On September 29, North Dorchester High School in Hurlock hosted a pre-release screening of the new documentary Sentenced, whose tagline is “Children who don’t learn to read are sentenced to a lifetime of struggle.” The sponsors of the event used the opportunity to discuss the local Campaign for Grade-Level Reading during a post-screening Q & A.

Produced by Stephen Curry’s Unanimous Media and directed by Connor Martin and Mark Allen Johnson, Sentenced highlights the lifelong and daily struggles of four ethnically diverse adults who never learned to read.

Fugi is a 53-year-old Latino man who repairs classic cars in Los Angeles. In fact, he has always loved cars so much that he spent nine years in prison for boosting them. He can write his name but can’t read the text messages on his phone. He isn’t able to afford healthcare for one of his sons, who needs medication for his seizures. His youngest son was a slow reader in school and is forced to do manual labor.

Hailey is a young, unemployed woman living in Elkin, NC, with her spouse. Their tiny house is a converted shed in someone’s backyard, and Hailey has to pull her own rotten teeth because she can’t afford a dentist. She knows her ABCs, but even work in the fast food industry is out of her reach because she can’t decipher words.

New York native Ana cannot read her bills. All but one of her five sons was taken from her. Young Reuben, whose father has been in prison his whole life, struggles with reading but dreams of being an architect.

Bianca is a 31-year-old Black woman raising her four young children in poverty by herself because the fathers are unavailable or dead. One of the children repeated first grade twice. Bianca struggles with spelling and reading.

Between each of these segments are statistics narrated by Stephen Curry, such as that the 43 million Americans who score low in literacy can’t get basic employment, and that 60% of young men entering prison cannot read above the third-grade level.

He also says that literacy problems often begin with childhood trauma, which is attested to by the film’s subjects. Fugi’s brother was killed in a drive-by shooting. Ana’s dad was an alcoholic, and she struggled with drug addiction. Bianca’s stepfather drowned her mother in a pool right in front of her. Additionally, Curry mentions that illiteracy can lead to health problems and early death; this is followed by the startling revelation that Fugi died during the making of the documentary.

But the film does offer hope and solutions. Kids first learn to read in one-on-one time with committed adults who offer stable relationships. These include volunteer mentors, many of whom have had their own struggles and trauma.

Sentenced is riveting, shocking, heartbreaking, and inspiring. The audience wants the film’s subjects to succeed, and some viewers will undoubtedly answer the call to help people like them.

Following the screening, several education experts took the auditorium stage to discuss the film’s themes and place them in a local context.

The speakers included James Redman of Polaris Village Academy in Easton; Cristy Morrell, founder of Talbot County’s Imagination Library; Talbot County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Sharon Pepukayi; Dorchester County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Jymil Thompson; and John Wyatt, head of the John & Janice Wyatt Foundation, who brought the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading to the Eastern Shore. The CGLR is a network of more than 400 communities across the U.S. that target children from preschool through Grade 3 to increase their reading proficiency.

“The film drives home the need for early interventions to ensure success for our youngest learners,” Kevin Beverly of Moving Dorchester Forward told the Spy. “The introduction of Campaign for Grade Level Reading in Dorchester County is a big step to helping these learners reach grade-level standards by 3rd grade. We are also engaging parents through the Parent Encouragement Program (PEP) to support them with new tools to improve communication in the family structures. We have created out-of-school reading programs to support our young scholars as well.”

“The school system under new leadership is inviting volunteers back into the system to help as well,” he added. “We will continue to advocate at the state and local government levels and with our business community for more resources to help us with these initiatives.”

Charlotte Potter Kasic

The Board of Trustees of the Academy Art Museum is delighted to announce the appointment of Charlotte Potter Kasic as its next Director.

Currently serving as Executive Director of the Barry Art Museum at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, Charlotte is an accomplished administrator and visual artist, whose medium is glass. During her tenure as Glass Studio Manager and Programming Director at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, she pioneered the field of performance glass. An avid educator, Potter Kasic founded the Assistantship Program at the Chrysler and taught glass and new media courses at universities and summer programs such as Penland School of Crafts and Oxbow School of Art.

Daniel Weiss, Museum Trustee and Search Committee Chair, notes, “We are extraordinarily fortunate to have Charlotte as our new Director.  She is an experienced and accomplished leader with an exciting vision for the future of the Academy Art Museum.” He added, “During the search, the Museum benefited from the exceptional leadership of Interim Director Jennifer Chrzanowski and we are well positioned for the years ahead.”

In accepting this position, Potter Kasic said, “As I step into this new role, I am particularly excited to reconnect with my artistic roots and engage with the Museum’s studio programs and to foster an enhanced  dynamic relationship between classes and the exhibition schedule. This holistic approach to programming is integral to my vision for expanding the Museum’s educational and cultural impact. I am also thrilled by the Museum’s ambitious and thought-provoking programming, such as the upcoming exhibition, ‘Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection’. The Museum’s trustees and staff are passionate, dedicated and committed professionals. Together, we will ensure that the Academy Art Museum continues to thrive as a center for creativity, education, and community engagement.”

