Printer Friendly Version - Creative Challenge Returns to Chester

Sosse Baker’s entry into this year’s Farm Finds Challenge in Chester is a work in progress. This year’s material is the square metal pieces with perforated holes that were found on an abandoned farm property in Chester. Artists can enter for $30, up until the day of the silent auction on Saturday, Sept. 25. All proceeds from the event benefit the Chester Historical Society. Photo by Sosse Baker

These are all somewhat ordinary materials, but when placed into the hands of the artists, sculptors, photographers, engineers, jewelry designers, and other creative minds of the Chester Historical Society (CHS) Creative Challenge, they are turned into works of art.

Although the ninth annual Creative Challenge in Chester, which is always based on materials associated with Chester’s history, was to take place last April, it is now on for later this year, with a call to area artists to participate.

This year, the challenge is named the Farm Finds Challenge since members of CHS found this year’s material, two-inch metal square pieces with perforated holes, after being granted access to the property of a former farmhouse on Cedar Lake Road in Chester.

Sosse Baker, a former trustee of the CHS, is responsible for bringing the Creative Challenge to Chester. She is an artist well known for creating baskets made from dyed and natural rattan, a species of climbing palm typically found in tropical regions.

Baker and her late husband, Jack, who owned the Chester Gallery on Main Street for several decades, were always inspired by the Leonardo Challenge of the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden.

“We did it every year,” said Baker. “It was just so much fun to see what artists and craftsmen would do with these things.”

Like the Leonardo Challenge, the Creative Challenge in Chester culminates in an artist’s exhibit and sale by silent auction. All proceeds from the auction in Chester benefit the CHS.

Asked about examples of art created since the Creative Challenge’s inception in 2012, Baker said, “It’s endless.”

One year, the challenge was to create something from wooden pegs that were found at an old mill in town.

“They were just little white sticks with a point at the end,” she said, adding that her husband, who loved partaking in the challenges, couldn’t think of anything to do with the peg until a week before the event.

“About a day before, he calls me in and he had put this peg in a mat and then wrote under it, ‘what’s the point’ and shadow box framed it,” said Baker. “It was just great. I think it sold for $400 or $500.”

In 2019, when the material was red velvet cloth from the discarded stage curtains of the Chester Meeting House, Chester Historian Rob Miceli made a teddy bear from it.

“It got a lot of bids,” said Baker. “I don’t remember what it finally got, but whoever bought it, walked out holding it.”

Another year, the materials were bone handles, originally for crochet hooks and flatware manufactured at the former Bishop & Watrous Novelty Works factory in Chester.

The main goal for this year’s challenge is “to hope people will come back and continue supporting the Chester Historical Society,” said Baker.

This year’s silent auction and reception for the Farm Finds Challenge will be held on Saturday, Sept. 25 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Chester Meeting House. The entry fee for artists is $30, which includes two tickets to the event. Artists can enter the Creative Challenge up until the day of the event.

Any artist who paid the entrance fee for the Creative Challenge in 2020, which was canceled due to COVID-19, is welcome to participate this year free of charge.

More information is available at www.chesterhistoricalsociety.org or by calling Sosse Baker at 860-526-9822.