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May 8, 2025

Chestertown Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Chestertown

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Spy Concert Review: MSO Performs Beethoven’s 5th by Steve Parks

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Michael Repper conducting the MSO.

If there are any four notes in all the classical music canon that almost everyone recognizes – even those who wouldn’t know Mozart from Muddy Waters – it would be the bah-bah-bah-BOHM of Beethoven’s Fifth. But how many aficionados would recognize the first few bars of his “rookie” symphony No. 1 as Beethoven’s?

When it premiered in 1804, the Fifth was called the “Fate Symphony,” which accounts for the title of the November concert series of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, “Fireworks of Fate,” continuing through Sunday’s matinee at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center. The four notes, it is said, denote “fate knocking at the door.” Should you answer?
Accompanying the pair of Beethoven symphonies on the program are two appetizers by 19th-Century French composer Louise Farrenc, both concert overtures, which means these six- or seven-minute pieces were never intended as part of a larger work, such as an opera.
Her Overture No. 1 pays homage to Haydn, Beethoven’s most important mentor. The gravity of the solemn opening adagio is quickly overtaken by a restless allegro that becomes more relaxed as it grows into a bold thematic statement and an authoritative finish. Farrenc’s Overture No. 2 takes a similar form but in a different frame of mind. Possibly traumatic opening notes give way to a celebration with a richly melodic and cheerful vibrance. Together these pieces leave you wishing Farrenc had added another movement or two for each. Sadly, symphonies were not in fashion with the French in her time and, in any case, women composers anywhere in the world struggled to be recognized.
Unlike Mozart, a child prodigy, Beethoven did not complete his first symphony until 1800 at age 29. Mozart died nine years earlier at age 35 with 41 symphonies to his everlasting credit.
In keeping with symphonic tradition, set largely by Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven’s First is composed in sonata form. But he throws in a bit of a trick by toying in the opening notes with the C Major key that dominates the piece. He then throws in an innovation with woodwinds playing a prominent role intertwined with the string instruments in introducing a second theme. Taking the lead for the MSO woodwind section are Mindy Heinsohn (flute), Dana Newcomb (oboe), Dennis Strawley (clarinet) and Terry Ewell (bassoon).
The second movement opens with what amounts to a fugue that gradually morphs into a darker mood with the rhythmic throb of timpani beats by Barry Dove. While the third movement is called a minuet, it comes off as more of a scherzo teaser that suggests bolder dancefloor strides. The final movement of Beethoven’s First toys with a trio of mellower notes before it gains momentum toward a confident landing that encompasses previous themes as well as Beethoven’s soon-to-be signature orchestral beats.
If you think that Beethoven’s Fifth is the meat-and-potatoes of classical music by long-dead European composers, ho-hum, think again. It’s at the very least the steak frites or filet mignon with truffles of the classical catalog’s all-time menu. And it’s not played as often as you might think considering its thematic presence in everything from movies to video games. So here’s your chance to hear it played live in full by a fine professional regional orchestra spurred on by a Grammy-winning music director, Michael Repper.
Here’s what I thought of the opening night performance in Rehoboth Beach Friday night, Nov. 8.
The opening four notes heard round the world and through the centuries are echoed in clarion calls from the back-row brass section led by Daniel Coffman (trombone), Luis Engelke (trumpet) and Michael Hall (horn). The orchestra played with a cohesive and deliberate temperament of an ensemble performing as one, led on strings by concertmaster Kimberly McCollum, Dana Bevard (second violin), Yuri Tomenko (viola), Katie McCarthy (cello) and Chris Chlumsky (bass).
New themes are introduced in the next two movements with a more reflective cadence followed by a lighter scherzo that culminates in a fond recollection of the Fifth’s opening flourish.
The fourth and final movement tests the musicians’ stamina with extended pianissimo riffs for strings while reeds and horns herald the breathless close to the Fifth’s fabled fate as one of, if not the greatest, symphony in classical music history. GOAT they call it in ironic athletic terms. (Greatest of All Time). And there is athleticism, even while seated, to do performance honor to Beethoven’s greatest hit. The MSO is fit for the occasion.
Mid-Atlantic Symphony’s “Fireworks of Fate” Series

Premiering Nov. 8 in Rehoboth Beach with Michael Repper conducting, followed by a 3 p.m. performance on Saturday, Nov. 9 at the Ocean City Performing Arts Center. The finale is at 3 on Sunday, Nov. 10 at the Todd Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College in Wye Mills. midatlanticsymphony.org

