a small group of us (including the grandson of one of the last lighthouse keepers, evidenced by the tattoo of the sentinel on his arm) explored the nooks and crannies, among the rocks, native plants, nests, Cormorants, and a few seals that had chosen to watch us from the shallows. To step out of the hot sun, we even had a chance to climb to the very top.
Many of the other human explorers were looking for birds – and they found them. The island was literally covered with Cormorant nests and bird droppings, which left a strong, ammonia smell hanging in the air. Some of these black birds, as well as seagulls, had expired, and their carcasses were in various states of decay. But there were baby birds, too, and eggs best left alone. Among the rocks, pebbles, and plant life could be found vertebrae and other bones, most likely from seals, as well as trash that had made its way from beaches and boaters – oddly enough, much of it in shades of blue. It was truly a privilege to step onto this otherworldly mount in the middle of the Sound. It was like being on another planet – whose alien inhabitants were all birds.
About the artists
Lisa Kereszi is a photographer and educator originally from outside of Philadelphia who has lived here in Branford since 2014. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City, and she teaches at the Yale School of Art, where she received her MFA in 2000. She has several books in print, including Governors Island, a 2003 commission about the former Coast Guard base, which is now a public park in NYC. More of her work can be seen at: www.lisakereszi.com
Registration is not required to attend this DROP-IN event.