Almost since the Spy started in 2009, we have reached out to some of the Mid-Shore’s most respected leaders as they transition off or retire from critically important positions in our region. From college presidents to successful nonprofit directors, the Spy Exit interviews has captured a moment of time in our collective history that time and again offers real lessons in leadership and imagination.

We continue this series with outgoing Academy Art Museum board chair Donna Alpi during a particularly important time in its history. Credited with guiding the AAM through the challenges of staff leadership changes, its innovative partnership with the Air Bridges project, and the extraordinary perseverance of the board and curatorial staff to bring the Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection exhibition, the largest and most resource-intensive undertaken in AAM history, Donna shares her experiences and lessons learned as she prepares to handle over board leadership to Talbot County’s Christine Martin this month.

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

 

Twice a year the Spy makes sure to sit down with Liza Ledford, the executive director of the beloved Oxford Community Center, to find out what’s going on their seemingly endless special events and programs every season. Liza stopped by the Spy studio the other day to talk to us about what’s coming up this fall. And no surprize here, the OCC will be packed with lectures, workshops, concerts, a road rally as well open mic nights and their popular “Cars and Coffee” Saturday morning gatherings.

It all adds motivation for all to make that easy trip to Oxford for all entire Mid-Shore.

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

As remarkable and important as the Water’s Edge Museum collection of Ruth Starr Rose paintings and prints may be, its provenance is even more so. Dating back to a time when women had just recently won their right to vote and when Jim Crow laws sought to deny all human rights to African-Americans, Rose – a white woman – created, as she put it, “a record of the life of Negroes of the Eastern Shore. It had never been done,” she wrote, “and is still unique in the annals of art.”

While art depicting people of color is no longer “unique” to this collection at the museum located on the Tred Avon’s edge in Oxford, it most likely was the case in 1933 when she wrote about her work. Moreover, it’s hard to imagine that anyone else could have achieved such a legacy. In the early decades of the 20th Century it was rare for black artists or women artists of any color to gain much notice. And her access to an isolated community with every reason to mistrust white strangers is itself remarkable. There were black artists whose success at the time was hard-earned – from Jacob Lawrence in fine art to Paul Robeson in performing arts – they won their notoriety in metropolitan capitals of the United States, principally New York City.

By comparison, Rose, the daughter of staunch Wisconsin abolitionists, won the trust of all-black communities of Talbot County at a time when the Eastern Shore – before any Bay Bridge was even dreamed of – was a geographic backwater. Yet she made friends with residents of The Hill in Easton, the historic neighborhood of free African-Americans dating back before the Civil War, as well as Unionville and Copperville settled by veterans of the war that won their emancipation.

Rose attended their AME churches regularly and developed her appreciation of spirituals performed by people she regarded as friends and neighbors. Among the oil portraits she painted were those of Isaac Copper, namesake of the founding family of the village bearing his surname, and Bernard Moaney, whose descendant, George Moaney, narrates the five-minute video “The Afterglow of Ruth Starr Rose” by Talbot Spy that can be seen on the Water’s Edge website, You Tube or talbotspy.org. He’s also a founding member and genealogical adviser to the museum.

Even in major museums of the world, George Moaney notes, “You don’t see a black person in their paintings except in the background as servants” or, more recently, in portraits of celebrities and political figures, notably Muhammad Ali and President Barack Obama. Before 2015, when the Rose collection surfaced, “Our family didn’t even know these images existed.” The unveiling of the works by Rose (1887-1965) marked, he said, “the first time I had seen on the Eastern Shore black and white people coming together for a cultural event.”

Of her 1933 color serigraph “Jonah and the whale,” featured four years later at the Paris International Exposition, Rose wrote: “Long ago the slaves sang, ‘If the Lord delivered Jonah from the belly of the whale, He will deliver me.’ And these words came too: The Negro race has been delivered from dangers and torments worse than Jonah knew. They have been given a vision of the freedom that can finally be complete.”

But there is much more to see and experience at the Water’s Edge Museum. In its special exhibits gallery, “Black Watermen in the Chesapeake” opens later this month. In the hallway just outside, pause to view “Victoria Park as a Civil Right.” In 1848, about a decade into her 63 years and seven months reign – surpassed only by the 70-year monarchy of Elizabeth II – Queen Victoria granted an “urban botanical garden” for the people of Antigua and Barbuda, part of the British Empire until 1981. The garden, she wrote, serves as open space “for the healthful enjoyment of air and space” for the people of the Caribbean island colony – now a nation.

