Ed Jaffe accepts the Litchfield Hills Creative Award for his […]

A new artistic force had moved to Litchfield County. Ed Jaffe is one of our new best kept secrets and he feels that Torrington is not far behind. Jaffe has lived his life in 20 year cycles. 20 years to grow up. 20 years as a photographer in New York, 20 years learning to sculpt in Vermont and 20 years as an artist/gallery owner in Virginia.

As most of you know I have been spending much of my time working on the Artist Relocation Program in Torrington since I arrived here a little over a year ago . That program is now live and much of it has been turned back to the city for execution .

Jaffe moved to Torrington last year in order to be a part of the obvious arts revival occurring here. Just off Torrington’s Highland Ave, Jaffe’s newly renovated and re-purposed studio holds all the magic of his prolific and successful career.

Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT July 31, 2015 Moderated by […]

Artist Ed Jaffe, most recently from Virginia, almost didn’t move here. He turned his back on the circa 1900 farmhouse along Highland Avenue four years ago, didn’t think twice about a city he found stagnant, stuck romanticizing its factory-town past, drifting toward a seemingly inevitable decline. “It looked like it was dying,” he said.

He’s changed his mind.

IN THE AFTERNOON LIGHT of his studio, Ed Jaffe paints a girl he saw years ago. He was strolling along an Ecuadorian when he spied her. Now the work is newly drawn and still colorless. Jaffe dabs white across the girl’s shoulders.

When 82-year-old artist Ed Jaffe stands up from a chair, he does so slowly and with a pronounced grimace, but it would be reasonable to assume the act is merely for show — a performance so as not to confuse a younger person’s expectations of an old man. Jaffe is and is not a lot of things.

Ed Jaffe’s studio of sculpted marble and textured paintings stands out like a sore thumb in Orange County.
Amid the quiet gift shops and quaint eateries in the town of Orange, Ed Jaffe’s exhibition space is a bit of a shock.

Many of Ed Jaffe’s sculptures and paintings evoke images of Mysterious cultures and lost civilizations. The Mayans, Incas, Aztecs and Ancient Chinese emerge from the stone Jaffe carves into polished works of art.

Those who meet his art before they meet the man could be excused for expecting Jaffe to be a mystic cloaked in the trappings of the Yucatan or the High Andes.