My first thought after reading the title of the Academy Art Museum’s compact but highly pertinent exhibit of selections from its collection was about “The Dude.” That would be Jeff Bridges’ character in the Coen Brothers’ film “The Big Lebowski.” That’s because AAM has called its exhibit “Earth Abides,” which coincides with variants of The Dude’s favorite expression: He either abides or decidedly does not.

Although the dictionary definition of “abide” is to follow the rules, to obey, or, in the negative, to disobey. But for The Dude, it’s more like going with the flow or swimming upstream against it – often disastrously. That’s sort of how our planet abides: It can take whatever humans and the elements inflict on it, but disaster eventually catches up, usually to the perpetrators living on its surface.

Thomas Hart Benton’s study for “Prodigal Son”

A Thomas Hart Benton study of his “Prodigal Son” painting catches your eye across from the top of the stairs to the museum’s second-floor gallery. The New Testament parable of a wayward son welcomed as he returns home, takes on a Dust Bowl twist as poor farmland management and drought devastate the landscape. The lithograph portrays a son returning to a long-abandoned family home. He passes a bovine skeleton beside the dusty lane. To the left, Grant Wood’s “March,” another fine example of Regionalism art of this period, keeps topographical company with Benton’s print, both circa 1939. In Wood’s sepia-toned scene, a winding road leads up a hill where a lonely tree abides, bending over in the stiff wind.

Further along the same wall, a grizzled middle-aged woman stands tall in abiding tolerance in George Schreiber’s “I Raise Turkeys and Chickens,” a 1953 lithograph. A scraggly stand of cornstalks – no turkey or chicken in sight – signifies the sparse yield of the earth beneath her feet.

Some of the art in “Earth Abides” speaks to the notion of who is boss. Ansel Adams’ “Upper Yosemite Falls – Spring” (1946) is one of many photos he took of the national park’s titular falls. Together with “Cedar Trees and Maple Leaves” (1974), they depict landscapes that will survive long after we’re gone. That is, except in the case of climate- or human-caused fires such as the infernos at one of Adams’ other favorite national parks, Sequoia in California, that threatened stands of ancient trees from which the park takes its name.  

Amid these mostly black-and-white artworks, Melissa Miller’s 1998 four-color lithograph, “Fossil,” stands out refreshingly. The title suggests that her predator-prey food chain is not what it seems, as horses do not hunt anything, much less fish, and fish have no means to eat birds. Miller’s imagery may signal an ecosystem gone awry, perhaps by pollution or climate change. None of which any carnivore or vegetarian can abide.

James Turrell’s enigmatic 1987 “Mapping Space (1)” turns research on an extinct volcano into a topographical, multi-media etching that maps in cake-like layers both aerial and surface views of the volcano with a white-circle aperture in the middle. Is it art, a geological record, or both?

On the opposite wall, Leonardo Drew’s 2012 collage of handmade papers bearing stenciled pigment represents a dead tree. The roots below that once sucked nutrients from the soil now release them, both below and through the dead or dying branches above. A rectangle rising amid the branches appears to recall the tree’s once-living bark. From death, life – a phenomenon we see sprouting after every forest fire. 

Kiki Smith’s 2018 etching “Healers” isn’t about human healing but rather that of bees. In recent years, there’s been an alarming die-off of bees, which humans absolutely cannot abide by. Maybe we could live in a world without flowers but not without plant blossoms that metamorphose into fruits and vegetables after pollination. Smith presents a bouquet of uncut wildflowers against a cloud-like background as if served up as an airborne feast for busy bees on a pollinating mission. 

Collagist Robert Rauschenberg’s 1982 sojourn in China inspired one of his most ambitious projects. Working with the University of South Florida’s Graphicstudio, he produced a 100-feet-by-30-inch color photographic mural printed on a single linear sheet entitled “Chinese Summerhall,” cutting and collaging small portions of his photos to assemble the final image. Another 28 photos that did not make the cut for his mural were printed in two portfolios, one of which, his moody study for “Chinese SummerHall (Man and Tree),” captures a figure, his back to the camera, in a prayerful pose – or perhaps he’s just reading – with a deciduous tree towering above the bench he’s seated on. The tree abides. What else can it do?