Be sure, then, to step outside to the Water’s Edge botanical garden. Replete with flowers, plus basil, bell pepper, cucumber and tomato plants, the fruits of which are composted. Besides the staff, the garden is tended, in part, by visiting elementary to middle school children who “learn about environmental justice that is denied to those who live in food desert neighborhoods,” said Sara Park, co-director of Water’s Edge along with Ja’lyn Hicks.

Water’s Edge was awarded a certificate of recognition from the Talbot County Council for the “pictorial history and artifacts on display [portraying] a resilient people who lived their lives, and loved and fought for their country and continued to forge ahead, despite the obstacles and hardships faced.” Council member Keasha Haythe, who had attended the museum’s anniversary celebration earlier in February, commented on the recognition: “Thank you for telling these stories. Having a grandfather who was a waterman, it’s important to tell stories of the heritage, history, and diversity that we have in Talbot County.”

Coincidentally or not, this occurred at the same council session in which a motion to rescind the county’s declaration supporting the goals of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) was defeated. However, following Trump administration threats to deny federal funding for expansion of the Easton Airport, the council voted in June to delete all mention of DEI goals in its official statements.

Nevertheless, Kay Brown, the museum’s assistant director, continues her work as manager of the Middle Passage Port Marker Project. Oxford is the only UNESCO-documented Middle Passage port on the Eastern Shore with no sign declaring that this is where slave ships docked to deliver its human-bondage cargo for sale. It’s a distinction shared in part just across the Tred Avon River where the Bellevue Passage Museum is planning and raising funds to build a space to tell the story of one of the country’s oldest African-American waterfront communities, which became self-sufficient following the Civil War abolition of slavery. The goal is to add on to one of the few remaining historic buildings available, located next to the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry dock. For now, the museum is a virtual one where you can view photos, artifacts and documentation of Bellevue’s own water’s edge past. In partnership with the museum in Oxford, the two would comprise a ferry-linked match in presenting an immersive educational and heritage tourism experience.

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For more on slavery to self-sufficiency and the Eastern Shore’s witness to both, the Harriet Tubman Freedom Center in Cambridge is exhibiting “Harriet: A Taste of Freedom” through Sept. 30. Curated by Larry Poncho Brown, a Baltimore-based artist, through interpretive works by 40 artists whose visions know no bounds as they are both local and international. The art ranges from portraiture to abstract imagery. In that sense, it’s almost as varied as Tubman’s remarkable life’s work – starting as a runaway slave herself who returned time and again to free family and other fellow slaves in Dorchester County to freedom at least as far north as Philadelphia. And she literally fought for freedom in the Civil War, having recently been promoted posthumously to the rank of general.

While you’re at it, and especially if you haven’t already visited, drive a few miles out of town to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park. The visitors center there serves both as a stand-alone attraction with exhibits and films changing from time to time with the goal of orientation as a gateway to the multi-state Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Scenic Byway. Tubman is quoted as saying, “I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

FROM RUTH STARR ROSE TO HARRIET TUBMAN

Water’s Edge Museum, 101 Mill St., Oxford. watersedgemuseum.org; Bellevue Passage Museum, online only bellevuepassage.org
Also, “Harriet: A Taste of Freedom,” Harriet Tubman Freedom Center, 3030 Center Dr., Cambridge, through Sept. 30 (possibly extended through December); harriettubmanfreedomcenter.com; Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitors Center, 4068 Golden Hill Rd., Church Creek, nps.gov/htu

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

 

 

This year, the Spy is expanding its commitment to the Chesapeake Film Festival by co-producing a monthly podcast with CFF Executive Director Cid Walker Collins and her dedicated team of volunteers. The series will feature in-depth conversations about the films being presented throughout the year, offering listeners a behind-the-scenes look at the creative forces behind them.

In our third episode, Irene Magafan, the CFF’s new board president, sits down with casting director Kimberly Skyrme. With notable successes such as House of Cards and True Lies, Kimberley talks describes her accidental start in casting, passion for storytelling, championing diverse talent, mentoring newcomers, and empowering women and locals in film.

This podcast is approximately 30 minutes in length.  For more information and to purchase tickets for the Chesapeake Film Festival, please visit this link.

