MENU

Sections

More

January 5, 2025

Talbot Spy

Nonpartisan Education-based News for Talbot County Community

1A Arts Lead

Spy Art Review: Start your engines at AAM by Steve Parks

by

Now and for the next few months, Easton’s Academy Art Museum’s main galleries are transformed into automobile showrooms – except these vehicles are historically artistic expressions of engineering on wheels that you could never afford even if any of the few such cars left in existence were for sale.
But while Concours d’Elegance – vintage auto shows of great prestige – are the highlight of the “Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection” exhibition, curated by Ken Gross and running through April 16, cars are but one medium of fine art produced between the two 20th-century world wars by Italian family patriarch Carlo Bugatti and his sons Rembrandt and Ettore Bugatti and grandson Jean.
Although he never traveled beyond Europe, Carlo drew on Asian, African and Islamic cultural influences in creating fin-de-siecle furniture designs of which two examples – one from the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, the other from Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts – are displayed in the hallway separating the auto “showrooms.” One is an armchair, possibly of Turkish inspiration, that like most of his works – including a hallway bench and an armchair, neither of which you’re allowed to sit on – combine exotic materials: ebonized wood inlaid with copper, brass, ivory and mother of pearl accented with leathery and painted flourishes.
His eldest son, Rembrandt, followed with an explicit art discipline rather than highly refined craftsmanship. In his short life ending in suicide at age 31, he devoted his talents to bronze sculptures of animal figures, none of which, presumably, posed for him. “Three Cow Grazing,” “Asian Elephant Begging” (perhaps for water?) and “Sacred Hamadryas Baboon” on all fours, are arrayed opposite the furniture pieces and a black-and-white photo gallery of the Bugatti family of artists.
Separated from the other sculptures is Rembrandt’s “Leaping Kangaroo,” displayed in the gallery featuring Ettore and Jean Bugatti’s Grand Prix race cars, Roaring ’20s forerunners to what we now call Formula 1 racers. A blue-grey Bugatti Type 45 Grand Prix with exhaust piping running from front to rear reveals its vintage with a front-end crank to start its explosive engine. A silver Bugatti Type 37A Grand Prix antique masterpiece with its red leather two-seat interior and spare tire strapped to the long front end that encompasses a powerful for-its-time engine. You can see a model of that engine outside its handsomely designed housing. It stands right next to the “Leaping Kangaroo.” And for sound effects you can press a couple of buttons to hear the roar of each Bugatti Grand Prix racer.
But for sheer engineering artistry, it’s hard, perhaps impossible, to beat the elegantly sleek designs of the Bugatti roadsters of the 1930s. These cars and the others in this exhibit are from the collection of Judge John C. North of Easton, and have never before been exhibited in a museum setting.  Lee Glazer, AAM’s Senior Curator, curated the exhibition, and Ken Gross is the guest Curator
You can see that the Bugatti Type 57 Atalante coupe on display at Academy Art shows was previously owned in that the driver and passenger seats are a bit cracked, while the classic exterior lines are so captivatingly authentic that they rise above minor seat imperfections. The companion virtuoso vehicle, the Bugatti 57SC Atlantic sports model, gleams in showroom fresh splendor, with its pristine interior and peek-a-boo peek into its awesome engineering artistry. Surely, the Bugattis – Etorre and his son Jean – knew how to make beautiful cars way back then. But imagine trying to insure one. Not to mention mileage. Way better to experience these Bugattis as museum artifacts. Admission is free.
                                                                  ***
To accommodate this never-seen-before exhibition at AAM, the annual museum members show has moved to the next-door Waterfowl Building.

The first object you encounter on arrival is Loretta Loman’s “Organic Farm” glazed stoneware ceramic that, to me, deserved an award. But Loman compensated as hers was one of the first  artworks sold. Just to the right of her piece is Anne Sharp’s Best in Show oil portrait “Eunice” of a woman in a red turban. Best painting went to James Plumb for his nearby still-life, “Three Garlics and Water” oil on canvas.

Anne Sharp’s Best in Show “Eunice”

Other winners include Stephen Walker’s Best Eastern Shore Scene primitive-style oil, “Smoke Break”; Best Landscape, actually a seascape by James Sharf, for his “Normandy Coast Gale” oil; Liam Swadler’s Sporting Award for his “Dock Dog” digital photo of a pooch fresh from a Waterfowl Festival water dive; Best in Ceramics for Karen Bailor’s “World View,” an odd-shaped mouth to a vase; Judy Wolgast’s Best Print winner for her “Snowscape” aquatint reflection of trees on an icy surface; Bridget Sullivan’s Best in Mixed Media for her “Ancestral” allegory; the Trippe Gallery Work on Paper Award to Barrie Barnett’s “Sheep in Winter,” in need of a shearing; Excellence in Photography award to George Sass’ soft-focus “Rolling Tide”; Best in Wood to Terance John for his enigmatic “Memories #19”; Best in Fiber to Susan Fay Schauer of Zebra Gallery for her “Ajidamoonh,” squirrel with a paisley tail; and Best Contemporary Art for “Serengeti,” a collage-and-acrylic abstract by Susan Thomas.
All the framed images are within the 12-by-12-inch limits or variable computations therein. Considering the ample space inside the Waterfowl Building, those limits seem, well, limiting as compared to available space in the museum galleries. Better coordination next year, should the members’ show return to the Waterfowl Building, evacuated after the annual mid-November festival, could work better for all concerned.
‘Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection’
Through April 16, 2025, Academy Art Museum, 6 South St., Easton.
Also, Annual Members Exhibition, through Dec. 29, Waterfowl Building, 40 S. Harrison St., Easton. (Both shows are closed on Mondays.)
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.

Spy Concert Review: MSO’s Joy to the Season by Steve Parks

by

A “Holiday Joy” concert by the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, led by maestro Michael Repper, is a lot more than Jolly St. Nick, “Joy to the World” and carols galore. This season, you’ll also hear arias about character assassins and deadly ones, too – both in French – plus an English poetry reading with symphonic sound effects.

We all know what to expect in a holiday-season concert. But Repper, despite his ironic Santa hat, seems determined to give us more. So he brought along an accomplice or two – besides, of course, his usual orchestra cohorts. The show opens as you might expect with a medley of the usual upbeat Christmas-time suspects – from “Winter Wonderland” to “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” But you know something is up with that piano at center stage facing the orchestra and no pianist in the program. That role, here and there, is filled by Repper himself, declining to sing as if it might be a crime against humanity.