Gabriela Montero’s Season Three Concert Series at the Ebenezer Theater in Easton opened on Saturday night with one of the best pianists I have heard in my lifetime—yet another indication that Easton is becoming a destination city for classical music lovers.

The featured pianist was Khatia Buniatishvili from Tbilisi, Georgia. Buniatishvili named her program Labyrinth—a place constructed of intricate passageways. And what an appropriate name it was! The program featured pieces by Satie, Chopin, Bach, Schubert, Liszt, and Couperin. The music was riveting, eliciting complex imaginative, tender, and emotional responses. It was truly a philosophical journey for the senses, evoking hesitation, sensuality, pleasure, and pain.

Buniatishvili began studying piano at the age of three. She performed in her first concert at the age of six, appeared internationally at the age of 10, and then studied piano for several years at the Villa Schindler in Austria. She signed with Sony Classical as an exclusive artist in 2010, and released her first album in 2011 and several more after that. Buniatishvili’s album Labyrinth was recorded at La Grande Salle Pierre Boulez at the Philharmonie de Paris and was produced by Sony in 2020.

Of the 10 pieces Buniatishvili played on Saturday night, my favorites included a delicate and nuanced rendition of Satie’s Gymnopedie, Chopin’s Polonaise, Bach’s Prelude and Fugue for Organ, and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody Number Two.

Buniatishvili demonstrated great versatility in performing all pieces, apparently by memory. The performance of Chopin’s Polonaise Op 53 in A Flat Major was exceptional. Among Chopin’s most beloved pieces, it is physically demanding and requires virtuosity and exceptional piano skills.

When playing Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody, as arranged by Vladimir Horowitz, Buniatishvili captured Horowitz’s emotion and spirit. When Liszt performed, he was known to play pieces so vigorously (some would say violently) as to endanger the piano. Buniatishvili too gave the Ebenezer Steinway quite the workout, rising from the bench to strike the keys harder than possible while seated.

A highlight of the evening was the presence of Gabriela Montero in the audience, who presented Buniatishvili with flowers at the end of the concert, which included two encores.

My one disappointment about this wonderful Gabriela Montero concert series is that it does not publish the specific pieces that will be played in advance of the concert. Instead, it provides only a short phrase about the concert’s content. It has been my experience that many concertgoers enjoy playing the music in advance to refamiliarize themselves with the pieces before attending the concert.

In short, Saturday’s concert was exquisite food for the soul–an excellent performance by a remarkable pianist playing an engaging series of short pieces.

The next concert in this series is on October 26 and features Gabriela Montero playing music by Robert Schumann. Information on upcoming concerts and tickets may be found here.

 A sincere thanks to Paul and Joanne Prager for making these outstanding musical experiences happen.

Maria Grant was the principal in charge of the federal human capital practice of an international consulting firm. While on the Eastern Shore, she focuses on writing, reading, piano, and nature. 

This is just one of the poems Sue Ellen will read when she returns to the Stoltz Listening Room on September 25th for the first of four Spy Nights this fall to support the Avalon Foundation and the Talbot Spy. Her special guest will Beth Dulin, last year’s winner of the Eastern Shore Writers Association’s 2023 poetry competition. Beth will share some of those award-winning poems along with new ones.  Tickets are available here.

This video is approximately two minutes in length.

The Academy Art Museum announces its most ambitious exhibition to date, Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection, opening with a special gala preview on December 5, 2024. The exhibition will open to the public on December 6, 2024, and run through April 13, 2025. It will feature rare automobiles, sculpture, and furniture by the Bugatti family, along with other objects and ephemera related to the renowned marque. In addition to furniture borrowed from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection will showcase works from two important private collections never-before seen together: eight bronze sculptures from the Arsidi-Scuderi Collection of Lugano, Switzerland, and five vintage Bugatti cars and other automotive elements from the North Collection of the Eastern Shore, Maryland. Highlights include two grand prix race cars, two Type 57 touring cars, and a miniature “Baby.”

A Multigenerational Story of Modern Creativity and Innovation

The exhibition will explore the rich artistic and technological legacies of the peripatetic Bugatti family, beginning with patriarch Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940). His fin-de-siècle furniture designs, which debuted at international expositions in London, Paris, Milan, and Turin, are noteworthy for their fanciful combination of materials: ebonized wood inlaid with copper, brass, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and vellum, which he often decorated with leather tassels, geometric marquetry, and painted designs. Sons Ettore (1881-1947) and Rembrandt (1884-1916) inherited their father’s artistic passion but pursued different paths. 

