COVID-19 UPDATES – Ridgefield Guild of Artists

To our valued Ridgefield Guild of Artists community,

At the Guild, the safety of our members and artistic community are of utmost importance. Given the current situation with COVID-19 (coronavirus), the Galleries and Art Studios are temporarily closed until further notice.

Please note the following regarding programs and events:

We have successfully brought our exhibitions to an online format! We are offering a wide variety of exhibitions for our artist community to entice everyone to continue to engage and get their work out there for all to see. Please check our website home page for current online shows and upcoming call for artists. We have a lot of exciting opportunities out there to show your work.

A community art project was initiated where we have offered free 10 x 10 canvases to anyone in the community who wanted to paint a canvas. The response was huge and we handed out close to 200 canvases. The canvases will be returned to the Guild in the coming weeks and displayed during our annual ArtWalk event (fingers crossed this event is still on!) in downtown Ridgefield. The canvases will be sold and all proceeds will come back to the Guild to help us with our programming costs.

We have also started an online series called Stories from the Studio, a glimpse inside the artist studio during these quarantined times. The link to these inspirational stories is found on our homepage.

Lastly, we have brought some of our existing classes online via the Zoom format. We are adding more as the demand arises. Regarding students enrolled in the spring class sessions, all registered students in the Spring I session will receive credits for the remaining classes in the session. If you have further questions or specifics on any credit amounts, please reach out to us at frontdesk@ridgefieldguild.org.

We continue to discuss with the Town of Ridgefield and the CT State Office of the Arts the safest and most appropriate time to re-open our galleries for physical exhibitions, as well as the Ridgefield Public Schools following their lead to re-open our art education classes. Summer camp, for now, is cancelled. ArtWalk is still on the calendar for the end of August and we will send out a call for artists by the end of June if we get the green light to proceed with this very popular, downtown event.

Things are changing rapidly. We will keep you updated as we can. Thank you for your understanding and patience in our efforts to prioritize your safety and the safety of our community.

In the meantime, stay creative and stay safe!

Pamela Stoddart

Executive Director

Ridgefield Guild of Artists