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

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

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

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

 

Next week, for our first event of the spring season, Jung Yun will be in town to discuss her fantastic novel O Beautiful. I couldn’t be looking forward to this book talk more.

This was one of my favorite reads of 2022 for a couple reasons, including the protagonist, who is unlike any fictional heroine I’ve met. A quick synopsis: Now in her forties, newly minted journalist Elinor Hanson returns home to North Dakota to write about the impact of the oil boom on the small towns there. Elinor is complex—both tough and vulnerable, ambitious and self-destructive, like many women I know in real life, and I can’t wait to talk to Jung about how she managed to craft such a realistic and compelling heroine.

I also love the way this novel refuses to make villains out of ordinary people, or to take sides in the complicated arguments over ownership and belonging the oil boom exacerbated in small towns suddenly overrun with itinerant workers. Race, class, gender, and violence are considered thoughtfully and with empathy, broadening the conversation, rather than shutting it down. For more pre-game prep, click through to my interview with Jung in the Talbot Spy. And don’t forget to reserve your seat! Sign up here for a special evening.

What Else I’m Reading this Month

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett. This elegant novel is about twins, identity, racial passing, and choices you can’t take back. Trying desperately to finish in time for the TEDI bookclub meeting at the library on Thursday, Feb. 2!

The Crane Wife, CJ Hauser. The title essay (which went viral back in 2019) examines the ending of a love story through the lens of the famous folk tale. This brainy, poignant collection expands beautifully on that premise.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin. 2022’s most celebrated novel lives up to the hype. Come for themes of friendship, collaboration, and creativity, delightfully explored; stay for the ‘90s video game nostalgia. Bonus: The audiobook narrator is terrific.

What Else I’m Looking Forward to on the Shore this Month

Art Opening: Clarity @ The Foundry, Denton
3:00-5:00 Friday, Feb 3
Free

Artist Rose Jeon contemplates the importance of self expression in more than 50 artworks created during their three-month residency at the Foundry.

Lecture: Bear Me Into Freedom with Jeffrey C. McGuiness @ Talbot Historical Society, Easton
1:00 Wednesday, Feb. 1
Free for THS members; $5 non-members

The photographer discusses his project documenting/re-imagining the landscape of Frederick Douglass’s Talbot County.

Theater: Tred Avon Players present Time Stands Still @ Oxford Community Center, Oxford
February 16-26
$25 general admission; $15 students

This contemporary drama, which revolves around a photojournalist injured in the Iraq war and her reporter boyfriend, won Laura Linney a Tony nod back in 2010.

Artist Talk: Cheryl Warrick @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
5:30 Saturday Feb. 18

Known for organic forms and abstract maximalism, the artist will discuss the work currently on view in AAM’s Abstract Surge exhibition.

Film: African American Film Festival @ Cinema Art Theater, Lewes
Feb 17-19
$10 per film general admission; $5 for students

Back after a COVID hiatus, the AAFF screens feature-length and short documentaries spotlighting African American culture. Of note: A Most Beautiful Thing, about the first African American high school rowing team in the country, and a local news segment on black watermen of the Chesapeake.

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

It seems like a relatively minor policy decision for the Academy Art Museum to drop its three-dollar admissions charge, but it’s actually a big deal.

While the common-sense approach of asking a visitor’s fee to enjoy the Museum was reasonable, what needed to be calculated was the significant turn-off it turned out to be for first-time goers. While the revenue from this fee was modest, the asking for money to come into the Museum spoke volumes about the sometimes hidden barriers to building inclusion and diversity. With free admissions, the AAM could immediately reach an entirely new audience for the relatively small loss of revenue.

This change is yet another example of how the Academy was making good on its strategic goal to broaden its audience from all walks of life.

The Spy sat down with AAM Board Chair Nanny Trippe and Director Sarah Jesse to understand more clearly how meaningful this policy change has been for the Mid-Shore community.

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

The matinee performance is billed as a “Stars of the Next Generation” concert. But these three young musicians are already stars of their own generation.

On Sunday, February 5, Chesapeake Music presents violinist Randall Goosby, violist Natalie Loughran, and pianist Zhu Wang — all in their mid-20s — in a program of works by Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart, and Florence Price at the resplendent Ebenezer Theatre concert hall in downtown Easton.