***

Winners in the 22nd Annual Members’ Exhibition were announced in nine cash-award categories at the opening reception Friday evening, Nov. 18. 

Jinchul Kim juried the show, now on display through Dec. 7 in the Academy Art Museum’s two main galleries. A South Korea-born artist and professor at Salisbury University, Kim has been commissioned to paint the official portrait of the First Lady of Maryland, Yumi Hogan, also a South Korean native. Kim, who has exhibited his art internationally, is a recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council Distinguished Artist Award and Salisbury University’s Distinguished Faculty Award. 

Best-in-Show winner by Michael Iandolo, “The Madness of Plein Air Easton”

The winners he selected in a blind viewing of the art (no names attached) are:

Best in Show in Honor of Lee Lawrie: Michael Iandolo, The Madness of Plein Air Easton, 2022, oil on board.
Nancy South Reybold Award for Contemporary Art: Christopher Harrington, Blue Triangle, 2022, resin
M. Susan Stewart Award for Best Collage: Sheryl Southwick, My Collapsing House, 2022, collage
Trippe Gallery Award for Best Work on Paper: Barrie Barnett, Michele, 2022, pastel
Jane Shannahan Hill Offutt Memorial Award for Painting: Linda Perry, Aqualung, 2022, mixed media on canvas
Academy Clay Award: Kathy Bodey, Forgotten, 2022, clay
Best Landscape Award (sponsored by the St. Michael’s Art League): Nancy Tankersley, Lovely Intruder, 2022, oil
Arielle Marks Award for Best Print (sponsored by Amy Haines and Richard Marks): Judith Wolgast, Assateague Marsh, 2022, etching and aquatint
Excellence in Photography (sponsored by Tidewater Camera Club): Sahm Doherty-Sefton, Eastern Shore, 2022, inkjet print

Besides the prize money, many of the artworks in the show are for sale by both winners and non-winners. 

“The Members’ Exhibition is an annual tradition at the museum that dates back to our founding in 1958,” said director Sarah Jesse. “We are fortunate to have many talented artists living in the area and for the museum’s adult class program, in many cases, to have played a role in helping hone their skills. The exhibition is a testament to our wonderfully creative community and the museum’s exceptional teaching artists.”

“Earth Abides: Selections from the Collection”
Through Feb. 28, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St. Easton

2022 Members’ Exhibition
Through Dec. 7, academyartmuseum.org

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

The hot new music series, “Gabriela Montero at Prager,” hit its highest note so far, literally, at the resplendently restored former sanctuary known as the Ebenezer Theater Saturday night, thanks largely to guest artists soprano Larisa Martinez and her super-star husband, violinist Joshua Bell.

Pianist Montero, who headlined the September 17 series opener with just her two hands, played a supporting role on this night, skillfully accompanying the couple on nearly all the program’s ten primarily short pieces. The Pragers in the title of the series are, of course, Joanne and Paul Prager and the Prager Family Center for the Arts. Montero is the artist-in-residence of the center, of which the Ebenezer Theater is its crown jewel.

Saturday’s concert opened with a 10-minute Bell and Martinez duet, one of the three longer pieces on the program. From Mendelssohn’s concert aria for soprano and orchestra, or in this case, violin, they performed “Ah, ritorna eta dell-oro.” (return to a valley of gold). To unobtrusive piano backing, violin and vocals trade places intermittently in a call-and-response duel before introducing an assertive change of pace as Bell propels his bow with the thrust of a fencing foil to Martinez’s dramatically ascending intensity. 

Bell left the stage for the next piece, described by his wife as Schubert’s “love letter to music.” With a lilting voice and light piano touch, Martinez and Montero delivered a brief and soothingly sweet respite before diving into the “Je suis” encore from Massenet’s “Manon.” Moving her sheet-music stand aside, Martinez sang in character, ranging from flirtatious girl to sultry woman, curling up and down the scale in rehearsed improvisation even as she laughed on key. Next, French composer Delibes’ “Les filles des Cadix” (The girls of Cadiz) opens with a pounding piano riff that launches a song suggesting Bizet to a flamenco beat with Martinez’s smoky soprano rising to toweringly high notes. 

