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May 31, 2023

Talbot Spy

Nonpartisan Education-based News for Talbot County Community

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Arts Arts Lead Arts Arts Portal Lead

With a Little Help from the Avalon, Easton Elementary Turns into Living History Museum

May 26, 2023 by Henley Moore 1 Comment

Easton Elementary School in Easton has brought history to life with a remarkable living history museum in its cafeteria. Spearheaded by fourth-grade teacher Joanna Morris, with the assistance of the Avalon Foundation, students immerse themselves in their chosen historical figures, conducting their own research and biographies of their favorite GOAT.

The Spy spent a few moments with Joanna, her crew of dedicated volunteers, and a cast of famous heros.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about the Avalon Foundation please go here.

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

Filed Under: Arts Lead, Arts Portal Lead

The Monster of Gunpowder River: A Chat With Author Michael Stang

May 26, 2023 by James Dissette Leave a Comment

One thing the hardships of the pandemic forced us to do was to determine how to spend our time during its long months of self-isolation and monotony. For creatives, the long blocks of time held a silver lining—time to explore their art form.

For retired emergency room physician Michael Stang, the pandemic’s mandatory partitioning of life offered a chance to rekindle his lifelong affection for writing. 

That love for writing, meditative walks along the Gunpowder River north of Baltimore, and a fascination with regional history led to a series of ideas Stang began to shape into stories.

The result was The Monster of Gunpowder River and Other Fabrications, a collection of seven short stories Visionary Art Museum director Rebecca Hoffberger calls “seven wonder stories, each structured upon a skeleton of geographic and historic truths…and gifted breath by the pure power of imagination.”

Michael Stang will share his stories on Wednesday, May 31, at 6 m at The Retriever Bar as part of the Bookplate ongoing Authors and Oysters series. 

For more event details, contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or contact@thebookplate.net. This event is free and open to the public, and reservations are not required, however the event on 6/14 with Smithsonian curator, Eleanor Harvey, will require reservations to guarantee a seat. Reserve your space by calling the shop at 410-778-4167. The next Authors & Oysters is scheduled for 6/7 with local favorite Jamie Kirkpatrick. All events are held in the back room of The Retriever, located at 337 ½ High Street in Chestertown, Maryland. 

This video is approximately five minutes in length.

 

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

Filed Under: Arts Lead, Arts Portal Lead

Looking at the Masters: Hung Liu – Part 4

May 25, 2023 by Beverly Hall Smith Leave a Comment

Hung Liu had many talents. She was a painter, photographer, video maker, and a printer. Since 2006, several of her paintings have been chosen to be woven into tapestries. In 2004 she attended the Tamarind Workshop at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, established in 1960 to advance the art of printmaking in America. There she developed a unique style of printmaking that involved layers, also in her paintings. Hung Liu won in 2011 the SGC International Award for Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking. 

 


“Dandelion with Mallard” (2016) (32’’x31’’) (monoprint with hand leafing and hand coloring) is from a series titled Drifters. On a road trip with her husband in the summer of 2014, Hung Liu began to photograph dandelions.  Large paintings from the series are titled by location: “Deadwood,” “Little Big Horn,” and “Mt. Rushmore.” Hung Liu appreciated the fact that dandelion seeds are migratory, they cross all earth and water barriers, and then multiply in new lands. The painting and prints depict dandelions past their prime, their blossoms going to seed. Their life is ending but is regenerated by the seeds.

The familiar Hung Liu circles and drips continue in this print. She also adds a brightly colored Mallard duck, in Chinese tradition a symbol of prosperity, abundance, and good luck.

“Migrant Mother” (2015)

Hung Liu visited the Oakland County Library in California in 2015 to study the archives of Dorothea Lange and the other photographers of the WPA (1939-43) who documented the Great Depression in America.  “Migrant Mother” (2015) (66”x66”) (oil) was one of the first of many paintings and prints in Hung Liu’s exhibition American Exodus. She commented,“This landscape of struggle is familiar terrain, reminding me of the epic revolution and displacement in Mao’s China. Only, now I am painting American peasants looking for the promised land.” 

Although the Dorothea Lange image is familiar to most viewers, Hung Liu said she finds “true inspiration…to discover, to excavate, to peel off the layers and try to find out what was there that got lost, for there is always something missing.” In “Migrant Mother” the face is the same as Lange’s photograph, but the poses of both mother and child are slightly altered, and a background is added. The figures are placed in a room, its dreary grey-brown color resembling a tent, not a house. A kerosine lamp and a bowl are placed on the table,

To offer hope in an atmosphere of despair, Hung Liu has painted a pink square on the wall, and the image of man’s hand holding a bouquet of freshly picked daisies. Daisies are an international symbol of purity and innocence. They represent new beginnings, and they bring joy. She said, “We can adopt each other’s children, so why can’t we adopt each other’s ancestors.”

“Tobacco Sharecropper” (2017)

“Tobacco Sharecropper” (2017) (monoprint with silver leaf) (33”x33”) depicts a barefoot and bare legged little girl helping her father pick tobacco. Hung Liu’s introduction of metal onto the surface of the print achieves a unique multicolored, mirror-like surface that reflects light. Her art education in China included painting of Russian Icons where precious metals, particularly gold leaf, were layered onto the image to increase its spirituality. Hung Liu’s inclusion of silver and gold leaf serve the same purpose. The images of the past are not lost, but brought back from history and preserved for the future.  