No, he leaves that role exclusively to guest soloist and up-and-coming opera tenor Jonathan Pierce Rhodes.

The evening’s holiday fare is split more or less evenly between orchestral favorites of the season and classic carols – both sacred and secular. These are sung by Rhodes. Mostly. (The audience is under “mandatory” obligation to sing along at the end.)

A recent graduate of Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young Artist Program, Rhodes is one of the most recognized new tenor voices in opera, having made his leading-role debut in “Fellow Travelers” by Gregory Spears with San Francisco’s Opera Parallele. He’s also performed with such prestigious companies as Lyric Opera Chicago in Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s “Blue,” and for three summers at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York, where he played the title role in Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.”

At MSO’s opening night of “Holiday Joy,” Rhodes delivered an ironically resounding “Silent Night” with a range seemingly from near-soprano to baritone tenor. Switching to opera, he sang Verdi’s most famous aria from “Rigoletto” with such expressive ownership as if it was written just for him nearly a century and a half ago. His connection to Verdi’s greatest hits felt just as apparent in Alfredo’s Aria from “La Traviata.” Yet, somehow, he dug deeper personally into “Deep River,” an African song popularized in 1916 by Henry Burleigh. Rhodes exuded still deeper meaning into how a spiritual can move him and his audience.

Reappearing a few numbers after intermission, Rhodes sang a decidedly un-Bing Crosby “White Christmas.” (Despite the famous title, this song and one other came closest to a Hanukkah reference in that it was written by Irving Berlin, a Jewish refugee. “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Gustav Holst was more hopeful than it sounds, while “O Holy Night,” including verses rarely sung in caroling, reflected an intensity of belief. But my personal holiday favorite, “The Christmas Song,” written by another Jew, Mel Torme, struck me as a stylistic salute to the great Nat King Cole. No one ever sang it better. But Rhodes comes very close. My only quibble with Rhodes’ performance outside the three unamplified arias, is that he sang the rest with a microphone, which put unnecessary distance between him and the audience, however slight that may be. He’s the last person in the room who needs a microphone, so powerful is his natural singing voice.

Thus, my award for best use of a microphone must go to John Sisson for his dramatic reading of “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to the incidental accompaniment of the orchestra, much in the way such music reflects the emotional energy of a motion picture.
Among other highlights of the orchestral side of the evening was another music-in-movies reference for anyone who remembers the somewhat bawdy film “10.” “The Little Bolero Boy” takes off on “The Little Drummer Boy” and Ravel’s “Bolero” that became a sexual theme in “10.” The unrelenting throb of his orchestral composition builds to a climactic finish as each section of the orchestra gets in on the act. But it’s the repetitive beat of the snare drum, played over and over by Dane Krich, plus a clarinet solo portion by Dennis Strawley, that keep “Little Bolero Boy” marching forward.

A trio of musicians who are not usually lead players throughout any orchestral piece are featured with brassy gusto early on in the concert by trumpeters Josh Carr, Ross McCool and Steven Bailey. They perform starring roles in Leroy Anderson’s irresistibly cheerful “Bugler’s Holiday.”

Surely, it was a “Holiday Joy” for those three as well as for the rest of us enjoying or playing in this seasonal symphonic celebration at Chesapeake College.

‘HOLIDAY JOY’ CONCERTS

Opening night:Thursday, Dec. 5, Todd Hall Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College. For more “Holiday Joy,” see one of these reprise performances: 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7 at Cape Henlopen High in Lewes, Delaware, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8 at Ocean City Performing Arts Center. Or check out the MSO Holiday Brass Quintet concerts Dec. 20 in Ocean Pines, Dec. 21 in Rehoboth Beach, or Dec. 22 in Easton. 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.

The growing art scene in Easton by Steve Parks

by

Jennifer McBrien’s embroidered”Subversive Thread” fabrics at the Academy Art Museum

The visual art scene in downtown Easton – also known as the Arts District – is now more so than ever before. From three fine-art galleries barely more than a year ago, Easton will soon have seven within strolling distance from Talbot County Courthouse, Academy Art Museum, Tidewater Inn, and Avalon Theatre.

On Friday afternoon, I took in one of the current exhibits at the Academy Art Museum and a show at the new Zach Gallery in the Prager Family Center for the Arts – also home to the Ebenezer Theatre and Chesapeake Music. Then I checked out the inaugural show at Talbot Resident Artists Gallery that opened just this month across the street from the Avalon, two shows featuring new artists at the dual Zebra and Spiralis galleries around the corner, plus a walk-through of the long-established Troika and Trippe galleries on Harrison and Studio B on Goldsborough. All in about an hour and a half. The range of artworks I encountered on my whirlwind tour was astonishing.

Although there are many, many, many times seven art galleries in Manhattan, given just a 90 minutes to tour a few I might not see such a plethora of styles and techniques – from simple charcoal-on-paper portraits to fabric-and-thread concoctions incorporating everything from photography to dollar bills and paintings made of molded clay – claymation stills. All this and the usual assortment of land- and seascapes capturing the natural beauty of the Chesapeake region.

I began my matinee tour at the Academy Art Museum where the next big show, “Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection” was about to be installed in the two main galleries for the Dec. 5 preview. The two smaller galleries down the hall from the main entrance host a most unusual show meant to expand the horizons of craft art, the subject of the popular annual weekend-long craft show and sale in October. “The Subversive Thread” will expand your imagination of what fabric art entails far beyond quilts and machine-stitched creations that have long been the purview of homemakers who do not necessarily consider themselves artists. In this thread show, four artists stretched the concept of fabric art to new and, at times, extravagant dimensions.

Han Cao repurposes what look to be family photo album images – a few in color, others black and white – in a “Self-Reflection” series, including “Wedding Day,” a 2021 photo with the happy couple looking at a mirror that reflects an embroidered window into an altered state of being.

Jennifer McBrien riffs on domestic art with her series of vintage lace napkins embroidered with images of endangered bird species. But more impressive is her 2024 laundry line of freehand embroidery on tea-dyed organza hanging like sheer curtains – all with nude female images from “Ruff Warrior Woman” to “Golden Warbler Woman.”

