The return of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival to live concerts after a 2020 virtual series of prerecorded and livestream performances is reason enough to celebrate. But the impeccable elegance of the Chesapeake Music’s new home made the evening a visual and musical sensation starring, among others, cellist Marcy Rosen and violinist Catherine Cho, the festival’s co-artistic directors.

Downtown Easton now has a resplendently restored performing arts venue in a space formerly known as the Prager Auditorium. But that space has been renamed Ebenezer Theater and transformed by inspired taste and rich refinement. No doubt, the inspiration derives, in part, from the building’s original purpose as a house of worship. Built in 1856-57, Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal remained a church for more than a century until Ebenezer and two other Easton congregations merged to form St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in the early 1960s. Six new stained-glass windows reflect a faith in culture and the arts.

You enter the theater from an unprepossessing Washington Street entrance. Up one flight of olive-green carpeted stairs brings you into what was once a sanctuary, redesigned with features suggesting the church’s early period. Patterned carpeting complements the stained-glass colors; each window draped in gold fabric matching the stage curtain. Gold Victorian-style wallpaper flanks the stage, which itself frames a Gothic celestial arch. Overhead, nine sleekly modern chandeliers adorn an intricately embossed gold-leaf ceiling. Seating is by movable plush chairs in grape-green upholstery, both on the concert hall floor and balcony at the back of the theater.

For this COVID restricted concert, chairs were grouped in pods of two to four seats together, totaling no more than half the Ebenezer’s expected capacity of about 180. Masks are still required of those attending the festival, including the musicians. 

The evening opened with brief remarks by Chesapeake Music director/founder Don Buxton, who called attention to the stage’s centerpiece–a restored Steinway grand piano. Fittingly, the inaugural piece played in the grand new concert hall was Mozart’s “Piano Trio No. 2,” written at a time in his career when the pianoforte, forerunner to the modern piano, emerged as an instrument displacing the harpsichord. Mozart, himself a keyboard virtuoso, wrote this trio in part to showcase his own performance skills. The piece opens with a bright and lilting solo performed Friday night by Ieva Jokubaviciute. Catherine Cho quickly joins her in a sparkling violin turn bolstered by Marcy Rosen’s cello underpinning. Together they create a lyrical dream sequence followed by mood-shifting movements indicating discord, regrets, and hopeful resolution.

From the comfort food of Mozart, the program turns sharply to Webern’s piece that undercuts the key structure of every piece Amadeus and other grand masters wrote. Webern’s early 20th century “Langsamer Satz,” roughly translated as Slowly with Feeling, gives equal measure to all 12 notes on the chromatic scale. No E-sharp, C-flat, or whatever. A quintet–violinists Cho and Francesca dePasquale, violist Molly Carr, cellist Peter Stumpf, and Peggy Pearson on oboe–incrementally build “Langsamer” to a searing emotional crescendo abetted by a throbbing cello vibrato, mournful violins, and a piercing woodwind that ultimately relax their grip into a placid and somewhat anticlimactic resolve.

Intermission provides a break to prepare us for Dvorak’s “Piano Quartet No. 2,” performed by pianist Diane Walsh with dePasquale, Carr, and Stumpf on strings. From the lush four-instrument opening to march-like cadences and staccato interludes, the quartet takes us on a roller-coaster of moods that might be interpreted as psychotic episodes. Indeed, Dvorak wrote the piece in a fevered stretch of a few summer weeks after one of his benefactors complained that he had not delivered the promised piano quartet in 14 years. It would be Dvorak’s last quartet, but well worth the wait.

Kudos to Chesapeake Music’s adventurous program, delivering both a splendid portion of meat and potatoes (Mozart) and exotic fruit and vegetables (Webern and Dvorak). Kudos also to Paul and Joanne Prager for this Ebenezer jewel. There is more to come in future restoration as the name atop of the former church suggests: The Prager Family Arts Center.