Hung Liu states: “With this new body of paintings, I would like to summon the ghosts from Dorothea Lange’s brilliant [black and white] photographs…I personally identify with Ms. Lange’s photographs since I am myself an immigrant from China and was caught up in wars and famines…forcing my family to migrate elsewhere. As an American citizen, I am very passionate about how painting American subjects remind me so much of those of my homeland.”

An exhibition of Hung Liu’s work was scheduled to open on December 6, 2019, at the Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. The exhibition was abruptly cancelled in November.  Hung Liu had agreed to remove a few of her paintings that were considered too controversial, but the reason for the cancellation was suspect, permits to bring her work into China were denied. In an interview with Art News (2019) Liu stated, “The message is anti-war so I thought it was OK. When I talked with my Chinese artist friends about it, they just said one word: Hong Kong.” Hung Liu held a cancellation party on the day the show was supposed to open.

“Sanctuary” (2019) (72”x72”) (oil with gold leaf) depicts a Mexican mother and her baby boy. Hung Liu’s concern for immigrants included those Mexican, Guatemalan, and Central American migrants arriving in large numbers at the American border. She visited the Texas border and talked with and photographed many migrants. The expression on the face of this mother displays a mixture of emotions: joy, thankfulness, relief, and many more. Previously, Hung Liu painted Madonna-like figures in different forms, both Chinese and African American. In “Sanctuary,” Hung Liu placed a solid gold leaf circle behind the woman’s’ head. It is a reference to the Virgin Mary, to the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe, to the halo always around the head of the Buddha, and it represents the sun and hope.  

Hung Liu retired from Mills College in 2014, but she never stopped working. She died on August 7, 2021 as the result of pancreatic cancer. She was 73 years old. She was an internationally respected and beloved artist, and her work was exhibited in over fifty solo exhibitions.  Memorial exhibitions continue to be scheduled world-wide. Her paintings remind us that everyone, no matter the race, religion, or place in the world, should be respected and honored. Having come from an authoritarian country, she loved American democracy. She remarked: “The story of America as a destination for the homeless and hungry of the world is not only a myth. It is a story of desperation, of sadness, of uncertainty, of leaving your home. It is also a story of determination, and—more than anything—of hope.” (Hung Liu, 2017)

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

Filed Under: Arts Lead, Arts Portal Lead

Eylie Sasajima Wins Washington College’s Sophie Kerr Prize

May 20, 2023 by Washington College News Service Leave a Comment

Eylie Sasajima ’23 earned the prestigious honor with a portfolio of poems, academic work and creative non-fiction.

The Prize caps a college career that included editing Collegian, Washington College’s student-run literary and art journal; serving as a poetry reader for the College’s national literary magazine, Cherry Tree; and conducting research as an English major on Frank Herbert’s Dune.

During the award ceremony Friday night, Sasajima, from Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, read several poems from her prize-winning portfolio, which she said she had curated with a conscious focus on assembling a manuscript, using the process of applying for the Sophie Kerr Prize as an opportunity to not only showcase her diverse writing, but also to strive to make the portfolio overall coalesce as a larger work.

“Poetry is the genre that I really speak best through. My goal for college was always to grow and mature as a poet,” Sasajima said. “I am right now looking at a career in editing and publishing. Something I’m thinking a lot about is putting together manuscripts.”

Sasajima began working as an editorial intern at Alan Squire Publishing of Bethesda during her last semester and will continue working there after graduation. Liz O’Connor, associate professor of English and acting chair of the department, said that is more of a continuation of Sasajima’s literary career than the beginning of it.

With her work for Collegian and Cherry Tree, as well as her scholarly work and writing, Sasajima has shown “substantial engagement in the literary community of Washington College,” according to O’Connor, and the broad approach to literary endeavors shows through in her poetry.

“In Eylie Sasajima’s poetry, the Sophie Kerr Committee recognized a young writer’s promising creative talents guided by critical acumen as an editor and intellectual engagement with the issues interrogated in the writing. In explorations of climate change, identity, gender, and power, Sasajima deftly translates between the ecologies of the self and the larger communities of our natural and social environments,” O’Connor said. “Eylie Sasajima is a poet and thinker worthy of our attention.”

Sasajima’s thoughtfulness is apparent when she discusses her work as well. Across the genres represented in her portfolio, Sasajima noted that the work deals with themes of gender, apocalypse, and home, including her homeplace of south-central Pennsylvania and her Japanese American heritage. Throughout the topics she addresses, Sasajima sees complexity, danger but also beauty, conflict but also pride.

James Hall, associate professor of English and director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House, serves on the selection committee that reviews student submissions and awards the Sophie Kerr Prize. He saw that complexity, as well as a special rigor and drive in Sasajima’s work.

“Eylie Sasajima’s poems explore the self in our modern world, confronting topics like climate change and oppression that are far-ranging and deeply impressive. As impressive as her writerly vision is the craft of her work: the attention to well-deployed imagery, to meaningful and burnished sonic textures, to poetic form that highlights and develops the wise intellectual and emotional arguments—these are all characteristics of an Eylie Sasajima poem,” Hall said. “And while Sasajima questions what it means to have a self shaped by socio-political powers, she also believes that poetry can restore the world’s beauty: to take from the ruins and build something better.”