Stacey Lee Webber has cash on her mind with 2022 “Two Dollar Fire” and similar pieces with actual dollar bills interspersed with a hand-stitched cotton-thread motif. Michael-Birch Pierce anchors the quartet of fabric artists with his mixed-media on velvet pieces in circular and rectangular frames, including floating soft-focus “Ghosts.”

From there, I walked to Washington Street, past the Talbot Historical Society, to Zach Gallery in the Zachariah half of the Prager Arts Center shared with Ebenezer. The current exhibit, running through the end of November, features works by Paton Miller and Scott Bluedorn. Miller, a painter based in the posh Hamptons on Long Island’s East End, dominated the space with his large oils that emulate his 20 years of painting in Fairfield Porter’s Southampton studio. Most notable to me, raised as an Easton-area farmboy, is “Farmer.” A black man seated with a wheelbarrow behind him appears to be looking directly at the viewer – to me in this case – creating a personal connection.

Bluedorn, also from the Hamptons and whose work I have mentioned in Parrish Art Museum reviews during my Newsday career, spans painting, drawing and printmaking – all represented at the Zach. His “Ode to . . .” series of birds-and-fish watercolors with visible wavelengths emanating from their aura typifies his natural-world oeuvre.

The newest gallery in Easton opened with works by a trio of artists who are not represented by other galleries in town. The Talbot Resident Artist Gallery, just across Dover Street from the Avalon, is their chance to show and sell their art. Three artists inaugurated the new space through the end of November. Scott Sullivan’s charcoal-on-paper portraits display his drawing skills with, among several other images, an immediately recognizable likeness of Pete Lesher of the Talbot County Council and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Other portraits include a clarinetist that I mistook for the late Benny Goodman. (Sullivan said others have made the same misidentification.) Also showing at TRA is Joan Cramer, whose watercolors range from colorful abstract to representational, and Marianne Kost, whose oils include a highly recognizable Harrison Street scene as well as architectural paintings.

The TRA Gallery will soon have a new neighbor. Just around the corner on Harrison Street, the Zebra and Spiralis galleries are breaking up after a year of living together in the same space. It’s not a divorce but more like an amicable separation that benefits both galleries. Depending on how long it takes for the ink on the paperwork to dry, Spiralis will move two doors up on Dover Street from TRA in the shop formerly occupied by Swan Antiques. For now, they continue to share space that will become Zebra’s gallery alone.

Currently, one of the new artists you might want to check out is Joseph Barbaccia, a Delaware painter who deploys polymer-based clay as his medium instead of, say, canvas or various types of paper. His self-portrait looks a bit like a series of tiny beads that are painted over, giving the image a textured depth not readily achievable on flat surfaces.

If you’re looking for art to buy, Ingrid Matuszewski’s “It’s a Shore Thing,” is off the market. The abstract of, presumably, a stretch of Oxford waterfront, just sold for $4,200. But it’s still up on the gallery wall for now. Among the Spiralis artists of note is James Stephen Terrell, whose patterned-abstract “Think” may have you scratching your head with curiosity.

The old-guard galleries, of course, still have plenty to offer. The Troika Gallery on Harrison celebrates its 27 years in business with a retrospective of works by surviving artists for an anniversary group show of “new masterpieces” through the end of the year, with a First Friday reception Dec. 6.

The Trippe Gallery is observing “Another Side of Jill Basham,” one of its most prolific, not to mention popular artists, through November and beyond. The paintings include urban scenes and abstracts that are atypical of the Trappe artist’s familiar land- and seascapes of the Eastern Shore.Around the corner on Goldsborough, Studio B Gallery paintings by owner Betty Huang go further afield and abroad to capture the “Splendor of Provence,’ where she painted lush French scenes last summer. Awesome, or charme in Francais.

Easton Arts District

All addresses in Easton:
Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., academyartmuseum.org
Avalon Theatre, 40 E. Dover St., avalonfoundation.org
Ebenezer Theatre, 17 S. Washington St., chesapeakemusic.org
Zach Gallery, 17 S. Washington St., zachgalleryeaston.com
Zebra Gallery, 5 N. Harrison St., thezebragallery.com
Spiralis Gallery (new venue pending), 35 E. Dover St., spiralisgallery.com
Talbot Resident Artists Gallery, 41 E. Dover St., talbotarts.org
Troika Gallery, 9 S. Harrison St., troikagallery.com
Trippe Gallery, 23 N. Harrison St., thetrippegallery.com
Studio B Gallery, 78 Goldsborough St., studiobartgallery.com
Talbot Historical Society, 25 & 30 S. Washington St., talbothistory.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor 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.

Spy Concert Review: MSO Performs Beethoven’s 5th by Steve Parks

by

Michael Repper conducting the MSO.

If there are any four notes in all the classical music canon that almost everyone recognizes – even those who wouldn’t know Mozart from Muddy Waters – it would be the bah-bah-bah-BOHM of Beethoven’s Fifth. But how many aficionados would recognize the first few bars of his “rookie” symphony No. 1 as Beethoven’s?