Her husband returned with remarks complimenting the Ebenezer venue and the appreciative audience, as well as the Pragers, for the salon-style atmosphere far more intimate than Bell’s usual vast concert hall settings. He then drew laughs while recounting the pandemic hibernation as a “year-long honeymoon at home” for the newlyweds who married in 2019. Bell had enough time on his hands to arrange Chopin’s best-known, much-loved nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2, to his violin interpretation. At Ebenezer, his playing rose to heightened romantic tension with a silvery smooth flow to the melody repeated with ever-more decorous techniques, culminating in quavering vibrato trills and a big-finish violin-and-piano coda. 

Martinez followed with a prayerful lullaby for children by Spanish composer Montsalvatge of the Catalan region and its capital, Barcelona. Continuing her Spanish-language tour, she sang a medley of traditional Latin folk tunes and short pieces by Ovalle (Brazil), Gimenez (Spain), concluding with Figueroa of her native Puerto Rico.

For the rousing finale – Bernstein’s “West Side Story” Suite – Bell returned to the stage for an instrumental prelude with Montero, which morphed into the familiar “Maria” melody. As if responding to the invocation of her concert character’s name, Martinez rejoined them to deliver in dulcet tones the best-known songs suitable for soprano from the 1957 Broadway musical, beginning with “Tonight,” pausing for violin solo interludes. Next, she was feeling pretty as Bell’s strings sounded delighted while she figuratively looked into a mirror. But the smile on her face faded as the suite segued into “There’s a Place for Us,” even as we all know there is none for them. Once the impending doom is realized, Martinez emits a tragic soprano scream drenched in operatic anger and loss, punctuating the suite’s violent denouement to a standing ovation. 

Full disclosure: My relationship with this former house of worship still evokes in me a sense of nostalgic sentiment whenever I walk up to what has been converted into a splendid and inviting concert chamber. I attended Sunday school downstairs and services in the upstairs sanctuary until 1962, when Ebenezer Methodist merged with two other Easton congregations to form St. Mark’s United Methodist Church. I was in ninth grade, and although that was a half-century ago, and I was too young to appreciate many of the sermons or hymns fully, I don’t recall anything quite as inspired as the performance I experienced Saturday night.

                                                                                     ***
If you haven’t bought tickets to the sold-out Saturday night concert or the Sunday matinee, you can catch Joshua Bell performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Meyerhoff Hall in Baltimore April 21 and 23 or the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda April 22. bsomusic.org  

Gabriela Montero at Prager Concert Series
Canadian pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, December 10
Irish tenor Anthony Kearns, December 17
The 2023 season opens with Cuban clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, on June 10
monteroprager.com/concerts

It became apparent from before the start that the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s choice of an “Eight Seasons” format for its November concerts was popular. This on an evening when it felt as though we have but two seasons now: summer and winter separated by teasingly brief intervals of spring and autumn.

Beforehand, a long line of music appreciators moved patiently toward and into the acoustically pleasing sanctuary of the Easton Church of God for the performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and Astor Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.” But before a note was struck, MSO board president Jeffrey Parker scotched any rumors that might ensue regarding the conductor-less concert they were about to witness – not unusual for a chamber orchestra. “I assure you, Michael Repper is still with us,” he said of the music director who made an auspicious debut at the September season opener at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center and will return to the podium for holiday concerts next month. The 15 strings-only musicians were led by example and cues from the evening’s guest soloist, Russian-born violinist Igor Yuzefovich of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and, after moving to the United States and earning advanced degrees at Peabody Conservatory, played with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Without a syllable of introduction, Yuzefovich launched the program with the beloved Spring concerto of Vivaldi’s 18th-century “Four Seasons.” Those whose only exposure to this masterpiece are a few chords amplifying myriad scenes in movies, TV miniseries, or commercials might say to themselves, “Oh, I know that one” – even if they think maybe Vivaldi is a sports-car brand. Of course, this audience was more attuned than that. But the sonnets were written, perhaps by Vivaldi himself, to accompany or clarify what became known as “program music” are included in the concert program: “Springtime is upon us” Da-Da DA Duh-Duh DA . . .

Vivaldi’s “Seasons” concerto is divided into three fast-slow-fast movements. The slow pianissimo segment features a viola and violin call-and-response with harpsichordist Bozena Jedrzejczak Brown providing soft textures suggesting a nap in a newly flowering meadow. The third movement celebrates the season with a festive dance pastorale.