While Sasajima won the Sophie Kerr Prize, both Hall and O’Connor noted the overall excellence and versatility of this year’s entrants, especially the five finalists, who also included Queen Cornish of Wilmington, Delaware; A.J. Gerardi of Wayne, Pennsylvania; Sophia Rooks of Williamsburg, Virginia; and Amara Sorosiak of New Milford, Connecticut.

“It was very difficult to narrow down to five finalists,” Hall said. “Reading these finalists’ work is to recognize how good writers draw from every genre and manage to mix in their own imagination to make the world feel new.”

After President Mike Sosulski announced that Sasajima had won the Sophie Kerr Prize, the other finalists turned to her with smiles and encouragement as she covered her mouth then rose to speak. Her remarks accepting the prize were heartfelt expressions of gratitude that reflected the importance of community in the Sophie Kerr tradition.

“This is an honor I never really expected for myself. and I can’t really put my gratitude into words. But I will try. Thank you to the Sophie Kerr committee for the support and for considering my work. I’m just so indebted to the English faculty here and to the Lit House staff. So thank you to all of them for their guidance, for their mentorship and for their support,” Sasajima said. “Amara, A.J., Sophia, and Queen are such amazing writers who exemplify how strong our literary community here is. And I certainly wouldn’t be here without some other members of that community…who made me feel welcome here and who are pretty wonderful writers who I look up to.”

 

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

Filed Under: Arts Lead

Looking at the Masters: Hung Liu – Part 3

May 19, 2023 by Beverly Hall Smith Leave a Comment

“When I got the United States, I had already lived half my lifetime in China. I did not really think about this; I just got on with my studies and trying to make a success of my painting career…. But I always felt I should be doing more, because of the Cultural Revolution and so on.”  Since her arrival in San Francisco in 1984, Hung Liu’s paintings have dealt with the cultural history she uncovered in old photographs. “I use historical photographs, they’re already grainy and really blurry–so it’s like memory, like our sense of perception, out of focus over time.”

‘Refugees – Woman and Children” (1999)

Another of her frequently represented themes is the struggle of so many Chinese people who were displaced as a result of disruptions caused by famine and war. “Refugees: Woman and Children” (1999) (80’’x120’’) is from a series titled Refugees. Everyone, from the very young to the very old, is affected. The old woman has become responsible for two babies placed in large woven baskets.  Sadly, Hung Liu also recognized the photograph might have depicted a mother desperate to sell her infants, not uncommon in China at the time. Her ability to communicate to the viewer sensitive facial expression is remarkable. 

To counteract desperation of the mother, she includes images of hope for the future. In China the crane and sparrows are powerful symbols of happiness. Lotus blossoms grow from the mud and muck at the bottom of ponds, but the flower rises above to bring great beauty and happiness into the world. It is a symbol of resurrection. The images of the Buddha bring a message of hope and a blessing to guide the family to a better life. Hung Liu’s emotional connection to the people, and her painting of the events, is sensitive and strong.  Viewers can easily connect to the people and their circumstances.

“Arise Ye Wretched on the Earth” (2007)

“Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth” (2007) (80”x80”) was the cover painting for the exhibition catalog Daughters of China. Hung Liu titled the exhibition after a Chinese propaganda film she had seen in 1948. “Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth” is a photograph of eight paramilitary women who threw themselves into the river rather than be taken prisoner during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

“Tis the Final Conflict” (2007)

 

Among the paintings in Daughters of China, several were titled “Tis the Final Conflict” (2007) (66”x66”). The paintings feature the incredibly expressive faces of individual Chinese warrior women, in groups, alone, and some with their fallen comrades. They are a compelling reminder of the terrors of war.

Hung Liu witnessed the Wenchuan earthquake in 1976 that killed 240,000 people. She painted “Richter Scale” (2009) (80”x160’’) in response to the 8.0 earthquake on May 12, 2008 in Sichuan. The quake killed 90,000 people, including the children attending an elementary school, largely as a result of the soddy construction of the building. She was in China in May 2008 for two solo exhibitions of her work in Beijing and to paint landscapes when the earthquake occurred. 

Building materials and bits and pieces of destroyed items are piled high in this thirteen-foot-long painting. A young girl and her little sister sit amidst the devastation. White birds, like angels, fly over the debris but can do nothing. At the upper right an animal’s eye, orange and black, looks out from the pile of wood. 

“Apsaras – White” (2009)

Hung Liu’s exhibition titled Apsaras (2009) was installed in 2009 at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York City. “Richter Scale” and other paintings of victims of the earthquake were included. Many of the portraits were simply titled Apsaras and a color. Many are of children with bandaged faces. “Apsaras – White” (2009) presents a poignant image of an old woman’s response to what she has seen. The Apsaras, the swirling female figure in blue, tries to bring what comfort she can to the grieving woman. The Apsaras is a beautiful heavenly maiden found in both Buddhism and Hinduism. The Apsaras sings and dances, a much-needed presence bringing calm and hope.