When it premiered in 1804, the Fifth was called the “Fate Symphony,” which accounts for the title of the November concert series of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, “Fireworks of Fate,” continuing through Sunday’s matinee at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center. The four notes, it is said, denote “fate knocking at the door.” Should you answer?
Accompanying the pair of Beethoven symphonies on the program are two appetizers by 19th-Century French composer Louise Farrenc, both concert overtures, which means these six- or seven-minute pieces were never intended as part of a larger work, such as an opera.
Her Overture No. 1 pays homage to Haydn, Beethoven’s most important mentor. The gravity of the solemn opening adagio is quickly overtaken by a restless allegro that becomes more relaxed as it grows into a bold thematic statement and an authoritative finish. Farrenc’s Overture No. 2 takes a similar form but in a different frame of mind. Possibly traumatic opening notes give way to a celebration with a richly melodic and cheerful vibrance. Together these pieces leave you wishing Farrenc had added another movement or two for each. Sadly, symphonies were not in fashion with the French in her time and, in any case, women composers anywhere in the world struggled to be recognized.
Unlike Mozart, a child prodigy, Beethoven did not complete his first symphony until 1800 at age 29. Mozart died nine years earlier at age 35 with 41 symphonies to his everlasting credit.
In keeping with symphonic tradition, set largely by Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven’s First is composed in sonata form. But he throws in a bit of a trick by toying in the opening notes with the C Major key that dominates the piece. He then throws in an innovation with woodwinds playing a prominent role intertwined with the string instruments in introducing a second theme. Taking the lead for the MSO woodwind section are Mindy Heinsohn (flute), Dana Newcomb (oboe), Dennis Strawley (clarinet) and Terry Ewell (bassoon).
The second movement opens with what amounts to a fugue that gradually morphs into a darker mood with the rhythmic throb of timpani beats by Barry Dove. While the third movement is called a minuet, it comes off as more of a scherzo teaser that suggests bolder dancefloor strides. The final movement of Beethoven’s First toys with a trio of mellower notes before it gains momentum toward a confident landing that encompasses previous themes as well as Beethoven’s soon-to-be signature orchestral beats.
If you think that Beethoven’s Fifth is the meat-and-potatoes of classical music by long-dead European composers, ho-hum, think again. It’s at the very least the steak frites or filet mignon with truffles of the classical catalog’s all-time menu. And it’s not played as often as you might think considering its thematic presence in everything from movies to video games. So here’s your chance to hear it played live in full by a fine professional regional orchestra spurred on by a Grammy-winning music director, Michael Repper.
Here’s what I thought of the opening night performance in Rehoboth Beach Friday night, Nov. 8.
The opening four notes heard round the world and through the centuries are echoed in clarion calls from the back-row brass section led by Daniel Coffman (trombone), Luis Engelke (trumpet) and Michael Hall (horn). The orchestra played with a cohesive and deliberate temperament of an ensemble performing as one, led on strings by concertmaster Kimberly McCollum, Dana Bevard (second violin), Yuri Tomenko (viola), Katie McCarthy (cello) and Chris Chlumsky (bass).
New themes are introduced in the next two movements with a more reflective cadence followed by a lighter scherzo that culminates in a fond recollection of the Fifth’s opening flourish.
The fourth and final movement tests the musicians’ stamina with extended pianissimo riffs for strings while reeds and horns herald the breathless close to the Fifth’s fabled fate as one of, if not the greatest, symphony in classical music history. GOAT they call it in ironic athletic terms. (Greatest of All Time). And there is athleticism, even while seated, to do performance honor to Beethoven’s greatest hit. The MSO is fit for the occasion.
Mid-Atlantic Symphony’s “Fireworks of Fate” Series

Premiering Nov. 8 in Rehoboth Beach with Michael Repper conducting, followed by a 3 p.m. performance on Saturday, Nov. 9 at the Ocean City Performing Arts Center. The finale is at 3 on Sunday, Nov. 10 at the Todd Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College in Wye Mills. 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.

Spy Theater Review: Ghosts haunt the Avalon by Steve Parks

by

Not to take anything away from the cast and creators of “Stage Fright,” now playing twice daily through Sunday at the Avalon Theatre, but the true star of this production is the Avalon itself, which observed its first hundred years in 2022.
Described as an “immersive theater experience,” the show is a largely fictional Halloween glimpse into the building’s history, beginning with a fire that destroyed the Avalon Hotel. Rebuilt in 1922, what was then called The New Theatre became known as “The showplace of the Eastern Shore,” renamed the Avalon Theatre in 1934.
The “Stage Fright” musical, written by Casey Rauch, who also plays the lead villain, and directed by Cecile Storm, who portrays his accomplice with a visceral demeanor, is no standard Halloween entertainment. It’s not recommended for anyone under age 16.  Musical direction by Ray Nissen accompanies frequent film montages as well as live action on and off-stage. Actors lead the way for the audience to explore every public space of the Avalon Foundation building.
What was formerly known as Banning’s Tavern has been transformed into what you might call a mad physician’s brain laboratory with alcohol serving mostly, it seems, as a preservative for neural tissue no longer occupying a skull. Main-stage scenes fill in the Avalon back story. Lou Baker is about to be released from 30 years in a psychiatric institution at age 95. Murder and ghostly reappearances have haunted the Avalon ever since the “apparent suicide” of Marguerite Gardot shortly after she gave up her child Charlotte to a church to further her career as a showgirl and Beauthy Shop Quartet headliner managed by her lover, Lou Baker. Having not seen Charlotte since she was a baby, Baker implores her to read Marguerite’s diary.
There is an intermission in there somewhere, but I saw “Stage Fright” on its final dress rehearsal, when my wife and I were the only audience. Presumably, drinks, refreshments and light fare were available once the show opened officially on Wednesday evening. We settled into our front-row seats in the lovely Stoltz Listening Room where the stage was lined with VHS videos from the failed business model of Blockbuster, which never anticipated the inevitability of streaming services. A film screened over the stage before us added more to the back story of Bob – Lou’s Girl Friday and former bare-knuckles boxer who doubles as bouncer while cleaning up her boss’s messes. Including murder? We’re left with a cryptic message: “All you do is watch.”
A trip to the third floor, not often open to mere Avalon ticket-holders, is a revelation. A grand space for a relatively small room dominated by an 18-foot leaded-glass ceiling dome and a chance to step outside on a narrow deck to take in the best view of downtown Easton that was once available to patrons of a restaurant called The Chambers. It’s now mostly reserved for Avalon Foundation board meetings and special (expensive) events.
So here’s your chance to tour the architectural beauty of the Avalon as you’ve probably never seen it. That was enough to distract me from the video at hand, except for the haunting message at the end: “All you do is watch.” As if we’re accessories to crimes we know nothing about. Not yet.
Taking the elevator down to the ground floor, our actor-guides led us out onto Harrison Street and the alleyway between the Avalon and Troika Gallery to return to the main stage. No spoiler alerts here. But I’m guessing you’ve figured out this is no musical comedy.
But a bit more evaluation of the performances is in order. Casey Rauch as Lou Baker is sufficiently addled and edgy to make us think he’s capable of all that has tormented him for decades. Katie Cox as his daughter, Charlotte, who is a stranger to him, seems to have avoided the mental trauma of her parents. She’s almost inspired by reading passages from her mom’s diary, as if she was talking directly to her, as the staging by Cecile Storm suggests. As Marguerite, Jenny Madino projects a spectral presence, appropriate for someone who’s been dead by suicide or murder for what? – almost a century?  Her Beauty Shop Quartet survivors – if anyone is not already a ghost by this time – Maddie Megahan (Vivian), Jeri Alexander (Minnie), and Grace Vorosmarti (Shirley) are just wildly vulnerable enough to be susceptible to crazy Lou.
While the film and video montages added here and there to the ghost story at hand, a few seemed entirely superfluous. Among the most revealing to any character were the excerpts from MTV back when the cable network made its splash as presenter of highly professional music videos – some of which made or resurrected the careers of feature film directors. It was, I suppose, the pinnacle of Lou Baker’s checkered career, that he wins an MTV best video-of-the-year award. OK, so there’s my spoiler. Aside from that, my best advice to you is to wear comfortable shoes and Halloween costumes that won’t get in the way of your getting around all the space that the Avalon offers in its centennial-plus glory.
‘STAGE FRIGHT’
6:30 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24 through Sunday, Oct. 27, Avalon Theatre, Dover at Harrison streets, Easton; avalonfoundation.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York theater 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.

