Pomperaug High School Art Teacher’s Exhibit Honored at Naugatuck Valley Community College

Florin Ion Firimita:
"Eight Ways of Forgetting" - 2004

Waterbury, Conn. – Naugatuck Valley Community College is hosting a reception on Thursday, October 23, for artist Florin Firimita, an art teacher at Pomperaug High School and adjunct professor of art at NVCC whose exhibit “The Future is the Past is the Present” is currently on display at the College.

The reception will be held from 5:30-8:30 p.m. in the Ruth Ann Leever Atrium, located in the Naugatuck Valley Community College Fine Arts Center, 750 Chase Parkway, Waterbury. It will include a gallery talk, light fare and a showing of The Art of Leaving, a documentary about the life and art of Firimita. The event is free and open to the public.

Born and raised in Romania during the Cold War and orphaned at the age of 16, Firimita survived an oppressive police state, participated in the anti-Communist revolution of December 1989 and then moved to the United States in 1990.

The Art of Leaving is based on his private journal entries over the past 20twenty years, exploring how his internal and external journeys have influenced the process and meaning of his art. Using a variety of mixed media, the film mirrors the techniques of Firimita’s style, which incorporates childhood postcards, family photographs and letters in his series of paintings: “Remembrance of Things Past.”

“Several years after leaving behind a surreal existence highlighted by fear, I finally started this excursion into regaining my past,” said Firimita. “My paintings are about time, about hope and loss, speed and slowness, about ever-present absences, about the benefits of solitude.”

Firimita began his education in the United States with an associate degree in art from Naugatuck Valley Community College and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from Central Connecticut State University. He is currently an art teacher at Pomperaug High School and adjunct professor of art at NVCC.

In the past years, his artwork has become widely collected and requested in numerous exhibits in the U.S., Europe and Australia.