“Grandfather’s Rock” (2013)

Hung Liu and her husband Jeff Kelley visited Qianshan in the summer of 2006. The province encompasses almost one thousand mountain peaks and forests where Buddhist and Taoist monasteries continue to function. Liu Weihua, Hung Liu’s beloved grandfather, was the foremost Chinese authority on the temples, stone steles engraved with carvings, caves, and carved stairways that populate the area. He photographed them for years; his book Qianshan was published posthumously in 2002. Hung Liu’s exhibition Quinshan: Grandfather’s Mountain (2013) included 14 paintings based on his photographs. “Grandfather’s Rock” (2013) (48’’x60’’) is one of her paintings. Grandfather Liu, a large stone stele from which water flows into a stone basin, and a cluster of yellow chrysanthemums, and the trees in the foreground, all carefully painted, occupy the center of the composition. The distant trees with cloudlike foliage dissolve into the sky. Hung Liu uses two styles of painting, realistic and abstract, to focus viewers’ attention on the transition from earth to sky.  

The cluster of yellow chrysanthemums, a symbolic element in the painting, represents longevity, wealth, and tranquility. The flower is native to China and important for 3000 years. The plant grows in the early spring, but does not bloom until fall. It is a popular flower in Chinese gardens, and in paintings, pottery, and poetry. It is treasured for its medical qualities.

“The Botanist” (2013)

“The Botanist” (2013) (96’’x54’’) is a portrait of Hung Liu’s grandfather. He was a major influence on her life. Liu Weihua focused his life-long study of Qianshan ecology as well as the religious shrines. Hung Liu commented, “I remember a lot of things: his face, his demeanor, his body language. He had hands that were very soft and big. So those kinds of things were very important for me as part of these paintings.”

“Silver River” (2013)

“Silver River” (2013) is a mural Hung Liu painted on a long wall in the San Jose Museum of Art for her exhibit Questions for the Sky. The brochure accompanying the exhibition states that it is “A meditation on the fleeting nature of life and death, the work itself is ephemeral by design: it will disappear forever when the exhibition ends on September 29, 2013.” Climbing ladders and scaffolds, Hung Liu painted the mural in just one week. 

 Hung Liu painted “Sliver River” (2013) (detail) using traditional black paint in the style of historical Chinese scrolls. Her personal symbols, circles, lotus flowers, and an Asparas, are painted in color.  A video of the work in progress was accompanied by three other Hung Liu videos titled Black Rain, Candle, and Between Earth and Sky.  The videos contained photographs taken by Hung Liu each day with her iPhone the year after her mother died. 

The series of articles on Hung Liu will conclude in the next issue of the Spy.

In my work, my experience as a Chinese immigrant to the United States is quite important, and I also discovered some very important historical photographs, both in the U.S. and in China. We were never allowed to see such photographs when I was in China.

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

Filed Under: Arts Lead, Arts Portal Lead

Looking at the Masters: Hung Liu (Part 2)

May 11, 2023 by Beverly Hall Smith

Hung Liu received her second National Endowment of the Art fellowship in 1991. She and her son became American citizens in 1991. Also in 1991, she made her first visit back to China on a faculty grant from Mills College. Hung Liu asked her mother, who had returned to China, to look for any old photographs for her research project: “Most families burned their photographs, especially ones of Western-style weddings or anything that indicated you were not a proletariat or had some money. I went to libraries and found some magazines. I came out with all the dust all over my face. Nobody had touched these things forever.” 

Hung Liu discovered books of photographs of high-class prostitutes from the late 19th Century until 1911 in an old Beijing film studio: “The women were doing the most hilarious things, like holding a book in hand, even though women were not allowed to learn to read and write, or driving a car, an old Ford model. The purpose was to sell themselves, pretend they were upper class. [The photos] were shocking and exotic but also familiar.” The books were a catalog used by high-ranking and wealthy men.

Hung Liu drew from her collection of prostitute photographs to create “Chinese Profile II” (1998) (80”x80’’). Profile portraits were used historically in ethnographic or anthropological studies of facial and racial prototypes. In the 21st Century women’s movements, these profiles were recognized as an attempt to avoid the “male gaze.”  Her collection of black and white photographs was an opportunity to present these figures with the dignity they deserve. “Chinese Profile II” is large in scale and rich in color. She describes the process: “Between dissolving and preserving is the rich middle ground where the meaning of an image is found.  I release information from the photo.” 

“September 2001” (2001)

“September 2001” (2001) (66’’x66’’) was completed after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by al Qaeda. The image of a Chinese Bride in full dress is fused with the image of a 10th Century Song dynasty ink painting of a duck. The young bride wears a traditional, richly embroidered red dress and a phoenix coronet. Phoenix coronets are made from kingfisher feathers, a traditional sign of status and wealth. They are made of silver and contain precious stones and pearls. Hung Liu interpreted the expression on the young bride’s face as reflecting “a moment of uncertainly, a feeling of being on the brink” which she saw as the collective emotional response to 9/11.

Fused with the bride’s face and coronet are the wings and head of a wild duck that flies through her face like the planes flew through the Trade Center and Pentagon. The effect is an explosion.  Mandarin duck is served at wedding ceremonies because the birds are considered extremely faithful, a symbol of love, devotion, affection, and fidelity.  For this reason, images of ducks are carved, made in porcelain, and cast in bronze for houses and temples. The duck heads look up, but Hung Liu deliberately positions the duck head bowed because “the bride symbolizes people involuntarily wed to an unexpected relationship, a new era in our political consciousness.”  

