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September 26, 2025

Chestertown Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Chestertown

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Academy Art Museum Reflections after 30 Years: A Chat with Janet Hendricks

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It’s not much of a stretch to say that Janet Hendricks was the Academy Art Museum was she first joined the museum in the early 1990s. While the AAM today has all the making of a robust regional museum and school, it was much more a “ma and pa” structure in Janet’s early days. The museum director at the time, Chris Brownawell, was in the role of art curator and financial manager, but almost everything else was on Janet’s plate, from the scheduling of classes, setting up lectures, creating music programs, and designing the AAM Magazine.

Janet remembers that era with fondness but has been overjoyed that, over time, the Academy has added key staff positions to help with this important side of the museum’s mission. And while she officially retired late last year, it’s still pretty likely one will still see quite a bit of her, and she continues to help the AAM on a few of their programs.

Nonetheless, after 30 years of dedication to the Academy, the Spy thought it was a perfect time to talk to Janet and her tenure as she saw her beloved institution grow and grow.

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

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Concert Review: A Night to Remember with the MSO by Steve Parks

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It was an evening for celebrating winners and also of remembrance at the opener of the penultimate concert series of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s (MSO) 2022-23 season.

Chief among the winners in Easton Thursday evening was Michael Repper. Repper was making his first appearance conducting the MSO since being awarded the Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance last month for the album he recorded with fellow Grammy winners – New York Youth Symphony (NYYS) musicians.

Featured on this opening night was Elizabeth Song, the 13-year-old New Jersey violinist who won first prize in MSO’s Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition in January. The three concerts Song performs with the orchestra through Saturday, March 11, are part of her prize, along with a $2,000 cash award.

First up in Thursday’s concert was Brahms’ circa 1880 Tragic Overture, a stand-alone symphonic movement, somber in sharp contrast to another he composed near the same time – the high-spirited Academic Festival Overture. This Brahms piece opened with a bombastic D minor temperament urged on by an animated Repper dressed all in black. Intermittent F major passages were more flowing, with an emphasis on strings led by concertmaster Kimberly McCollum, punctuated by clarion calls with Mark Hughes and others in the brass section taking the lead.

Elizabeth Song

Repper next introduced violinist Song by her preferred nickname, Poppy. Song performed the same concerto she played in the competition finals on January 12 at Easton’s Avalon Theater. But this time, she was making her debut with a full orchestra instead of piano accompaniment. Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5, published in 1861, was all but forgotten until rediscovered by 20th-century orchestras and solo musicians. It has become a favorite in competitions because of the technically challenging and listener-friendly phrasing that gives violinists ample opportunities to show off their virtuosity.

After peering back at the orchestra during its celebratory opening, Song took every advantage of her opportunity, deftly diving in and out of rapid changes in pace and mood, from sweet to urgent. During a tumbling stretch of demands on her prodigious skill, she mastered the vicissitudes of the concerto as if it were child’s play. From attack mode to lullaby, she induced weeping-for-joy-or-sorrow glides of emotion while wielding see-saw strokes up and down – almost making her instrument chatter with excitement. Astonishingly, Song has improved on her winning performance just two months ago, though credit must also go to the maestro and the 38 orchestral musicians who made her debut such a smash.

MSO’s concerto competition was named in memory of Elizabeth Loker before the inaugural event in 2019-20. What was to be the second annual competition was delayed three years by COVID. Loker, better known to friends, colleagues, and loved ones as Beth, died of cancer in 2015. Retired from the Washington Post as vice president of publishing technology, Loker moved to Royal Oak and became a board member of both the MSO and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Next year’s competition will accommodate three finalists, who will each get to perform with the orchestra.

Song’s performance was a tough act to follow. But after intermission, Repper conducted the MSO in Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1, which won the previous Best Orchestral Performance Grammy for its recording by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The four-movement symphony begins with a modest passage drawing from African folk tunes, quickly building to a strings-and-percussion crescendo before settling into a hymn-like gospel pastoral. The second movement features a melody inspired or borrowed from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, with horns and reeds joined by strings and drums for a gratifying conclusion. Movement three breaks out in a party mood to a cowboy theme not out of place on “Yellowstone.” Trumpets, led by Josh Carr, declare that it’s time to dance and have fun. The final movement enlists every corner of the orchestra toward a frenzied but disciplined race to the finish.

Price has become a programing favorite of American orchestras – long after her 1953 death – in both February’s Black History Month and March’s Women’s History Month. As the first African-American woman to have her classical music composition performed by a major orchestra – Chicago Symphony in 1933 – Price’s works, most recently discovered in what was once her summer home, deserve attention in both months and all the other 10. That first-ever piece was her Symphony No. 1.

This year’s Grammy-winning album, with Repper conducting the NYYS, includes two other Price compositions – “Ethiopia’s Shadow in America” and her Piano Concerto in One Movement – as well as pieces by Valerie Coleman and Jessie Montgomery, two living African-American female composers.

Personally, I look forward to the day when neither black nor women’s history needs a special recognition month but are broadly recognized throughout the year.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s March Concerts
Opening date in the series was Thursday night, March 9, Easton Church of God
7:30 p.m., Friday, March 10, Community Church, Ocean Pines
3 p.m. Saturday, March 11, Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach
midatlanticsymphony.org

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

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Looking at the Masters: Adelaide Labille-Guiard   

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Adelaide Labille-Guiard (1749-1803) was one of the eight children of Claude Edme Labille and Marie-Anne Saint-Martin. Her father owned a haberdashery shop near the Louvre in a popular section of Paris with theaters, music halls, and dance halls. It was home to many artists, since the Royal Academy was housed in the Louvre. Labille-Guiard was able to spend time in the studio of Francois Elie Vincent, a miniaturist, and she also studied pastel with Maurice Quentin de la Tour. She entered the Academy of Saint Luke in 1769.  She married Louis Nicholas Guiard, a financial clerk, that same year. The marriage contract stated that she was a professional painter at the Academy of Saint Luke. They separated in 1774; there were no children. When Napoleon came to power, they were able to divorce legally. Although she continued to use the name Guiard, she married Francois Vincent, a history painter, in 1800.