Full disclosure: Because of COVID restrictions and the early sellout of the opening concert, I am reviewing the music via livestream, although I did observe a pre-concert rehearsal by the musicians. Second disclosure: I attended church services and Sunday school at the Ebenezer until St. Mark’s opened when I was in junior high. Although I vaguely recall the organ music and choir, it’s doubtful that either was as artfully inspiring as the new Ebenezer’s opening night, justifiably billed as “Extravaganza.”

By the way, the name Ebenezer has nothing to do with Scrooge. It stands biblically for “stone of help,” of which Easton’s Ebenezer was and could be again by virtue of arts inspiration. 

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

 

36th CHAMBER FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT

Mozart’s “Piano Trio in G Major, K. 496;” Webern’s “Langsamer Satz” (Slowly with Feeling); Dvorak’s “Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Opus 87.” 

Ebenezer Theater, 17 S. Washington St., Easton. Festival continues at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 5, with “Dynamic Duos,” Sunday, June 6, “Summer Nights,” Tuesday, June 10, “Masterworks,” Friday, June 11, “Piano Spotlight,” and Saturday, June 12, “Festival Finale.” Tickets $50, live-streaming $15 (viewing available for one week, including Friday’s opening night). chesapeakemusic.org, 410-819-0380

 

Chestertown RiverArts is putting a new twist on its annual Plein Air festival this year. On Friday and Saturday, June 4-5, come to historic Chestertown to enjoy Paint the Town Plus, a festive atmosphere celebrating the art of the outdoors in the outdoors. 

On June 4 from 5-8pm, as part of Chestertown’s First Friday festivities, RiverArts will exhibit works by some 30 artists from throughout Maryland under tents in Fountain Park. These artists have been working on landscapes, seascapes, paintings of quaint towns, and more since April 30. Artists who work in media other than painting have also been invited to participate, a new addition from past years. The Friday evening event will be an opportunity to enjoy this exhibit, perhaps purchase a piece, and get to chat with the artists themselves.

In addition to the exhibit, the RiverArts Clay Community will offer Empty Bowls Upside Down, a new version of the ever popular Empty Bowls tradition, which benefits the Kent County Food Pantry. Potters have made hundreds of beautiful bowls, any one of which can be purchased for $20. Buyers are also asked to bring canned soup and boxed dried food for donation. Unsold bowls will be available again the next day.

Visitors will want to stroll through Chestertown during its First Friday celebration. Known for its arts and entertainment district and beautiful historic waterfront, the town has many galleries and fun shops which will be open, adding to the gala spirit.

On Saturday morning, coinciding with Chestertown’s noted Farmers’ and Artisans’ Market, RiverArts will be sponsoring a Quick Draw. From 10:30-12:30, artists will paint scenes from throughout Kent County, some based on suggestions from local residents. Expect to see some of these artists painting in town, once again offering the chance to speak with them about their approaches and techniques. These works will then be exhibited for judging in the tents. Cash awards will be given. All of these works will be for sale.

Also on Saturday morning, RiverArts’ KidSPOT will host Paint the Park for young children. Easels, paper canvases, and oil pastel sticks will be set up in Fountain Park, giving young artists the opportunity to explore the joys of Plein Air painting and express their interpretations of the local scene. A good time will be had for the whole family.

Come back June 11 to see works from the festival hung in the RiverArts Gallery for its first in-person exhibit in over a year.

Jazz doesn’t get any better than the groove Christian McBride’s New Jawn delivers, and fresh from winning his J1h Grammy, McBride has accepted Dr. Mel Rapelyea’s invitation to headline the 25th Anniversary Chestertown Jazz Festival in September.

In a word, “Wow!”

When Christian McBride’s New Jawn takes the stage under the bigger-than-ever Festival tent in Wilmer Park, on the banks of the Chester River, McBride’s premier musicians will continue the Chestertown Jazz Festival tradition of bringing astonishingly important jazz artists to town. In 1996, Rapelyea topped off his first Festival by wooing the Count Basie Orchestra’s Frank Foster to Chestertown, and Foster didn’t disappoint. He thrilled the first-Festival audience with his quartet of Basie veterans, and this year’s headliner is proof that “Doctor Mel” can still shag big stars.