“To the Edge of Your World” is the intriguing title of a new exhibition by Anita Groener at the Academy Art Museum where she was its 2024 artist-in-residence. But in my initial walkthrough at the opening reception on Saturday, Aug. 16, I found the show – consisting of delicate constructs (I hesitate to call them sculptures) and drawings punctuated by a checkerboard gouache on paper – visually underwhelming. But my first impression was devoid of context aside from the brief wall-label introduction, which mentioned another premiere that day – this of an accompanying animated video, “Shelter,” inspired by highly personal narratives of residents at the Talbot Interfaith Shelter homes on Goldsborough Street in Easton. 

Context makes all the difference in this exhibit of works by the Dutch-born and now Ireland-based artist. Here, Groener deploys appropriately common materials – twigs, cardboard and paper – to reflect the edgy themes suggested in the title: the everyday impact on those directly or indirectly affected by conflict, migration and remembrance of what is left behind as well as trepidation about what lies ahead. At the reception, “Shelter,” the stop-motion animation by Groener in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Matt Kresling in partnership with TIS was shown on a wide screen to a full-capacity audience in the museum’s auditorium. During the run of the exhibition through Oct. 26 visitors can view up close on a video screen in the lobby.

One of the themes that instantly came to my mind as I entered the museum’s Lederer Gallery was “Shelter,” a piece by the same name that looked like anything but. Rather, it resembles a series of cages for imprisoned migrants like those in some border-state detention facilities and on Florida’s notorious Alligator Alley. A series of small drawings bookended by a pair of larger gouache images incorporating bits of twine enigmatically titled “At the Still Point of the Turning World” and “I am Here Because You Are There” leands you toward the gallery back wall lined with tiny stick-constructed objects resembling baby cribs or tree houses, some sprouting leafy saplings and others inhabited by human stick figures. Stick objects on a long table seem to be waiting for assembly into something more than the sum of their parts. We can only guess what.  

Nearby, you are invited to leave written comments about what you have seen. But before you do, check at least a few segments of the animated “Shelter” video for the context I was lacking at first. You’re not expected to stand through the full half hour in front of the screening of “Shelter,” which runs in loops during museum hours. The imagery constructs and then deconstructs rectangular stands of sticks amid a growing gathering of humans while at other times forming a patch of trees blowing in the wind. Each such scene is accompanied by vocal recordings of TIS residents telling how they became homeless – each very relatable in the sense that – as the saying goes – “there but for the grace of God [or whomever] go I.” Death of a parent or spouse, loss of employment after 22 years, addiction to pain killers after an accident or by self-medication, whether by alcohol or drugs. Each story is separated by photographic images from the artist’s past, usually including a baby or young child and a parent or other relative.

After viewing a few of these vignettes, return to Anita Groener’s exhibit to see what you may have missed at first glance. I missed a lot. But that’s just me.  Maybe you’ll be more intuitive. 

***
While you’re at the museum, walk across the hall to the Healy Gallery for “Fields, Voids, and Translations,” a show of works on paper and textiles by Piper Shepard. A Baltimore-based artist, Shepard specializes in large-scale works – she calls it “architectural scale” – such as weavings that mimic botanical or even celestial imagery. My favorite was “Soft Light Shifting,” a handcut lunar graphic that casts a full-moon shadow on the wall a foot or so behind it, bringing to mind a solar eclipse if you’re at the right place and time for such an event. Three squarish black-and-white prints on paper offer “Textile Translations” from fabric to art on the far wall from the moon. 

In the hallway Atrium between the AAM’s main galleries, stop long enough to take in and contemplate Anne Lindbergh’s commissioned site-specific piece called “seen and unseen.” The most easily “seen” portion are three drawings in parallel lines of complementary colors. These  reflect shades that are largely “unseen” until you stand against the north wall of the natural-light Atrium and look up through an opening toward the second-story ceiling. A luminous sculpture of chromatic threads creates a rainbow effect in earth-and-sky hues that can be seen both above and below. But you’ll  need to climb the stairs to the upper hallway gallery and stroll back to the far wall to discern whether the colors take on a different shade from on high. See for yourself.