“Self-Portrait with Two Students” (1785)

Labille-Guiard’s pastel portraits achieved great success when she exhibited at the Academy of Saint Luke.  An exhibition in1877 was so successful that the Royal Academy, with the backing of the King, abolished the Academy of Saint Luke. The ambitious Labille-Guiard was undaunted. By 1783, her pastels had earned her an appointment to the Royal Academy. It had limited membership of women to four. Labille-Guiard was an advocate for women artists. Her “Self-Portrait with Two Students” (1785) (6’11’’ x 5’) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) had several purposes. Exemplary of her classical technique, it included two of her female students, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761-1818) and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond (d. 1785). Both students would become fine artists, although they could not become Academy members or show their work in Academy exhibitions. Labille-Guiard was determined to get them in the exhibition, one way or another.

She depicted herself in the process of teaching her students, who pay her rapt attention. She shows off her wealth, dressing in an extravagant light blue and white silk gown, with a very low neck-line. She wears a very large straw hat with a large blue bow and lots of feathers. Her father’s haberdashery skills are on full display. The toe of her elegant silver slipper rests on the easel. Clearly, she dressed herself in an outfit she would never wear when painting. In contrast, her students are simply dressed. Her well-appointed studio has a carpet on the parquet wooden floor. A gilded and carved wooden stool with a red velvet cushion holds additional paint brushes. Behind her is a classical portrait bust, and beyond that a statue of a Vestal Virgin. Specially selected Roman women who remained chaste and kept the sacred fires burning in the temple of Vesta received special rights and privileges.

“Madame Adelaide” (1787)

Princess Marie Adelaide, daughter of Louis XV and eldest aunt of Louis XVI, saw great talent in the work of Labille-Guiard. She was responsible for hiring Labille-Guiard to paint portraits of the Madames of France, women of the court who were relatives of the King.  Labille-Guiard was awarded a pension of 1000 livres. The subject of  “Madame Adelaide” (1787) (106” x76.3’’) (Versailles) is dressed in a flowing, burnt orange velvet coat decorated with heavy gold embroidery. It is worn over a silver and gold brocade gown with lace sleeves and jabot. Her hair adornment of ribbons and lace is not a hat, but may be another Labille-Guiard creation.

Madame Adelaide stands next to an elegant easel on which the cameo portrait of her dead parents and brother are painted. A black velvet curtain has been pulled back to display the work. The towel and pen in her hands may indicate Madame Adelaide has just signed the work. She looks out at viewers as if to get their approval. The marble inlaid floor, the gilded stool with a green velvet and gold fringed cushion, and the gold chair with the green cushioned back set the scene in a palace. On the wall behind her are four tall marble columns with Corinthian capitals. Between the columns is a carved stone relief depicting persons mourning at the side of a death bed. Barely visible between the two columns, a sculptured female figure stands upon a pedestal and holds a burning torch. 

‘’Madame Louisa Elisabeth of France and Son’’ (1788)

  “Madame Louisa Elisabeth of France and Son” (1788) (108’’ x63’’) (Versailles) is a posthumous portrait, the subject died of small pox at the age of 32. Her young son Ferdinand holds her hand and looks up at her. Louisa Elisabeth, relaxes against the rail of a porch and looks pensively at the viewer. She wears an elaborate black dress with gold trim, decorative red slashes on the sleeves, and stiff white lace.  The bodice is very low cut, not usual in women’s portraits of the time. The red velvet curtain hanging from the roof of the porch, the red velvet on the railing, the red in her hat, and the tiny red point of her shoe tie the composition together. Her unusually well feathered hat is another Labille-Guiard creation. The sun shining across the painting from left to right creates shadows. Her silhouette, particularly her feather hat, appears on the wall behind her. The sun shines fully on the three short pillars of the balustrade, her son’s blond hair, and the hand her son holds. The sun does not shine upon the upper part of her face. The inclusion of the parrot on the balcony railing is an interesting choice. Parrots carry on conversations as they repeat words they have heard and therefore are considered messengers from God.

“Marquise de Lafayette” (1790-91)

Labille-Guiard wanted to move toward painting history subjects. She was commissioned to paint the King’s brother in a large history painting. During the French Revolution of 1789, much of the art that depicted royalty was destroyed.  The portraits of the Madames of France and a major painting of Marie Antoinette that had been taken to Versailles were spared.

The “Marquise de Lafayette” (1790) (30.75’’ x 24.75’’) (National Museum of Women in the Artist) is presumed to be a portrait of the wife of the Marquis de Lafayette, well-known in France for his help to America in the American Revolution. The Marquise is dressed in a simple purple dress with little adornment and no jewelry except for earrings. She is placed in front of an ambiguous landscape, not a royal palace or park. Her attire is within the more subdued and simplistic limits of the early years of the French Revolution.  

Labille-Guiard supported the French Revolution, and she found patrons among members of the National Assembly (1789-1791) including Robespierre and Talleyrand. She also was commissioned to paint some history paintings.  She proposed on September 23, 1790, that an unlimited number of women be admitted to the Royal Academy and allowed to serve on the governing board. Both motions were approved, but short lived. 

Labille-Guiard finally was allotted lodgings in the Louvre in 1795, and was given a new pension of 2000 livres per year. She was the first woman artist to have a studio in the Louvre. Her earlier requests were rejected because of her students were women. The Comte d’Angiviller had advised the King that “all the artists have their lodgings in the Louvre, and as one only gets to all these lodgings through corridors that are often dark, this mixing of young artists of different sexes would be very inconvenient for morals and for the decency of Your Majesty’s palace.”