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

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

Spy Theater Review: Ghosts haunt the Avalon by Steve Parks

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Not to take anything away from the cast and creators of “Stage Fright,” now playing twice daily through Sunday at the Avalon Theatre, but the true star of this production is the Avalon itself, which observed its first hundred years in 2022.
Described as an “immersive theater experience,” the show is a largely fictional Halloween glimpse into the building’s history, beginning with a fire that destroyed the Avalon Hotel. Rebuilt in 1922, what was then called The New Theatre became known as “The showplace of the Eastern Shore,” renamed the Avalon Theatre in 1934.
The “Stage Fright” musical, written by Casey Rauch, who also plays the lead villain, and directed by Cecile Storm, who portrays his accomplice with a visceral demeanor, is no standard Halloween entertainment. It’s not recommended for anyone under age 16.  Musical direction by Ray Nissen accompanies frequent film montages as well as live action on and off-stage. Actors lead the way for the audience to explore every public space of the Avalon Foundation building.
What was formerly known as Banning’s Tavern has been transformed into what you might call a mad physician’s brain laboratory with alcohol serving mostly, it seems, as a preservative for neural tissue no longer occupying a skull. Main-stage scenes fill in the Avalon back story. Lou Baker is about to be released from 30 years in a psychiatric institution at age 95. Murder and ghostly reappearances have haunted the Avalon ever since the “apparent suicide” of Marguerite Gardot shortly after she gave up her child Charlotte to a church to further her career as a showgirl and Beauthy Shop Quartet headliner managed by her lover, Lou Baker. Having not seen Charlotte since she was a baby, Baker implores her to read Marguerite’s diary.
There is an intermission in there somewhere, but I saw “Stage Fright” on its final dress rehearsal, when my wife and I were the only audience. Presumably, drinks, refreshments and light fare were available once the show opened officially on Wednesday evening. We settled into our front-row seats in the lovely Stoltz Listening Room where the stage was lined with VHS videos from the failed business model of Blockbuster, which never anticipated the inevitability of streaming services. A film screened over the stage before us added more to the back story of Bob – Lou’s Girl Friday and former bare-knuckles boxer who doubles as bouncer while cleaning up her boss’s messes. Including murder? We’re left with a cryptic message: “All you do is watch.”
A trip to the third floor, not often open to mere Avalon ticket-holders, is a revelation. A grand space for a relatively small room dominated by an 18-foot leaded-glass ceiling dome and a chance to step outside on a narrow deck to take in the best view of downtown Easton that was once available to patrons of a restaurant called The Chambers. It’s now mostly reserved for Avalon Foundation board meetings and special (expensive) events.
So here’s your chance to tour the architectural beauty of the Avalon as you’ve probably never seen it. That was enough to distract me from the video at hand, except for the haunting message at the end: “All you do is watch.” As if we’re accessories to crimes we know nothing about. Not yet.
Taking the elevator down to the ground floor, our actor-guides led us out onto Harrison Street and the alleyway between the Avalon and Troika Gallery to return to the main stage. No spoiler alerts here. But I’m guessing you’ve figured out this is no musical comedy.
But a bit more evaluation of the performances is in order. Casey Rauch as Lou Baker is sufficiently addled and edgy to make us think he’s capable of all that has tormented him for decades. Katie Cox as his daughter, Charlotte, who is a stranger to him, seems to have avoided the mental trauma of her parents. She’s almost inspired by reading passages from her mom’s diary, as if she was talking directly to her, as the staging by Cecile Storm suggests. As Marguerite, Jenny Madino projects a spectral presence, appropriate for someone who’s been dead by suicide or murder for what? – almost a century?  Her Beauty Shop Quartet survivors – if anyone is not already a ghost by this time – Maddie Megahan (Vivian), Jeri Alexander (Minnie), and Grace Vorosmarti (Shirley) are just wildly vulnerable enough to be susceptible to crazy Lou.
While the film and video montages added here and there to the ghost story at hand, a few seemed entirely superfluous. Among the most revealing to any character were the excerpts from MTV back when the cable network made its splash as presenter of highly professional music videos – some of which made or resurrected the careers of feature film directors. It was, I suppose, the pinnacle of Lou Baker’s checkered career, that he wins an MTV best video-of-the-year award. OK, so there’s my spoiler. Aside from that, my best advice to you is to wear comfortable shoes and Halloween costumes that won’t get in the way of your getting around all the space that the Avalon offers in its centennial-plus glory.
‘STAGE FRIGHT’
6:30 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24 through Sunday, Oct. 27, Avalon Theatre, Dover at Harrison streets, Easton; avalonfoundation.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York theater critic now living in Easton.

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

Spy Review: Isidore String Quartet Interlude by Steve Parks

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Isidore String Quartet, from left, Adrian Steele, Devin Moore, Phoenix Avalon and Joshua McClendon

The Isidore String Quartet, riding high after back-to-back years as winner of Canada’s prestigious Banff International String Quartet Competition (2022) and an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2023) put their credentials to inspired effect in their Chesapeake Music Interlude concert Saturday night.
Never mind that the program listed a trio of pieces by dead European composers. The concert was adventurous enough with Bartok’s atonally immersive riff that critics derided as “barbaric” when his second string quartet debuted during World War I. But Ravel’s ground-breaking early career masterpiece and Mozart’s quartet that anticipated by at least two centuries the modern string quartet model made the program almost entirely contemporary in temperament and musical maturity.
The four New York-based Isidore musicians are graduates of the Juilliard School campus at Lincoln Center. They take their name from two sources – legendary Juilliard Quartet violinist Isidore Cohen but also their shared taste for vodka ascribed to a Greek monk named Isidore.
The concert opened with the last of six Mozart quartets championed by his mentor, Haydn – 24 years his senior. At the time – the 1780s – nearly all string quartets were basically first-violin solo pieces with a supporting cast of viola, cello and second violin. So shocking was Mozart’s String Quartet No. 6, nicknamed his “Dissonance” quartet, that his publisher assumed the score was a copying error. Haydn countered on behalf of his genius protege: “If Mozart wrote it, he must have meant it.”
The piece opens with, instead of a solo turn by Isidore violinist Phoenix Avalon, a ponderous motif that suggests a wandering in the dark of a bad dream, which shifts abruptly to a cheerful awakening that brilliantly involves all four string players in a musical conversation alternatively featuring violinists Avalon and Adrian Steele, violist Devin Moore and cellist Joshua McClendon.
The conversation resumes in the second movement andante with cellist McClendon providing the heartbeat thoughline. The third movement minuet is anything but the standard ballroom dance vibe. There’s a turbulent undercurrent with counterpoint interruptions in the flow with a return to the melancholy of the opening bars of the first movement. The allegro finale suggests a cheerful resolution to the preceding turmoil with almost giddy turns of musical phasing by  Avalon and Steele with fluttering syncopation by violist Moore and grounded by cellist McClendon for a skilled landing.
Bartok’s String Quartet No. 2, completed in 1917 in the middle of the Great War, now known as World War I, almost demands a bleak musical format. The piece opens with a peaceful if restless opening, as if awakening in the middle of the night but unable to fall back asleep, watching the inside of your eyelids a soon-to-be realized horror. The second movement borrows on both Bartok’s native Hungarian folkloric themes with Arabic overtones from his North African studies to create a desperate intensity led by violist Moore and cellist McClendon which dissolves into a brooding finale dramatically marked by a swelling requiem theme punctuated by moments of reverential near-silence.
After intermission, the first violin chair role switched to Adrian Steele who led a romantic opening, which morphed into urgent and then wistful phrasing that may suggest love lost. Quivering regrets are reflected in the pizzicato and plucking of string percussion in a brief second movement followed by a slow, melodic revisit of earlier themes. The finale encompasses all the shifting moods of the whole with moments of agitation, joy and reflection in between. In each expression, the Isidore quartet delivered the goods as they did in each of the first two remarkably relevant string quartets written two centuries ago.
Of note: This was the first major concert event under the helm of Chesapeake Music’s new executive director David Faleris following founder Don Buxton’s retirement. So far, so good.
Chesapeake Music Interlude Concert
Isidore String Quartet, Saturday night, Oct. 5, at Ebenezer Theatre, Easton.
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