Carlo Bugatti, Hall Bench, c. 1890s. Wood, parchment, copper, brass, paint, leather. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Gift of Lloyd and BarbaraMacklowe. 89.141. Photo: Troy Wilkinson. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Rembrandt had a tragically brief career as a sculptor, producing deeply empathetic and impressionistic portraits of animals. Ettore, meanwhile, became a celebrated automobile designer and manufacturer. According to automotive scholar and guest curator Ken Gross, Bugatti’s technical advances were inextricably linked to—even indistinguishable from—their formal beauty: “Everything about Bugatti was artistic: the cars, their advertising, and the enduring joie de vivre associated with the marque.” The cars that he and his elder son, Jean (1909-1939), designed came to epitomize the speed and dynamism of modernity.

Rembrandt Bugatti, Leaping Kangaroo, 1907. Arsidi-Scuderi Colleciton. Photo: Peter Harholdt.

Visitors to the exhibition will be able to immerse themselves in the Bugatti family story as they view the furniture, cars, sculptures, photographs, advertisements, and other ephemera. These pieces and the stories behind them will provide a deeper understanding of the family’s creative passions, their pursuit of perfection, and their place within the history of cultural modernity. “Although Ettore Bugatti famously declared, ‘Perfection is never reached,’ he obsessively pursued it throughout his career,” said senior curator Lee Glazer. 

1936 Bugatti Type 57 Atalante, Chassis no. 57456. Private Collection. Photo: Peter Harholdt

Expanding Access and Audience

Maryland’s Eastern Shore is a major destination for car collectors, thanks to the annual St. Michaels Concours d’Elegance. Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection aims to attract concours attendees and car collectors who are not necessarily regular Academy Art Museum visitors. Special “hoods up” days and other programs will offer behind-the-scenes experiences and special access to subject-matter experts.  

The exhibition supports the museum’s commitment to education, outreach, and inspiration for all. With no admission fee, Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection will be accessible not only to car enthusiasts and collectors, but to art and design lovers, and the broader community, including students and residents of the mid-Atlantic region and the Eastern Shore.

Save the Date

The exhibition opens with a gala preview on December 5, 2024, and will open to the public on December 6, 2024 and run through April 13, 2025.

Sponsors

We are grateful to the following organizations for making this exhibition possible. Preliminary sponsors include lead sponsor Blue Point Hospitality with additional support from Arlington Associates, Benson & Mangold, Boxwood Estate Winery, Brown Advisory, Chuck Mangold, Jr./Benson and Mangold, Easton Utilities, Eben Finney/Brown Advisory, Grayce B. Kerr Foundation, J.P. Morgan Private Bank, McHale Landscape Design, Shore United, The Oaks, Tidewater Inn and Wye Financial. 

There’s nothing like a fresh pair of eyes to help us see our familiar surroundings anew, and “Rivers,” a captivating show at Kent Cultural Alliance on view through September 7, provides them, times four. Ashley Minner Jones’s recording of lapping waves with occasional birdsong brings the beauty and serenity of our rivers instantly to mind, while Hilary Lorenz’s fascinating paper weavings speak of their animated complexity. William Blake’s paintings contemplate the ongoing legacy of the Civil War along their shores, and Langston Allston’s two large canvases examine rivers as paths to freedom.

In partnership with ShoreRivers, KCA sponsored a six-week residency for the four artists, all from different parts of the U.S. During the first week, they received an intensive introduction to the area. They each spent a day on a river with one of ShoreRivers’ Riverkeepers, toured Chestertown with a focus on the history and influences of the river on the community, learned about local ecology from ShoreRivers and Sultana Education Foundation staff at the Lawrence Wetlands Preserve, and visited conservation projects on a waterside farm dating back to the Colonial era.

From there, the artists were free to react to their experiences by creating art, and each one chose an entirely different approach.

“Waves at the Edges of Nowhere” by Hilary Lorenz

For Lorenz, an interdisciplinary artist whose studio is in the high desert of Arizona, weaving seemed the perfect analogy for the coming together of the myriad influences that create our rivers’ ecosystems. Stunningly complex and dynamic, her series of works created from paper hand-marbled in water from the Chester River woven together with vividly patterned stone lithography and linoleum block prints evoke the ever-changing ripples and waves, shadowed depths and sudden sparkling glints of light on a tidal river. Sometimes the weaving folds over on itself like a breaking wave or reveals a fringe of seaweed cut out of paper dangling down from behind, sometimes a shape appears—a heart or an enormous moth, a remnant of an image from one of the prints. It’s like watching a river flow—the more you look, the more you discover.