“Atelier of Madame Vincent” (1808)

Labille-Guiard was able to divorce her estranged husband and marry Francois Vincent in 1800. She, her husband, and student Marie Gabrielle Capet moved to a house outside Paris in the town of Pontault-en-Brie. Labille-Guiard and Vincent adopted Capet so she would be able to inherit their estate.  Unfortunately, Labille-Guiard became ill and died in 1803 at the age of 54. Her student Capet stayed on to look after Francois Vincent, who died in 1816. “Atelier of Madame Vincent” (1808) (27” x32.8”) was painted by Capet as a tribute to her teacher Labille-Guiard (Mrs. Vincent). Labille-Guiard, dressed in a simple white gown, paints a portrait of the esteemed French painter Joseph-Marie Vien (1716-1809). Capet sits to her left and looks out at viewers as if to verify they are paying attention. She prepares paint for Madame Vincent.  In the black jacket just behind Madame Vincent, her husband points at something in his wife’s painting. 

The room is full of watchers. Labille-Guiard and other women painters were often accused of taking credit for works painted by men. Therefore, onlookers were not unusual in the studio of a woman artist. Accusations and rumors of rivalry between women artists and flirtations with male sitters were common, but not true. Male artists’ prejudice against women artists who might steal their clients was rampant. 

Labille-Guiard was considered one of the best teachers of her time, and one of the great pastel portraitists. Her reputation suffered after her death, not because she was not a great artist, but because she was a woman artist. Her works and her reputation have been researched and restored by writers in the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. 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 Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Review: Works by Four Artists from Turkey by Steve Parks

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Judging from attendance on the opening weekend beginning February 24, “Fractured Modernities” will be a popular Academy Art Museum exhibition. In part, it may be due to the show’s subtitle – “Contemporary Art from Turkey” – and the acknowledgment in the introductory wall panel that these works “marry movement and color with the heaviness of the nation’s past, especially in the wake of a catastrophic earthquake that shook Turkey and Syria.”

Untitled Erdem Varol photo inspired by the painting “The Tortoise Trainer.”

It is entirely coincidental that the ‘modernities’ referenced by these four young Turks are “fractured’ beyond recognition in much of eastern Turkey, far removed from the scenes represented in this wide-ranging display of various visual art disciplines. 

At the entrance to the first of two galleries, you are greeted by the Turkish word for collaboration in Merve Unsal’s pink neon sign. Inside, the entire wall to your left is covered with black-and-white photos by Erdem Varol. His breadth in subject matter is evident from the start with a large shot of Istanbul high-rises, their middle floors obscured by clouds as the top floors appear to float above the mist. Just below is a small fashion statement with varied plumage protruding from the brim of a hat hiding the face of the man wearing it. Another captures the upturned visage of a sculpture high above a slice of Istanbul’s cityscape beyond. Another shot gives away the secret of his photographic perch as the shadow of an airplane appears in the foreground route to another part of downtown. 

The money shot, however, defines the unique geographic character of Varol’s hometown. Hanging over the gallery mantel is a view from 10,000 feet of approaches to a bridge spanning the narrow Bosporus Strait separating Europe to the west from Asia to the east, both within the ancient city of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople, onetime Roman Empire capital conquered by the Turks to form the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century).

Although the medium is very different – ink and/or watercolor on paper – there is a link in vantage point between Varol and Didem Erbas. Starting in the first gallery and spilling over to the second, her Architectural Remains series brings to mind ancient cornerstones unearthed by archaeologists and skeletal fragments of wooden structures. Meanwhile, her Airport Zone and War Zone series suggest barren land exposed in one by modernized transportation and in the other by the devastation of war surrounding Turkey – from Syria to Iraq and Iran and now, of course, Ukraine. Each War Zone of destruction – one in brown, the other mainly in blue – oddly leaves the land left behind in a natural state. A place, maybe, to start over.

On the floor in the same gallery, Erbas has constructed a site-specific installation mainly consisting of piping pieces for plumbing or drainage. Other than as a statement on wasteful water usage, her intended message eluded me.

On the opposite wall, Zeynep Kayan’s video upends our notion of videography altogether. Although we don’t see her face, Kayan stands in front of the camera, repeatedly gesturing, holding a mirror pointed upward to reflect a ceiling light. In the accompanying text to this Mirror III video, it is performance art said to be ‘meditative.’ It might help to have a seat to meditate on this purposeful monotony meant to teach us not to expect to be entertained.

Aerial photo by Erdem Varol of bridge crossing from Europe to Asia in Istanbul

More engaging to me is Outside Instead of Before, a paired series of two-channel videos by Unsal projected on a bare wall. Although there is subtle motion in the images, they are presented more like a slideshow with a view just outside Unsal’s apartment in Istanbul and the major construction site as he sees it from his literal viewpoint. We see curtains fluttering in the breeze brushing past his open window next to a tall yellow construction crane in a vacant lot strewn with building materials. It’s followed by a nearly identical view from his balcony and a night view of the sleeping site next to a peek through his window of lights and moving figures inside. A small stapled script next to the space where the video is projected poses the question, among many others, “Can one eye unsee what the other has seen?”

A provocative thought suggested by Unsal’s juxtaposed imagery.

But the highlight, in terms of Turkish art and history, must go to Varol’s photograph of a young man gazing through a doorway in front of a poor sculptural reproduction of a bearded elder whose image Osman Handi Bey painted in The Tortoise Trainer. The 1906 oil on canvas is regarded as one of the greatest in Turkish Orientalism – compared in importance on the accompanying wall label as what Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is to Renaissance painting. At the feet of the young man and trainer are a swarm of tortoises signifying the slow pace of reforming the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed shortly after World War I. Fear the turtle? 