Spy Review: Isidore String Quartet Interlude by Steve Parks

by

 

Isidore String Quartet, from left, Adrian Steele, Devin Moore, Phoenix Avalon and Joshua McClendon

The Isidore String Quartet, riding high after back-to-back years as winner of Canada’s prestigious Banff International String Quartet Competition (2022) and an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2023) put their credentials to inspired effect in their Chesapeake Music Interlude concert Saturday night.
Never mind that the program listed a trio of pieces by dead European composers. The concert was adventurous enough with Bartok’s atonally immersive riff that critics derided as “barbaric” when his second string quartet debuted during World War I. But Ravel’s ground-breaking early career masterpiece and Mozart’s quartet that anticipated by at least two centuries the modern string quartet model made the program almost entirely contemporary in temperament and musical maturity.
The four New York-based Isidore musicians are graduates of the Juilliard School campus at Lincoln Center. They take their name from two sources – legendary Juilliard Quartet violinist Isidore Cohen but also their shared taste for vodka ascribed to a Greek monk named Isidore.
The concert opened with the last of six Mozart quartets championed by his mentor, Haydn – 24 years his senior. At the time – the 1780s – nearly all string quartets were basically first-violin solo pieces with a supporting cast of viola, cello and second violin. So shocking was Mozart’s String Quartet No. 6, nicknamed his “Dissonance” quartet, that his publisher assumed the score was a copying error. Haydn countered on behalf of his genius protege: “If Mozart wrote it, he must have meant it.”
The piece opens with, instead of a solo turn by Isidore violinist Phoenix Avalon, a ponderous motif that suggests a wandering in the dark of a bad dream, which shifts abruptly to a cheerful awakening that brilliantly involves all four string players in a musical conversation alternatively featuring violinists Avalon and Adrian Steele, violist Devin Moore and cellist Joshua McClendon.
The conversation resumes in the second movement andante with cellist McClendon providing the heartbeat thoughline. The third movement minuet is anything but the standard ballroom dance vibe. There’s a turbulent undercurrent with counterpoint interruptions in the flow with a return to the melancholy of the opening bars of the first movement. The allegro finale suggests a cheerful resolution to the preceding turmoil with almost giddy turns of musical phasing by  Avalon and Steele with fluttering syncopation by violist Moore and grounded by cellist McClendon for a skilled landing.
Bartok’s String Quartet No. 2, completed in 1917 in the middle of the Great War, now known as World War I, almost demands a bleak musical format. The piece opens with a peaceful if restless opening, as if awakening in the middle of the night but unable to fall back asleep, watching the inside of your eyelids a soon-to-be realized horror. The second movement borrows on both Bartok’s native Hungarian folkloric themes with Arabic overtones from his North African studies to create a desperate intensity led by violist Moore and cellist McClendon which dissolves into a brooding finale dramatically marked by a swelling requiem theme punctuated by moments of reverential near-silence.
After intermission, the first violin chair role switched to Adrian Steele who led a romantic opening, which morphed into urgent and then wistful phrasing that may suggest love lost. Quivering regrets are reflected in the pizzicato and plucking of string percussion in a brief second movement followed by a slow, melodic revisit of earlier themes. The finale encompasses all the shifting moods of the whole with moments of agitation, joy and reflection in between. In each expression, the Isidore quartet delivered the goods as they did in each of the first two remarkably relevant string quartets written two centuries ago.
Of note: This was the first major concert event under the helm of Chesapeake Music’s new executive director David Faleris following founder Don Buxton’s retirement. So far, so good.
Chesapeake Music Interlude Concert
Isidore String Quartet, Saturday night, Oct. 5, at Ebenezer Theatre, Easton.
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.

Spy Review: Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Season-Opener, by Steve Parks

by

You could say that the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra trumpeted the opening of the fall arts season at the acoustically pleasing Easton Church of God Thursday night, except that it was mostly strings that heralded the “Violin Virtuoso” concert series, which continues with performances this weekend in Lewes, Delaware and Ocean Pines, Maryland.

The 27th season of the Delmarva Peninsula’s only fully professional symphony orchestra, led by Grammy-winning music director Michael Repper, got off to an exhilarating start with a program that, on the surface, might appear to be a medley of dead European composers’ greatest hits. Johannes Brahms, a heavyweight in his class of composers, wrote his only two classical overtures in 1880 – the fittingly brooding Tragic Overture and, as a bookend in temperament, the celebratory Academic Festival Overture, perhaps the most popular piece of his career as a successor to Romantic-period forebears, Beethoven and Bach.

Violin soloist Grace Park

If there was to be comedy tomorrow, reversing the order in the song from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” it was, indeed, tragedy tonight. Still, the overture’s opening allegro suggests robust assertiveness rather than gloomy foreboding The middle Moderato movement settles unexpectedly into a peaceful, march-like interlude. In the concluding third movement, Brahms intertwines rapidly evolving counterpoints between tumult and moody reflection, of which each fully engaged section of the orchestra keeps up with the furious race to the finish.

The next long-dead European composer on the program, was essentially making her concert debut. Alice Mary Smith was the first British woman to compose symphonies – two to her credit – in the latter half of the 19th century. Back then it would have been as likely that a woman composer could get a symphony published, much less performed, than it might be today for a woman to play tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, regardless of Taylor Swift’s enamor for that position on the field.
Smith had two things going for her: A family of some means that helped get her into London’s Royal Academy to study music and a talent that put her in the same league with male contemporaries. Though she was not very widely recognized in her lifetime, she is by no means a fluke. Modern recordings of her two symphonies, including No. 2 in A Minor, accessible now on YouTube, prove that she should have been taken seriously and only recently – 140 years after her  death in 1884 – has been appreciated.