More gentle but hardly less complex, Lorenz’s row of hand-marbled cloths are graceful studies of the movements of wind and water. Working outdoors, mostly in Wilmer Park, Lorenz used the traditional Japanese suminagashi method of dabbing colored ink rhythmically onto water she had scooped from the river. As with her hand-marbled paper, she allowed the wind to swirl the ink into natural patterns, capturing the whirls of color by laying cotton cloths on the water’s surface. Multiple layers of marbling yielded bafflingly complex waves and whirlpools as intricate as the ripples, eddies and flow of the river itself.

“River Brought Me to You” by Langston Allston

Minner Jones also took a hands-on approach to “Rivers” gathering both native and invasive plants from the Chester River watershed and grinding them into powders that she mixed with vodka to create a photosensitive emulsion of each species. To make her “Chestertown Anthotypes,” she laid a sprig of each plant on paper brushed its particular emulsion and exposed it to sunlight for 14 days. The resulting prints have a subtle, touch-your-heart beauty that can’t help but draw you in to study their graceful leaves, flowers and berries, forging an intimate connection with the individuality of each plant.

A community-based artist and folklorist, Minner Jones has lived her life in a Baltimore neighborhood settled by members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, of which she is a registered member. While looking through the Kent County Historical Society’s archives, she came across a headline from a 1995 issue of The Cecil Whig asking “What happened to the Shore’s Indians?” The question appears three times, pointedly unanswered, as empty white lettering hovering in a field of brushy color, either the deep blue of cyanotype, the rich gold of the powdered remains of black-eyed Susan plants (the state flower of Maryland), or the sandy brown of Chestertown soil.

Blake, a painter who lives and teaches near Chicago, has carved out a curious niche for himself as a Civil War reenactor who paints other reenactors. Purposefully echoing Winslow Homer’s documentation of the war during his service as an artist-correspondent, his skillfully rendered subjects conjure a hauntingly engaging sense of introspection about a conflict that continues to reverberate down to the present day.

In a striking trio of ink and wash paintings, Blake casts the fiery abolitionist John Brown as “Father Time,” inviting consideration of the morality and repercussions of Brown’s actions as seen from our 21^st century perspective. In contrast, the river appears a magical place in three oil paintings of a pair of reenactors dancing together on its shores under a full moon, a sprinkling of glittering stars, or a comet (in reference to the comet of 1861 which some saw as a kind of portent relating to the war). Full of hope and joy, these scenes exude a strong optimism about our progress in understanding equality and inclusion.

It’s in another oil painting, “A Sense of History Comes Not by Sight,” that Blake’s message comes most to the fore. In loose brushwork coalescing into robust flesh tones, a man clad in a Civil War uniform is painted eyes closed, clearly contemplating the lessons of history, something we all would do well to emulate. With a bristling gray and white beard, he is of an age to have gained perspective, and in a mischievous play on the idea of reflection, Blake paints light glinting off his forehead and from under his glasses. Clearly, it’s the light that shines with the dawning of understanding.

Allston’s two large canvases casually hung on grommets have a bold, visionary energy that  recalls the directness of folk art. A painter and muralist who works in both New Orleans and Chicago, he used the river as the setting for both works. In “Fourth of July,” the faces of two young African Americans are lit by the glow of fireworks so strongly that the light becomes stars blooming on their dark skin as if to say, “This is our country, too!”, a potent reminder of those whose forced labor was crucial in building the country from Colonial times onward. In his second painting, “The River Brought Me to You,” the two faces of a figure in a small boat look both forward and back as he paddles furiously on a dark river surrounded by shadowy, foreboding woods. Swooping in from above in a rush of green flames, three winged women, like the Greek Furies, urge him onward.

Framing these arresting images are small drawings and handwritten notes scrawled in urgent capital letters that serve as a journal of Allston’s encounters, thoughts, emotions and discoveries during his residency. In an off-hand, stream of consciousness style, they range widely, describing encounters with a local elderly white woman who apologized for her ancestor’s involvement in the Ku Klux Klan, his musings at the sight of a stately historic home across the Choptank River, and his wandering homesick thoughts about the effects of the Mississippi River on his home in New Orleans. Integrating personal experiences with the influences of history and geography, his ponderings suggest a tapestry of interlocking stories.

Typically, artist’s residencies allow artists to immerse themselves in their work in a supportive, inspiring environment where they can connect with other creative individuals, but KCA’s residency has added purpose. The artists were called to explore rivers in ways that informed them and constantly engaged them with the community. They worked with young people in RiverArts’ summer camps, painted a mural at Worton Community Center, collaborated with local craftsmen, hosted open studios, gave talks about their work, and built new relationships.

The ripple effect is clear—in the process of creating art in response to what they learned through the residency, the artists have gifted our community with new and richer ways to understand our rivers and experience a firmer sense of place. And in a further benefit, as they return to their own homes, these artists will continue to disseminate their insights in their future work, benefitting people in many other communities and helping us all to better understand one another.

For more about Kent Cultural Alliance, go here.