Fractured Modernities: Contemporary Art from Turkey

Works by four Turkish artists were created in this European-Asian crossroad nation. Through April 16, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton. academyartmuseum.org

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

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Looking at the Masters: Sonia Delaunay

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“UNESCO Annee Internationale de la Femme 1975”

In1975, the United Nations General Assembly declared March 8 International Woman’s Day “to recognize the fact that securing peace and social progress and the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms requires the active participation, equality, and development of women; and to acknowledge the contribution of women to the strengthening of international peace and security.” Sonia Delaunay was commissioned by UNESCO to design the official poster. The United States sets aside one day for the celebration, but the subject of Delaunay’s French poster was International Year of the Woman.

Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), born in Odessa, Ukraine, was from a well-to-do Jewish family. Her uncle Henri Terk was a lawyer in St Petersburg and Sonia went there to live with the Terk family when she was five.  She received a quality education in St Petersburg, including the languages French, English, and German. She traveled, visited museums, and discovered art. By age fourteen her talent was recognized, and she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany. She went to Paris in1905 to study at the Académie de la Palette on Montparnasse. However, she preferred the galleries and the new art to the Classic style. She was influenced by the paintings of Matisse, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, and she met Kandinsky and other Russian artists in Paris.

“Le Bal Bullier” (1913)

Delaunay’s first solo exhibition was at the William Uhde Gallery in Paris in 1909. Uhde was a German art critic and art dealer. She and Uhde were married in December 1909. It was as a marriage of convenience for both: her parents wanted her to come home, and Uhde was gay. That same year Sonia met Robert Delaunay and fell in love. She and Uhde divorced amicably after one year of marriage. Uhde said, “A friend of mine felt he could make my wife more perfectly happy than I could.”  

Sonia said, “In Robert Delaunay I found a poet. A poet who wrote not with words but with colors.” Together they developed a new artistic style they named Simultanism, based on Cherveul’s scientific discovery that light was composed of the six colors of the rainbow. The Delaunays preferred to use the colors of light when painting an object rather than the browns and grays of Cubism.  “Le Bal Bullier” (1913) (oil on mattress fabric) (38” x 132.5’’) depicts customers dancing in the popular Montparnasse nightclub to the new favorite, the tango. The tango originated in a sailors’ bar in Argentina, and the intensity of the dance and the erotic moves of partners in a tight embrace became all the rage. The Delaunays were frequent customers.

Sonia captures the simultaneous excitement and energy of the tango with intense colors that form various shapes moving across the dance floor. Some couples hold each other tight and move their hips in matched rhythms. Others sway and swirl to the pulsing of the music. The viewer is drawn into the passion and spirit of the dance.

“Electric Prisms” (1914)

“Electric Prisms” (1914) (94”x 99”) was inspired by the electric streetlights on Paris boulevards. The canvas is composed of two major centers of light radiating and overlapping in a multitude of colors. Robert Delaunay described Sonia’s style as intuitive: “Sonia created her harmonies and rhythms of color from life itself, from color she invented with the brush in the manner of color poems.” Their good friend Guillaume Apollinaire, considered to be a major poet, playwright, novelist, and art critic of the early 20th Century, called their art Orphism. Orpheus was the legendary Greek musician renowned for his musical skills that allowed him to charm the three headed dog Cerberus and enter Hades. Apollinaire commented, ”Upon waking, the D’s talk color.” Sonia decorated everything in their apartment as she said, “to make homes live able, bodies alive…it can be the dress of books, the skin of objects, the harlequin driving away ugliness…we have liberated color, which has become a value in itself.” The Delaunays’ “Electric Prism” paintings were juried into the Salon d’ Independents in Paris in 1914.

 

“Simultaneous Dress” (1914)

Sonia Delaunay designed their clothes in what she termed simultaneous colors. She made Robert a suit with a red coat and blue collar, with which he wore red socks, yellow and black shoes, black pants, a green jacket, sky blue vest, and tiny red tie. Sonia wore a “Simultaneous Dress” (1914) similar to the one pictured. It was purple with a green belt, the bodice was divided into old rose, orange and Nattier blue, each of a different fabric, tulle, silk, flannel, taffeta, and peau de soie.

Gloria Swanson in swimsuit and a coat (1923-24)

The Delaunays vacationed in Fuenterrabia, a Basque border town in Spain. In 1914, World War I broke out, and they lived in Madrid for a year. To escape the Spanish Revolution, they moved to Portugal and lived there from 1915 until 1917.  Sonia said the light in the Iberian Peninsula opened her eyes. She used the opportunity to design pottery and fabric, and by 1919 she had turned her attention to fashion. Her Russian relatives helped support Robert and her, but the Russian Revolution in1917 closed that avenue of support. The couple moved back to Madrid, where they met Diaghilev. He commissioned Robert to design the sets for the ballet Cleopatra and Sonia to design the costumes. The Marquis de ’Urqui helped Sonia set up Casa Sonia; her fashion and fabric became famous. 

The Delaunays moved back to Paris in 1921, and Sonia set up a fashion studio with Jacques Heim, a French fashion designer and costume designer for theater and film. She designed clothes for such famous people as actress Gloria Swanson and shipping heiress Nancy Cunard. Gloria Swanson’s coat was wool with embroidery. Sonia created 50 silk fabric designs that were manufactured in Lyon and sold in department stores in London, New York, and Amsterdam. She was commissioned to do book illustrations, and sets and costumes for a variety of plays and films

Citroen (1925)

In 1925 Delaunay designed the Citroen B-12 boat tail to match her “simultaneous outfit.” The 1925 International Exposition of Decorative Arts included furniture, bedspreads, lampshade, book binding, carpets, handbags, and shoes designed by Delaunay. She was invited to speak at the Sorbonne (1927) where she introduced the idea of prêt-à-porter (ready to wear).  Although Robert’s art always brought income, Sonia’s business provided support for the family. The stock market crash of 1929 caused Sonia to close her business, although she continued to design for private clients. Sonia told a friend the Depression liberated her from business. 