Repper is one who noticed her work. And as a champion of underperformed composers, mostly women and/or African-Americans, he conducts performances of these long-lost or disregarded symphonies and concertos.

Smith’s Symphony No. 2 opens with a bold Allegro as if to stand her symphonic ground against her almost exclusively male fellow composers. The second movement Andante introduces lyrical contrasts to tensions of the first, providing a tenderly reflective mood that sets the stage for the third movement’s rhythmic syncopation while adding a danceable theme to Smith’s symphonic palette. The Allegro finale reintroduces themes from each of the previous movements, building to a climactic and confident close.

Following intermission, soloist Grace Park, winner of the prestigious Naumburg International Violin Competition, set the pace for the orchestra as assuredly as music director Repper. It was not so much her virtuosity as the inventive piece itself, created by Felix Mendelssohn, still another long dead composer. He succumbed at age 47 to overwork and the heartbreak of his beloved sister Fanny’s passing. Mendelssohn’s groundbreaking Violin Concerto changed how such concertos were composed and presented for the next century and a half.

Orchestras customarily set the tone of the opening theme of a concerto while the soloist bided his or her time. But from the start of his “Violin Concerto” the attention is riveted on the soloist, thanks to Mendelssohn’s innovations. Another change he introduced was that the three movements of his concerto are played almost as one – with little or no pause in between.

The effect is to make the soloist the star attraction almost throughout the piece. It works best, of course, if the violinist can garner that attention in a spell-binding way. Grace Park did so with near breathless aplomb, fulfilling her solo role with dexterity and authority. The orchestra also fulfilled its supporting role. The bassoon marks the transition between the first movement with a sustained B note, led by Terry Ewell, followed by a rise to C in moving on to the tenderly melodic second movement. Meanwhile, the string section, featuring concertmaster Kimberly McCollum and her associate William Wang, gives the soloist a bit of a break. Finally, there’s the briefest pause while Park plays the last whisper of a phrase before diving in with a sprinter’s burst of speed, punctuated with pizzicato gymnastics as woodwinds led by Rachael Yokers on flute and Cheryl Sanborn on clarinet join in to complete a triumphant finish.

After a couple of standing-ovation bows, Park returned to center-stage for a solo encore. “What do you play after that?” she asked. “Maybe some Bach.” As fine as Park performed the Bach encore, it was child’s play for someone of such great skill and presence.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Violin Virtuoso’
Thursday night at Easton Church of God. Two more performances at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, Delaware, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, Community Church, Ocean Pines. midatlanticsymphony.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.
A footnote: The MSO ratified a new three-year collective bargaining agreement with the musicians represented by the Musicians’ Association of Metropolitan Baltimore late last month. So Delmarva’s only professional symphony orchestra is good to go for at least another three years.

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

17th Annual Chesapeake Film Festival and the Man Behind It All by Steve Parks

by

For the 17th annual Chesapeake Film Festival – opening Sept. 27 in Easton, preceded by a one-day mini-fest Sept. 12 in Chestertown – more than 200 films from five countries and 15 states were submitted of which 32 made the grade.

Among those that were accepted by the festival team is the opening day documentary at the Ebenezer Theater, “Call Me a Dancer,” highly recommended by the festival’s executive director Cid Collins Walker and by Martin Zell in his fourth and final year as CFF president. Co-directed by Pip Gilmour and producer Leslie Shampaigne, who will there in person for an audience Q&A after the noon showing of the film, it’s the story of Mannish, a young street dancer from Mumbai, who struggles with dreams of becoming a ballet star and his parents’ insistence that he follow the tradition in India that requires a son to support them in later life. Upon meeting an Israeli ballet master, Mannish is more determined than ever to follow his dream. But can it be realized against the odds?

Martin Zell

Zell, who himself was a documentary filmmaker and a producer of major national and international special events, will introduce the environmental documentary “Diary of an Elephant Orphan.” Baby Khanyisa, a three-month old albino calf caught in a wire snare and rescued with the hope of integrating her into a herd of mostly former orphans. “You will see elephants like you’ve never seen them before,” says Zell, who has explored many parts of Africa and Asia in his myriad travels to those continents. “Very inspiring,” he adds.

The world premiere of a film short of local and regional interest precedes the pachyderm documentary. “Chesapeake Rhythms,” written by Tom Horton and directed by Dave Harp celebrates the migration of native trumpet swans to Eastern Shore marshes.

A one-day mini Environmental Festival features six films on conservation efforts regarding the Chesapeake Bay and its thousands of miles of estuaries. It will be presented at the Garfield Center in Chestertown in two sessions, matinee and evening, on Sept. 12.

Aside from environmental and social issues that have long been a CFF focus, the arts get their due as well. “Jamie Wyeth and the Unflinching Eye” headlines the “Saturday Night & the Arts” program on Sept. 28. Directed by Glenn Holsten who will also stick around for a Q&A, Jamie is part of a three-generation dynasty of painters beginning with N.C. Wyeth and his son Andrew, who  is Jamie’s dad. (“Wyeth,” a festival preview film also directed by Holsten, was shown in August at the Academy Art Museum.) Jamie is best known for his painting subjects, ranging from JFK to Rudolph Nureyev along with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Andy Warhol. But aside from these and other famous faces, he also directs his eye toward animals on his farm and the rocky islands of Maine.

Among the “Spotlight on Maryland” films on the last evening of the festival is a glimpse into civil rights history as seen through the eyes of 50 people from Chestertown. “Get on the Bus” takes you along for the ride, with stops in Atlanta, Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, and a tour of the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, paying homage to the African-American experience.
Meanwhile, if you want to learn how such films are made or get free advice from filmmakers, head to the Talbot County Free Library just a couple of blocks from the Ebenezer. “The Art of Storytelling” panel and workshop begins at 10:30 a.m. on the final day of the festival, Sept. 29, which closes with a student awards showcase.
                              