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

Spy Review: Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Season-Opener, by Steve Parks

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You could say that the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra trumpeted the opening of the fall arts season at the acoustically pleasing Easton Church of God Thursday night, except that it was mostly strings that heralded the “Violin Virtuoso” concert series, which continues with performances this weekend in Lewes, Delaware and Ocean Pines, Maryland.

The 27th season of the Delmarva Peninsula’s only fully professional symphony orchestra, led by Grammy-winning music director Michael Repper, got off to an exhilarating start with a program that, on the surface, might appear to be a medley of dead European composers’ greatest hits. Johannes Brahms, a heavyweight in his class of composers, wrote his only two classical overtures in 1880 – the fittingly brooding Tragic Overture and, as a bookend in temperament, the celebratory Academic Festival Overture, perhaps the most popular piece of his career as a successor to Romantic-period forebears, Beethoven and Bach.

Violin soloist Grace Park

If there was to be comedy tomorrow, reversing the order in the song from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” it was, indeed, tragedy tonight. Still, the overture’s opening allegro suggests robust assertiveness rather than gloomy foreboding The middle Moderato movement settles unexpectedly into a peaceful, march-like interlude. In the concluding third movement, Brahms intertwines rapidly evolving counterpoints between tumult and moody reflection, of which each fully engaged section of the orchestra keeps up with the furious race to the finish.

The next long-dead European composer on the program, was essentially making her concert debut. Alice Mary Smith was the first British woman to compose symphonies – two to her credit – in the latter half of the 19th century. Back then it would have been as likely that a woman composer could get a symphony published, much less performed, than it might be today for a woman to play tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, regardless of Taylor Swift’s enamor for that position on the field.

Smith had two things going for her: A family of some means that helped get her into London’s Royal Academy to study music and a talent that put her in the same league with male contemporaries. Though she was not very widely recognized in her lifetime, she is by no means a fluke. Modern recordings of her two symphonies, including No. 2 in A Minor, accessible now on YouTube, prove that she should have been taken seriously and only recently – 140 years after her  death in 1884 – has been appreciated.

Repper is one who noticed her work. And as a champion of underperformed composers, mostly women and/or African-Americans, he conducts performances of these long-lost or disregarded symphonies and concertos.

Smith’s Symphony No. 2 opens with a bold Allegro as if to stand her symphonic ground against her almost exclusively male fellow composers. The second movement Andante introduces lyrical contrasts to tensions of the first, providing a tenderly reflective mood that sets the stage for the third movement’s rhythmic syncopation while adding a danceable theme to Smith’s symphonic palette. The Allegro finale reintroduces themes from each of the previous movements, building to a climactic and confident close.

Following intermission, soloist Grace Park, winner of the prestigious Naumburg International Violin Competition, set the pace for the orchestra as assuredly as music director Repper. It was not so much her virtuosity as the inventive piece itself, created by Felix Mendelssohn, still another long dead composer. He succumbed at age 47 to overwork and the heartbreak of his beloved sister Fanny’s passing. Mendelssohn’s groundbreaking Violin Concerto changed how such concertos were composed and presented for the next century and a half.

Orchestras customarily set the tone of the opening theme of a concerto while the soloist bided his or her time. But from the start of his “Violin Concerto” the attention is riveted on the soloist, thanks to Mendelssohn’s innovations. Another change he introduced was that the three movements of his concerto are played almost as one – with little or no pause in between.

The effect is to make the soloist the star attraction almost throughout the piece. It works best, of course, if the violinist can garner that attention in a spell-binding way. Grace Park did so with near breathless aplomb, fulfilling her solo role with dexterity and authority. The orchestra also fulfilled its supporting role. The bassoon marks the transition between the first movement with a sustained B note, led by Terry Ewell, followed by a rise to C in moving on to the tenderly melodic second movement. Meanwhile, the string section, featuring concertmaster Kimberly McCollum and her associate William Wang, gives the soloist a bit of a break. Finally, there’s the briefest pause while Park plays the last whisper of a phrase before diving in with a sprinter’s burst of speed, punctuated with pizzicato gymnastics as woodwinds led by Rachael Yokers on flute and Cheryl Sanborn on clarinet join in to complete a triumphant finish.

After a couple of standing-ovation bows, Park returned to center-stage for a solo encore. “What do you play after that?” she asked. “Maybe some Bach.” As fine as Park performed the Bach encore, it was child’s play for someone of such great skill and presence.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Violin Virtuoso’

Thursday night at Easton Church of God. Two more performances at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, Delaware, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, Community Church, Ocean Pines. midatlanticsymphony.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.
A footnote: The MSO ratified a new three-year collective bargaining agreement with the musicians represented by the Musicians’ Association of Metropolitan Baltimore late last month. So Delmarva’s only professional symphony orchestra is good to go for at least another three years.

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

17th Annual Chesapeake Film Festival and the Man Behind It All by Steve Parks

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For the 17th annual Chesapeake Film Festival – opening Sept. 27 in Easton, preceded by a one-day mini-fest Sept. 12 in Chestertown – more than 200 films from five countries and 15 states were submitted of which 32 made the grade.