“Study for Portugal” (1937)

 

Sonia’s mural “Portugal and Distant Voyages” was exhibited at the Paris World Fair of 1937 in the Pavilion de Chemins de Fer (railroads).  In the “Study for Portugal” (1937), Sonia created a background of simultaneous colors, all in pastel rainbow shades, to represent clouds in the sky. Figures wearing colorful native costumes of Portugal move toward the center figure, a train represented by two large black wheels. A black building is the tallest object near the center of the composition. To the right are the double arches of a railroad bridge in light orange and green. Three black masts of boats indicate the nearness of the port. The mural won Sonia a gold medal.

Thursday afternoon at the Delaunays was the place to be. That was where the artists of Paris, including the Surrealists, wanted to be. Unfortunately, Robert’s health declined and he died of cancer on October 14, 1941. Sonia continued to make art, while dedicating time to making sure Robert’s legacy was established. Sonia lived in the south of France during World War II and returned to Paris after the war. Much in demand, Sonia was given one-person exhibitions in Paris. Her first solo exhibit in America was at the Rose Fried Gallery in New York City in 1955.  The Robert & Sonia Delaunay Museum des Beaux-Arts opened in Lyon, France in 1959. Sonia was the first living woman artist to be given an exhibition in the Louvre in1964. The Matra automobile company, formed in 1960, asked Sonia to design the coloring of one of its models in 1967. The commission of the UNESCO poster for the International Year of the Woman was followed the naming of Delaunay an officer in the French Legion of Honor in1975. When French President Pompidou wanted to bring an official gift from the French government on his visit to America, he chose one of her paintings.

‘’The Encounter’’ (1971)

In the 1970’s Delaunay created designs for tapestries at the Aubusson tapestry works. “The Encounter” (1971) (69’’x 48’’) (Aubusson) is one of several tapestry designs. 

“The Encounter” (1971)

Throughout her life, Sonia’s choice of color and design stood out in any exhibition. She died at age 94. ”Je Suis une optimiste” were her last words.

“For me there is no gap between my painting and my so-called ‘decorative’ work. I never considered the ‘minor arts’ to be artistically frustrating; on the contrary, it was an extension of my art.”

“I always painted as an amusement and it amused me to do that,
but this amusement took my whole life.” (Sonia Delaunay)

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. 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 Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Shore Lit March Notes and Musings by Kerry Folan

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I discovered Lawrence Weschler in 2006 while interning at McSweeney’s, the indie house that had just published his award-winning essay collection Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences. In it, he explores images, forms, and compositions found in life that seem also to repeat throughout art history: Rothko’s 1969 black and white colorblocks mirroring newspaper covers from that year’s moon landing; Joel Meyerowitz’s photograph of a 9/11 first responder echoing Valezquez’s rendering of the god of war. Art, imitating life, imitating art.

The interns at McSweeney’s are not paid, or they weren’t then, but they are invited on their last day to help themselves to a few books from the office stock, which is how I came to own that volume (which is, sadly, now out of print). I flipped through it, fascinated, and then put it on my bookshelf for a decade. It wasn’t until grad school that I truly got to know his writing, when a professor assigned his seminal essay “Vermeer in Bosnia.” In it, he draws connections between the Vermeer paintings he observed hanging in the Mauritshuis Museum and the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal he was covering nearby in The Hague. He concludes, startlingly and convincingly, that these apparently incomparable things are in fact remarkably similar: they are both about finding interior peace in the face of ravaging violence.

This is, I now know, Weschler’s specialty: pairing seemingly unrelated things to revelatory effect. I was stunned by the power of his insights as well as the openness of his prose. In refreshing contrast to the tight-fisted academic exegeses  I was used to, Weschler’s essays are rangy conversations, brilliant and accessible, illuminating and human-scaled. I had found my new favorite essayist.
Of course, I’m not alone there. Lawrence Weschler is a legend. He was a staff writer at the New Yorker for more than twenty years, twice winning the George Polk Award for reporting, and the author of more books than I can name. His work has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and been shortlisted for the Pulitzer, and in forty-plus years of trying to make sense of the comedies and tragedies of this world through his writing, he has yet to slow down. His new biweekly substack, Wondercabinet, is fantastic, and he continues to write books, articles, and exhibition catalogues at a dizzying pace. (His article on the record-breaking Vermeer exhibition at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam is due out this week or next in the Atlantic.)

So imagine my surprise to find an email from him in my inbox a few months ago. He had, apparently, stumbled across an essay about his work I had written some years ago for the Los Angeles Review of Books and reached out to introduce himself. It was like getting a letter from Santa Clause, or the President. Elated, I asked him if he would consider coming to Easton as a Shore Lit visiting writer, and—I can still hardly believe this—he said yes.

A huge thank you to the Academy Art Museum and George Mason University for making this program possible. Seeing Lawrence Weschler speak about his work in person is a bucket-list moment for me, and I am beyond thrilled that it is happening here, on the Shore. He’ll be lecturing at 6:00, Friday, March 3 at AAM; I hope you are all able to join us for what’s sure to be an incredible evening.
Reserve Your Seat

What Else I’m Reading this Month:
 

Night of the Living Rez, Morgan Talty. Set on a Penobscot reservation in Maine, this story collection has been racking up award noms. Talty combines gritty materiality with humor, offering an irreverent Indigenous narrative that rejects sentimentality—even as it examines the complexities of addiction, poverty, and intergenerational trauma.