“Strange Fruit” (2002)

The title, “Strange Fruit” (2002) (80’’x160’’) was inspired by the Billie Holiday song Strange Fruit (1939) that called attention to the numerous lynchings in the American South. The painting also is known as “Comfort Women,” because they were Korean prisoners of war who were forced to serve Japanese soldiers during World War II. Hung Liu used the red paint in the background to obscure the Japanese soldiers that were visible in the original photograph. She incorporates the images of two butterflies, symbol of love. White butterflies carry souls to heaven, while black butterflies represent transformation and hope after dark times. Although neither of the butterflies is entirely white or black, any butterfly is considered good luck in China as both words butterfly and good luck sound similar when spoken.

Hung Liu began to incorporate circles in paintings at this time. In Chinese writing, a circle is used rather than a period to end a sentence. In Zen Buddhism, circles represent both wholeness and emptiness, and the cycle of life. Hung Liu completes each circle in a single brush stroke. She refers to them as “a kind of Buddhist abstraction.”

Untitled” (Seven Poses) (2005)

Hung Liu’s Seven Poses (2005) is a series of “Untitled” paintings (60”x60”) of 19th Century courtesans who provided entertainment in the form of music, poetry, and song to entertain dignitaries. Each of the paintings depicts one or two courtesans with pieces of ancient pottery, and each contains symbolic animals such as grasshoppers, sparrows, swans, and cows. All the women are posed seated since they have undergone foot-binding. In “Untitled” Hung Liu has created a painting that employs the color orange. In China, orange is associated with the harvest and represents happiness and wealth. It is a popular color used in celebrations. Oranges and tangerines are a primary food for Chinese New Year. The cow is symbolic of agriculture and nurturing; it is a gentle animal. The friendly cow licks the leg of one of the women. 

Hung Liu’s signature drips and circles are present, as are Chinese characters and chop marks. In each of the seven poses, an ancient Chinese artifact is prominent in order to reinforce the historical nature of the image. Flowers are also placed in many of Hung Liu’s paintings since they too have significant symbolic meaning for Chinese people. The white flowers in this painting are magnolias, one of the most expensive flowers in China. They were considered so precious that only the emperor could own and grow them. They also were valued for their many medicinal properties. Hung Liu states, “I communicate with the characters in my paintings, prostitutes—these completely subjugated people—with reverence, sympathy, and awe.”

“Going Away, Coming Home” (2006) (10’ tall by 160’ long) can be found on the glass window of Terminal 2 at the International Airport in Oakland, California. Hung Liu painted eighty red-crowned cranes, the second rarest crane species, on the huge glass wall with enamel paint. Red brings good luck, is the color of joy, and protects against evil. The silk scroll “Auspicious Cranes” (12th Century), painted by Emperor Huizong, was hung over the roof of his palace to bring peace and prosperity to his home. From that time, cranes have been a symbol of peace, purity, wisdom, fidelity, prosperity, and longevity.         

Hung Liu has placed twenty cranes on each of the four windows of the terminal, bringing the number to 80 cranes to give blessings to travelers. A second layer of glass contains images of satellite photograph close-ups of the Bay Area and the Northern California coast toward the Asian Pacific region. Departing passengers walk past an expanding image and returning passengers see the view being reduced back to the Bay Area. Hung Liu’s circles represent the endless and wholeness of the universe.

Next week, part 3 of the article on Hung Liu will continue her journey to bring understanding and information to the public through other themes in her impressive and expansive body of work.

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

Filed Under: Looking at the Masters, Arts Lead, Arts Portal Lead

Shore Lit May Notes and Musings by Kerry Folan

May 6, 2023 by Kerry Folan

Maybe it’s because I made such a deliberate and dramatic personal change when I left I think a lot about what life in a rural community offers us that life in the city can’t. When I left New York, I hoped I would be trading quantity for quality. That has turned out to be true for me.

While I had access to so much in New York, I found, after a while, that I wasn’t really absorbing any of it. For me, the gift of living in a small town is time and attention. Both are more abundant here, and I can afford to be more generous with each than I ever could in the city. My life is richer as a result.

The same principle applies to Shore Lit. As a one-person organization, I will never be able to produce the number of events a great city bookstore does. But that was never the point. My hope in starting Shore Lit was to offer this community a way to connect through literature—to read excellent books we may not have otherwise discovered, and to discuss the ideas presented in those books with our neighbors in a setting that encourages curiosity. It’s about the conversations, as much as it’s about the content. 

With that in mind, I’m experimenting with a new community conversation series this summer. Academy Art Museum Director Sarah Jesse and I will be leading a Summer Book Club in the AAM galleries—one book each month that coincides with the themes of an AAM exhibition. 

These conversations will be intimate, 15 to 20 people tops (depending on the size of the gallery), giving participants the chance to connect with one another and to share their responses, interpretations, and questions about the work—both the art work on the walls, and the text we’re reading. Sarah and I will give some background on each, and we’ll offer some guided questions, but we won’t be lecturing. We imagine these as facilitated conversations, rather than formal talks. All are free (though registration is required for planning purposes), and books are available for purchase at AAM. I hope you’ll join us! 

Register for “Maud Martha” Book Club on June 22

Register for “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” Book Club on July 13

Register for “Solito” Book Club on August 10   

Visit the Shore Lit website for more information on each book selection and its corresponding exhibition.

What Else I’m Reading

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. I’ve joined A Public Space’s APS Together reading group, led by novelist Mona Simpson, to work through Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece this month. It’s like being back in school, in the best possible way. 

River House, Sally Keith. An elegy for the speaker’s mother and a metaphor for the imperative of life after loss. I cried, and then I read these poems again start to finish.