Among those that were accepted by the festival team is the opening day documentary at the Ebenezer Theater, “Call Me a Dancer,” highly recommended by the festival’s executive director Cid Collins Walker and by Martin Zell in his fourth and final year as CFF president. Co-directed by Pip Gilmour and producer Leslie Shampaigne, who will there in person for an audience Q&A after the noon showing of the film, it’s the story of Mannish, a young street dancer from Mumbai, who struggles with dreams of becoming a ballet star and his parents’ insistence that he follow the tradition in India that requires a son to support them in later life. Upon meeting an Israeli ballet master, Mannish is more determined than ever to follow his dream. But can it be realized against the odds?

Martin Zell

Zell, who himself was a documentary filmmaker and a producer of major national and international special events, will introduce the environmental documentary “Diary of an Elephant Orphan.” Baby Khanyisa, a three-month old albino calf caught in a wire snare and rescued with the hope of integrating her into a herd of mostly former orphans. “You will see elephants like you’ve never seen them before,” says Zell, who has explored many parts of Africa and Asia in his myriad travels to those continents. “Very inspiring,” he adds.

The world premiere of a film short of local and regional interest precedes the pachyderm documentary. “Chesapeake Rhythms,” written by Tom Horton and directed by Dave Harp celebrates the migration of native trumpet swans to Eastern Shore marshes.

A one-day mini Environmental Festival features six films on conservation efforts regarding the Chesapeake Bay and its thousands of miles of estuaries. It will be presented at the Garfield Center in Chestertown in two sessions, matinee and evening, on Sept. 12.

Aside from environmental and social issues that have long been a CFF focus, the arts get their due as well. “Jamie Wyeth and the Unflinching Eye” headlines the “Saturday Night & the Arts” program on Sept. 28. Directed by Glenn Holsten who will also stick around for a Q&A, Jamie is part of a three-generation dynasty of painters beginning with N.C. Wyeth and his son Andrew, who  is Jamie’s dad. (“Wyeth,” a festival preview film also directed by Holsten, was shown in August at the Academy Art Museum.) Jamie is best known for his painting subjects, ranging from JFK to Rudolph Nureyev along with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Andy Warhol. But aside from these and other famous faces, he also directs his eye toward animals on his farm and the rocky islands of Maine.

Among the “Spotlight on Maryland” films on the last evening of the festival is a glimpse into civil rights history as seen through the eyes of 50 people from Chestertown. “Get on the Bus” takes you along for the ride, with stops in Atlanta, Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, and a tour of the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, paying homage to the African-American experience.
Meanwhile, if you want to learn how such films are made or get free advice from filmmakers, head to the Talbot County Free Library just a couple of blocks from the Ebenezer. “The Art of Storytelling” panel and workshop begins at 10:30 a.m. on the final day of the festival, Sept. 29, which closes with a student awards showcase.
                              
***

When I asked Martin Zell in a Zoom interview if he and his wife Linda moved from D.C. to the Eastern Shore “after you retired,”  he replied, “I don’t use the R word. We moved to the Eastern Shore” – more specifically to Sherwood – “the day after I stopped working.” Well, not to quarrel with such an accomplished man as Marty Zell, but it seems to me he hasn’t stopped working.

He found a niche when he first attended the Chesapeake Film Festival shortly after he moved. Soon he was volunteering. A few years later, he joined the board of directors and will “retire” – excuse me: “stop working” – as president of CFF in November after a four-year term. But in the interim it has become apparent that he is uniquely qualified for the role. Not that his successor will not be qualified in his or her own way. But Zell has seen and done it all when it comes to film and event production.

Right after college, graduating from Drake University in Iowa with a minor in film, he took a year off to travel. Now, just in the decade since he “stopped working,” he and Linda have traveled three months a year to an estimated 15 to 17 countries – mostly to remote villages and rural parts of two continents – Africa and Asia. “I have an affinity for other cultures,” he says.

Returning after that first year abroad, Zell took a job as cameraman for Iowa Public TV in Des Moines, which led to filming and later producing documentaries, several of which won awards and national attention on PBS stations across the country. Chief among them were “Don’t Forget the Khmer,” a documentary that arose from an Iowa fund-raiser to help refugees in Cambodia. It raised $300,000. Zell was assigned to find out how that money was spent. A significant portion went to sending nurses to refugee camps for desperate people who had probably never had proper health care. “They were so grateful,” Zell says, adding, “It fed my soul as well.”

“I would label him a humanist with great understanding for people,” says John White, then program director for IPTV. “This quality is evident in many of his nationally broadcast PBS documentaries.”

In 1987, Zell moved on to form his own company, Zell Productions International based in Washington, where he produced CINE Golden Eagles award-winning documentaries for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Forest Service. But in 2000, as funding for such projects was drying up, he “transitioned to another field” to become production manager for Hargrove Inc., which he calls “the big gorilla” in major special events. In 2008, he brought his talent and experience in producing films to such mega events as the 2008 Inauguration of President Barack Obama, staging and designing the decor and presentation of 55 to 60 events a day over the inaugural’s five days. Four years later, he was executing production plans for the DNC National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., and also in 2012, for the NATO Conference in Chicago.

“You do what you’ve done as a film producer,” Zell recalls, “applying the same sensibilities that it takes on making a documentary. You make all the contacts and create a budget, present your ideas to the director you’ve hired and go from there.”

So, yes, he was pretty much up to the job of producing the Chesapeake Film Festival. And after that’s over, he’ll take off for another three months to see the world as he and his wife prefer to see it – up close and personal with people who may or may not get noticed that much.

One thing he’s observed in his travels, Zell says, is that “most people love us. Forget the radicals or the dictators. In Morocco, Muslim people were reminding us that their country was the first to recognize the United States as a nation, back in 1787, when we were barely a country yet.”

Zell takes pictures by iPhone of these regular folks and their villages and environs on his travels. You can see them by the hundreds on his site: instagram.com/martin_zman): “The adventures of a curious shutterbug who lives on the Eastern Shore . . .”