Randall Goosby has performed with big-name orchestras from all over the United States and Europe – including the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and London Philharmonic. And this year, he will stretch his performance map to another continent with concert dates in Japan and South Korea. His precocious resume includes his debut with the Jacksonville Symphony at age nine and the New York Philharmonic at 13. He is the youngest winner ever of the Sphinx Concerto Competition and later a recipient of Sphinx’s Isaac Stern Award. A graduate of Juilliard, Goosby continues his studies for a distinguished Artist Diploma under the tutelage of Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho, co-artistic director of Chesapeake Music’s annual chamber music festival.

Goosby will perform Florence Price’s Two Fantasies, accompanied by pianist Wang and, after intermission, in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat for Violin and Viola, with Loughran and Wang.

Natalie Loughran won first prize in the 2021 Primrose International Viola Competition and the BIPOC (Biracial Indigenous or People of Color) Composer’s Prize for her arrangement and performance of “Mother and Child” by African American composer William Still Grant. In addition to her work as a concert soloist, Loughran regularly plays with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. She will pair with Wang on Schumann’s Fantasiestucke, Opus 73.

After his Carnegie Hall debut, pianist Wang’s recital was named “The Best of 2021” by New York Times classical music critic Anthony Tommasini. And as the 2020 Young International Artists Audition winner, he earned the Stern Young Artist Development Award in the name of the Linda and Isaac Stern Foundation.

All three will perform together on the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante.

“Stars of the Next Generation” concert, 2 p.m. February 5, Ebenezer Theater, 17 S. Washington St., Easton; chesapeakemusic.org

***

The annual Annapolis Film Festival doesn’t return until March 23. But in the meantime, the festival screens a very timely and important documentary – “The Educational Divide: The Story of East Side High” — highly relevant to Black History Month. After a federal judge ordered the town of Cleveland, Mississippi, to merge its two separate but unequal high schools, found to violate Brown Vs. Board of Education, the community is faced with how to deal with the ruling. Until very recently, we may have thought that Roe v. Wade was “settled” law. Now we’re left to wonder if Brown is the law of the land. Are our public schools allowed to continue racial segregation or not? Can we put our faith in the U.S. Supreme Court to do the right thing? How long does a precedent have to exist before it is unassailable? Your guess is as good as mine.

This high court decision came down in 1954 – nearly two decades earlier than Roe Vs. Wade. What’s next? Abolishing same-sex marriage? Interracial marriage? How about making only white male landowners eligible to vote? That’s how it was in states-rights interpretations of the original Constitution. Even free black men who may have owned land counted only as three-fifths of a person. Personally, I’m not sure bigots who might favor this could do the math.

“The Educational Divide: The Story of East Side High,” 7 p.m., Feb. 8, Maryland Hall’s Bowen Theatre, Annapolis, annapolisfilmfestival.com

***

Imagine. An emerging Impressionist artist you never heard of – much less seen any of his art. I confess. I didn’t know anything about Giuseppe De Nittis until I read about him in the Washington Post. And now I can’t wait to see his under-discovered paintings at the venerable Phillips Collection museum in D.C. De Nittis was born into a wealthy family in largely impoverished southern Italy. Making his way to Paris as a young man, he hobnobbed with the likes of Degas and Manet before making his debut in the historic first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. He died of a stroke at age 38, just ten years later.

From the few online images of his art, I say with some assurance that he had great facility as a painter with an eye for capturing scenes that inspired him to paint them. I love Impressionists and their fellow travelers I’ve seen at the Phillips – especially Pierre Bonnard, who helped bridge Impressionism to Modernism. But there is that impression – forgive the word assimilation – that you’ve seen it all before. And while I never tire of seeing, for instance, certain favorite movies, I am looking forward to discovering for myself an accomplished Impressionist painter whose work I have never experienced in a museum. 

“An Italian Impressionist in Paris: Giuseppe De Nittis,” Through February 12, Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St., NW, Washington, DC.,

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

 

During the second half of his life, Marc Chagall continued to paint and make prints, but he branched off into new territory. When he and his family escaped from Nazi Germany and arrived in New York on June 23, 1941, he was embraced by the art community of New York City. He was represented by Pierre Matisse, the son of Henri Matisse. Chagall lived in New York from 1941 until 1948, then returned to France where he lived for the rest of his life. Chagall met Picasso in Paris, and they admired each other. Chagall joked, “What a genius, that Picasso. It’s a pity he doesn’t paint.” Picasso famously said, “When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is. His canvases are really painted, not just tossed together…I don’t know where he gets those images…He must have an angel in his head.” 