“Oh my goodness!” laughed Rapelyea. “I am thrilled that Christian McBride’s New Jawn is our headliner-this is going to be quite a celebration. We’ll have new young talent that people will love, great local and Mid-Atlantic artists excited to be back to play the Festival again, and lots more. The 25th anniversary Festival is going to have it all.”

Tap “Christian McBride’s New Jawn” into YouTube and you’ll get a whiff of the level of musicianship that will bring jazz lovers from Philly, DC, Baltimore and South Jersey to the three-day Festival, from Thursday to Saturday, September 9 to 11.

Chuck Redd on vibraphone and drums will amaze, as always, when he kicks off the festival with his combo in Rock Hall on Thursday, in The Mainstay’s new outdoor venue. Talk about legends! Redd was 21 when he joined the Charlie Byrd Trio and took off on a career that included 25 European tours and six tours in Japan with Barney Kessel. In recent years, Redd has played countless packed-house gigs at the Mainstay as well as the 2016 Jazz Festival. Rapelyea says Redd is dedicating his 2021 Festival concert to the memory of Charlie Byrd.

Doctor Mel is delighted with the music he and Sue Matthews have lined up for Friday night’s “Cocktails and Jazz” show in the Festival’s biggest-ever tent in Wilmer Park, where the pandemic-era audience will be able to spread out while they enjoy heavy hors d’oeuvres and drink in the sound of Festival favorites. Millington’s Vaughn Bratcher Project will welcome the audience with smooth modern jazz spiced with a bit of R&B before they hand over the stage to The Sholbertshire Swingtet.

The four Sholbertshires are pros who’ve travelled the world and performed with the best of the best: Amy Shook on acoustic bass (she played at the White House twice!); Joe Holt at the piano (he’s on more than 30 album recordings and has been hosting “Mainstay Mondays” with local talent since 2016); Scott Silbert on tenor sax (he’s the U.S. Navy Band’s chief arranger and plays with the Smithsonian’s Jazz Masterworks Orchestra); and Steve Abshire on guitar (he appeared twice with the “Great Guitars,” once with Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd when he filled in for Barney Kessel).

“The Sholbertshires are four of the mid-Atlantic’s favorite voices in jazz,” Rapelyea said.

“They’ve joined forces to celebrate the music of the Great American Songbook, and their unique and joyous way pays tribute to the swingin’ ensemble sound of the Oscar Peterson Trio featuring Stan Getz. I guarantee they’ll swing you into great health!”

On Saturday, the Chestertown Jazz Festival tent will be filled with music all afternoon and into the evening. “We’ll open with gospel music as always,” Doctor Mel said. The Burke family will grace our opening, “and our emcee on Saturday will be the wonderful and beautiful Miyuki Williams from WPFW jazz radio in Washington, D.C. She has emceed the Festival many times and everyone who knows jazz knows her. She hosts a Sunday jazz show on WPFC called Sunday Kind of Love.”

Rapelyea says he is delighted that the second group on stage Saturday, the Ephraim and Ebben Dorsey Quintet, is a tribute to youth in jazz. At 17 and 16, the brother and sister alto saxophonists claim top-billing in their Baltimore combo. According to Doctor Mel, the teens have been playing professionally with veteran musicians locally and across the country since they were about ten years old.

Next up? A “Chestertown Jazz Revue” choreographed by vocalist Sue Matthews that will be jam-packed with local celebrities and home-grown super-stars: Dick Durham, Stef Scaggiari, Sherry Winston, Giacomo Gates, The Uptown Vocal Jazz Quartet, Lena Seikaly, Sue Matthews and Marlon Saunders! For anyone who’s been tuned in to the local music scene for a decade or two or three, the Jazz Revue will be a gift basket overflowing with sounds people love about Chestertown.

And then, with everyone already on their feet, calling for more, Doctor Mel says Miyuki Williams will introduce Christian McBride’s New Jawn.

