Meet Abby Carter of Hadlyme, renowned children's book illustrator for publishers Hyperion, Holiday House and Walter Foster, Jr. at Open Your Heart: A Tasty Celebration of Middletown Area's Finest Cuisine on Feb. 7. Abby is SVDM's own Artist-in-Residence at the soup kitchen since 2012.

 

Back then, she wanted to volunteer her time, skills and art supplies with guests to encourage them to experiment with making art. Months later, with few takers, the idea of drawing portraits of the Soup Kitchen guests, many of whom have experienced homelessness and other extreme conditions brought on by poverty, was born.  

 

Over the next several years the Soup Kitchen's humble dining room has been transformed into a gallery space like no other. As the official artist-in-residence at the Soup Kitchen, Abby has produced over 230 portraits of the Soup Kitchen "regulars" and an array of larger paintings that penetrate the psyches of both subject and viewer. Abby has given celebrity to the faces so often ignored in our small city.

The collection had to be shared with the world!  

 

In October 2016, SVDM in collaboration with the MAC650 gallery (Middletown Art Collective), the North End Action Team (NEAT) and Middletown North End Gallery Walk invited the public to a showing of Abby's Crossing the Street: Portraits of People in the Community. Both of Abby's expressive pencil portraits and her larger oil interpretations of Soup Kitchen guest "regulars" were viewed at two spaces that night, at the soup kitchen and MAC650 across the street. The show then headed to Hartford and was on display in the Lyceum and the Legislative Office Building in early 2017. Thousands of people have viewed our folks through Abby's art. 

 

You will have a chance to see some of Abby's portraits and talk with her at Open Your Heart. Her book of the show will also be for sale. Don't miss this wonderful artist at this outstanding event!