ART, ANIMATION, ATRIUM & FIBER IMAGERY

Anita Groener’s “To the Edge of Your World” and “Shelter” video, through Oct. 26; Piper Shepard’s “Fields, Folds, and Translations, through Oct. 12; Anne Lindbergh’s “seen and unseen” installation, through the fall of 2026, all at Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton, Tuesdays-Sundays, free admission, academyartmusuem.org 

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

 

When artist and filmmaker John Severson launched an early version of Surfer magazine in southern California in 1960, the U.S. surfing population—confined at the time almost entirely to Hawaii and southern California—was so small that he wasn’t sure there were enough surfers and advertisers to support the publication. Severson, who once cited Gauguin, Picasso and Abstract Expressionism as his principal influences, originally designed the 36-page magazine as a collection of prints of his own surf photography, pen-and-ink drawings, cartoons and illustrations, and short fiction to promote live screenings of his surf movies. 

Despite his qualms, Severson (1933-2017) forged ahead with Surfer, eventually benefitting from the nascent boom in popularity of surfing among California teenagers that would explode across America to the East Coast by the mid-‘60s and then spread to the rest of the world. He later expanded Surfer to 12 issues annually and its circulation would top more than 100,000 by the end of the decade. 

Severson’s academic training—he held a master’s degree in art education–and natural gifts as an artist, editor and writer combined to create what would become the definitive voice of the surfing world and its culture. When he started Surfer 65 years ago, the surfing market was virtually nil; today the global surfing industry is estimated to be worth more than $12 billion.

The chronicles of surfing abound with soulful innovators like Severson, whose story underscores the deep historical connections that bond surfing and artists. Their creative spirit persists today through the contemporary surfer/artists who continue to shape the narrative—turning surf culture into a vital platform for personal expression.

“Summer Salt: Fresh perspectives in print, paint, photography, sculpture, and scrimshaw,” the current exhibition at the Zach Gallery in Easton, explores these intersections in a modern context, showcasing the work of five East Coast surfer/artists: Peter Spacek, Scott Bluedorn, Scott Szegeski, Ben McBrien and Nick LaVecchia.

“All five of the artists included in this exhibition are surfers,” said Aynsley Schopfer, manager of the Zach Gallery. “I perceive their art as a response—a dialogue with humanity–from their experience in the water. Their choice of materials and subject matter reflects their relationship and reverence for not only the ocean, but the natural world at large, which feels particularly pertinent to a community on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay. In my observation, few people understand and respect nature more than surfers.”

Spacek, a Santa Barbara transplant who lives and works in Long Island’s East End, specializes in “modern scrimshaw,” a technique inspired by the ancient maritime craft of etching images onto whale bone and walrus tusks. Using discarded polyurethane-foam-and-fiberglass surfboards and fragments as his canvas, he thoughtfully repurposes materials that would otherwise be scrapped. Their luminosity and weathered texture, acquired through years of exposure to the elements, lend them a unique character. The show includes one of his earliest examples of this technique, Indo Point, etched on a surfboard he shaped in 1973.

As a surfer Spacek features prominently in William Finnegan’s dazzling memoir Barbarian Days: a Surfing Life, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for biography/autobiography. Finnegan grew up surfing in California and Hawaii and later moved to New York City as his journalism career flourished. As a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine, he and his wife, Caroline, a lawyer, had settled into a comfortable middle-age professional life in Manhattan when he happened to meet  Spacek in Montauk, a surf town at the far eastern end of Long Island. Spacek’s nervous enthusiasm for surfing was boundless. His “stoke” quickly infected Finnegan and the two surfers embarked on a series of trips over nine years to Madeira, a Portuguese archipelago situated in the north Atlantic, 300 miles from the Moroccan coast. Madeira’s waves undulate unimpeded out of deep water, like those in Hawaii, striking the island with staggering size and power. Finnegan’s chapter on Spacek is a harrowing account of gargantuan waves, horrifying wipeouts and hold-downs, near drownings, serious injuries and blood left on the rocks. For Spacek and Finnegan, it was euphoria.

Scott Bluedorn, another Long Island-based surfer/artist, works across an impressive array of media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, installation and found-object assemblage. Bluedorn, who earned a bachelor’s degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2009, produces surreal imagery inspired by maritime history, cultural anthropology, myth, supernatural themes and the natural world to distill a vision he deems “maritime cosmology.”  One of his larger pieces on view at the gallery, Eclipse Fish, is an acrylic painting on a found object: remnants of a plastic industrial buoy that washed ashore in a storm.