“Oh, my goodness,” Rapelyea said. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”He is so grateful for his knowledgeable and hardworking committee for so many years. He inaugurated festival 1 in 1996 with the complete backing of Leslie Raimond who headed The Kent County Arts Council. She’s been helping him ever since. Other current members include the master of recycling and the organizer and leader of the ‘Ukulele group’, Ford Shuman. He is the consummate ‘Stage Manager.’ Hard workers also include Mary Simmons, Andy Goddard, Nie Carter, and the newest Steve Arnold. Steve is the new Executive Director of the Garfield Center for the Performing Arts. He joins the committee with zeal and excitement for this 25th-anniversary event.

For ticket information, go to The Chestertown Jazz Festival’s Facebook page.

Dr. Mel Rapelyea and his committee are ‘Well Healthy Aware’ and are prepared to follow any future regulations related to the COVID pandemic. As of the latest CDC ruling the event has received their blessing to move forward safely with no significant restrictions.

For information and advance ticket sales go to www.garfieldcneter.org or call 410-810-2060.

This coming weekend, May 14-16, the annual Oxford Fine Art Show will take place at the Oxford Community Center. The event, in its 37th year, will feature 50 artists juried into the exhibition and sale. The selected artists are from as far as Cayman Island to as close as the Eastern Shore. 

As customary, a Featured Artist and their work is selected, which appears in posters, advertisements, brochures, etc.  This year that artist is the locally renowned Sheryl Southwick, a teaching artist for the Academy Art Museum and Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center. Her featured work is called A View from the Porch. 

An artist since childhood, Southwick was raised by creatively inclined parents, who fostered her desire to learn everything from carpentry to sewing to music. She realized the power of art when in high school, a teacher taught the class to work in every style for one subject. “We would take, for instance, a bell pepper,” said Southwick, “and we had to paint it, draw it, make collages, or sculptures. It forced me to think extremely creatively in a very open way.”

Southwick earned a BFA in painting and drawing from Louisiana State University and then studied with Milton Resnick, Mary Vernon, Leon Berkowicz, and others. She also spent a year in Paris immersing herself in the works of painter Pierre Bonnard, whom she considers her most significant influence. 

Southwick began to gain notoriety through her collage interpretations of landscapes and abstracts, created by distressing and coloring paper before tearing it into strips and making it the palette. The process gives the artwork a paint-like quality or creates, as described by a Baton Rouge gallery, ‘paper mosaics.’

In March of 2020, with the stay-at-home order, Southwick began to spend more time painting. “We were inside because of the pandemic, and I was in this house that reminded me of the interiors that were painted by Pierre Bonnard, the painter that I just love. So, this became my ‘Bonnardian summer.” It was also the beginning of her series: ‘Other People’s Places,’ which can be seen at the show this weekend.

The series is captivating, probably because there is a certain familiarity to them. Southwick says, “I think that my paintings of interiors are comforting for people to see, especially because it’s things that everybody has in their house. Things like cats, lamps, tables. And when they’re painted, it’s very compelling.” 

Compelling enough, of course, that one of them was chosen as the featured work by Juror Stewart Burgess White. Oxford Fine Arts chairwoman Karen Walbridge recalls the selection process.  “Stewart chose her because of her style. He felt like you were actually in her work itself. He just liked the feel of it.”

That’s also the feeling that Southwick would like others to experience. “I want my painting,” she says, “to be very beckoning. You want to get up close because sometimes you can’t tell from a distance what’s going on.  If I see a painting from across the room, I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, well, look, I can see the whole thing from here.’ I don’t want it to be just a bunch of big bright colors screaming at me.  There will be a lot of colors in my paintings, but they won’t scream at you. They’re quiet colors, but they’re very rich. And if you get up close, there might be intensity as well.”

If you spend any time with Southwick, you’ll soon learn that color is what defines her as an artist. She studied it; she works in it; she thinks about it. A great deal. She says, “My work is that of a lot of color knowledge and spontaneity. But it’s a light touch. It’s not overworked. I want color to sing, but sing in the right keys.”

She’s not kidding. It’s so important to her that lack of color makes her uncomfortable. “I was in a church one time,” says Southwick, “that was so plain, and the walls were so white–no paintings, no stained glass. It was distracting to me, a white room with nothing at all.”