Leon Bakst, Chagall’s original teacher in Russia, introduced him to theater and opera. In 1921, Chagall created sets and costumes for several plays by Sholem Aleichem. After he arrived in New York, the Ballet Theater of New York commissioned Chagall to design sets and costumes for Aleko (1942), a ballet by Leonide Massine, a fellow Russian. Chagall then designed sets and costumes for Firebird by Stravinsky for the Ballet Theater. In Paris, after WWII, he designed sets and costumes for the 1958 production of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe.

Chagall was 77 years old when Andre Malraux, French Minister of Culture, commissioned him to paint the ceiling of the Paris Opera (1963) (2,400 square feet) (440 pounds of paint). Chagall divided the ceiling into five sections that were glued to polyester panels and hoisted 70 feet to the ceiling.  A controversy erupted. The Opera was a historic building, and Chagall was not French, and he was a modern artist. However, when the ceiling was unveiled to the public on September 23, 1964, the response was rapturous. All the critics were positive. Chagall refused to be paid for the work, allowing only the cost of materials to be covered.

Chagall’s ceiling design paid tribute to a host of famous composers, actors, and dancers. A large chandelier hangs from the center of the ceiling, and the inner circle depicts four scenes: Bizet’s “Carmen’’ in red, Verdi’s “La Traviata” in yellow, Beethoven’s “Fidelio” in blue and green, and Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice” in green. In a red flared Spanish dress, Carmen dances, smiles, and winks. Behind her is the bull ring. Next to her is the witty image of a bull, dancing and playing the guitar.  

In the large outer circle, Chagall depicts ten scenes: Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” in blue, Mozart’s “Magic Flute” in light blue, Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” in green, Berlioz’s “Romeo and Juliet” in green, Rameau’s, unnamed work in white, Debussy’s “Peleus and Melisandre” in blue, Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe” in red, Stravinsky’s “Fire Bird” in red, green, and blue, Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” in yellow, and Adam’s ”Giselle” in golden yellow. At the lower left border, Chagall depicts Odette, the white swan, rising from the water with a bouquet of flowers in her hand. Next to “Swan Lake,” the peasants dance under the village trees in “Giselle”

Chagall commented on the ceiling: “Up there in my painting I wanted to reflect, like a mirror in a bouquet, the dreams and creations of the singers and musicians, to recall the movement of the colorfully attired audience below, and to honor the great opera and ballet composers…Now I offer this work as a gift of gratitude to France and her School of Paris, without which there would be no color and no freedom.” 

At 69 years old, Chagall was commissioned in 1956 to create his first stained-glass window for the Gothic Cathedral of Metz in France. Although a new medium for him, he accepted the challenge, learned from a stained-glass master, and conquered the technique. This work was followed by a commission for twelve windows, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, for the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem. Other commissions followed: windows for All Saint’s Church, Tudeley, UK (1963-1978), Union Church of Pocantico Hills, New York (1976), the Fraumunster in Zurich, Switzerland (1967), Cathedral of Notre Dame, Reims, France (1968-1974), Chichester Cathedral, West Sussex, UK (1978), and St. Stephen’s Church, Mainz Germany (1978-86).

Three Chagall stained-glass windows are in America. “The Window of Peace and Human Happiness” (1964) (15’ wide and 12’ tall) in the United Nations Building, New York City, was commissioned to commemorate Dag Hammarskjold, the second secretary general, who was killed in a plane crash on September 17, 1961, while on a peace mission to Africa. 

Chagall divided the window in half with the tree of knowledge, represented by the snake that coils up from bottom center of the window. At the left are those who are in paradise, seen in the circle of light blue glass. This half of the window represents the theme “Love and Harmony” where animals, angels, and humans live together in peace. At the right side is “The Hostile World and Wars.” Composed of dark blue colors, the lower half consists of the anguished faces of people who struggle to survive. At the top right, is the Crucifixion. An angel with golden wings carries the Ten Commandments to a city below. A woman in dark purple and red kneels in grief for all those that have died in wars. 

Above the serpent is an angel hugging a young girl who carries a bouquet of purple and red flowers. To Chagall these colors represented love. The angel and the girl reference the “Kiss of Peace.” Found in the New Testament, it was the greeting “peace be with you.” Included in the window are other symbols of peace and musical notes from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Hammarskjold’s favorite. Chagall wrote that he wanted people “not to see the window but to feel it. I should like people to be as moved as I was when I was engaged in this work which was done for people of all countries, in the name of peace and love.”