“The painting is based on my experience of the total solar eclipse witnessed on Lake Ontario and the disoriented salmon and pike I saw swimming around after the event,” Bluedorn says.

Scott Szegeski, a New Jersey-based artist and avid surfer, revisits an ancient technique in Japanese printmaking called gyotaku to impress full-size images of surfboards on paper. The ink-based practice was originally used by Japanese fishermen in the 19th century to document and archive their fish catches. The technique lets Szegeski preserve all of the unique dings, gashes, scratches and other wear-and-tear marks that a surfboard accumulates after a life in the ocean.

After years of printing his own surfboards, Szegeski began receiving requests for his gyotaku prints from local surfers who wanted to carve out a memory in time of their favorite board. A prime example of the gyotaku technique in the show is Big Fish, a print of a board shaped in California for East Coast legend Scott Duerr, a member of the New Jersey and the East Coast surfing halls of fame.

Big Fish also displays the work of “wood wizard” Ben McBrien, founder of Farmhaus, who built the walnut frame for the piece. McBrien says he established Farmhaus, his one-man furniture studio, as a young father with a need for a flexible schedule and “to fund his surfing addiction.” His work focuses on finding function, purpose and beauty in the discarded materials from Philadelphia’s outdated housing. Also in the show are several Farmhaus sculptures, meticulously carved wood pieces treated with shou sugi ban, a Japanese technique of charring wood. Sounder, a whale’s tail carved from two poplar-wood sections and attached with a brass hinge, is exceptional in its simplicity and beauty. McBrien recently moved Farmhaus from Philadelphia to Asbury Park to be closer to the surf.

Farmhaus also collaborated with renowned Maine photographer/surfer Nick LaVecchia on another piece at Zach, constructing an oxidized-ash frame for LaVecchia’s wistful Portal No. 44, a Chromaluxe aluminum print of a misty moon (or sun) hovering above a dreamy sea. LaVecchia’s work reflects his love and respect for the forces of nature that shape the rugged Maine coast, where he lives in a modern, sustainable homestead on the family farm. He brings an eye for humanity’s place in the world and the images he creates represent the purity and natural beauty of every subject. His work has been highly sought after by major international corporations, including Apple, Bose, BMW, Google, the North Face, Toyota and Yeti.

Perhaps more notably, LaVecchia is just as celebrated as a photographer in the surfing world. An article on LaVecchia and his work in a 2021 issue of The Surfer’s Journal, a ravishingly elegant bimonthly, is accompanied by a wide-ranging selection of photos that capture the picturesque rawness and pristine blue-green waves that make coastal Maine so potently alluring for surfers. Lavecchia’s photos made surfers from all over the world want to be a part of Maine surfing, according to the story.

​While art and surfing are serious business for these artists, they also know that both pursuits can also be fun and joyous.

“For a summer exhibition it was important to evoke a fresh, jovial mood, where you can almost breathe the salt air with an unpretentious elegance,” Schopfer said.

Richard W. Walker is a former staff writer at ARTnews magazine in New York and  a longtime surfer.

Summer Salt: fresh perspectives in print, paint, photography, sculpture, and scrimshaw is on view at the Zach Gallery through September 6 at 17 South Washington Street, Easton. Gallery hours are Wednesday-Saturday10-4 and by appointment.

 

 

 

On September 2, the Easton Choral Arts Society begins rehearsals for its 2025-26 season, and encourages new singers who share a love of choral music to join. The new season follows a successful 2024, when their performances of Dan Forrest’s “Creation” played to sold-out houses.  See a performance of “Creation” here. 

“This season, Easton Choral Arts Society celebrates the beauty of grounded traditions and the wonder of reaching toward something new,” Artistic Director Alexis Ward said in announcing the new season. “From ancient carols blooming in winter to the soaring dream of flight, our programs reflect the deep roots that anchor us and the uplift that music brings.”

“A Winter Rose” turns toward the quiet strength of nature, as roses, evergreens, holly, ivy, mistletoe, and floral imagery long associated with the holiday season

bloom through carols both familiar and unexpected, Ward said. Sacred and secular pieces intertwine, offering warmth, wonder, and reflection as we usher in the holiday season with beauty and imagination.