Leaping two centuries forward, Piazzolla’s Argentinian Summer introduces the tango-meets-modern-jazz portion of the program. Here the tempo emulates torrid heat with searing violins led by Yuzefovich and concertmaster Kimberly McCollum, foreshadowing thunderous cloudbursts accented by the lower strings’ lightning strikes.

Vivaldi’s Summer follows a similar path with far different arrangements in the soft breezes of ensemble strings dotted with chirping violins suggesting songbirds until the second and third movements prestos roar with the growling and plucking staccato of violas, cello, and bass.

Buenos Aires Autumn arrives with pizzicato stomping to a tango dance beat accompanied by cellist Katie McCarthy’s sonorous solo sitting in for Piazzolla’s instrument of choice, the accordion-like bandoneon. Violins take over in solo and ensemble configurations to flutter like falling leaves in a tree-swaying zephyr.

After intermission, Autumn resumes with Vivaldi’s lilting harvest revelry segueing into a post-celebratory slumber. The awakening allegro opens with a march-like theme of hunters on the prowl signaling a fearsome rustle of strings pointing to prey fleeing for their lives. Spoiler alert: On a downbeat note, it seems that not all survive.

Winter comes to Buenos Aires with the guest soloist evoking somber anticipation of long, dark nights, alleviated by a flickering acceleration that heats up to the crackling fire of all strings on hand. Vivaldi’s winter counters with shiveringly tremulous violins and fierce winds howled by violist Yuri Tomenko, bassist Chris Chlumsky, cellist McCarthy and lower-string accomplices.

The concert concludes where it commenced: In spring, fittingly so because Spring in the Southern Hemisphere is Autumn here, north of the Equator. McCollum introduces the season with a restless theme picked up by Yuvefovich and the entire string ensemble in a Bach-inspired counterpoint leading to a torrid ending punctuated by a harpsichord tingle of chill in the air.

A standing ovation without a word spoken, from first note to last – a post-election blessing.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra

Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” and Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires”
Repeat concerts: Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach, 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, and Community Church, Ocean Pines, 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13; midatlanticsymphony.org

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

As in much of his work, Geoff Delanoy makes both an artistic statement in his photography and a visual commentary on threats to so much of what we have too long taken for granted regarding the sustainability of quality of life on our planet. It’s not an optimistic viewpoint, as suggested by the title of his current exhibit at the Adkins Arboretum Visitors Center in Ridgely – “Ghost Forest.”

In the context of “Canary in the Mine” warnings of impending disaster, Delanoy’s cautionary tale in pictures might be called “Loblollies in the Marsh.”Delanoy, a professor who lives in Baltimore and chairs the Art Department of Notre Dame of Maryland University, became fascinated with the climate change vulnerability of low-lying coastal terrain while engaged in a decade-and-more photographic project called “Fugitive Landscapes.” Over just that stretch of time – milliseconds in geologic Earth time – Delanoy noticed even day-to-day changes in tides and landscapes at Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California, ultimately resulting in “Trees,” his black-and-white photography book. 

That experience led him to explore similar, if not more immediately alarming, effects on coastal climes closer to home. He studied climate changes in the Chesapeake Bay, where previously habitable islands are being inundated and erased by high tides. “Ghost forests were a very visible manifestation of changes in the environment with sea-level changes.”

The “Ghost Forest” exhibit at Adkins, comprising about 20 black-and-white photographs, makes a much larger statement regarding the number of images and its stark-yet-muted tones. 

Delanoy tried color photography when beginning this project but changed his mind. He explains his artistic decision: “I found the cool earth tones of the shore’s landscape too peaceful and visually pleasing to convey the urgency of the climate crisis. The images have a more immediate impact in monochrome.”

No doubt climate-change deniers would excoriate Delanoy’s decision as leftist media manipulation. They ignore the fact that it’s pushing 80 degrees just before Election Day and Veterans Day and that the confused forsythia in my backyard is in bloom again. And that my wife suggested we turn on the air conditioning in November. 