How To Do Nothing, Jenny Odell. I finally got around to this buzzy 2020 book about “the attention economy.” I had been expecting something softer, more self-helpy, and was pleasantly surprised at the intellectual rigor and insight Odell brings to the topic.

Bonus: Use code BANNEDBOOKS10 to get 10% off orders at Bookshop.org all month long.

What Else I’m Looking Forward To on the Shore This Month:

Multicultural Festival @ Idlewild Park, Easton   

10:00-2:00 Saturday, May 6 Free

A beloved family event returns with music, artisanal goods, and, of course, food: Haitian, Salvadoran, Indian, and Pakistani options will be available (plus hot dogs, sausages, snow cones, and ice cream). 

Performance: Hoesy Corona’s Terrestrial Caravan @ Adkins Arboretum, Ridgley

1:00 Sunday, May 7 Free 

Complementing his site-specific atrium installation currently on view at the Academy Art Museum, Corona will conduct a performance piece in which performers wearing his climate ponchos will walk the Arboretum grounds. 

Theater: The National Theater’s King Lear @ The Avalon Theater, Easton

1:00 Saturday, May 13 $15 

DC’s Shakespeare Theater just set the bar for modern adaptations of Lear with Simon Godwin’s record-breaking spring 2023 production. See how Ian McKellen’s performance compares in this replay from the London stage’s 2018 version.

 

Book Talk: David Sedaris @ Browseabout Books, Rehoboth Beach

6:00 Tuesday, May 30  $18.99 (includes a paperback copy of Happy-Go-Lucky)

If you missed everyone’s favorite Christmas elf at The Avalon last fall, you can catch him on the paperback tour for Happy-Go-Lucky. But the best part of a Sedaris event may very well be the signing line, where he chats and jokes with every last fan. 

Easton-based Kerry Folan is an Assistant Professor at George Mason University. She is also the founder and director ofShore 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.

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

Filed Under: Arts Lead, Arts Portal Lead

Looking at the Masters: Hung Liu

May 4, 2023 by Beverly Hall Smith

 Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China, in 1948. Her father was an officer in the army of Chiang K’ai-Shek. When Mao Zedong and the communist party took over on October 1, 1949, Hung Liu’s father was sent to prison, and her mother was forced to divorce him to save her new born daughter. Hung Liu went to live with her grandfather. She began drawing by age five: “One beautiful day in the late spring of 1954, I went outside with my grandpa, who was a middle school biology teacher. We both loved the outdoors–the wild flowers, the bugs, the birds, and everything we could see in nature. I brought my sketchbook with me as always. I was six years old, and that was the first time I tried to draw trees–there were a lot of them. I had a hard time doing it. Finally, I showed my finished drawing to grandpa–I was quite frustrated with the representation of the trees. Grandpa was like one of my teachers at school–he looked at my drawing, took a moment to meditate, then wrote down my grade–95. I guess he didn’t like the way I drew the trees. As I was just about to take my sketchbook and walk home, grandpa crossed out the 95 and put down 100!  I was surprised and speechless.” (Hung Liu, 2010)

“My Secret Freedom” (1968-1972)

In 1968 Hung Liu was sent to Da Dulianghe re-education camp where she worked as a farmer for four years.  She managed to make small drawings which she named “My Secret Freedom” (1968-1972). She also took photographs with a hidden camera of the peasants and gave them to them as gifts. Most families had destroyed their photographs to protect themselves.

After her release from the camp, Hung Liu attended the Beijing Teachers College as an art and education major. She received her BFA in 1975 and her MFA from the Central Academy of Fine Art in 1981. From 1981 until 1984 she taught at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing. Hung Liu was allowed to go to the United States to study art in 1984. She received an MFA (1986) in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego. She was taught only Russian realist art in her MFA program in China.

One of Hung Liu’s early works in America was “Resident Alien” (1988) (5’x7.5’), a large painting of her Green Card with her name as FORTUNE COOKIE, and the date of her birth1984, considering 1984 as the date of her rebirth. Hung Liu views fortune cookies as a symbol of her hybrid status: she was neither American nor Chinese, a multicultural condition. A rule-breaker, as she was in China, Liu made the words RESIDENT ALIEN large as a criticism of her status as an immigrant in the promised land. 

“Virgin-Vessel” (1990)

     Hung Liu began to teach Chinese History in1987 at the University of Texas, continuing as Assistant Professor of Art from1988 until 1990. From 1990 until she retired in 2014, she was a professor of art at Mills College in Oakland, California. Among her first works in America were paintings that criticized conditions in China. “Virgin-Vessels” (1990) (72”x48”) depicts a young Chinese girl, with a perturbed look on her face, sitting in front of mirror. Her age and her white clothing reinforce the title of the work. Her feet, which project forward, are twisted and deformed. She is a victim of Chinese foot-binding, where the toes and arch are broken and bound to the sole of the foot. Women are then unable to walk. Girls were told that it made them more marriageable, as men liked small feet. However, most of the girls were forced to sit still, and were put to work making yarn, cloth, mats, shoes, and fish nets. The practice was more an economic necessity than a way to a better marriage.

Hung Liu has placed a red square on the white costume of the girl. The color of red has been for centuries a symbol in China of the sun, fire, and the heart. It represents power, celebration, prosperity, and it is said to repel evil. It also represents fertility. Quotations from Chairman Mao is alternatively titled the Little Red Book.  In the center of the red square, Hung Liu has painted a white Chinese vase/vessel. On it she has painted in the traditional Chinese style a couple on a rug having sex. 

