Water is essential to life. While it may be without taste or smell or color, it is vital for all forms of life. It is not a source of nutrition or energy but humans must consume it if they hope to survive. About 71% of the earth’s surface is covered by water and it is essential for agriculture, food production, fishing, transportation, sports, and cooling and heating homes and industries. What would we do without it?
The Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop wants you to look at water in an entirely different way. Think of the Greek god Narcissis who fell in love with his own reflection when he stared into a pool of water. The 30th Annual Leonardo Challenge, since 1995, has been a special fundraiser for the Museum, encouraging artists and craftspeople to focus on a specific item relating to the creative ideas of that master inventor Leonardo da Vinci.
This year on Thursday, May 14 from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m that focus will be splashed and saturated on WATER, concentrating on all the ways Leonardo incorporated this substance into his artistic creations.
Come to the Museum, 915 Whitney Avenue, in Hamden for Food and Drink, an Art Auction and Live Music, both indoors and outdoors. Tickets are $85 each, with sponsorship tiers from $250-$5000. For credit card transactions, call 203-777-1833 or visit www.eliwhitney.org/events/leonardo-water. Tickets are available online or at the door.
In past years, the themes of the challenge have ranged from ice cream spoons to pencils to mirrors to buttons to playing cards and clothespins and many more. This year Leonardo’s relationship with water, his paintings and observations, will be explored by artists from all over the country. Perhaps one will create a piece of furniture, an item of jewelry, a children’s game, a mobile, a lamp, a piece of clothing, a work of art, the possibilities are endless. As an Italian born in 1452, he set the bar high, with his accomplishments in sculpture, painting, mathematics, architecture, engineering, anatomy, botany, geology, cartography, music and writing.
To date, artists have contributed such items as Angelic Seraph, Covered Bridge, As I See It, The Spirit of the Tide, Watercolor Postcards, Go With the Flow, and Ocean Bliss, and many more.
What better way to support and encourage the budding child inventors of tomorrow than by endowing the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop projects today. Come to the Challenge and applaud the unique works artists and artisans have recently contributed. Please support the worthy cause of educating our youth in thought provoking experiences and experiments of invention and design. Just as Leonardo might have said, “In every drop of water, there is a story waiting to be told.” Come hear this distinctive story for yourself.
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