Last weekend the Spy went across to bridge to visit the American Craft Council Show in Baltimore to find five Chestertown artists who were attending the weekend event.

Now in its 45th year, this ACC event, formerly known as the Baltimore American Craft Show, was a welcome return for artists after two pandemic closures.

The Baltimore Convention Center was awash with crafts from all over the country, from giant steel fabricated rabbits to sheer silk scarves and miniature gold-leaf fantasy creations, glazed pottery and glass bowls that looked like candy and cases upon cases of jewelry.

Even among the cavalcade of visitors that would eventually account for 20,000 shoppers, we found our Chestertown artists, and even though they had little time for conversation we captured a few images as they talked with customers. It was inspiring to see them among presenters in this prestigious council flagship show.

Seasoned veterans of the national craft and art show circuit, glass artists Patti and Dave Hegland, potter and sculptor Marilee Schumann, silk textile artist Yuh Okano, and floorcloth designer Faith Wilson displayed their new creations.

“After so many pandemic shutdowns, it was great to see old friends and see what they’re up to. We all had masks on, so sometimes it took a few seconds to recognize each other,” Wilson quips.

And it was a tough weekend to have a show in Baltimore. The Preakness was running, the Orioles were playing, universities and colleges were having graduations and Saturday was sweltering. Nevertheless, craft and art shoppers were happy to get out to discover what their favorite artists have been creating.

And besides, who can pass a seven-foot steel rabbit or prowling bear without having it sent directly to home? We know who did.

To see more of these gifted Chestertown artists go to:

Marilee Schumann here.

Hegland Glass here.

Yuh Okano here.

Faith Wilson here

This whirlwind video is approximately four minutes in length.

If, and perhaps when, the Spy offers an award to a Mid-Shore nonprofit organization for innovative use of a video to document its relevance and history; it certainly would have gone to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum last year.

The Long Shore, the privately funded mini-documentary of the CBMM’s remarkable role in maritime history, broke entirely new ground in telling an institution’s powerful story in a way that is both spellbinding visually and dramatic in content. The YO Production is still gaining attention at film festivals and online as a new gold standard for peer museums to study and replicate.

And this year, that fictional award would go to the Academy Art Museum’s ten-minute feature that uses the AAM’s well-maintained scrapbook since it first opened to tell the unique story of the museum’s founding.

Produced and directed by AAM volunteer and professional video editor Matt Kresling, the ten minute video is a minor masterpiece in using the simple pages of an institution’s journal to reunite former leaders and staff in telling the remarkable tale of the Academy Art Museum’s humble beginnings to the its present position as one of the best regional arts centers in the Mid-Atlantic.

This video is approximately ten minutes in length. For more information about Academy Art Museum please go here.

How times fly. It seems like it was only the other day when the Oxford Community Center opened its doors after a total renovation. That was ten years ago! And now, the Spy has discovered that one of the best community arts and culture centers in Maryland will be celebrating its 40th anniversary of existence this year and 38 of those years hosting its Oxford Fine Arts Festival. Lordy.

We asked the OCC’s executive director to come by the Spy studio the other day to hear more about its year of celebrations, get a sneak preview of some of the art that will be part of the Fine Arts Festival weekend coming up, and how the Community Center has deservingly earned the hearts of so many on the Mid-Shore as they begin their fifth decade of service.

This video is approximately four minutes in length. For more information about the Oxford Fine Arts Festival please go here. For the Oxford Community Center please go here.

While there are countless examples of community members pitching in to help education programs and teachers on the Mid-Shore, it’s hard to beat the recent story of the Avalon Foundation working with Daniel Weiss, the CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to offer a personal tour of that world-famous institution for Easton Elementary School art teacher Anna Madachik.

After three years of working with Easton Elementary School on both afterschool art classes and programming related to the Avalon’s annual Plein Air Easton festival, the Foundation’s Jessica Bellis, and Anna were brainstorming about what else could be done with this collaboration when the idea came up of connecting Anna with another one of the Avalon’s special friends, Daniel Weiss. And Dan just happens to call Oxford, Maryland home during his weekend breaks from running one of the largest museums in the world.

Dan had recently helped the Avalon by becoming the competition judge for Plein Aire in 2021. And He didn’t hesitate to set aside time for Anna and a crew from the Avalon’s community television station to visit the Met after closing hours and discuss and videotape her conservation on seven of Anna’s handpicked art objects that she could later share with her students for many years to come.

The Spy down with Anna last weekend to talk about this remarkable adventure, the generosity of Dan Weiss, and the impact this unique kind of art education has on young children.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about the Avalon Foundation please go here. For information about the Metropolitan Museum of Art please go here.