Zell even teaches a Chesapeake Forum, Academy for Lifelong Learning class in “iPhone Photo Magic.” Check it out at chesapeakeforum.org

CHESAPEAKE FILM FESTIVAL
Sept. 12 mini festival, Garfield Center, Chestertown
Sept. 27-29, Ebenezer Theater, Easton
Sept. 29, “The Art of Storytelling,” free admission, Talbot County Free Library, Easton
Tickets and times at chesapeakefilmfestival.com; garfieldcenter.org for mini fest
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton. 

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

Mid-Shore Arts: A Unique Singer-Songwriter Showcase in Rock Hall

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You could say it’s a “rock hall,” except that The Mainstay in Rock Hall, the historic burg by the Bay, presents far more than one genre of live music. On Sunday afternoon, Mainstay hosts a Singer-Songwriter Showcase outdoors on the venue’s Backyard stage – weather permitting. Matt Mielnick, director of The Mainstay, says the showcase is the “brainchild” of its Delmarva Singer-Songwriter Association (DSSA), which formed in 2022 and meets monthly to encourage local and regional musicians to write and perform their own songs.

“Our group got together as an offshoot of The Mainstay’s very successful open mic night on the second Wednesday of each month, now going into its third year,” says Mark Einstein, a well-known Kent County musician whose day job is captaining charter boats. He plays in another open mic night at the Garfield Center for the Arts in Chestertown on the fourth Wednesday of the month.

“Mark deserves the lion’s share of the credit for organizing our singer-songwriter association and these showcases that have grown out of it,” Mielnick says.

“Since we’ve encountered so many musicians who enjoy writing their original songs, we thought it would be a good idea to provide a way for them to share their ideas and music with other like-minded folks,” says Einstein. “We try to meet once a month at The Mainstay with a goal of providing two showcases a year.  Our first one was a free live event at The Mainstay, which was very successful. Our second showcase was video-recorded and edited for YouTube.

“The third free showcase on Sunday [4 p.m., Aug. 18], like the others, uses a Nashville-style writers-in-the-round format. The idea,” Einstein says, “is to place three or four people on the stage at a time, sometimes more, with each performing an original song of theirs – usually with guitar accompaniment. Sometimes violin. Everybody has a turn, and the concert moves along at a quick pace,” he added.
The musicians are mostly local, with a few regional exceptions, including Tom Chirip, a seasoned songwriter and recording artist who lives in southern New Jersey. (He can’t make it to Rock Hall this Sunday.) The showcase usually features 12 to 14 musicians, including a few award-winners and up-and-coming local artists.
Here’s the lineup for Sunday:

* Host Einstein has many original songs to his credit, which he posts weekly on YouTube and Facebook.

* Stephanie Aston Jones plays and sings folk ballads she has written.

* Don Clark, member of the Mid-Shore Songwriters Circle in Easton, writes and sings with acoustic guitar accompaniment.

* Einstein met Jerry Diangelo at an open mic night in Middletown, Delaware, where he discovered him to be “a great player and songwriter.”

* With an extensive background in guitar and vocals, Dave Fife has numerous original songs in his repertoire, many of which he has recorded.

* A singer-songwriter from Worton, Earl French recently won an award for his song, “The Wind.”

* Richard Geller, a regular leading volunteer at The Mainstay, is an accomplished songwriter as well.

* Del Hayes, known as one of Chestertown’s finest pickers, has performed his original songs at The Mainstay’s open mic nights.

* Frank Hogans, also from Chestertown, is known locally as a polished songwriter and guitarist.

* A vocalist and guitar player, David Simmons has written and performed many uplifting spiritual compositions.

* Bob and Laura Taylor perform as a duo and have been regular participants in Mainstay events and share their knowledge and talent with the Delmarva Singer-Songwriters Association.

As you’ll gather from the accompanying video, Mark Einstein plays frequently – in this case with an ensemble of fellow DSSA musicians. This performance is from the second Mainstay Singer-Songwriter Showcase.

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.
Singer-Songwriter Showcase
4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 18, Backyard stage of The Mainstay, 5753 N. Main St., Rock Hall. Open mic nights are at 7 p.m. on the second Wednesday of the month (Aug. 14, this month) and at 7:30 p.m. on the fourth Wednesday of the month (Aug. 28, this month) at the Garfield Center for the Arts, 210 High St. Chestertown. mainstayrockhall.org; garfieldcenter.org

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

Mid-Shore Arts Plein Air Easton and ESLC Pair Up to Promote Land Conservation

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Painting by Russell Jewell

Plein Air Easton introduced a new collaboration during its just-concluded 20th anniversary festival with the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy. This invitational for past and current PAE artists was intended to connect art to the cause of – guess what? – land conservation.

Eighteen artists participated in the exhibit that ran through the end of the Plein Air fest on July 20. The show and sale at ESLC headquarters on Washington Street was mounted, in part, by way of a grant by Bruce Wiltsie, who has partnered with the Avalon Foundation since the start of Plein Air Easton. He has just been inducted into the PAE Hall of Fame for, as the event program stated, “years of support for the many ways that art can underscore the vital importance of conservation of our land and the beauty that surrounds us.”

The participating artists were Jill Basham, Tim Beall, Zufar Bikbov, Hiu Lai Chong, Lisa Egeli, Martin Geiger, Stephen Griffin, Joe Gyurcsak, Charlie Hunter, Debra Huse, Russell Jewell, Mick McAndrews, Charles Newman, Daniel Robbins, Mark Shasha, John Brandon Sills, Mary Veiga and Stewart White.

Some of the paintings are along the lines of what you may have viewed (or purchased) at the festival, including Debra Huse’s lavish brushstroke-textured “Historic Beauty” of trees bending over river’s edge and pointing toward a puff-clouded sky. But several others reminded me personally of the farm I was raised on in the ’50s and ’60s on Dutchman’s Lane, virtually next door to where I live now in Easton Club East. One-hundred acres of that farm are being developed into a Four Seasons 55-and-up community. (Full disclosure: My parents sold the farm in the ’70s.)