The black-and-white imagery in “Ghost Forest,” is quite persuasive, if repetitive. One of the most striking photographs is a stretch of paved road interrupted by a still reservoir of water reflecting cumulus clouds and, no doubt, blue skies above, which foreshadows a distant stand of pines. The peaceful scene of standing water where it should only be rushing past during rare stormy events documents what we’re in for,

The images are untitled, and the locations are not identified. This one appeared to be shot at the Blackwater National Refuge. But the road could well have been on Hoopers Island, where you can drive in at low tide but may be unable to leave at high tide. So much of marshy, low-lying Dorchester County is predicted to be just another part of the Chesapeake Bay within a generation. 

Most of the other shots depict stands of dead pines, some of them loblollies, and oaks, that were essentially drowned and poisoned by the invasion of salt water. They stand in lines of dead wooden soldiers shorn of limbs. In one image, they lean or fall over across from an open tributary with an island of surviving-for-now pines. One shot captures a lonely tree, standing alone amid the marsh grass, bent over, as if prayerfully, by years of prevailing winds.

You can meet the artist Saturday, Nov. 12, at a reception at the Adkins center, a fitting location for this subject matter as it is surrounded by the arboretum grounds and the Tuckahoe State Park.

We give Delanoy the last word: “Trees bear witness to the landscape and communicate on a visceral level. Hopefully, the photographs strike a balance between the inherent beauty found in nature but also motivate us to change course with the great losses that we face because of climate change.”

‘Ghost Forest’

Adkins Arboretum Visitors Center, 12610 Eveland Rd., Ridgely, through Dec. 23. Reception with artist Geoff Delanoy, 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12. adkinsarboretum.org

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

The first of twenty-four sculptures donated by Peter and Hanna Woicke of St. Michaels was unveiled Saturday at the Kent County Public Library.

Fitting for a community that supports the arts and loves its dogs, “Reading Dog” by Massachusetts sculptor Jay Lagemann is a fanciful, floppy-eared bronze canine standing on its hind legs and reading a book.

Arranged and curated by Chestertown Public Arts Committee, “Reading Dog” is the first of eight outdoor pieces to be strategically placed throughout the community by the end of the year. The remaining sculptors will arrive over the next two years.

Chestertown Arts and Entertainment District, Chestertown Town Council, Mayors Cerino and Foster, and County Commissioners promoted the public arts initiative, an idea inaugurated by former Washington College professor and artist Alex Castro who brought the stainless steel wave “Broad Reach” to Wilmer Park in 2107 as part of the Chestertown’s Public Arts Master Plan.

Quoted in a 2021 Spy article, Kent Cultural Alliance Director John Schratwieser said the collection is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a small rural community. “The artists are diverse in every sense, and the long-term benefits for the people of Chestertown and Kent County are many. Having a public art trail for students to learn from, seniors to interact with, and visitors and residents alike to enjoy, is just a win for all.”

Chair of the Public Arts Committee Ben Tilghman opened the ceremony and introduced sculptor Jay Lagemann.

Lagemann said that the sculpture was inspired by making wax figures of dogs for his children. Observing their glee, he thought a large rendering of one of the dogs would evoke the same reaction.

Proving to be true, the whimsical canine caught the attention of the Woickes and, until it’s installation in Chestertown on Saturday, the sculpture graced their lawn in St. Michaels for a decade.

“The Public Arts Committee feels that these sculptures will deepen and enrich this idea that Chestertown as a community that supports arts, that has working artists that are here for the benefit of everyone in the community,” Tilghman says.

This video is approximately five minutes in length. Photography by Elizabeth Healy. For more about Chestertown Public Arts, see their new website here

With only hours to go before the Academy Art Museum’s annual Crafts Show opens its door for its famed Preview party, the Spy was able to spend a short moment with this year’s featured artist Sean Donlon and his remarkable glass teapots.

Sean takes glass manipulation to a new level with these inanimate glass sculptures that become vibrant and alive when they interact with the light and colors in their surrounding environment.

Donlon earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Craft and Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and has traveled all over the United States and internationally to Lauscha, Germany and Murano, Italy to study lost techniques in glass. He recently received the Smithsonian nd his work has been exhibited the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the Chrysler Museum, and several galleries throughout the United States.

This video is approximately two minutes in length. For more information on the AAM Crafts show and ticket information please go here.