The Hygienic Art Gallery is at the heart and soul of the rebirth of the city of New London. The story of the Hygienic, as it was told to me, goes something like this...

Once upon a time there lived a man who ran a diner on Bank Street, in the small waterfront city of New London, CT. Back in the days when the Imperial Theater still lived and teenagers still drank malts after school, this man (for purposes of this post we shall refer to him as "the Hygienic Angel") had a certain affinity for local art and local artists.

Once a year when the wind blew cold from the north and all the summer tourists had returned to their homes in New Jersey, the Hygienic Angel would open the doors of his popular diner and allow them come in (the artists). All the artists from far and wide ”Come one come all!”...”Hear ye hear ye!”....”Bring your work and show it for free!” So all the artists would come (from far and wide) and show their work and feel very special… for one whole weekend in January.

Then one day the Hygienic Angel died, and darkness fell upon the land. The Hygienic Diner was condemned and all that once was, was no longer. The artists began to roam the streets and along came the prostitutes and drug addicts....

Let’s face it. Artists are "stability challenged". One of the reasons I have always loved, and ventured back to, New London is for the energy. In a world where we are consumed with moving too fast, making too much, sleeping too little and creating not enough...New London has always inspired me. It has flavor. Energy. A raw passion that ignites anyone willing to catch fire.

Confession: I peruse the coffee shops on Bank Street when I am lacking inspiration hoping to find them filled with granola-artist types and musicians. I could sit at Monica's State Street Diner for hours on a Sunday morning and sketch the patrons sitting at the counter. The regulars. The characters.

Oh The happy ending! I apologize. It goes like this…
One day somebody came along and decided to reconstruct the Hygienic. “If you build it, they will come”...or something like that. They recreated the original design of the diner and turned the rest into gallery space (currently highly coveted gallery space mind you). The upstairs portion of the building was turned into Co-op apartment space for local artists meeting certain criteria (basically they must be earning a living and producing art regularly) ….And so they came.

As for the rest of the story, well that you’ll have to read about in the papers.

So here it is. I have lived in New York, I have lived in New Orleans, I have traveled through Europe, I have...well....I’ve been around. And I realized during my travels how quickly one becomes a teeny tiny fish in that big huge pond. So I love this city. I believe in it. It’s real. It’s raw. It’s honest. It’s even a bit cosmopolitan. And it’s just sheltered enough to protect us sensitive artists from the harsh realities of those big bad cities. It is a town located in a region, located in a state, located in a country, that has too much and consumes too much. We allow too much, we ignore too much, and we help too little. The artists flock here. They have always flocked here. And everybody knows....the artists know. After all, how many places are there in the world where you can be a medium sized fish? Not too big. Not too small. Just right.

A history lesson (sort of)