This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub. Reliably, Straub hits that sweet spot between clever and warm-hearted. In this novel, 40-year-old Alice time travels back in time to her 16-year-old life and is given the chance to change the trajectory of her father’s future.

Still Pictures, Janet Malcolm. The legendary journalist looks back at her own life through a series of snapshots, which function more as metaphor than documentary. Though spare, Malcolm’s memoir is relentlessly elegant. To wit: “The events of our lives are like photographic negatives. The few that make it into the developing solution and become photographs are what we call our memoirs.”

What Else I’m Looking Forward to on the Shore this Month:
Film: Women Talking @ Regal Cinema, Salisbury
March 4-9, various showtimes
$12-$18
Sarah Polley stacked her film adaptation of Miriam Toews’s novel with serious heavy hitters: Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley. Skipping the Shore entirely in its original release, it’s playing on just a few dates this month in the run-up to the Oscars.Reading & Workshop: Meredith Davies Hadaway, Sophie-Kerr Poet-in-Residence, Rose O’Neill Literary House, Washington College, Chestertown
5:30 Tuesday, March 7
FreeMeredith Davies Hadaway has published three collections of poetry, including At the Narrows, winner of the Delmarva Book Prize, as well as essays and reviews for anthologies and journals. She’ll read from her work, and then lead a generative writing workshop.

Music: Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra March Concert, Easton Church of God, Easton
7:30 Thursday, March 9
$50
Elizabeth Song, winner of the Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition, will be the featured soloist for performances of Johannes Brahms’s Tragic Overture and Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E Minor.

Exhibition Opening: “State of the Art” and “Bill Wolf Sculpture,” Dorchester Center for the Arts, Cambridge
5:00-7:00 Saturday, March 11
Free
Dorchester Center for the Arts presents the exhibit State of the Art in partnership with the University of Maryland Global
Campus and the American Poetry Museum. Bill Wolf: Sculpture will be on display in the upstairs performance hall. The Sagacious Traveler will be performing at the opening reception, part of Cambridge’s Second Saturday arts celebration.

Theater: Fun Home @ Black Box Theater, Salisbury
Thursday, March 9-Sunday, March 12
$20 general public (discounts for students, seniors, faculty) 
Adapted from Alison Bechdel’s extraordinary graphic memoir of the same name, this Tony Award-winning musical charts young Bechdel’s relationship with her closeted homosexual father, who runs a funeral parlor out of the family’s home.

Exhibition: Fractured Modernities: Contemporary Turkish Art @ Academy Art Museum, Easton 
On view through April 16
Free
Turkish-born curator Mehves Lelic has selected four contemporary artists whose work collectively demonstrates the exhaustion and joy of living and making art under authoritarian rule.

Easton-based Kerry Folan is an Assistant Professor at George Mason University. She is also the founder and director ofShore Lit, an organization that aims to bring literary events to the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in the Baltimore Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, and other noted publications.

 

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Spy Arts Diary: John Waters in Ocean City and MSO’s Grammy Winner by Steve Parks

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John Waters is the celebrity headliner for the seventh Ocean City Film Festival, featured in a live performance on Saturday, March 4, which he calls The End of the World. Let’s hope he’s kidding. 

John Waters

But if you want to see one of Waters’ explicitly recallable films, look for them streaming somewhere. The OC Fest showcases movies, shorts, and documentaries from around the world, including the Delmarva Peninsula, most of them from the last two years. John Waters’ most recent film was a 2007 remake of his hit Tony-winning musical Hairspray, based on his 1988 film of the same title.

So before we get to the films you can see at various Ocean City venues March 2-5, allow me to share my favorite John Waters quote from an interview with him for Newsday on Long Island around the time of Hairspray’s 2003 Broadway opening.

“That’s the most subversive thing I’ve ever done,” he said of creating Hairspray. 

“Why’s that,” I asked. 

“Now every time someone who’s seen Hairspray on Broadway and then finds one of my films listed on late-night cable, they’ll say, ‘Oh, a John Waters film. That must be cute.’ ”

Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), with its literally filthy ending, and Female Trouble (1974), starring his favorite onscreen accomplice Divine (from a movie of the same name), aka Glenn Milstead, were anything but cute. Funny, yes, if you share Waters’ warped sense of humor and irony. Of his first-ever live performance in Ocean City, he says his monologue will be an irreverent but insightful riff on “all of today’s despair and disease, desires and desperation.”

Baltimore native Waters also recalls Ocean City summers as a teenager living under the Boardwalk and “dreaming of making weird films,” adding: “Now I’m back,” at age 76, “having done just that.” As for the film festival, the outlier who now has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame says, “That’s what these festivals are all about – inspiring creative lunacy.”

Which brings us to the films surrounding Waters’ End of the World show.

Among the feature films: Against All Odds: Surviving the Holocaust, Isatis, an archeological travelog to the ancient desert city in central Iran; Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, the true story of Roger Sharpe who in 1976 helped overturn New York City’s ban on pinball; Worst Laid Plans, three tales of vacation-themed horror, and The Automat, a documentary on the once-maligned, now-extinct commissary-style urban eateries fondly remembered by Mel Brooks and the late Carl Reiner. So it’s gotta be funny. Then there’s The First Step, a political docu-commentary about black activist Van Jones, whose attempts to be a “bridge builder” during the Trump presidency predictably fails in divided America, and The Innocents, a supernatural thriller taking place in the long days and short nights of a Nordic summer.

Among opening night highlights are a pair of films of local origin: Hedgehog, produced by Dave Messick of Unscene Productions, focusing on Stephen Decatur High School graduates in nearby Berlin. Biggest Little Farm: The Return, a 30-minute documentary directed by Ocean City native John Chester, is a follow-up to his award-winning feature that debuted at the 2019 OC festival tracing the farm’s transformation.