Chagall lived in Chicago while he was working on the mosaic “The Four Seasons” (1974) and was impressed by Chicago’s commitment to public art. To thank the City for its kindness and support showed while he worked on the mosaic, he offered to create a stained-glass window as a gift to the City. Chagall selected the theme “American Window” (1977) (30 feet wide x 8 feet tall) (Chicago Art Institute): “I lived here in America during the inhuman war in which humanity deserted itself. I have seen the rhythm of life. I have seen America fighting with Allies. The wealth that she has distributed to bring relief to the people who had to suffer the consequences of the war. I like America and the Americans. Above all, I am impressed by the greatness of the country and the freedom that it gives.” A second influence was the American Bicentennial. Chagall began work on the window in 1976, and it was dedicated on May 15, 1977.

Chagall worked with the French stained-glass artist Charles Marq, who developed a technique to allow three colors, not just one, on the pane. Chagall was able to paint on the glass with metallic oxide paint that was then fused to the glass by heating. The windows are divided into three parts, each with 2 panels that are divided into 12 panes.

The first window depicts Chicago history, emphasizing music, with musicians, instruments, and a musical score. A horn player in yellow is positioned at the top, with a musical score and a violin. The skyline of Chicago can be seen along the bottom of the window. The second panel features an artist’s palette and paint brushes, and at the lower right in red, a still life of fruit in a bowl.

The second window shows the unity among Chicago neighborhoods, the City skyline continuing across the bottom of the window. In the third panel the emphasis is on literature and freedom of speech. At the bottom are a desk and inkwell, and a book. At the upper right, two books are placed in front of the white sphere. Above is a bright yellow sun beneath branches of trees. Long-time Chicago Mayor Richard Daley died in 1976. A strong supporter of Chicago art projects. The hand at the left holding a candle is a tribute to him.

In the fourth panel a large bird flies in the sky above the cityscape. Two multicolored trees are place at the upper corners of the panel. The Statue of Liberty stands tall at the left side of the panel with the torch of freedom in her hand. Lady Liberty was a gift from France for America’s Centennial, and Chagall’s “American Window” was his gift to America for its Bicentennial.

The third window displays the significance of religious freedom in America. Across the top of panel five is a theater curtain. Centered in the panel is a standing performer whose legs are visible, while the upper body is surrounded in a swirl of green, yellow, and blue patterns in Chagall’s favorite floral bouquet shape. Emerging from the bouquet is a singer. At the left, a performer in a harlequin costume holds a mask. The harlequin costume relates to another of Chagall’s favorite images, the circus. At the lower right a figure carries a Menorah. In the sixth panel, six figures dressed in European native costumes gayly dance and play tambourines. At the upper left, a large circle, made up of a mixture of bright shapes and colors, lends the scene a sense of happiness, joy, and well-being. The city of Chicago stretches out below.

The final stained-glass project undertaken by Chagall was the design of eight windows for St Stephen’s Church, Mainz, Germany. Mainz remained the largest center of European Jewry for centuries. Originally reluctant to create the windows, Chagall finally agreed to take on the project as a commentary on the reconciliation between Germany and the Jews, and between Jews and Christians. Chagall was 91 when he accepted the commission, and he worked on it until his death in 1985. The windows were completed by Charles Marq, Chagall’s colleague.  

“For me a stained-glass window is a transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world. Stained glass has to be serious and passionate. It is something elevating and exhilarating. It has to live through the perception of light.” (Chagall)

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 

The word ‘Labor’ in the title of the companion exhibits that open the new year for the Academy Art Museum (AAM) takes on very different meanings upon viewing. Although there are no depictions of women delivering babies in any of the etchings or paintings that make up the slender but charming Mary Cassatt exhibit in AAM’s Lederer Gallery, there are plenty of mother and child together.

Across the hall, in the Healy Gallery, the “Labor and Leisure” show drawn from the museum’s permanent collection is long on images of men at work. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the 1945 watercolor of a shirtless man powering a “Drill,” the title of a Robert Riggs print.

Taken together, the two exhibits have little to do with each other except that they are mostly of prints, etchings, and engravings with scattered oils or watercolors here and there. Plus, in the case of Robert Rauschenberg’s conspicuous, if enigmatically titled, 1986-87 “Tibetan Garden Song,” there is a cello bathed by scrub brush in a gleaming metal tub. Who knows – I don’t – what to make of it? But it’s really cool.