I remember a time when much of the waterfront acreage in Talbot County was tilled as farmland harvested for corn, wheat, rye and soybeans. Most of that land is now occupied by grand waterview estates, many like the ones hosting the annual “Meet the Artists” party which opens Plein Air Easton. I have no quarrel with that as those former agricultural fields with a view – maybe even a beach – were not much more accessible to trespassers than these myriad private waterfront properties, now best seen by boat or by rare – but often generous – invitation.

The paintings that resonated most with me depicted farm scenes that are still integral to Talbot County’s rural character. John Brandon Sills’ “Sunset, Yorktown Farm” for one, arrays a planted field in the fading evening light. Another, from the same 500-acre Talbot County farm, features a large harvesting combine like the one I was not allowed to operate as a boy but occasionally perched upon when my father was done or when it was parked in a shed – just like the one in Russell Jewell’s “Deep Breath & Swallows.” Can’t figure the title to that one, priced at $1,900. Other paintings in the show fetched up to $3,000.

Proceeds from the sale go to the artists and to Plein Air Easton, care of the Avalon Foundation. ESLC plans to use the paintings or copies of them as future educational tools.

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Spy Theater Review: Tennessee Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’

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The Factory describes itself as a “community arts project [providing] creative space for individuals to explore their passion for the performing arts.” And although I didn’t get a chance to see this stunning company debut in the “evocative atmosphere of our open-air venue,” I can say that the performance lived up to The Factory’s promise “to deliver a fresh and captivating interpretation” of this great American classic.

A rainy Friday – which put a damper on opening night of the 20th anniversary of Plein Air Easton – forced the company to scramble for an indoor venue. Thankfully, the Avalon Theatre accommodated The Factory after raffling off prizes to deserving Plein Air Easton volunteers.

But “Streetcar” was scheduled as a double feature with The Factory’s rollicking riff on Wild West gender roles – “The Ballad of Jesse Devereaux Radio Play” as the opener. Take-down of one set and replacing it with another pushed the Williams masterpiece, which runs 2 ½ hours, into a late-show time zone. I strongly encourage those of you who missed the Friday performance or left it early to see it in the Talbot Historical Society gardens before it closes on July 21. It’s too good to miss.

The 1947 Broadway original, as well as the 1951 movie starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, is a taut and fraught love-hate story involving sisters and the husband of one and brother-in-law of the other. We encounter the first main character as she arrives at her destination on the title streetcar. Blanche DuBois is shocked to find what she considers the squalor her sister Stella lives in with her husband Stanley Kowalski. Stella returns home shortly after to greet her and suffer Blanche’s complaints about sleeping arrangements consigning her to a couch. Because it is his bowling night, Stanley shows up just in time to wolf down his supper before reporting for his overnight job.

That gives the sisters more time to talk, which proves painful as Stella learns the real reason for Blanche’s sudden arrival. The family plantation, Belle Reve, has been lost to profligate spending by previous male heirs and likely by Blanche herself, who brought a trunkful of once glamorous gowns and accessories, including a rhinestone tiara that Stanley later mistakes for diamond. “Death is expensive,” Blanche says, further explaining that funeral expenses of family elders cost her the plantation mansion and the remaining 20 acres.

Citing what he calls the “Napoleonic Code,” that which belongs to the wife (or her family) belongs to him. This motivates Stanley to ask questions about Belle Reve and Blanche’s side of the story and why she now has no place to turn to but the Kowalski second-story walk-up. If you aren’t already familiar, never mind the spoiler answers his investigation reveals.

All of which transpires in the apartment, appropriately unprepossessing but hardly squalid as Stella has kept it as presentable as she can for Blanche’s arrival. The two love each other but are appalled by their sibling’s circumstances. Ben VanNest’s set design somehow captures all this along with the center of attention on poker nights – the kitchen table with seating for four. That’s where Blanche catches the eye of one of Stanley’s guest gamblers. Among the foursome, Mitch, as they call him, is the only gentleman. He’s lonely and easily taken in by Blanche’s flirty, lady-like solicitations. Anchoring the other side of the set is the Kowalski marriage bed, around which most of the sisters’ conversations take place. Whether intentional or not by the set designer, it appears to be long overdue for a new mattress.

Running virtually the length of the rear wall of the Avalon stage is a black-and-white photo of rowhouses, long-ago broken up into multiple apartments, upstaged by a commuter train. There’s a streetlight visible just outside the Kowalski bedroom window, which we imagine is about the size of a bathroom mirror.

Costumes by Jeri Alexander – mostly for the sisters – speak volumes about where one comes from and who the other has become. Flimsy dresses Blanche steps in and out of are of no professionally appropriate use for a schoolteacher. In one amusing opening night scene, the rear hem of Blanche’s dress clings to the slip, leaving it exposed where no one seems to notice except anyone in the audience. Inadvertent wardrobe malfunction.

By contrast, Stella wears loose-fitting gingham or print dresses barely hiding what Stella has yet to tell Blanche: She’s pregnant. Her short sleeves and, in one dress-up case, a diving neckline, myriad tattoos on her arms, legs and along her collarbone are meant to reveal – effectively – perceived new class distinctions between the sisters.

The lighting, relatively dim as Blanche prefers, also plays a shifting role implying the drama of the moment, credited to Factory producer Cecile Storm. And uniquely, except of course for the film version, are instrumental overlays performed offstage by the “Ballad of Devereaux” combo. Movies deploy music to accent whatever is happening on-screen. Here, as directed by Willoughby Buxton, the instrumentation indicates dramatic moments – pay attention – or to provide sound effects such as a passing train whistle. My only complaint on opening night was that at times the incidental music obscured lines spoken from some parts of the stage. Perhaps it was designed for an outdoor venue where the show now moves – weather permitting.

The theatrical accessories were far more pertinent to than distraction from the storytelling, which in this case, inspired Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece. But all are nothing without actors who seem to live the lines rather than just speak them.

