Mad River Fest 2026
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 | 3-7:30 p.m.
A Day of Celebrating Resilience Through Art, Poetry and Community
Founders Hall, CT State Northwestern
A Lyrical Lens: Coping with the Contemporary Through Music with Dr Whitaker, Dean of Students and Faculty
3-4 p.m. | Library Rotunda
(Students only)
Join Dr. Whitaker, Dean of Students and Faculty, as we launch the festival with an engaging conversation on how music helps us navigate the complexities of contemporary life. Through reflection and discussion, we’ll explore how lyrics and sound can serve as both a mirror and a guide–offering insight, connection, and resilience in times of change, uncertainty and shared experience.
Exhibition Reception Featuring Artist Janis Stemmermann
4 p.m. | The Gallery at Founders Hall
When conceiving work for this exhibition, I was thinking about the process of printmaking and shaping clay vessels as empathy—points of contact. Often, I use text to create connections between ideas and materials, as the visual representation of language into a physical form. In early works of this genre, I used passages from The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, in which she describes raw and visceral experiences of the mind and body. When thinking about the text for this most recent work, I came across a note I wrote over 30 years ago, written next to a sketch of a sculpture idea. In it are questions of permanence, carrying grief in our bodies and how we translate experience into objects.
In making Note to Self, 2024-2025, I carved these words backwards onto several young maples I had cut down outside my studio, using one tree for each of the 13 lines. To reveal the text, I inked the trees, one by one laid a large piece of Okawara paper over them and used my hands to apply pressure around the form to create an impression along its length. I leaned the trees into the forms of wet, malleable clay pitchers, allowing them to be reshaped by the weight of the wood. When installed as a whole piece, the impression is hung on the wall with the tree matrix arranged horizontally on the floor, along with the reformed pitchers. All the parts radiate personal history, experience, time and touch.
The Whey Station Grilled Cheese Truck
4-5 p.m. | Outside Founders Hall
We proudly welcome back the Whey Station! Swing by Mad River Fest for next-level grilled cheese that’s affordable, family-friendly and seriously satisfying–then stick around for a night of art and poetry that feeds the soul.
Family Friendly Events
4-5 p.m. | Founders Hall (Hallways and Lounges)
Join students from H.E.A.R.T. (Helping, Educating, Advocating, Reaching and Transforming) for kid-friendly activities, plus work with students from P2P (Peer 2 Peer Mentors) and the art department as they guide you through the process of making your own customizable Mad River Fest t-shirt!
Live Music Sets the Stage!
Featuring Student, Ella Gannon
4:30-5:30 p.m. | Founders Hall Auditorium
Ella Gannon is a Folk + Rock musician based in Barkhamsted, known for her warm tones and a bright and positive energy that will remain memorable long after the final applause. Blending influences from Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac and Noah Kahan, she creates a soprano sound that is soft and gentle, bringing a comforting and joyful mood to any room she plays in.
Ella has sung all her life but first began choir in 4th grade and continued through her senior year of high school. She picked up a guitar for the very first time in June of 2024,a self-taught beginner. In winter of 2025, she began taking guitar lessons at Mad River Music in Winsted. Since then, she has enjoyed performing at multiple events, such as The Colebrook Fair, The Winsted Fall Foliage Festival, and several open mics. Ella signs herself up for as many performances as she can, continues taking lessons and strums away in her free time, continuing to shape her evolving sound.
Mad River Anthology Launch
5-5:30 p.m. | Outside Founders Hall Auditorium
Pick up your copy of this year's Mad River Anthology, hot off the presses! Featuring incredible work from our talented Northwestern student body.
Main Stage Event Plus Open Mic!
Featuring Antoinette Brim-Bell and Janis Stemmermann
5:30-7:30 p.m. | Founders Hall Auditorium
Stick around after the main stage presentations and take the mic!
Sign up for the Mad River Open Mic as you enter the Auditorium. Share your poetry, music, stories or creative spark with our community.
Antoinette Brim-Bell is Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate (2022–2025) and the author of three poetry collections, with work featured in Poetry Magazine, Poem-a-Day, and numerous journals and anthologies. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Cave Canem Fellow, and interdisciplinary artist, her work spans poetry, criticism, visual art, and performance, including a ballet adaptation presented on the Alvin Ailey stage in New York City.
Janis Stemmermann is a visual artist and designer whose interdisciplinary practice spans installation, ceramics, textiles, and printmaking, exploring the space between art, function, and the language of domestic objects and landscape. Her work has been supported by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and exhibited widely in New York and Connecticut, with studios based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Sharon, CT.