Cool is not the word that comes to mind while taking in Cassatt’s prints and paintings in this interpretation of “Labor and Leisure.” Her images are warm and reflective of a life observed but not experienced first-hand. She never bore nor raised children of her own. Several of her models are children of her siblings, in many cases described in titles you can discern without reading them, such as the loveliest oil painting in the exhibit, “Mother Resting Her Cheek on Her Daughter’s Blond Hair,” from 1913. Apparently unrelated to her is a little girl and her mom in a preparatory sketch for Cassatt’s 1893 painting “The Child’s Bath,” seen in a drypoint drawing resulting from her study of Japanese printmaking.

From a period in her career largely realized in Paris with the help of her mentor Edgar Degas, are two images depicting leisure-time diversions: Cassatt’s delicate multi-plate color etching “The Banjo Lesson” and her tender aquatint print of mother and daughter in the shade “Under the Horse-Chestnut Tree.” Other images of ink or pencil on paper, executed in sublime detail, leave the impression of not-quite completed works. Perhaps it’s indicative of her near blindness in the last decade or so of her life, which ended in 1926. It reminds me of Beethoven, all but deaf in his last years. Cassatt might have been drawing, almost, from memory.

Supplementing the labor/leisure theme – very much needed as this purview of Mary Cassatt’s career as a pioneering female artist is somewhat limited – the accompanying exhibit of works from the museum’s collection makes this survey well worth your attention. It’s all over the place – from the aforementioned Rauschenberg to Rembrandt, represented here by an exquisitely etched if minor, 1647 portrait of fellow painter Jan Asselyn.

You can hardly miss David Hockney’s text-driven “Old Rinkrank” panel standing in stark contrast to Thomas Patton Miller’s “Summer in Baltimore” and “Maryland Crab Feast” screenprints juxtaposing bright poster colors against black-face figures. And don’t overlook the 1799 Goya etching “Tantala” mounted next to Emily Lombardo’s “Tantalus” after Goya from 2013 when she was an AAM artist-in-residence,

In the end, there’s a lot to see here. All for free admission.

Just don’t try to pluck the strings on the Rauschenberg – what do you call it? – an instrumental construction. Leave it to a cello virtuoso. Personally, I nominate Yo-Yo Ma. Book him to play that cello, Sarah Jesse, and I’d guarantee a sellout worth covering your budget for a year or more.

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

‘Mary Cassatt: Labor and Leisure’
‘Labor and Leisure in the Permanent Collection’
Both exhibits run through April 15
Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton academyartmuseum.org

 

Think of a mix between Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and Elton John and you’ve got Josh Christina. If you’re a fan of piano driven rock ‘n’ roll,  Josh will restore your confidence in the ability of young musicians to carry on the great tradition of the rock pioneers. He writes his own music, refurbishes the classics, and plays a mean piano.  He’s also known for creating legendary live performances with his band.

Before the sold-out January 21 performance at the Academy Art Museum (with WHCP Community Radio serving as c0-host) Josh zoomed with the Spy’s Cecile Storm for a quick chat. The good news is that Josh will be returning to Cambridge on May 25th.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For information about his Cambridge performance please go here.

 

 

Elizabeth Song, a 13-year-old violinist from Haworth, NJ, won the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition Thursday evening in performances by seven finalists in front of a live audience and panel of judges at the Avalon Theatre in Easton.

Ethan Nylander, a flutist from Townsend, DE, was awarded the runner-up prize and pianist Emma Taggart of Brooklyn, NY, was recognized with an honorable mention. First prize includes a $2,000 cash award plus performances as a violin soloist with the MSO in three concert programs March 9-11 in Easton, Ocean Pines and Rehoboth Beach. Second prize is a $500 award and a concert performance in the orchestra’s ensemble series next season. 

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

Nylander performed with a piano accompanist 20th-century French composer Jacques Ibert’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra. Playing solo, Taggart chose the Piano Concerto in One Movement by Florence Price, the first African-American woman to have her composition performed by a major American symphony orchestra.

The other finalists included three pianists: HaozhouWang of Philadelphia playing a Prokofiev concerto and Valerie Wellington of Kansas City, MO and Philina Zhang of New York City, both performing pieces by Rachmaninoff. James Kang of Newark, DE, played Paul Hindemith’s “Der Schwanendreher” viola concerto.

The three judges seated before a live audience of about 40 were MSO music director Michael Repper, concertmaster Kimberly McCollum and principal bassoonist Terry Ewell. The competition is named for the late board member of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and a supporter also of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.