“Jiu Jin Shan” (1994) is an installation commissioned by the De Young Museum in San Francisco. It was part of a larger exhibition titled The Other Side: Chinese and Mexican Immigration to America.  Jiu Jin Shan is what the Chinese call San Francisco; the English translation is Old Gold Mountain. The mountain and the roadbed are formed from 200,000 fortune cookies; the railroad tracks crisscrossing the floor are taken from the Sierra Nevada section of the transcontinental railroad. Liu painted several Chinese sampans, sailing ships, on blue walls of the gallery. The ships around the room are smaller, as if they are coming from far away. When Europeans first saw Chinese ships, they called then junks. 

“Three Fujins” (1995)

“Three Fujins” (1995) (96”x126”x12’’) was influenced by a photograph taken in the 1880’s during the Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty in China. The  Fujins were concubines of the royal court. In full make-up, they are dressed in court finery with flowered headdresses. They sit rigidly, with little expression, as they pose for the camera. Hung Liu’s use of oil paint thinned with linseed oil is allowed to run in long drips of color over the painted surface. The painting is an early example of this technique, which became her signature style. 

The three black wire bird cages are real, not painted. They hang from the front of the canvas and represent the caged life of the fujins who would remain trapped like birds for their entire lives.

“Rice Sweeper” (2000) (80’’x80’’) represents Hung Liu’s fully developed style. The subject is an elderly Chinese person who uses a bundle of straw to sweep up the grains of rice that have fallen by the wayside. It speaks of the hardships experienced by the common people in China during the wars and revolutions. Other Hung Liu’s paintings have a similar theme, depicting hungry children eating the small amount of rice to be had, a woman working a hand loom, and women pushing the wheel of a millstone. Hung Liu uses linseed oil to thin the paint so that it runs down the canvas, which creates a unique atmosphere.   

Hung Liu places a mother hen and her two chicks at the lower left corner of “Rice Sweeper.”  Chickens were domesticated in China by 6000 BCE. They are considered benevolent and faithful. Roosters represent the Sun as they crow every morning at sunrise.  Balancing the composition, six small images of the Buddha are placed at the top right corner. They are seated cross-legged in the lotus position for meditation.

Four sparrows sit on the branch of a fruit tree above the rice sweeper’s head. A fifth sparrow sits on the old man’s shoulder. In China, the sparrow is an auspicious sign of happiness and the coming of spring. Hung Liu includes these symbolic references to abundance and happiness as a sign of hope in the struggle of the common people to survive.

The Chinese communist government pursued the “Four Pest” campaign from1958 until1962 to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. Sparrows ate grain, seeds, and fruit, and the campaign was intended to increase crop yield. When it became obvious the rice crops were diminishing because the sparrows were not there to eat the huge number of insects, including locusts that attacked the rice, Mao Zedong ordered an end to the sparrow killing. He redirected efforts to the elimination of bedbugs.

Hung Liu explores many themes in her art, bringing her work world-wide attention. Part II on Hung Liu will touch another of her themes.

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

Filed Under: Looking at the Masters, Arts Lead, Arts Portal Lead

WC Art Chair Ben Tilghman Starts Art Series with AAM

May 3, 2023 by Academy Art Museum

The Academy Art Museum is pleased to present a series of four Art History Lectures with Benjamin C. Tilghman on Thursdays beginning June 1 from 11 am – 12:30 pm. The history of art is long and vast, and it can be hard to know how to start exploring it. This series will look at four important periods in the history of Western art while also explaining some of the tools art historians use to better understand historical art. By tracing the developments of different genres such as landscape, history painting, and self-portraiture, we can also develop our skills of perceiving changes in style, iconography, and social context that shaped how works of art were made and seen. 

Benjamin C. Tilghman is associate professor and chair of Art + Art History at Washington College and a member of the Material Collective, a collaborative working group of art historians that explores innovative and more humane modes of scholarship. A specialist in Medieval, Renaissance, and Islamic art, he previously worked at the Walters Art Museum and is currently chair of Chestertown’s Public Arts Committee. 

Classes and Dates:

JUNE 1 – INVENTING “ART” IN THE RENAISSANCE – In the 15th century, artists and patrons alike began to think differently about how art could be made and seen. We will explore this momentous shift by examining the innovative work of artists such as Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer, and Leonardo da Vinci. 

JUNE 8 – VIRTUOSITY AND THEATRICALITY IN THE 17th CENTURY – Keen intellects, extraordinary technical skills, and a deep love for the dramatic moment distinguish much of the art of this century. Even as we appreciate the distinctive visions of such masters as Johannes Vermeer, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, we can also see deeper shared interests beneath the surface. 

JUNE 15 – REPRESENTING REALITY IN THE 19th CENTURY – What, in the end, should an artist depict in their work? How can they best represent the world around them? We will see how these questions fired the minds of Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, and Gustave Caillebotte, among others. 

JUNE 22 – MODERNISM: NEW ART FOR A NEW AGE – Famous as the age of “-isms,” the early 20th century was an unruly and sometimes raucous time as artists struggled to make sense of the rapid changes in the world around them. Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Hilma af Klint, and others will help us start to make sense of this restless period. 

