If you’re in search of a unique holiday gift for someone special, don’t miss the TRA Gallery at 31 E. Dover Street downtown Easton, right across from the Avalon Theatre. You will be inspired by the stunning original artwork on the walls. TRA Gallery is proud to welcome local artists   Lynne Davis, Josepha Price, and Lynne Weaver. 

The artists will be in the gallery on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday throughout December. Come by to chat with them, learn about their creative processes, and purchase original art while supporting our community’s artists. 100% of the sales proceeds go directly to the artists.

Lynne Davis is a graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art, with a major in Graphic Design and the University of Maryland with a Master of Library Science degree. 

After retirement from teaching, Lynne returned to her love of art and began oil painting as a studio painter, selling her work by commissions and local art shows.  She is inspired by how light plays on nature and brings things to life. Upon graduating from art school, she worked with pen & ink and pastels but has since chosen oils as her mainstay medium.

Her paintings have found homes from Florida to California, and Belgium. Lynne is an active member of the Academy of the Arts Working Artists Forum and the St. Michael’s Art League. 

Josepha Price has been a resident of Talbot County since 1998, where she raised her three children, who remain her greatest inspiration. She has been working since she was twelve, and her first commissioned piece was a Black War Bonnet Society replica on Buffalo hide. During her childhood, she moved between her father’s carpenter shop and her mother’s farm, hosting traveling indigenous artists during Powwow season. She learned to bead, tan, and quill, but ultimately found her passion in painting. Her mix of skills, developed during her childhood, led to a creative stint with The King’s Grant, an architectural precast company specializing in concrete replicas of French limestone and marble materials found in Versailles. Her time there also honed her sculpting abilities and mold-making skills while keeping her carpentry knowledge fresh. Although she received basic art education at Chesapeake Community College, she decided that learning by doing suited her style better. Currently, she works mostly in collage but is also fluent in oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor, and graphite.

Judith Stevens Weaver is a member of the St. Michaels Art League and Working Artists Forum. She has exhibited her work throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states and finds Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where she lives, to be inspiring. A thread throughout her work is her love of nature and she is intrigued by the abstract shapes and impact of color and light within the natural world, especially on the water and in the woodlands. Exploring the natural world through primarily watercolor painting brings her spiritual joy that she strives to share with the viewer.

Talbot Arts is committed to supporting the arts sector and distributing funds equitably through grants and services to enrich the quality of life and enhance the economic vitality of all citizens in Talbot County. This year, the arts council will distribute $ 185,000 in grants for arts organizations and those providing arts programs, classroom-based arts education, and middle and high school summer arts scholarships for gifted and talented students. Other services include producing “Arts in Action,” a weekly radio program on WHCP, to promote the arts in Talbot County and providing access to resources to help the arts community grow and thrive. The TRA Gallery is the latest initiative by the Arts Council, designed to provide opportunities for independent visual artists who currently lack gallery representation to showcase their work. The space is available at no cost for one month to an individual artist or a small group to exhibit their art. 

For more information about Talbot Arts programs, contact  [email protected]. 

The board of directors of the Talbot County Arts Council has announced that Joan Levy of Oxford has been appointed as the organization’s executive director effective August 1.

Arts Council President Patrick Rogan says, “Our board’s search for the new executive director drew high-quality applications from throughout the Mid-Atlantic Area. After due consideration, Joan was the search committee’s clear first choice. She has in abundance the qualities we considered essential for great success in the position, including past experience managing non-profit organizations, a deep and broad appreciation for the arts, and a commitment to contributing to the cultural, economic, and educational benefit of the community. We are thrilled that she has agreed to serve as our executive director.”

Levy is an experienced marketing, communications and business development executive, she has had a long career successfully designing and executing plans to support strategic initiatives for large and small non-profit organizations. After a 30-year career with Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, she relocated to the Eastern Shore. In 2015, she established JM Levy and Associates, offering a full range of business support and fundraising services to the Maryland Mid-Shore community as a working professional and as a volunteer.

She says, “It is my belief that the arts play a major role in the quality of life in our communities and bring people together across boundaries. They are key to our building stronger connections with each other by increasing understanding between people who may have little on common on the surface. I’m honored to represent the council as its executive director and to implement its mission.”

Levy fell in love with the Eastern Shore on a trip to Oxford in 1977. She and her husband, moved there ten years ago, restoring an original waterman’s cottage in the historic district.

She succeeds Gerry Early whose term as executive director began on January 1, 1999. He was a career officer in the U.S. Army whose last assignments before retiring as a colonel with 35 years of service were as a brigade commander in Korea and director of academic affairs for the National Defense University at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington D.C.