RESIDENCY
Peck’s Ledge Lighthouse, 2024
In early September of 2024 Ward Shelley and myself were artists-in-residence at Peck’s Ledge Light, a 118-year-old lighthouse in Long Island Sound, two miles off the coast of Norwalk, Connecticut. The residency, sponsored by The Norwalk Art Space (TNAS), will lead into my curation of an exhibition at TNAS in the summer of 2025 focusing on artists who reference the Sound and its environs in their work. The lighthouse has not had long-term residents since 1933 when it was automated. Peck’s Ledge, which was restored starting in 2016, currently does not have electricity, running water, or bathroom facilities. It was the last lighthouse built on the Sound, joining two other lights on the Norwalk Islands: Sheffield Island Light (built 1868), and Green’s Ledge (built 1902). During our stay we explored by kayak Goose Island and Cockenoe Island, two of the Norwalk Islands that are closest to the Light.
Richard washing dishes on the dock.
Ward on the stairway to the lighthouse’s third floor.
Sunrise, looking southeast across the Sound towards Long Island.
One of the many boats that harvest farmed oysters from the beds around the Norwalk Islands. The local oyster industry is run by Norm Bloom & Sons, a fourth-generation, family-run business that has been harvesting shellfish in the Sound since the 1940s.
The riprap surrounding the base of the lighthouse at sunset.
Richard standing in the remains of the research facility on Goose Island that was built by the Carnegie Foundation in 1909. The Foundation used Goose Island to test an anti-yellow fever serum on the island’s rat population. The Island is currently part of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge, which conserves ten separate locations on the Connecticut coastline. The Refuge stretches for 70 miles from Salt Meadow near the mouth of the Connecticut River, to the Norwalk Islands in the western Sound. Located in the Atlantic Flyway, the Refuge provides a critical habitat for many species of shorebirds, including the threatened Piping Plover, and seabirds including the endangered Roseate Tern.
Ward’s flags, each dedicated to an island in the East River and Hell’s Gate (the western entrance to the Sound), as viewed up through the Lighthouse’s coal chute.
Our residency marked by an inscription on the Lighthouse’s central cast-iron column.