But there is also a positive side to this type of anxiety. “You will hear from other artists who say they’re scared of the white canvas because they don’t know what they’re going to do with it. To me, it’s an invitation to put a dot on it, to make a mark, to make that connection outside of yourself.”

Nowadays, Southwick is finding inspiration from a new muse. She’s staying at a place by a creek with lots of trees. “I like looking at things that are very active and in a quiet way. So, the ground of the forest is full of leaves, sticks, dirt, and the grass creeping up here and there. And all that together is like a tapestry to me. So, I’m painting pictures of what looks like trees, but they’re also evolving into other portrayals that are slightly more abstract.”

You’ll have to wait to see the forest and the trees. For now, you can experience the tapestries of the rooms that Southwick has painted and which you can own. 

Sheryl Southwick will demonstrate how she modulates the color areas of an oil painting from 10 am-11 am on Sunday, May 16th at OCC.

Don’t miss all the other activities and events planned for this weekend’s 2021 Oxford Fine Arts. For more information, go here.  Or please go to Sheryl’s website here.

Val Cavalheri is a recent transplant to the Eastern Shore, having lived in Northern Virginia for the past 20 years. She’s been a writer, editor and professional photographer for various publications, including the Washington Post.

Vincent Van Gogh felt the need to leave the distractions of Paris, and in February 1888 moved 450 miles to Arles in the south of France. He was stunned by the south, it’s sunlight and the colors. He wrote to his brother Theo: “The painter of the future will be a colorist such as never existed. In the south, one’s senses get keener, one’s hands become more agile, one’s eye more alert, one’s brain clearer.” 

Van Gogh was passionate in all things, and he fell in love with the flowering orchards that signaled the arrival of spring, for him the start of a new life. He began a series of paintings depicting the lush blooming orchards of plum, peach, pear, almond, and apricot. In March 1888 he wrote to Theo: “This country seems to me as beautiful as Japan in its limpid atmosphere and gay color effects.  Water forms patches of beautiful emerald or rich blue in the landscape, just as one sees in Japanese prints.  The sunsets have a pale orange hue that makes the fields appear blue. The sun, a splendid yellow. In all of nature, in trees for instance, I see expression and a soul, as it were.”

“Orchard in Bloom, Bordered by Cyprus Trees” (April 1888) (25.5” x 31.8’’) is one of fourteen paintings of orchards made on Van Gogh’s arrival in Arles. He discovered Impressionism and Japanese Ukiyo-e wood cuts in Paris.  As a means to make a quick profit, he purchased 600 Japanese wood cuts to sell.  Although this venture was not profitable, as he wrote to his brother Theo, “it gave me the opportunity to see a lot of Japanese art at leisure and over time.” “Orchard in Bloom” is an example of Van Gogh’s use of Impressionist color with blue and purple tree trunks, not brown, that support the abundance of white and pink blossoms. The ground is painted in shades of purple and tan, tan for the color of the earth and lavenders for the shadows. “Instead of trying to paint exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully.” Influenced by Japanese prints, Van Gogh painted several copies, but always added his own inspiration to the images.  He stated emphatically, “All my work is based to some extent on Japanese art.”

“Flowering Peach Tree” (Souvenir de Mauve) (March 30, 1888) (28.7” x 23.6’’) is dedicated to Van Gogh’s friend and supporter Anton Rudolf Mauve who was married to Van Gogh’s cousin Ariette (Jet) Carbentus.  During his early career, Van Gogh spent three weeks in 1888 under the tutelage of Mauve, learning to use oil paint and watercolor. Van Gogh was a prolific letter writer, especially to his brother Theo, and he often spoke of Mauve. When describing his current work it was about the with colors. He describes this painting, “at this moment, I have six paintings of blossoming fruit trees…a wicker fence and two peach trees in full bloom, pink against a sparkling sky blue with white clouds and in sunshine…since I’ve decided to send this one to Jet Mauve, I’ve written on it Souvenir de Mauve.” Mauve and Van Gogh had a falling out, but Van Gogh always remembered Mauve with fondness. Mauve had just died, and Van Gogh sent the painting with the inscription “Souvenir de Mauve to his cousin Jet, Mauve’s widow.