Here are the leading suspects in making this happen. Cavin Moore as Blanche achieves such an astonishing transformation, particularly as we had an hour or so earlier caught her as a radio-play singer and deliverer of zingers. In “Desire,” we see her struggling to relive her long-past post-graduate schoolgirlish days like those of ones she later taught. But she can’t hide behind badly told jokes to lift her spirits after an unhappy birthday cake-and-candles ritual. As Stella, Liv Litteral tries to hide desperation for her sister but also for herself in that, with a baby coming, she has no better way forward than Blanche if the bully in her husband overtakes his professed love for her.

Alex Greenlee, in the pivotal role of Stanley – loved by his wife, hated by her sister – manages all the explosiveness of a brute, seeming to slug his pregnant wife hard with impressive fight-scene precautions for Litteral’s safety and later violently clearing his plate from the table on Blanche’s birthday. Other infractions by Stanley – all well-played – would be further spoilers to reveal here. All I would add is that Greenlee still seems just a little too civilized to be a monstrous Stanley. But he does scream with convincing agony, “Stella! Stella!” – begging forgiveness without actually asking for it.

Another key player is Mitch, played by Noah Thompson with both the infatuation and disillusion of a jilted lover who was neither jilted nor a lover, though he wanted to be the latter. But the suitor side of his equation and the plaintive side come through viscerally in Thompson’s deft interpretation of his character’s conflicted emotions.

One other in a fine cast, all worthy of mention, is aforementioned costume designer Alexander, doubling as Stella’s downstairs neighbor who figures in supportive roles in both the crucial opening and closing scenes.

So there could only be kudos for director Iz Clemens. Whatever these fine actors brought to the table in this challenging psychological/sociological drama, Clemens has brought out the best in them. So far. Maybe they can be even better next time. Following the “Shakespeare in Love’ royal directive, it might as well be a comedy or musical.

In the meantime, try not to miss this “Streetcar Named Desire” before its last stop on July 21.

A production by The Factory, a community arts project in Easton. Remaining performances at 7 p.m. July 19-21 in the Talbot Historical Gardens, 30 S. Washington St., thefactoryproject.org. Photos by Henley Moore.

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

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Plein Air ‘Meet the Artists Party’ and More by Steve Parks

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Plein Air Artist Abby Ober

Among the 58 artists competing in the 20th anniversary Plein Air Easton festival, one who planted his easel along a water view from the sumptuous greens of Wye Heights Plantation, was John Brandon Sills of Cockeysville, making his 17th appearance in one of the leading events of its kind in the United States.
Of the three he’s missed, one was the COVID-restricted event that amounted only to a show and sale of art by local plein-air painters at what was once the News Center space in Talbottown. As grand prize winner of the 10th anniversary PAE in 2014, the award was increased for the occasion to $10,000. “So this year,” Sills said as he added brushstrokes to his water-meets-sky oil of the scene before him, “I asked if they were raising the grand prize to $20,000.”
No dice. It will be $5,000 as usual.
While water views were still well-represented among the paintings presented for sale under the Meet the Artists tent Saturday evening, there were so many other views to capture within the myriad gardens and the sloping greensward from the Wye Heights Plantation mansion where dozens of black sheep grazed oblivious to the guests and artists ambling around their space.
Nancy Tankersley, one of the co-founders of Plein Air Easton and judge of this year’s competition, made the rounds to reconnect with many of the local and far-flung painters she has known from her own tours of the plein-air circuit that inspired her to help bring one to Easton.
It has been a great and unexpectedly successful event. And one of the keys to that success, besides the beautiful land-and-seascapes that provide painterly inspiration, is one word I’ve heard repeatedly from artists who come back year after year, or others from transcontinental distances who return occasionally to a place they fondly remember. The word is hospitality.

Plein Air Artist, Fairley Lewis

Many of the painters we encountered at Meet the Artists congregated in the various gardens on the grand estate, owned by Lisa and Tim Wyman, including one that encompasses a pub rebuilt to 17th-century specifications but which provided air-conditioned relief from the sweltering midafternoon heat otherwise leavened only by shade or a breeze off the water. Fairley Lewis of Springfield, Missouri, making his Plein Air Easton debut, said he made the trip because “this is a famous event that everybody who does plein air knows about.”
We asked Christopher Leeper or Confield, Ohio, making his second trip to Plein Air Easton – his first since 2019 – if he had chosen his spot along Skipton Creek for its shade. He smiled and said, “Mostly I just liked the view.”
Abby Ober of St. Michaels, who has competed in a dozen other festivals from Florida to Pennsylvania, was making her Plein Air Easton debut. She was painting a landscape perspective of the estuary and trees on the opposite shore.
Far across the gardens and an open expanse, one painter stood alone, capturing the view where Skipton Creek and Wye River funnel into each other – with a portion of Wye Island in a corner of her canvas. Olena Babak was making her ninth pilgrimage to Plein Air Easton. What brings her back so many times from Maine? “I love the beautiful scenery here. But I also appreciate that they do the best job in treating the artists – always making you feel special.” Babak cites as evidence a time when her car broke down after the long drive from Maine and a volunteer said, “Just hand me the keys and go paint. And it got fixed” – while Olena painted.
As we settled with cool drinks into comfortable outdoor sofas for two, watching the sheep grazing their way from one side of the lawn to the other, we watched the artists, one by one bringing their paintings to the tent where they would be displayed briefly, just before a buyer takes one home with them. Among those that sold early that evening was one by Plein Air Easton first-time Lewis. It fetched his price of $1,200. That was the same price as PAE regular Jill Basham of Trappe got for her “Wye Riverview.” In just his second PAE appearance, Leeper of Ohio sold his “River View with Oak” for $1,600.
One of the true veterans of the festival out-of-towners, Sills was among the last to mount his painting under the tent. He priced his “Across the River” at $2,200. Before it was marked “sold,” we left to pick up our bright orange bag filled with gourmet entrees, sides, dessert and wine.
Besides taking care of the festival artists, the Avalon Foundation also takes care of its guests.
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Former winners of Plein Air Easton first, second and third place awards, along with artist choice winners and other featured alumni painters, have been invited to paint during this 20th anniversary PAE. Their works will be exhibited for sale at the Eastern Shore Land Conservatory at 114 S. Washington St., Suite 101. The show opens Wednesday, July 17, 6-8 p.m., and remains up through July 19.
Other happenings this week include the “Paint Tilghman” exhibit and sale, Monday, July 15; “Happy Hour Paint-In” featuring costumed actors from The Factory, Tuesday, July 16; “Local Color” demos by PAE artists Tim Beall and Charles Newman, Thursday, July 18; Collectors Preview Party, Friday, July 19; Quick Draw and Next Generation Painting competitions, Saturday, July 20; competition judge Nancy Tankersley’s discussion of her winning selections for Plein Air Easton 2024, pleinaireaston.com/calendar.
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