In addition, dozens of showcase shorts under varied themes ranging from Maritime Life to Sex, Love, Romance & Intimacy will be screened nightly at venues including Ocean City Performing Arts Center, Flagship Cinemas, Fox Gold Coast Theater, and Ocean City Downs Casino.

Ocean City Film Festival

For tickets, dates, and times to these and other events, parties, and awards night presentations, go to OCFilmFestival.com
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Music director Michael Repper conducts his first Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra concerts since winning the Grammy Award with the New York Youth Symphony for Best Orchestral Performance. 

Michael Repper

The opening night of the three-concert series is 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 9, in Easton at the Church of God, followed the same time the next evening at the Community Church in Ocean Pines, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 11, at Epworth United Methodist Church in Rehoboth Beach. The program for each concert opens with Brahms’ Tragic Overture. Next is Henri Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Minor, featuring the winner of MSO’s recent Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition, violinist Elizabeth Song as honored guest soloist. After intermission, the orchestra performs Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1. 

As the first African-American woman to have a composition performed by a major classical music orchestra – the Chicago Symphony – Price has been an in-demand Black History Month choice by orchestras across the United States. All the music on the Grammy-winning album recorded by the young musicians Repper nurtured during the height of the COVID pandemic was by African-American women – Price and two living composers, Jessie Montgomery and Valerie Coleman. 

“My entire mission as a conductor,” Repper said just after his February 5 Grammy triumph, “is to connect people through music. I’m so proud that this project brought people together during the challenging time of the pandemic, and thrilled to have been able to share this tremendous music by Price, Montgomery, and Coleman.”

At 13, violin prodigy Elizabeth Song is about the same age as the younger musicians in the Repper-led youth orchestra. Song will play the piece that won her the $2,000 top prize at her live performance at the competition finals on January 12 in Easton. 

Song played 19th-century Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Minor, recognized in competition circles as a challenging concerto that allows performers to display their virtuosity. Young Song played it with beyond-her-years confidence and expressive nuance. 

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Concerts
7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 9, Easton Church of God; 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 10, Community Church, Ocean Pines; 3 p.m. Sunday, March 11, Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach. midatlanticsymphony.org
                                                                   ***
“Don’t let it be forgot, that, for one brief, shining moment there was Camelot.” Jacqueline Kennedy recited that emotive lyric shortly after her husband’s assassination on November 22, 1963, in Dallas and for months and years after that. It was from her husband’s favorite Broadway musical that opened the year he was elected president. The 1960 Broadway musical encapsulates the fleeting idealism of a fictional court and castle in the 12th-century legend of King Arthur. 

Years later, Clint Hill, Jackie’s Secret Service agent (who climbed out of the vehicle trailing the presidential limousine to push Mrs. Kennedy back in her seat) wrote that Jackie purposefully cultivated an immortal myth about her husband’s presidency. “Camelot” came to represent the youth, hope, and optimism of JFK and his thousand-day administration.

Previews of a Broadway revival of “Camelot” in a new version created by Aaron Sorkin and Bartlett Sher begin March 9 toward an April 13 opening. I can’t imagine it’s an accident that this “Camelot” debuts on the 50th anniversary year of the JFK assassination. If it runs through November 22, which I fully expect it will, there’s a matinee on that date beginning within the hour, Eastern time, when those of us who remember first heard the awful news.

Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot
Aaron Sorkin and Bartlett Sher collaborate on a new version of the classic musical. Previews begin March 9, Vivian Beaumont Theatre, Lincoln Center, Manhattan, opening April 13. broadway.com and discount sites such as seatgeek.com and stubhub.com

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

 

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Design with Jenn Martella:  A Look at the Wildset Hotel

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This building at 209 N. Talbot St. in St. Michaels began its life as a schoolhouse until John S. Hambleton, a blacksmith, bought the property in 1871 and altered the building to become his residence. The Victorian style, two-story, three-bay frame house has a front porch with a gable centered over the second story middle window that breaks the eave line. Across the street from this property is the first of several houses built with brick facades from the local brickyard established in 1873. 

These four buildings were later unified to become the Five Gables Inn. A year and a half ago, sisters and native Washingtonians Allie Blain and K.C. Lager, and DC based developer and owner Mihran Erkiletian, purchased the properties and transformed the four buildings of the former Inn into a boutique hotel. They were very ably assisted by the design and construction team of architect Charles Goebel and contractor James Sebastian of Alchemyworks. On the day of my tour, General Manager Brian Ball explained the clever names for the hotel and restaurant that ground it to its location in St. Michaels. I learned that “Wildset” refers to a group of wild oysters and I realized “Ruse” is a nod to “the Town that fooled the British.” 

Before touring the buildings, I explored the site amenities that include the main house ‘s front porch, with perfect front row seats to watch the Christmas parade and the rear lawn’s firepit surrounded by Adirondack chairs that is a quiet nocturnal spot to create Smores from kits provided by the Hotel. Future plans include a pool.

Across the street, a new pergola shaped portal between two of the three buildings in the Annex frames “The Garden”, a grassy spot for morning yoga or that second cup of coffee from the Main Building’s  Sundry and Coffee Shop. Behind the portal are thick wood posts on each side connected by strings of discreet small bulbs that must cast a magic spell at twilight. The Garden ends at a paved parking area between the Annex buildings and an historic one-level outbuilding whose original use was the Milk Truck Garage. 

The building is undergoing renovation to become an event space for patrons of the Hotel or private events for a maximum number of 75 attendees. The space is open to the underside of the ceiling and sunlight will filter in from the shed dormer infilled with windows at the rear wall, the side windows three windows and a new pair of French doors at the entry. Since the rear wall of the building is located very close to the street, the windows at the rear are set high above the floor to block the views of the cars. At the front of the building, there are two entry doors, one for event patrons and another door that opens into the catering staging area. 