In “Small Pear Tree, Arles” (April 1888) (28.7” x 16.1’’) viewers have the opportunity to inspect a single flowering tree instead of the entire orchard.  We can appreciate Van Gogh’s use of color for the ground; the variety of light blues, purples and tans depict to the slight unevenness of the ground.  His drawing of the tree, the focal point of the painting, is twisted and yet balanced to create a quiet energy. The application of paint to depict each blossom or cluster of blossoms allows the viewer not only to see the tree more clearly but also to appreciate fully Van Gogh’s obvious joy in painting. His brush caresses each petal with care. Van Gogh describes his technique: “…to manipulate the colors in a picture so that they vibrate and set each other off, something like putting together jewelry or designing costumes.”

After the significant incident on May 5, 1889 when he cut off his ear lobe, Van Gogh voluntarily signed himself in to St Paul Asylum in S Remy, near Arles. The asylum, a former monastery, offered him what he sought; solitude and peace. With its large courtyard and walled gardens of herbs, poppies, irises, roses, and beyond the walls, fields of wheat and orchards of all types, it was as he wrote “the lightning conductor for my illness.”  His first painting in S Remy “Irises” (May 1889) (28” x 36.6”) is full of his usual energy, and as critics have noted they evidence his admiration and joy in flowers. Van Gogh describes the colors “running up to carmine and pure Prussian blue.” The direction of the green leaves moves the composition from right to left, with the single white iris successfully stopping the flow.  The composition is carefully orchestrated with a balancing of iris against earth in the foreground, and the addition of the cluster of bright orange and yellow marigolds at the upper left.  Purple and yellow are complementary colors on the color wheel; they bring out the best in each other. 

Van Gogh sent this and other paintings to Theo in Paris. Theo was excited by the works and submitted them to the September 1899 Salon des Independents.  Theo wrote to Vincent: “Irises make an extremely good showing.  They have put it on the narrow wall of the room, and it strikes the eye from afar.  It is a beautiful study full of air and life.”  The art critic Mirbeau said, “How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers.” Seeing the painting Monet remarked, “How did a man who loved flowers and light to such an extent, and who rendered them so well, how, then did he still manage to be so unhappy?”  This painting was often exhibited and it changed hands frequently. It was sold in 1987for 58.9 million dollars. 

In February 1890, Van Gogh suffered his worst relapse and missed the spring season. “If I’d been able to continue working…I would have done others of the trees in blossom. Now the trees in blossom are almost finished…I have no luck.” To make up for the time lost, he painted a large number of flower paintings including roses, poppies, sunflowers and irises. “Irises” (May 1890) (29’’ x36’’) is one of his last paintings at S Remy.  More studied and simpler in composition, “Irises” still evidences Van Gogh’s love of flowers.  Many of these last works were on the same size canvases, indicating he was making paintings for exhibition. Van Gogh remained at S Remy for 374 days. He created 150 paintings and 100 drawings. 

“Almond Blossoms” (February 1890) (29” x 36”) was painted before “Irises” (May 1890), and before Van Gogh missed the Spring blooms. He had painted flowering almond trees and single almond branches before.  Almond blossoms and trees were a subject he turned to often as a symbol of new life.  “Almond Blossoms” is considered by art critics to be one of Van Gogh’s finest works, and it held a special place in Van Gogh’s life. Theo Van Gogh married his wife Johanna in the spring of 1889, and their son Vincent William was born in February 1890. Theo wrote, “As we told you, we’ll name him after you, and I’m making the wish that he may be as determined and as courageous as you.” Vincent wrote to a friend, “I started right away to make a picture for [Theo’s son} to hang in his bedroom, big branches of white almond blossoms against a blue sky.” To Theo: “It does me, too, more good, and gives me more pleasure than I could express in words…You will see that it is perhaps the best, the most patiently worked thing I have done, painted with calm and with greater firmness of touch.” Unfortunately, this letter ended with the following sentence, “And the next day, down like a brute.” 