How often have you thought, “I’m in the mood for some great bluegrass, but I also want a side serving of cringe worthy dad jokes?”  Next time you have that specific craving, you should definitely hope that The David Mayfield Parade is in town.  They brought their unique show to the Avalon Theater’s Stoltz Listening Room this past Friday and left a sellout crowd thoroughly entertained.

Mayfield led his impressive band – including standout Steven Moore on 5-string banjo – through a fast-paced 90-minute show, evoking every emotion from joy to despair, sometimes in the same song.

The songs were based in bluegrass, and occasionally ventured out to more straightforward folk or even rock(ish) territory.  I have, for example, absolutely no idea how to classify their set closer, Trapped Under the Ice, which featured a call-and-response section of nonsense syllables and a catchy sing-along chorus (“I am a monkey in a cage”). But it rocked, and it absolutely worked.

In addition to top-notch musical chops, the band showcased impressive vocal harmonies on almost every song.  Watching Mayfield, Moore and multi-instrumentalist Mat Dunkelberger huddle around their one distinctive retro-styled Ear Trumpet microphone was one of the real pleasures of the show.  The three voices, undergirded by Gram Bell’s elegant upright bass, delivered on song after song.

Mayfield and the band were clearly excited to be back playing before a live audience after a two-year hiatus for, as he put it, “no particular reason.”   Although he looks more like a Brooklyn hipster than the son of Ohio based bluegrass musicians (as he is), Mayfield’s stage presence was at once goofy, sincere, and self-effacing.  He was, at every moment, totally committed to entertaining the audience (and, always, himself).

What made the mixture of comedy and music successful is that the musicianship was so good that even the worst jokes – told with knowing wink – could not distract from it.  Mayfield’s mugging worked because his playing – on both the acoustic guitar and the mandolin – and his singing were so powerful.  In less talented hands, it would crossed over into being annoying.

This was my first time in the Stoltz Listening Room.  It’s hard to imagine a better place to listen to music.  Small rooms – Stoltz holds a little under 70 – often get described as “intimate,” and I guess that’s accurate here.  But its more than that too – it is comfortable, even spacious, the staff are welcoming, and the sound is phenomenal.  When Mayfield sang his first encore from the middle of room, with just his guitar and without any amplification, every note and every cord was loud and clear.  I am already scouring the Stolz calendar looking for an excuse to go back.

Mark Pelavin, the founder of Hambleton Cove Consulting, is a writer, consultant and music lover living, very happily, in St. Michaels.

Cecile Storm, Casey Rauch, & Dave Cherry

The Tred Avon Players bring Agatha Christie’s classic mystery back to homicidal life in this tale of a serial killer who accomplishes nine murders–or is it 10? –on a foreshortened weekend.

Dame Agatha considered “And Then There Were None”–scandalously known by other titles–her most challenging novel to write. Published in 1939, it was followed by a 1943 stage adaptation, also by Christie, and a 1945 movie. The book was also one of her greatest successes–more than 100 million copies sold, making it to this day among the all-time best-sellers.

The book and play were long known as “Ten Little Indians,” and before that, “Ten Little . . .” (Africans)–except that’s not what they were called in the original title, both derived from a children’s counting rhyme and minstrel song. The rhyme, which plays a prominent role in more recent play productions–including this one–has morphed into “ten little soldiers.” The more intriguing, certainly more appropriate, current title comes from the rhyme’s final line.

Aside from the one-by-one murders, the plot revolves around invitations to eight strangers and a married servant couple by an absentee host identified as U.N. Owen. (Mr. Unknown?) An ominous recording accuses each guest, and the help, of dastardly crimes for which none have done penance.

The Spy asked each Tred Avon Player, aptly cast by director Tim Weigand, to cite their character’s choicest line. Here’s what they offered and what those lines and their interpretation may suggest.

William Blore (played by David Cherry): “They done a murder and got away with it.”

Cherry acts the part of a suspicious character because, to everyone else who arrives at the “Unknown Estate,” he’s Suspect No. 1 after the first murder. For one thing, he alone introduces himself using an alias. For another, he’s a cop, very possibly rogue.

Anthony Marsden (played alternately by Alex Greenlee): “Tricky, what?” (and by Nick Richards): “I need another drink.”

It may have been drunk driving that got this devil-may-care young man invited to this soiree in which no one, except perhaps the perp, gets out alive. A tricky what’s-what, eh, Tony?