As I walked back to the main building for my tour, I admired how the original Inn building’s  “L” shape was seamlessly modified by the addition to the east that infilled the space with a two-story part facing N. Talbot St., set back in deference to the original three-bay building. Behind this two-story area is a one-story space. The former space contains two new guest suites and the latter is the Ruse restaurant. 

The front door opens into the reception, coffee bar and retail area with a cased opening into a hall with restrooms on the exterior wall and a delightful mural above a shiplap wainscot. 

I paused to savor the black and white mural’s kinetic design of swimsuit clad figures in various positions of movement or rest and how the scale of the artwork was prefect for the hall width. So much more creative than a row of framed artwork! I also admired the stylish white oak floors throughout the building, the accents of white shiplap walls and wainscots  and how the white trim in the public spaces becomes black along the guest room corridors. 

The hall opens into the spacious side guest entry lobby from the parking area, convenient for guest check-in. At the interior wall, double sets of single run stairs access the second floor guest suites. 

The guest entry lobby ends at a perpendicular hall to access four guest suites. Brian opened the door to the corner suite and being an admirer of Scandinavian design, I loved the room’s neutral palette and modern furnishings, including a wall of built-ins accommodating a mini fridge, low bench for suitcases, TV and stovepipe open fireplace. Shiplap wainscot covers the wall above the bed and Brian explained the colors alternate between creamy white and black for the guest rooms. This suite opens onto a deck covered by the balcony above. I made a mental note to reserve this quiet room in the fall for a quick path to the firepit for evening smores. 

Retracing our steps, Brian led me to the addition part of the building with the interior entrance next to the front reception area. A very short hall ends at Ruse Restaurant’s reception area, with an exterior door to the outdoor dining terrace. This delightful space is festooned with wood columns supporting strands of discreet small lights to match The Garden’s layout across the street. Ruse’s compact design placed both the Oyster Bar and the Full Bar at the interior walls, leaving the rest of the space for dining with rows of windows at the exterior corner walls. 

Instead of built-in banquettes, continuous custom black wood benches topped with weathered leather cushions  are placed under the window walls for transparency. I admired the other design touches of handmade ceramic pendants, the bar tops of soapstone and the oyster bar with a hand painted base. I made another mental note to meet friends soon for drinks in this charming space.

I have been in too many hotels that feature long and boring double-loaded corridors. As I climbed the stairs to the second floor, I quickly realized the circulation space is arranged in an “U”  shape with short hall lengths that are sunlit and moonlit by two skylights next to the double stairs to the main floor. Like Goldilocks, the variety of room types would encourage me to book different ones until I found the one that was “just right”; but then, all of the rooms I saw were equally appealing! Most rooms have free-standing fireplaces, private balconies or terraces and some offer luxurious soaking tubs. The front rooms in the addition have the advantage of sloped ceilings that rise from the roof eave to follow the underside of the roof rafters above. The common “thread,” so to speak, is the crisp Parachute bedding along with cozy built-in seating and baths stocked with Grown Alchemist products.

Two visionary sisters plus one developer, combined with the architect-contractor team was a very successful formula for this unique boutique hotel in the heart of St. Michaels-bravo to the entire team!

Wildset, https://thewildset.com/,  410-745-8004 Interior Design by Allie Balin and K.C. Lager Architect:  Charles Goebel, https://cpgoebel.com/, 410-820-9176. Contractor:  James Sebastian, Alchemyworks, https://www.alchemy-works.net , 410-693-9049

Jennifer Martella has pursued her dual careers in architecture and real estate since she moved to the Eastern Shore in 2004. Her award winning work has ranged from revitalization projects to a collaboration with the Maya Lin Studio for the Children’s Defense Fund’s corporate retreat in her home state of Tennessee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tred Avon Players Plans to Make Time Stand in Oxford

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Tred Avon Players opens its 42nd season with TIME STANDS STILL, a smart, witty and thought-provoking drama. The show runs February 16-26 and will be performed in partnership with the Oxford Community Center at 200 Oxford Road, Oxford, Md.

Written by Donald Margulies and directed by Ed Langrell, TIME STANDS STILL is set in a loft in Brooklyn. The story revolves around Sarah (Mary Ann Emerson), a photojournalist who has returned from covering the Iraq war after being injured by a roadside bomb, and her reporter boyfriend James (Zachary Schlag) who is swamped by guilt after leaving Sarah alone in Iraq. They receive a visit from their friend Richard (Bill Gross), a photo editor, who introduces them to his new girlfriend Mandy (Ashley Chroniger), who is much younger than he. The play focuses on their relationships and Sarah and James’ prospects at a more conventional life.

The Spy asked Ed and Mary Ann to stop by the Spy studio last week to hear about the production.

TIME STANDS STILL opens on Thursday, February 16 and runs for seven performances through Sunday, February 26. Thrifty Thursday, Friday and Saturday performances are at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday afternoons are at 2:00 p.m. at the Oxford Community Center, 200 Oxford Rd in Oxford. Tickets are adults $25 / students $15 (no fee added.) Thrifty Thursday (February 16) and Sunday matinees sell out quickly!

NOTE: TIME STANDS STILL contains adult content and language that may not be appropriate for younger audience members.

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Mid-Shore Arts: Oxford Community Center Plans with Liza Ledford

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With a fresh coat of paint, a new sound system, and the Covid pandemic finally behind them, the Oxford Community Center is back in the game this spring.

Beyond the OCC’s traditional events, Liza Ledford, the center’s CEO, says that 2023 will be an exceptional year for the highly beloved community center. The OCC will be firing on all cylinders, starting with a new travel excursion program, adding a spring lecture series, and preparations for their annual Fine Arts Fair.

The Spy sat down with Liza this week to learn more.

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

 

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