***

When I asked Martin Zell in a Zoom interview if he and his wife Linda moved from D.C. to the Eastern Shore “after you retired,”  he replied, “I don’t use the R word. We moved to the Eastern Shore” – more specifically to Sherwood – “the day after I stopped working.” Well, not to quarrel with such an accomplished man as Marty Zell, but it seems to me he hasn’t stopped working.

He found a niche when he first attended the Chesapeake Film Festival shortly after he moved. Soon he was volunteering. A few years later, he joined the board of directors and will “retire” – excuse me: “stop working” – as president of CFF in November after a four-year term. But in the interim it has become apparent that he is uniquely qualified for the role. Not that his successor will not be qualified in his or her own way. But Zell has seen and done it all when it comes to film and event production.

Right after college, graduating from Drake University in Iowa with a minor in film, he took a year off to travel. Now, just in the decade since he “stopped working,” he and Linda have traveled three months a year to an estimated 15 to 17 countries – mostly to remote villages and rural parts of two continents – Africa and Asia. “I have an affinity for other cultures,” he says.

Returning after that first year abroad, Zell took a job as cameraman for Iowa Public TV in Des Moines, which led to filming and later producing documentaries, several of which won awards and national attention on PBS stations across the country. Chief among them were “Don’t Forget the Khmer,” a documentary that arose from an Iowa fund-raiser to help refugees in Cambodia. It raised $300,000. Zell was assigned to find out how that money was spent. A significant portion went to sending nurses to refugee camps for desperate people who had probably never had proper health care. “They were so grateful,” Zell says, adding, “It fed my soul as well.”

“I would label him a humanist with great understanding for people,” says John White, then program director for IPTV. “This quality is evident in many of his nationally broadcast PBS documentaries.”

In 1987, Zell moved on to form his own company, Zell Productions International based in Washington, where he produced CINE Golden Eagles award-winning documentaries for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Forest Service. But in 2000, as funding for such projects was drying up, he “transitioned to another field” to become production manager for Hargrove Inc., which he calls “the big gorilla” in major special events. In 2008, he brought his talent and experience in producing films to such mega events as the 2008 Inauguration of President Barack Obama, staging and designing the decor and presentation of 55 to 60 events a day over the inaugural’s five days. Four years later, he was executing production plans for the DNC National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., and also in 2012, for the NATO Conference in Chicago.

“You do what you’ve done as a film producer,” Zell recalls, “applying the same sensibilities that it takes on making a documentary. You make all the contacts and create a budget, present your ideas to the director you’ve hired and go from there.”

So, yes, he was pretty much up to the job of producing the Chesapeake Film Festival. And after that’s over, he’ll take off for another three months to see the world as he and his wife prefer to see it – up close and personal with people who may or may not get noticed that much.

One thing he’s observed in his travels, Zell says, is that “most people love us. Forget the radicals or the dictators. In Morocco, Muslim people were reminding us that their country was the first to recognize the United States as a nation, back in 1787, when we were barely a country yet.”

Zell takes pictures by iPhone of these regular folks and their villages and environs on his travels. You can see them by the hundreds on his site: instagram.com/martin_zman): “The adventures of a curious shutterbug who lives on the Eastern Shore . . .”

Zell even teaches a Chesapeake Forum, Academy for Lifelong Learning class in “iPhone Photo Magic.” Check it out at chesapeakeforum.org

CHESAPEAKE FILM FESTIVAL
Sept. 12 mini festival, Garfield Center, Chestertown
Sept. 27-29, Ebenezer Theater, Easton
Sept. 29, “The Art of Storytelling,” free admission, Talbot County Free Library, Easton
Tickets and times at chesapeakefilmfestival.com; garfieldcenter.org for mini fest
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor 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.

Mid-Shore Arts: A Unique Singer-Songwriter Showcase in Rock Hall

by

You could say it’s a “rock hall,” except that The Mainstay in Rock Hall, the historic burg by the Bay, presents far more than one genre of live music. On Sunday afternoon, Mainstay hosts a Singer-Songwriter Showcase outdoors on the venue’s Backyard stage – weather permitting. Matt Mielnick, director of The Mainstay, says the showcase is the “brainchild” of its Delmarva Singer-Songwriter Association (DSSA), which formed in 2022 and meets monthly to encourage local and regional musicians to write and perform their own songs.

“Our group got together as an offshoot of The Mainstay’s very successful open mic night on the second Wednesday of each month, now going into its third year,” says Mark Einstein, a well-known Kent County musician whose day job is captaining charter boats. He plays in another open mic night at the Garfield Center for the Arts in Chestertown on the fourth Wednesday of the month.

“Mark deserves the lion’s share of the credit for organizing our singer-songwriter association and these showcases that have grown out of it,” Mielnick says.

“Since we’ve encountered so many musicians who enjoy writing their original songs, we thought it would be a good idea to provide a way for them to share their ideas and music with other like-minded folks,” says Einstein. “We try to meet once a month at The Mainstay with a goal of providing two showcases a year.  Our first one was a free live event at The Mainstay, which was very successful. Our second showcase was video-recorded and edited for YouTube.

“The third free showcase on Sunday [4 p.m., Aug. 18], like the others, uses a Nashville-style writers-in-the-round format. The idea,” Einstein says, “is to place three or four people on the stage at a time, sometimes more, with each performing an original song of theirs – usually with guitar accompaniment. Sometimes violin. Everybody has a turn, and the concert moves along at a quick pace,” he added.
The musicians are mostly local, with a few regional exceptions, including Tom Chirip, a seasoned songwriter and recording artist who lives in southern New Jersey. (He can’t make it to Rock Hall this Sunday.) The showcase usually features 12 to 14 musicians, including a few award-winners and up-and-coming local artists.
Here’s the lineup for Sunday:

* Host Einstein has many original songs to his credit, which he posts weekly on YouTube and Facebook.

* Stephanie Aston Jones plays and sings folk ballads she has written.

* Don Clark, member of the Mid-Shore Songwriters Circle in Easton, writes and sings with acoustic guitar accompaniment.

* Einstein met Jerry Diangelo at an open mic night in Middletown, Delaware, where he discovered him to be “a great player and songwriter.”

* With an extensive background in guitar and vocals, Dave Fife has numerous original songs in his repertoire, many of which he has recorded.

* A singer-songwriter from Worton, Earl French recently won an award for his song, “The Wind.”

* Richard Geller, a regular leading volunteer at The Mainstay, is an accomplished songwriter as well.