Sir Laurence Wargrave (Steve Ford): “I cooked Seton’s goose.”

Edward Seton was a hirsute young man sentenced to hang by Judge Wargrave for the murder of an elderly woman. Ford, who besides the judicial wig he wears as part of his character’s official duties, is as bald as he is inquisitive, fittingly so for an esteemed lord.

Rogers, the butler (Michael Sosler): “And there’s plenty of beer in the house.”

Appropriately obsequious as a hired servant, Sosler projects his own taste in beverage preference over that of his guests, who tend more toward whiskey, brandy, and fine wine.

Mrs. Rogers, the cook (Mary Ann Emerson): “Rich folks is queer.”

Remember, the Christie novel was written just before World War II. So translate “queer” as “odd.” You can bet that sexual orientation would not occur to Mrs. Rogers, played by Emerson as a woman not often seen outside the kitchen, possibly not even by her husband.

Emily Brent (Lynn Sanchez): “I would have thought you might be a bit uncomfortable in that dress.”

The lack of “comfort” Miss Brent ascribes to a fellow guest is all her own. To her, Vera’s tattoos are wicked stains on her soul. Revealingly, Sanchez excuses her spinster character’s own wickedness in hounding an unmarried teenage mother to literal death as God’s judgment on the girl.

Vera Claythorne (Cecile Davis Storm): “Such restraint in the face of danger is truly heroic.”

Vera claims to be a secretary mysteriously hired for this occasion. Her attire, and the tattoos it reveals, draw spinster Emily’s condemning attention. But, as played by Storm, Vera is more receptive to carrots than sticks. She flirts back with the handsome Capt. Lombard as they dance around the whodunit conundrum.

Philip Lombard (Casey Rauch): “What a law-abiding lot we seem to be.”

A debonair womanizer as portrayed by Rauch, Lombard picks up on “heroic” as his cover for the deaths of 21 African tribesmen under his command, calling his abandonment of them in seeking their rescue as “the only truly heroic thing” he’s ever done. Still, he looks good, formally dressed for dinner that never comes, caressing a glass of whiskey.

General Mackenzie (Rob Sanchez): “Fellow’s a madman.”

We won’t say to whom the general is referring. In any case, as played by Sanchez, Mackenzie may have no clue. He teases us with threads of insight here and there but mostly imagines being in the presence of a deceased loved one. Maybe his comments are self-referential.

Dr. Armstrong (Cavin Alexandra Moore) “Many homicidal maniacs are very quiet, unassuming people.”

Truer words, it can be said, or in this case, spoken. But take care in taking this as a spoiler. Or is it just a ploy by Christie to throw you off? Whatever, Moore’s performance only adds, as it should, to the riddle on the fireplace mantle – counting down the stick-figure soldiers.

Two production observations: First, the set design by Cece Davis Storm (aka Vera) captures the elegant taste and wherewithal of the mystery host. The architecturally framed sightlines invite us to imagine an English Channel view glimpsed from within this remote island estate.

Secondly, if you have a choice of performances to see, skip the matinee. Daylight makes it impossible to produce a blackout in Oxford Community Center’s theater space. Director Weigand suggests individual or communal blackouts: Closing your eyes on cue in Act II. (Lest you accidentally catch a visual spoiler.) In any case, closing your eyes is no dramatic equivalent of an actual blackout. Who isn’t afraid of the dark in the presence of mass murder?

Also, be prepared for a two-and-a-half-hour show. I put that one on Dame Agatha falling in love with her own talky script.

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

“AND THEN THERE WERE NONE”

Agatha Christie’s classic play performed by the Tred Avon Players, Oxford Community Center, Thursday, April 28 through Sunday, May 1. tredavonplayers.org

If you think the third National Juried Photography Exhibition opening the Academy Art Museum’s spring-summer season is more of the same, think again.

For starters, the summer of 2020 edition was seen on-online-only by many who viewed it at all due to COVID-19 restrictions. But what truly distinguishes this national juried show from its two predecessors is the serially thematic nature of each presentation, selected blind (no names attached to prospective entries) by artist Kris Graves.

In the historic Lederer Gallery, the original circa 1800 museum structure, “New Photography III,” begins on the left with Kristen Joy Emack’s intimate 2021 black-and-white series of her daughter and her daughter’s cousin wading in their undies and, later, focusing on one of the girl’s faces framed by a canopy of ferns and the two of them in a tangle of twisted tree branches. In a final image, one girl lies on the pavement with a mask atop her head as the other’s hand draws a chalk tiara to complete their play portrait.

