One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Or in this case another woman’s treasure. If you live in Easton and you happen to check out one of the three new shows at the Academy Art Museum you just might recognize some of your trash featured in the Heather Harvey exhibit “The Thin Place.”

Harvey, a Washington College associate art professor, prowls the streets, alleyways and parking lots of Easton on what she calls “urban beachcombing” expeditions. She searches for debris that comprise her installations, three of which hang at the museum through Sept. 30.

Belonging by Heather Harvey

Harvey, a Syracuse native whose undergraduate degree from the University at Buffalo—“I’m an upstate New York girl,” she says—is in anthropology and archaeology. She regards herself as a science-inspired artist. Harvey earned her MFA in art from Virginia Commonwealth University and now chairs art and art history at the Chestertown college. She lives in Easton with her husband, who teaches history at Salisbury University—splitting the geographical distance from their academic venues.

At the Academy museum, her installations are accompanied by about a dozen paintings, watercolor and acrylic, that reflect a different side of Harvey’s exploration of “areas where we don’t have everything figured out, re-inculcating childlike enchantment and wonder.” These are “thin places,” a Celtic expression for permeable divides between living and dead, sacred and profane, commonplace and extraordinary—even extraterrestrial. The science part of that enchantment, she says, are “invisible ordering systems” that define our life on this planet—astronomy, gravity and weather, including wind (“we only see its effects”) as well as magnetic fields. Other paintings are metaphors for certain effects on our lives, such as emotions, or even more defining biological or sociological realities, including gender, race and class.

Possibility by Heather Harvey

Among the most personal of her paintings is “Hope Sound,” the name of the place in Florida where her friend, poet Mary Oliver, passed away. Painted on the day Oliver died, it expresses, Harvey says, her grieving, her thanks for having known her friend and “a sense of ascension.” By contrast, another painting derives from scientific curiosity, inspired by her trip with her husband two years ago to South Carolina to experience a total solar eclipse.

“There’s a little bit of Baroque in my pieces,” Harvey says, referring to a suggestion of exaggerated motion and detail to produce drama and a sense of exuberance. But she also goes for the sublime. “That’s beauty mixed with awe that borders on terror. An eclipse is like that,” she says. “An unsettling tension between the two.”

As for the trash you may or may not recognize, Harvey on her nocturnal sojourns seeks surprise in whatever she finds. “I’m not looking for anything in particular,” she says. “I don’t get the idea first and then go out and look for something to complete it. The objects themselves inform my work.”

Not all the objects are recognizable. Twisted pieces of metal. Shards of plastic or rubber. Others we can guess at, such as a bit of green-and-red ribbon. A discarded piece of Christmas wrapping? Maybe a tree decoration. Still others are unmistakable. A child’s sandal missing its mate.

Whatever, Harvey endeavors to create aesthetic treasure out of it.

For Heather Harvey, who has exhibited from New York City to Los Angeles, this is her first show in the hometown where she gathers most of her material. The other two shows coinciding with Harvey’s at the Academy Art Museum are Amze Emmons’ “Pattern Drift” and James Turrell’s “Mapping Spaces.”

Steve Parks is a retired journalist, arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

The Rolling Stones made it back to Maryland during the long Fourth of July holiday, following the postponement of their Memorial Day weekend concert due to Mick Jagger’s heart-valve surgery. Any doubt that the Stones can still play, that Jagger can still command the stage and prance about in full-throated theatrical vigor, was obliterated on a steamy night that would drain men half his age and that of his partners comprising—yes, indeed—the world’s greatest rock-and-roll band ever.

Take that, Beatles fans. More on that later.

A confession in AARP terms: Historical perspective informs my opinion that the Stones are now performing better than ever. Which is saying a ton. In my estimated 27 times of seeing and hearing them live, which may account for my partial hearing loss, I’ve never known the Stones to mail it in, to go through the motions, though at times in the ’70s, when Keith Richards chased his heroin hangover with Jack Daniels, the band occasionally lost focus. Even then, their ragged play reflected a spontaneous and one-of-a-kind genius.

But on this Fourth of July eve, the Stones were as deliberate in their seemingly raucous mayhem as I’ve ever experienced. From the “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” opener to the “Satisfaction” finale, the band—even with several new contributors to their supporting cast and sharply limited rehearsals constricted by Jagger’s recovery—never missed a beat. We can thank Charlie Watts for that. The band’s senior—an original Stone along with Jagger and Richards who turn 76 this year—has anchored their controlled chaos for 57 years, coming in at the last instant with the percussive heartbeat they all lean on, if only by vibration when they can’t hear it onstage.

