Pageant & Variations
Milton Bond is one of the renown elder artists of Connecticut. -- Governor John Rowland, on the occasion of Bond's retrospective 1998 exhibit at the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, issued a Proclamation declaring the artist’s 80th birthday, March 5, 1998, as "Milton Bond Day."
Painting the bygone scenes
of cities, towns, and the sea, Bond delightfully renders the fine details
of history and time, giving each of his paintings a sensation which
is at once elaxing, invigorating, and sublime. A self-taught artist
who comes from a long line of oyster men and sailors, he now lives in
a house along the edge of the Housatonic River. He is descended from
Sir William Bond, who in England in the 1500’s built the largest
ship of the fleet of Henry VIII.
Milton grew up assisting his father, Captain Ashabel Bond, who owned
the Bond & Currier fleet on Long Island Sound, in the operation
and sailing of four sailing and three steam vessels. Their landing place
was the still famous Bond’s Dock at Stratford.
"Privateer Swift," oil painting
under reverse-glass,
1998, 40"w x 30"h
Milton Bond’s personal craft is the medium of reverse glass painting, working in a mirror world in the fine detail of acrylic, ink, and metallic foil, giving a three dimensional luminosity to the exposed glass side when exhibited. The medium was first introduced to him 32 years ago by his beloved sister Mildred, a lover of the arts.
In the last 40 years, he has produced over 1,500 paintings, and been featured at the Museum of American Folk Art, NYC; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, the Lyman Allyn Museum, New London; the Grand Palais, Paris, France ; and the John Judkyn Museum of American Art, in Bath, England; and the New York State Historical Association, in Cooperstown, NY.
Reproductions of Bond’s paintings have also adorned the pages of many books of Connecticut art, and the covers of such beautiful editions as ONLY IN BRIDGEPORT, An Illustrated History of the Park City, by Lennie Grimaldi, and In Pursuit of Paradise : A History of the Town of Stratford, by Louis G. Knapp.
With this show, coinciding with "Make Art Work," the Artists’ Congress 1999, meeting in New Haven, June 17-20, the York Square Gallery begins a recurrent series of the works of senior artists.
Return to 1990's York Square Gallery
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