The contrast with the next series could hardly be sharper. Michael Iacovone deploys geometric curves to connect earth-scapes with solar objects in studies bearing such titles as “A System to Measure Myself Against the Arch of the Sunset,” in which “myself” is represented by an ant-scale figure on a desert landscape. Meanwhile, Gregg Evans concentrates on everyday life in his relatable series, from “Reptile,” a turtle traversing a gravel path, to “Sunset, May,” a satellite dish upstaging a blush-red sky.

“Portrait of a Chicago Schoolgirl” by Melissa Ann Pinney

Returning to human engagement, Melissa Ann Pinney brings a youthful arena of diversity into individual interpretation with her 2020 Chicago public schools project. These are not your mother or father’s school photos but rather a series of look-at-me personal statements: a girl wearing cartoon-figure tights accented by a colorful stack of bead bracelets and a pastel necktie; another young lady poised as if for flight in her turquoise jacket with arms spread like butterfly wings, and a COVID-masked black man wearing a gold Christian cross necklace.

Portraits of a more abstract nature mark Aline Smithson’s Fugue series exploring the finite lifespan of seemingly immortal digital files. Some of her “Fugue States” involve otherworldly negative imagery while others evoke right- or left-facing striped profiles, some with peek-a-boo conventional photos glimpsed like trapped personas within.

Lenard Smith introduces an architectural theme with tall cylindrical shapes beneath a roof, cones and triangular shapes supporting a bridge, and other geometric forms imitating a statue with arms. That sets the stage for an architectural shelter from what might be considered R-rated themes in the last two displays in the Lederer Gallery. Michael Young’s “Hidden Glances” series is partially hidden from wider gallery view behind a three-sided alcove which encompasses photos of a topless man inside a featureless male torso and a “Leather on Leather” composite of a partially nude male interspersed with S&M play clothes and toys. Margaret Murphy offers a feminine glance into social media “self-televication,” including such selfies as “Rosy Cheeks” (freckled) and “Adoration,” a girl apparently admiring her skimpily clad body.

In the Healy Gallery across the hall, “New Photography III” continues with a series of images by Korean-American Jeong Hur that, ironically, endeavors to “disprove the notion that photos depict the world truthfully.” Among these are digitally manipulated shots of a cloud-shaped human figure and a hand-of-God tableau inspired by Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco. Noel Spirandelli further explores the sleight-of-eye theme with his “oddities of modern life,” among them reverse white tattoos on a black man’s face and color-matching prints on the clothes of “Mike” and the entire Fremont Hotel room he occupies.

“Wish” by Jeong Hur

Rashod Taylor endeavors to capture a slice of domestic African-American life with photos of himself and his son LJ, from “Bathtime” to “It’s Complicated” – a shot of his son holding a small American flag with his dad’s image reflected in the glass door behind him. Jon Feinstein addresses a tragic family theme indirectly with his typology study comparing the deterioration of evergreens in the Northwest with the progression of his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease.

Ahmed Ozsever’s series of rural and industrial landscapes takes an aerial view of scenes tinted in what reminds me, as unlikely as it sounds, of fine blue-on-white Delft chinaware, scarred in one image with gray gravel. Thomas Stoffregen’s panoramic study focuses on severely neglected urban architecture in an undisclosed Midwestern city. It’s a Rust Belt photo album sadly familiar in American cities on either coast or in-between flyovers – boarded-up commercial properties on either corner and a ballfield no one plays on anymore.

Edward Bateman’s series indirectly reflects the pandemic years from which we are now, hopefully, emerging. Confined indoors in his Utah home, Bateman recreated famous Western landscapes on his kitchen tables to photograph instead of the real thing – from “Yosemite in Winter” to “Bryce No. 26” in a virtual national parks tour. All without leaving the gallery.

***

“The World” by Adrienne Elise Tarver

Just down the hall, be sure not to miss “Manifesting Paradise.” Adrienne Elise Tarver creates a mini-Garden of Eden in her caulking and acrylic wire mesh mimicking botanical fronds and ferns amid other products of her artistic skillset. This includes the “Mirage” series of small watercolors inspired by a deck of Tarot cards; “The World,” a three-eyed tapestry displayed above the fireplace in the first of the two-room gallery; and “Namesake,” a painting of a plantation house near the lost town of Tarverville engulfed in flames, symbolizing slavery’s end.

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

“NEW PHOTOGRAPHY III” through July 10, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton. Also, ADRIENNE ELISE TARVER” MANIFESTING PARADISE” through July 24, artist talk on July 13. 410-822-2787, academyartmuseum.org