Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections, 2015.196.59.1, Connecticut Historical S ...

Peruvian American Cultural Association of Connecticut Calendar of Events

DistributorDistributed by Peruvian American Cultural Association of Connecticut

Date1993

MediumPaper

ClassificationsInformation Artifacts

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

CopyrightIn Copyright

Object number2015.196.59.1

DescriptionFlyer for the Peruvian American Cultural Association of Connecticut Calendar of Events, May-July 1993.

NotesSubject Note: Connecticut is home to a growing community of Peruvian immigrants, the state’s second largest Latino/a group after Puerto Ricans. Approximately 40,000 Peruvians live in Connecticut, and Stamford has Lima Peru as its sister city. The Peruvian American Community Center has been celebrating the homeland’s Independence in Stamford since 1991. Several Peruvian restaurants across the state serve a variety of regional cuisines, and Peruvian newspapers publish in Connecticut. Peruvian community members work in both service industry and white-collar jobs. The first Peruvian Club in Hartford was formed in 1966, and the Peruvian American Cultural Association was formed in 1992 by musician Armando Zarazu and was active for several years in organizing events such as these depicted. Later a prominent organization that began as a Hartford association of professionals from the Ancash region developed into the Association of Peruvian American Professionals. A long-running Peruvian music show broadcasts on WTRC/Trinity College radio station since 1978. The Peruvian Consulate has established an office in Hartford to provide services to the community. The Consulate has sponsored several cultural activities over the years, including a celebration of Peruvian Independence Day on July 28 with events such as a celebration mass at St. Joseph Cathedral in Hartford and sometimes at performing arts spaces in Hartford.

A notable activity of the Peruvian community in Hartford takes place annually in October. The Brotherhood of the Lord of Miracles (HESMIPERU), a religious fraternity organized locally in 1968, holds a mass and solemn procession through the streets around Our lady of Sorrows Church, carrying its revered statue of the Lord of Miracles. The group, which includes a women’s auxiliary and office holders, organizes social as well as religious events in the community. Their festivals include music, dance, and the special fried cakes called picarones. CCHAP collaborated with WNPR to record the sounds and images of this festival in 2008.

CCHAP has been documenting Peruvian traditional arts activities including folk music and dance, and community festivals such as the Lord of Miracles Procession. We began in 1993 by working with a remarkable Peruvian craftsman, Romulo Chanduvi, whose traditional woodcarving became part of CHAP’s first exhibit, Living Legends: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists. We involved the folk dance group Danzas Peruanas in the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and also encourage the dancers from Peru Folklore group. In 2005 CHAP assisted the Hartford-based group Negrura Peruana to be featured in the Homegrown: Music of America series sponsored by the American Folklife Center, performing at the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage.

Additional audio, video, and/or photographic materials exist in the archive relating to this community

Biographical Note: Romulo Chanduvi began learning the art of woodcarving and fine furniture-making from the age of twelve, growing up in Lima, Peru. He absorbed the techniques and styles of carving passed down in his family’s shop for generations, and served apprenticeships in private workshops in Argentina and Switzerland. Romulo began his career teaching furniture-making under the auspices of the AID Program of the United Nations, helping soldiers to acquire a trade after their military service. He continued to receive advanced training from master woodworkers, learning to work with tropical woods while practicing his artistic skills in Panama. Since 1993, when he received his green card as an “artist of exceptional merit,” Romulo has lived and worked in the Hartford area where he continues to create original woodcarvings as well as replicated museum-quality furniture for many organizations and private collectors. His Charles Street workshop walls are covered with carefully-arranged tools, vises, drills, and hundreds of chisels that Romulo has modified for use in hand-carving intricate details as well as to transform logs of exotic woods into extraordinary pieces of furniture. Each piece is built with authentic joining techniques of the appropriate period, and is finished with all-natural stains, resins, bee waxes, shellacs, and varnishes. His clients include several high-profile collectors in the northeast, and he recently created custom cases for the Sullivan Collection of 18th century porcelain at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Romulo also creates traditional woodcarving in the Spanish/Inca style.

Romulo has been featured in several important exhibitions, including the Institute for Community Research touring exhibit "Living Legends: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists," and the Wadsworth Atheneum’s installation of "Faith and Fortune: Five Centuries of European Masterworks," and in a feature article in Home Living Connecticut magazine.
Romulo’s son Jonathan carries on the family tradition in restoration, establishing a successful studio in New York.

Additional audio, video, and/or photographic materials exist in the archive relating to this community and these artists.

Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.

Status

Not on view