In the Spring, “Wings of Song” invites audiences on a theatrical journey through wonder of human flight. From poetic meditations and gospel spirituals to jazz-age glamour and modern choral masterworks, the program unfolds like a flight experience, complete with in-flight narrator, to explore what it means to rise, to dream, and to fly.

“Rooted & Rising” is more than a musical theme, it is a vision for who we are becoming, Ward explained.

“In a time of disconnection, Easton Choral Arts offers something essential: a place to breathe together, to sing together, to be together. We are building a musical community that nurtures people at every stage of life – students, parents, professionals, retirees – and we believe that making music together is not just enriching, it is healing.

“In a world that yearns for connection, beauty, and belonging, Easton Choral Arts is more than a choir. We are a home for the human spirit. And this season, we are proud to be rooted . . . and rising.”

Interested singers are invited to join an open rehearsal, scheduled for September 2 and September 9 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at St. Mark’s Methodist Church in Easton. All are welcome to attend, regardless of musical knowledge or experience.

Pre-registration is requested so that we may have enough music for all who will attend. Interested participants can find information and register here by visiting the “Join Us” tab.

It’s murder, mystery, and mayhem this August as Tred Avon Players brings CLUE: On Stage to life at the Oxford Community Center in a few weeks. This fast-paced farce by Sandy Rustin is based on the 1985 cult classic film and the infamous Hasbro board game that has kept us guessing for generations.

Directed by Jess Newell, CLUE: On Stage opens on a dark and stormy night at Boddy Manor, where six suspicious guests assemble for an unusual dinner party. When their host winds up dead, everyone becomes a suspect—and the hunt is on to discover who did it, with what, and where!

Jess and Natalie Page Laney, who play the Cook, stopped by the Spy studio to discuss what the audience can expect when they visit the OCC.

This video is approximately two minutes in length. Performances run August 14-24 at the Oxford Community Center, with evening shows Thursday through Saturday and Sunday matinees. Tickets and full show details are available at www.tredavonplayers.org.

 

An annual feature of the Plein Air Competition and Arts Festival has been a theatrical performance from Easton’s own Factory Arts Project, a nonprofit community workshop for the performing arts.

From Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams, productions by the project have been some of the most anticipated and appreciated highlights of the festival.

But this has been a tough year for the troupe. A December fire at its Brooklets Building headquarters displaced the community and damaged its extensive collection of costumes and sets.

Despite the setback, the workshop’s Creative Director Cecile Davis was nonetheless determined to maintain its annual contribution to Plein Air, so she proposed to the sponsoring Avalon Foundation the idea of a radio play as less complicated alternative.

Davis said she had a backlog of scripts available, but at a planning session with the Avalon Foundation Marketing Director Tim Weigand suggested she consider an original work sent unsolicited by a Maryland author and Plein Air fan R.A. Pauli – about the festival itself.

“[Pauli’s] been attending the festival for years, and was inspired by it,” Davis said. “And it shows in the script. He really had insight into the experience.”

“Picture This” features four vignettes inspired by the spirit of the Plein Air competition. One is about the artists, others about the natural scenes they paint, and finally a couple’s journey to buy their favorite piece.

“We were disappointed not being able to stage a full production again, but we thought at least we can do a radio play,” Davis remembers. “But then we got thinking, how can we make the radio play more meaningful?”

In keeping with the spirit of The Factory’s inclusive and collaborative approach, inspired by a painting by artist John Singer Sargent, during a two-hour paint-by-numbers event one afternoon.

The workshop recorded the audio before the festival started, then filmed a live performance at the festival’s kickoff on July 11.

“That we were doing the recording during the festival itself opened us up to the artists, who were all painting us while we were recording it. And you could tell they were loving it. There was tremendous crossover.”

This resulting video synchs the initial recorded audio with the Friday performance, creating work that will serve as a mini-documentary that to help promote the nonprofit mission of both the Factory Arts and the Avalon Foundation.

Now in the process of relocating to Mill Place near the Avalon Theater, The Factory known for its costume shop, prop house, and support for local artists, and partners with organizations like WHCP radio to amplify community voices.

As Factory Arts prepares for a merger with the Cambridge-based Groove Theater and its first major fundraiser, the video presents a vivid snapshot into the workshop’s deep ties to Talbot County and its commitment to local art.

For more, visit The Factory’s web site or the Avalon Foundation.