* Del Hayes, known as one of Chestertown’s finest pickers, has performed his original songs at The Mainstay’s open mic nights.

* Frank Hogans, also from Chestertown, is known locally as a polished songwriter and guitarist.

* A vocalist and guitar player, David Simmons has written and performed many uplifting spiritual compositions.

* Bob and Laura Taylor perform as a duo and have been regular participants in Mainstay events and share their knowledge and talent with the Delmarva Singer-Songwriters Association.

As you’ll gather from the accompanying video, Mark Einstein plays frequently – in this case with an ensemble of fellow DSSA musicians. This performance is from the second Mainstay Singer-Songwriter Showcase.

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.
Singer-Songwriter Showcase
4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 18, Backyard stage of The Mainstay, 5753 N. Main St., Rock Hall. Open mic nights are at 7 p.m. on the second Wednesday of the month (Aug. 14, this month) and at 7:30 p.m. on the fourth Wednesday of the month (Aug. 28, this month) at the Garfield Center for the Arts, 210 High St. Chestertown. mainstayrockhall.org; garfieldcenter.org

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

Spy Art Review: American Modernist Blanche Lazzell by Steve Parks

by

Blanche Lazzell never achieved great fame – or fortune for that matter. But she was widely admired by fellow artists, several of whom she studied with or were tutored in her signature technique, which is captured in several of her woodblock prints in the Academy Art Museum exhibit of her wide-ranging works in “Becoming an American Modernist.”

An untitled 1950 oil on canvas by Blanche Lazzell

Of course, however accomplished women artists born in the 19th century and who continued to create and exhibit their works into the mid-20th, they were rarely recognized with the popular and critical attention that male artists enjoyed.

Lazzell, the ninth of 10 children born in 1878 near the West Virginia farming community of Maidsville – went on to graduate West Virginia University with a degree in fine arts. Determined to make a career of it, Lazzell enrolled in the Art Students League of New York where she studied with William Merritt Chase and Georgia O’Keeffe, who unlike most contemporary artists of her gender would gain international acclaim.

In an early turning point in her career, Lazzell sailed to Europe where she found her niche at the Academie Moderne in Paris, studying with post-impressionist painter Charles Guerin, and on her second stay in France studying Cubism alongside Fernand Leger. Between trips abroad, she spent the first of 40 summers in Provincetown on Cape Cod, thriving in the company of the blooming art colony there and was influenced by German abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann.

All these threads of her remarkable career are evident in the the Academy Art’s subtitles that organize this comprehensive exhibition beginning in the Lederer Gallery with “Petunias, Provincetown and Process,” which bears witness to the introductory wall-label statement from the artist herself: “Often I can’t get a thing out of my system with just one print.” So, moving on from the lovely 1932 white-line block print “The White Petunia,” we encounter the solo “White Petunia’ of her 1943 monotype, “Petunias” of various colors in the 1934 monotype, followed by the 1940 “One Petunia” on paper, and, in the final statement on the subject, a ruddy red untitled petunia captured in her 1943 watercolor. Finally, images switch from flowers to Provincetown where she maintained a home studio adorned by potted flowers she lovingly tended. The new repeating subject here is “The Provincetown Church Tower,” starting with a 1921 graphite on paper and continuing with five more images of the same tower through 1922.

Blanche Lazzell’s Hollyhock, a 1917 oil on canvas

 

The first image under the heading of “Coming Home to Abstraction” with the large 1952 block print masterpiece “Planes II,” which caught our eye from across the gallery as we first entered. This woodcut print of colliding geometric shapes and complementary colors, all narrowly separated by distinct white lines – one of the finest of her career – was executed late in her life. She died in 1956. A series of purely abstract paintings-on-board squigglies from the 1940s follows, punctuated by a pair of geomatics from the early ’50s, anticipating “Planes II,” as if they were oil-on-canvas studies.
“Abstractions of the 1920s,” Lazzell’s breakthrough decade, brings this gallery full circle with “Painting VIII” and subsequent works of varied Roman numerals. Some bring to my mind a few famous abstract suggestions of musical instruments, though unlike Picasso, Lazzell never hinted at what these objects might be. The only exception in this section is the final “Abstract Windmill” study for a tempera painting not part of this exhibit. You won’t have to guess that the image represents a windmill.

Moving across the hall to the Healy Gallery, we encounter diverse examples of “Understanding Abstractions” as Lazzell explores various means of expression during early years, beginning with “Roofs,” a 1918 woodblock print that looks more like a painting with sharply angled rooftops reaching toward a towering treetop. An untitled 1915 oil on canvas of a Provincetown manse upstaged by sprawling trees and a foreground boat is more impressionistic than abstract. Falling somewhere in between is another oil, a lush “Hollyhock” that brings Van Gogh’s 1899 “Irises” and others among his floral still lifes to my mind.

Skipping over for now the next section of architectural scenes, Lazzell’s “Still Lifes” take many forms, ranging from her highly abstract 1942 oil-on-canvas “Shell,” said to be that of a conch alongside cockeyed flowers, to her standard 1927 “Still Life” painting of fruit in a bowl with a side of flowers in a vase. Others expand the subject matter far afield to “Beach Combings,” her 1931 linoleum block print to the final image in the show, a 1939 “Still Life” oil influenced by her teacher-student relationship with Hoffman. It focuses on what appears to be a skeletal portion of a large animal, likely a cow.

“The Built Environment” phase of her career offers more or less representational scenes, mostly from Provincetown and West Virginia. They range from “Provincetown Suburbs,”  a 1940 oil that seems to foresee lyrical imagery suggested by the 1962 Malvina Reynolds song “Little Boxes,” to her semi-abstract “Campus,” 1934 block print depicting a view of Lazzell’s West Virginia alma mater, and the colorful 1935 woodblock “Provincetown Waterfront,” which was not printed until 1956, three months before her death. It is possibly the last artwork Lazzell completed.

While she was appreciated by her fellow artists as a woodcut pioneer and in developing abstract art in the United States, Lazzell’s work faded into obscurity after her passing. But her art has been rediscovered in recent years. In 2012, her 1931 white-line block print “Sail Boat” sold for $106,200 at auction.
‘Blanche Lazzell: Becoming an American Modernist’
Through Oct. 20, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton.
Opening reception, 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 1

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