I first heard the Stones in 1964, as I recall, on WCAO-AM, the top 40 station in Baltimore, when an overnight DJ wandered off the playlist to spin a 45 flipside that had Jagger moaning in bluesy-beggar mode “I need you, baby, Mona.” (“Without your love I’d surely die.”) Perhaps this captured the love-life anguish of a dateless 16-year-old. Whatever. The Stones’ Brit/blues fortified me against near-universal peer pressure to tilt my allegiance toward The Beatles. Six years later, when the Fab Four were no more, I taunted their fans by calling The Beatles “the world’s most overrated band.” It was tongue-in-cheek, sort of. They were undeniably great, but also hyped beyond measure. My measure was how well a band balanced studio albums and original songs with live performance. The Beatles never mastered the latter. They surrendered to screaming girls who drowned them out. The Stones, instead, virtually invented the modern rock concert by installing their own sound, and later video equipment plus beyond-Broadway stage sets. Meanwhile, The Beatles and other touring bands at the time relied on sound systems available to them at, for instance, Shea Stadium in New York, or the Civic Center in Baltimore.

The Stones’ mastery of this vital piece of their legacy is so evident as to be taken for granted. Most in attendance at FedEx Stadium, Hyattsville home of the Redskins, expect such aural and visual enhancement at any big-venue event. But geezers like me remember when bands sounded like what you might hear on a P.A. system at a bus or train terminal. Squawk! Squawk!

My first Stones concert was 1965 in Baltimore and the second that same night (or maybe it was vice versa) at the even-then decrepit Washington Coliseum. I discovered by way of Bill Wyman’s coffee-table scrapbook, which he autographed early this millennium, that I paid $7.50 for each concert. A few years ago, at what I expected would be my final Stones attendance, ticket prices moved two decimals to the right. That I could procure nosebleed tix for $99 this time around persuaded me to see them again, I presume, once more, for the last time. I’ve been fooled before, but given Jagger’s surgery and the Stones’ four-to-five-year gap between tours, that makes most of them 80-plus next time around. 

Wyman, now 83, may be responsible for the Stones’ astute attention to sound equipment. Senior to other band members, he was hired, in part, because he had his own speakers, better than any the others could afford. 

Back to “No Filter,” the Stones’ current tour: Every Stones epoch is represented on their playlist, including a brief instrumental interlude of “2120 Michigan Avenue” and a cover of “Mercy Mercy,” both preceding the 1965 blockbuster “Satisfaction,” ranked rock’s No. 2 all-time by Rolling Stone. The Stones played it like it was first time, virginal (or at least horny). Sometimes rock stars and others in stadium venues turn the microphone toward the audience to fill in the blanks, such as “I can’t get no” or “You can’t always get what you want,” and the gesture falls flat. Not here. The stadium reverberated with live feedback. The same on the disco-ish “Miss You”: “Too too too too, too-de doo. Too too-TOO too!” Even the apocalyptic “Gimme Shelter,” with now climate-change overtones, evoked a mournful wave of “ooooh ooooh woooh.”

On any and all of these numbers it’s impossible to miss the “rookie” among Stones regulars. In 1975, Ronnie Wood succeeded Mick Taylor, who replaced drug-addled Brian Jones before he was fired, then died face-up in a swimming pool in 1969. Wood is a “Picasso on guitar,” as Jagger described him. Next to the frontman, he’s the Stones live-concert centerpiece, displaying his electric and acoustic string athleticism, balanced by Richards’ inventive and high-caliber showmanship. Regrettably, Keith is a lesser figure in that the Stones are not producing new songs. It once bothered me that fans sat on their hands when the Stones played new material on their tours in the ‘90s and early ‘00s. It doesn’t matter anymore. There’s a treasure of songs left off the current 20-song setlist. I didn’t hear my personal favorite, “Dead Flowers,” or the one I personally identify with as a Dutchman’s Lane farmboy—I retired to Easton Club East, next door to the former dairy farm I grew up on—“Sweet Virginia” (“got to scrape the [excrement] right off your shoo-ooze”). But there were songs from every period, sung with no punches pulled, including “Start Me Up,” which was played at our first-dance wedding reception, best known for the lyric “you make a grown man cry,” ending with the woman in question’s desirability to a dead man. 

The Stones are profane and poetic. R-rated Bob Dylan, if you will. Who can argue with their philosophy: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time you just might find you get what you need?”

If you’ve never seen the Stones, this could actually be your last chance. They’re playing July 23 in Philly, barely a two-hour drive from Easton (less from Chestertown) since the Middletown bypass opened. Failing that, there are two shows Aug. 1 and 5 up the Jersey turnpike at MetLife Stadium. If you care about rock ’n’ roll at all, you must see these masters of the art.