Sign-up for individual classes listed above or the whole series. Classes are $24 for AAM Members and $29 for non-members and the series is $90 for AAM Members and $100 for non-members. For more information visit academyartmuseum.org

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

Filed Under: Arts Lead, Arts Portal Lead

Looking at the Masters: Claude Monet

April 27, 2023 by Beverly Hall Smith

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was one of the exceedingly small of group of artists known as the Impressionists in 1870’s Paris. They were interested in new scientific ideas and decided to incorporate them into their work.  Most significant was the theory of color, proposed by Michel Eugene Chevreul (1786-1889). His theory of color held that sunlight is not white, the color of paint artists used to lighten all colors.  Nor was it black, the paint artists used to darken objects.  Sunlight is composed of the colors of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.  The proof of his theory was that the rainbow or light shown through a prism contained these colors. This understanding of the nature of light was entirely new, and contrary to the long-held convention since the Renaissance. 

When the Impressionists went outside to paint, made possible by the invention of the screw cap for paint tubes, they also became aware that water, wind, and the sun move all the time.  To catch movement, their brush strokes needed to be shorter and more visible.  Thus, the works tended to look, according to the critics of the time, messy and sketchy.  We love the works today, but they were dismissed in their day.

Monet’s career proceeded with its ups and downs, but by the late1880’s, he began to concentrate more and more on the effects of light on objects that he painted over and over at different times of day and in different seasons of the year.  The subject of the painting became more and more the colors of the light, not the object painted.  He started painting his series of Haystacks and Poplar Trees in 1891, Rouen Cathedrals in1892-93, and Water Lilies (Nympheas) from1897 until 1926.  He said, “color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.”

Monet’s career provided the funds needed to purchase a home in Giverny in 1890. His interest in horticulture grew. With a group of gardeners, he diverted a stream in his backyard, and in 1899 he began a water garden, including a Japanese footbridge. He painted 250 water lilies from 1897 until 1926.

“Water Lilies” (1897)

 

Monet’s first series of water lily paintings (1897-99) featured close-up views of the flowers as in “Water Lilies” (1897).  This first series was exhibited in 1900 at Galerie Durant-Ruel in Paris. From the beginning, the water lily painting had great success with the public. 

“The Clouds” (1903)

Monet’s second series of 48 canvases, including “The Clouds” (1903) (29”x41.5’’), was exhibited in Paris in1907. In this painting, the lily pond and the distant riverbank take up the entire canvas. White clouds are reflected in the moving water. 

“Water Lilies” (1904)

In another painting in the second series, “Water Lilies” (1904), Monet painted the scene at a different time of day and different season of the year. In this painting the waterlilies are more colorful, and the reflection of trees on the river bank is evident. Monet wrote on August 11,1908, “These landscapes of water and reflection have become on obsession for me.”

This second series of water lily paintings was so popular that the French Government dedicated two rooms at the Musee de l’Orangerie to his paintings. Built in 1852 by Napoleon III, the Orangerie housed orange trees from the Tuileries Garden during the winter season.  Monet began the eight water lily paintings for the Orangerie in1914, and he worked on them until his death in 1926. 

By 1908, Monet’s eyesight was failing, and it worsened over time. His second wife Alice died in 1911, and he did not paint water lilies again until 1914. “Reflections of a Weeping Willow” (1916) (51.2”x79”) (Metropolitan Museum, New York City) it the result of some changes Monet made in the color palette of his paintings. He chose to paint the flowers with bright dots of color. Monet’s friend George Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France (1906-09 and 1917-20) encouraged Monet to paint larger canvases. The State commissioned 12 monumental paintings to be included in the Orangerie, and that resulted in a Paris exhibition in 1916.

7 Monet with panels for the Orangerie

The day after the Armistice (November 11, 1918), Monet offered the French State two large water lily panels as symbols of peace. He worked with the architect of the Orangerie to create two elliptical rooms to display the panels, giving the viewer the “illusion of an endless whole, of a wave without horizon and without a shore.” Monet said of his later masterpieces that they were “one instant, one aspect of nature contained in it all.”

“Water Lily Pond, Evening” (1926)

The 82 years-old Monet developed cataracts. In 1923 he had three operations., but his eyesight was severely impaired. “Water Lily Pond, Evening” (1926) is one of his last paintings. The colors are bright and fiery, painted with passion. He wrote, “I realized with terror that I could see nothing with my right eye…a specialist…told me that I had a cataract and the other eye was also lightly affected. It’s in vain that they tell me it’s not serious, that after the operation I will see as before, I am very disturbed and anxious.”

According to Clemenceau, Monet told him in early 1926 that the paintings were almost ready: he was “waiting for the paint to dry.” Monet died on December 5, 1926. He left 22 large panels to the French State. The paintings were taken from his studio and placed in the Orangerie. The museum was inaugurated on May 17, 1927, as the Musee Claude Monet.  At Monet’s funeral, Clemenceau removed the black shroud covering the coffin and replaced it with a flowered cloth, crying “No black for Monet.”

Two statements by Monet sum up his life and his work: “I am only good at two things, and those are gardening and painting.” “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.”

Note:  This article is the 150th in the Looking at the Masters series in the SPY. The first article, published on April 14, 2020, was on Monet’s water lilies. That article contained only one picture of the water lilies.  This 150th article contains additional information, and more important, a greater number of pictures of Monet’s wonderful water lilies (Nympheas) paintings.

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

Filed Under: Arts Lead, Arts Portal Lead

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