“Almond Blossoms” was hung prominently above the piano in the living room in Theo’s home, and it continued to be a cherished family painting.  Van Gogh checked himself out of S Remy in May 1890 and moved north to Auvers under the care of Dr. Gachet.  The move placed him closer to his brother.  Van Gogh lived for another ten weeks and painted 70 pictures.  On Sunday, July 17, 1890, Van Gogh tried to take his life; he died on the following Tuesday morning.  He was thirty-seven.  Six months later, Theo died at the age of thirty-three.  After Theo died, “Almond Blossoms” was hung in Jo and her son Vincent’s bedroom.  Johanna and her son inherited 755 letters Van Gogh had written to Theo, 200 paintings, and Van Gogh’s collection of over 400 Japanese woodcuts. She was the guiding force behind the creation of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. In his short life Van Gogh painted more than 850 paintings and produced more than 1,300 works on paper.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 

The Spy had a few questions after reading a press release the other day from the Main Street Gallery in Cambridge noting that it would be featuring the work of Paul Clipper with the intriguing exhibit title of “HOME GROWN CHORDOPHONES.”

The first question for us was what a “chordophone” might be. The second was what made it “home grown.” But the most important was “who the heck makes home grown chordophones in the first place.”

As with most things with the Cambridge Spy as we get to know our new community, we turned to Mike Starling over at our partner WHCP radio for some help. And it turned out that Mike had an easy answer for this. He set us up with an interview with Paul Clipper, who also happened to be one of the community station’s most popular volunteer disk jockeys who hosts a Blues program every week.

So we did. A few weeks ago, the Spy sat down with Paul to not only get some answers, but also the chance to listen to a unique life journey as a publisher, country editor, motorcycle enthusiast, radio host, and photographer. And like so many others we have been meeting in Dorchester County, gives a larger hint on why Cambridge is such a rich and unique part of the Eastern Shore. 

This video is approximately eight minutes in length.

HOME GROWN CHORDOPHONES at the www.mainstgallery.net, runs through Sunday, JUNE  27. There will be two artists receptions on Second Saturdays, MAY 8 and JUNE 12 from 5-8 pm.  The gallery is located at 518 Poplar St. in Cambridge’s lively Arts and Entertainment District and directly across the street from Jimmie and Sooks Restaurant.

The Mid-Shore has been blessed with several organizations and instructors over the years who have provided a countless number of promising artists the skills they need to pursue their passion for painting. But the Working Artists Forum must be considered one of the earliest pioneers.

Founded in 1979 by a handful of devoted artists as a way to mentor painters of all ages, the Working Artists Forum now has over 100 members from all over the Eastern Shore, who take advantage of the organization’s workshops but also participates in its unique network of galleries where members work is on display throughout the year.

The Spy recently sat down with Betty Huang, the WAF’s current president, to understand this great organization’s mission, history, and services as well as its ongoing philanthropic support in supporting art and art teachers in elementary schools in six counties on the Shore.

This video is approximately minutes in length. For more information about the Working Arts Forum please go here.

You could say without exaggeration that Miro in New York 1947, the new exhibition at Easton’s Academy Art Museum, was centuries in the making–preceding by one year the inauguration of the first president of the United States. Much of the printmaking derived from works by Atelier 17 artists now on display until just past the Fourth of July are rooted in a relief-etching technique invented by poet William Blake in 1788.

Blake dubbed it “illuminated printing,” by which some of his written masterpieces were published in book form. Works by artists-in-residence at the New York-based atelier–many of them refugees of war and genocide–adorn illustrated texts of then-living poets, principally Ruthven Todd, whose first name honors a Norse clan of Scottish noblemen. An early 1947 Miro print enhances Todd’s verses, translated from Spanish:

“Once he had a country where the sun shone,
Through the enchanted trees like lace.
But now it is troubled, and happiness is gone.
For the bombs fell in that fine place
And the magician found we he had woken
His people killed, his gay pots broken.”

Literal words meld progressively into visual art as one moves through the two galleries of about 70 Miro, Hayter, and Atelier 17 works. Although Miro–Joan Miro of Spain–is the headliner of this exhibition, British artist Stanley William Hayter was the seminal printmaking artist whose spark and glue held the transplant school together through the early postwar years that drew them to New York in the first place.

