‘Vanishing Landscapes’ Captures the Loss of our Chesapeake Shores

A deer stands in a flooded warehouse, staring at a forest on a television screen, as water rises slowly against second-floor windows.  Nearby, a black-and-white aerial photo shows farmland overwhelmed by a sea of windowless data centers.  Intricate bundles of marsh twigs and driftwood form a geometric grid on another wall. 

In Vanishing Landscapes, the environment looks back at us.  This new exhibition, hosted by the Dorchester Center for the Arts in Cambridge and curated by Visual Arts Coordinator Lillie Pennypacker, features 29 mostly local artists who work in painting, photography, sculpture, and fiber. 

The show kicks off with a reception on November 8 at the Arts Center’s High Street gallery, with live music, light fare, and artists in attendance. It will run for eight weeks, followed by a closing reception on December 13. Both will run from 5 to 7 p.m.

Pennypacker, who grew up in Cambridge and studied art in New York, Boston, and Rome started at the Dorchester Center for the Arts in January of 2025. 

“I inherited the title and theme of the exhibition, and the Executive Director encouraged me to develop it from my perspective,” she told The Spy.  “The throughline for the exhibition is our emotional, physical, and cultural connection to the environment.  It’s not just documenting what’s been lost but exploring how we feel about it in our psyche and our bodies.” 

Painter Patti Aaronson of Cambridge brings a personal view to the exhibit with her surreal scene of a deer gazing at a television glowing with an image of the woods as water builds up outside. 

“The deer looking at the woods on the screen represents a sense of loss, of longing for the natural world,” she said.  “It’s the sadness of looking at what’s been lost, realizing what’s gone.” 

Aaronson painted the piece in two weeks after seeing the call for submissions. “I had this concept in mind, which I thought was perfect for Vanishing Landscapes,” she said.  Stylistically, the painting is an uncanny blend of realism, surrealism, and minimalism. 

“Art is a way to tell the truth emotionally.  Facts speak to the mind, but art speaks to the heart. It shows that climate change is here, not something in the future.”

Photographer Andrew Cohen of Montgomery County gives us a perspective from on high.  His black-and-white aerial photograph, “Ashburn, Virginia,” shows a vast agglomeration of data centers spreading over what was once farmland in Loudoun County. 

“I wanted to show how industrial land was being repurposed for these massive buildings,” he said. At first, he rode his bike around the sites but felt the need for height to capture the scale. Cohen contacted SouthWings, a nonprofit that pairs photographers with pilots who took me up in a small plane to get the shot.

 He opted to convert the image to black and white. “The color wasn’t changing anything,” he said. “Black and white reveals the geometry of the buildings and the scars on the landscape.”

Cohen sees a paradox of development in the scene. “They’re a mixed blessing,” he said. “These centers store our medical records and photos, but they also consume land and energy. They’re useful, but they’re big, ugly boxes that hold our digital lives but erase the physical ones that came before.”

Sculptor Marcia Wolfson Ray of Baltimore builds her work from materials gathered on site. Her wall-mounted piece, “Terrain,” assembles twenty clusters of sticks, bark, and driftwood from the marsh near Toddville, below the Blackwater Refuge. 

“The materials came from the landscape, and they came from the landscape pretty locally,” she said. “The forms are arranged in a shifting grid, their rough shapes echoing the marsh. The land is sinking and the tide is rising.  My work comes from that landscape, so in a way it’s both of it and about it.”

Ray says her style is influenced without being necessarily realistic, but more about “form and structure and how natural materials can speak for themselves.” Each section of her three-dimensional work is labeled and holds a specific place in the tableau.  “You worry about how to make things stay in space. There’s a physicality that two-dimensional work doesn’t have.”

 “Down in southern Dorchester County, the land is sinking and the tide’s coming in,” she said. “You can see it. You can feel it,” she said.  “In the future, a lot of that land won’t be habitable any longer.”

Pennypacker received many submissions to her call for artists and had to make tough decisions about which works made the cut. 

“Not being selected doesn’t mean an artist isn’t good,” she said. “I choose pieces that make me feel something. Whatever emotion, as long as it’s genuine.”  

The show mixes seasoned and emerging voices, with approaches from data-driven to heartfelt.  Dorchester County fits the theme naturally. Recurring floods and higher tides affect roads and homes. The exhibition offers space to reflect without solutions. 

At the end of the day, Vanishing Landscapes holds a mirror to the Eastern Shore and places like it, representing loss through eyes that know the water’s rise, and speak from experience. 

Pennypacker sums it up aptly.  “It’s a show about connection as much as loss.  The pieces invite viewers to feel the link between the two.”