I have no regrets now, having seen them, I suspect for the last time. But what of my post-Stones life? These guys are not too old to play. But I may be too old to see them. Getting to FedEx was way more hassle than I’d bother for a Redskins game or anyone else besides the Stones. But if they never tour again, what am I left with in terms of guilty pleasures? I don’t smoke and gave up recreational drugs way back in the last millennium. I don’t drink to excess and have been faithful in decades of marriage. The Stones are my last surviving vice. Guess I’ll have to take up gambling.

Steve Parks, retired journalist and arts writer/editor, is a recovering Stones addict now living in Easton.

The second week of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival fortnight of concerts opened with “Love Story”—not to be confused with the cloyingly saccharine 1970 novel and movie of the same title best remembered, or forgotten, by the line: “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” (Are you kidding? I’ve been in love with the same woman for decades and must have apologized a thousand times. But that’s another story.)

Pianist Diane Walsh

This “Love Story” celebrates the marriage and partnership of Clara and Robert Schumann, 19th-century musical geniuses whose lives are the stuff of tragic opera. Clara Wieck’s father so opposed her marriage to Robert Schumann that his daughter’s husband-to-be dragged him into court. Friedrich Wieck held such pride in Clara’s composing skills as well as her brilliance as a pianist that he feared her being subjugated by Robert, who would prove to be a loving but not entirely supportive spouse. The couple and their eight children—four of whom died young—lived on the earnings of Clara as a concert pianist. She had little time to write her own music and in any case gender bias restricted women composers from publishing or having their works performed in public. Meanwhile, her husband, who composed what is considered the first great chamber work for piano and string quartet—anchoring Wednesday’s recital at Easton’s Academy Art Museum—suffered the final in a series of mental breakdowns, condemning him to an asylum and early death.  It was in these last tortured years of his life that Clara, who survived Robert by four decades, wrote the sole chamber piece of her career, opening Wednesday’s concert.

Perhaps it is their personal story that influences my perception of these two masterpieces. But I cannot help but to classify, hopefully without gender bias, one as tenderly feminine and the other as virulently masculine.

Clara’s Piano Trio in G minor, Opus 17, as performed on the 200th anniversary year of her birth by pianist Diane Walsh, violinist Carmit Zori and cellist Marty Rosen, evokes a wistful remembrance of a treasured moment. Zori’s violin fulfills its melodic role throughout. In the lighter second movement scherzo, it leads us in a restless search perhaps for a place to lay one’s head, while in the third movement the weeping violin is echoed in tragic undertones by Rosen’s cello. The more hopeful finale is piano-driven as Walsh leads with dramatic flourishes to the string evocations of romantic sentiment.

J. Lawrie Bloom

By comparison, Robert’s quintet, taking advantage of the extra violin, here played with her usual flair by Catherine Cho, makes a defiantly robust statement as if announcing who’s boss. A soulful viola-and-cello duet, played by Maiya Papach and Rosen, leads to a big first movement finish with twin teardrop notes on violin. A wandering second movement—lost with no direction home—balances dual violin tenor against viola/cello baritone. A scherzo with agitative staccato riffs gives equal voice to all instruments racing pell-mell toward a pause before a final tumult that dives into a soft landing as if executed by an ace pilot—in this case a quintet of expert artists.

Week 2 of the chamber fest followed on the heels of Saturday’s gala at Easton’s Temple B’nai Israel, featuring clarinetist J. Lawrie Bloom performing in his finale as co-artistic director of the festival with cellist Rosen, Bloom’s co-founder/director, and violinist Cho, his successor in 2020. Bloom earlier distinguished himself, as ever, in the “Romantic Interlude” concert at the Academy Art Museum re-introducing Louise Farrenc’s trio for clarinet, cello and piano—a piece written by the only 19th-century female professor of the Paris Conservatory re-published at the dawn of this millennium. Bloom’s bright clarinet soared in contrast to Rosen’s emotional cello underpinning as pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute bridged the two with tonal stepping stones across their melodic river. That concert concluded with a Brahms piano quartet expressing the anguish of his unrequited love for Clara, now a widow, unwilling to share her life with his. Such are the inspirations for great art.

On Thursday, the festival makes its debut in Cambridge, followed by two more concerts Friday in Easton and Saturday in Oxford, wrapping up its 34th season.

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

“From Rags to Riches” (concert, reception), Schubert, Brahms, Mozart, Lilburn, Psathas, Bolcom, Gershwin; 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 13, Christ Church, Cambridge
“Romancing and Dancing,” Clara Schumann, Ravel, Bartok, Dvorak; 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 14, Trinity Cathedral, Easton
“The Art of the String Quartet” (concert, reception), Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann; 4 p.m. Saturday, June 15, Oxford Community Center
Tickets/info: 410-819-0380, chesapeakemusic.org