Notably, Hayter created a welcome environment for women artists, a dozen of whom are represented in this show–principally Czech-French printmaker/painter/sculptor Terry Haass, but also Norma Morgan, whose artworks are featured in a companion solo exhibit in AAM’s two smaller first-floor galleries initiated and curated by Mehves Lelic, the museum’s new chief curator. Lelic also completed curation of the “Miro” exhibit planned by the administration of museum director Benjamin Simons, now directing Telfair Museums in Savannah, Ga., and Anke Van Wagenberg, currently curator at Vero Beach (Fla.) Art Museum. Sarah Jesse, formerly deputy director of California’s Orange County Museum of Art, is now Easton’s new director.

Among the stars of the main AAM exhibit, besides Miro and Hayter, is American artist Fred Becker, whose wife, fellow American Jean Morrison, was also an Atelier 17 mainstay when it relocated to New York City after the Nazis marched into Paris in 1940. Around this time, Miro also arrived in America as fascist troops overthrew government loyalists in his native Spain’s civil war. Miro joined Hayter’s group of artists in refining a method of printing in the cursive style of handwriting deployed by Blake a century and a half earlier. These largely text-driven prints resemble a printed page–including copper-plate etchings. Others by Miro feature a more vibrant intaglio technique embroidered with imagery that offers a glimpse into his later Surrealism period–primitively expressive and free-flowing.

Atelier 17’s printmaking explorations stretch far beyond text in the next gallery. Femmes et Oiseau Devant  la Lune (Women and Bird in Front of the Moon) from 1947 captures the Miro we’ve come to know in paintings that succeeded this experimental phase in a long career. (Miro lived to survive his 90th birthday by several months.) 

Haass’ Breaking the Vicious Circle engraving of three highly abstract figures is more painterly than etchingly–if that’s a word–more brush-stroked than carved out. Becker’s Aerial Jungle series progresses from three copper plates to earth-toned flyover views suggesting an untrammeled rainforest. Hayter’s Falling Figures series represents a stark departure from poet Blake’s plate-making that originally launched the Atelier 17 mission. Waxy “soft-ground” etching facilitates drawing by pencil point, offering a free hand for artists to experiment with abstractions bringing to mind, for instance, works by Yves Tanguy, foreseen in text-anchored Slender Dignity of Isolated Bones. 

The best works of Norma Morgan are saved for her Enchanted World exhibit. So, don’t skip the galleries just down the hall from the museum’s new Harrison Street courtyard entrance. Her hand-colored engraving of Harriet Tubman in a biblical-miracle setting is not to be missed. Nor is her Sojourner Truth, Spirit of the Mountain, a celebration of the ongoing civil rights struggle. 

And now that spring is no longer threatening snowstorms (we hope), as in the upper Midwest, it’s an ideal time to take in the outdoor Waterwall installation by Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann before it comes down in June. The mixed-media enclosure of acrylic, silkscreen, and collaged vinyl-over-glass evokes the artist’s interpretation of Chinese cave murals transformed minute to minute by sunlight and passing clouds. 

Indoor and outdoor art. Masks are still part of our collective viewing experience. But at least we have one now. And these works are well worth any trivial inconvenience. 

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic and editor now living in Easton.

 

MIRO IN NEW YORK, 1947: Miro, Hayter and Atelier 17

Through July 8, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St. Easton, online viewing available through Aug. 1. Zoom conversation with Carla Esposito Hayter, art historian, and daughter-law of Atelier 17 founder Stanley William Hayter, led by AAM curator Mehves Lilic, 10 a.m. May 8, $20-$24.

NORMA MORGAN: ENCHANTED WORLD

Through Aug. 1, Academy Art Museum; 410-822-2787, academyartmuseum.org. Admission: $3, free for children 12 and younger. Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, noon-4 p.m. Sundays, closed Mondays. 

WATERWALL: Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann

Through June 6, an outdoor installation on museum grounds, South and Harrison streets