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Easton Art Galleries Host Plein Air Shows by Steve Parks

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On Plein Air Easton/s opening night, July 12, Trippe Gallery celebrates with its “Variations 3.0: 1 Photograph, 15 Painters” exhibit and party. This third annual “Variation,” like its predecessors, is in part a contest involving both artists and appreciators. Fifteen painters participating in the Plein Air festival create their own interpretations of a single photo challenge presented by gallery owner and photographer Nanny Trippe. Viewers compete in matching the artist to his or her painting and then vote for a people’s choice winner.
“Mingle with the artists,” Trippe says, adding that the opening night “party starts here.”
The 15 artists who will paint their own variations on the photo include some who have been in most of the previous 19 Plein Air Easton festivals. They are, alphabetically, Olena Babak, Jill Basham, Beth Bathe, Zufar Bikbov, David Diaz, Vlad Duchev, Stephen Haynes, Charlie Hunter, Len Mizerek, Diane DuBois Mullaly, Elise Phillips, Crista Pisano, Cynthia Rosen, Nancy Tankersley and Mary Veiga. The first “Variation” came about during the 2020 COVID shutdown when the only public event was a show and sale of paintings in the Talbottown space that was formerly the News Center bookstore and gift shop.
A few doors south from Trippe on Harrison Street, Spiralis Gallery, which shares space with Zebra Gallery, opens its “Vistas and Viewpoints” show on First Friday, July 5, featuring interpretive landscapes by Larry Horowitz, Leslie Lumen, Kerream Jones, Francis Eck and James Stephen Terrell.
In adjoining rooms, Zebra has welcomed three new artists with exhibits ranging from Gabriel Lehman’s delightfully colorful paintings, which are essentially children’s-book illustrations of fairies and “real” kids in fanciful settings, to Adam Himoff’s patterned-face oil portraits “Plain Sight” and “She Looked Right Through Me,” among others. Golsa Golchini completes the threesome with mixed-media constructions, including “Knock Knock,” a document displayed within a frame on which a woodpecker is hammering away and “The Snow Shortcut” enveloping skiers riding a three-dimension avalanche downhill. Both, weirdly fascinating.

Kevin Fitzgerald “Ocean Nightfall”

Heading further south on Harrison, just past the Avalon Theater, the Troika Gallery renews its popular “Fabulous Forgeries” format with paintings by member artists creating paintings inspired by – “after” is the word – of various masters with photos of the original masterpieces posted next to their “forgeries.” That show runs before and after the Plein Air fortnight, along with Kevin Fitzgerald’s “Points of Departure II” exhibit of horizon-view land-and-seascapes.

Betty Huang “Splendor of Provence”

On Goldsborough, between Washington and Harrison streets, Studio B Art Gallery hosts its First Friday salon-style open house July 5, featuring new paintings by previous Plein Air Easton winners and participants in this year’s event, as well as paintings by Bernard Dellario and Studio B owner Betty Huang who just returned from France, where they applied their brushes in capturing Provence landscapes. On July 16, Dellario leads a live painting demonstration in floral still life for those who’d like to learn the technique or who just enjoy seeing how it’s done.

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For this 20th anniversary Plein Air Easton, Nancy Tankersley serves as awards judge of the festival, now managed by the Avalon Foundation.

Tankersley, who founded Plein Air Easton two decades ago this month in partnership with the Academy Art Museum and Al Bond, then Easton’s economic development director who now leads the Avalon Foundation, brings her founding partners together again 20 years later.


Academy Art Museum opened its “Reflections: Nancy Tankersley” exhibit in the upstairs landing gallery, running through July 28, which bookends, calendar-wise, 2024 Plein Air Easton. Her art talk late last month revealed her reasons for choosing these particular reflections on her career – not only as an artist but as plein-air enthusiast, promoter and co-founder. Before 2004, such painting, historically associated with French art painted outdoors, was popular mostly in this part of the world along the West Coast.

Tankerley encountered the regional phenomenon first at Carmel, California, in 2004, and brought the idea to Easton and to Bond, who was seeking attractions in the summertime that might lure tourism to Easton rivaling the hugely successful Waterfowl Festival in November. It took only a few years to catch on, and Plein Air Easton is now regarded as one of the premiere events on the plein-air circuit.

Painters who come from all over the United States and other countries find that they can sell their artworks even before the paint is dry. It’s practically a Plein Air Easton trademark. From day-two’s “Meet the Artists” painting-and-purchase frenzy to the closing-night sales and festival awards, you can sniff the aroma of oil-on-canvas as prospective buyers are warned that they can look but not touch still-wet paint. It’s the closest that fine-art painting comes to matching the spontaneity of live performing arts.

Tankerseley’s “Reflections” attempts but never quite achieves that spontaneity, although a few of her most recent 2024 oils in this show gave me a still-drying whiff. Of course, you’re not allowed to touch them anyway. “Old Partners” (2024), portraying friends out for a leisurely crabbing-by-boat expedition – laughing and likely sharing old stories – practically reeked of fresh paint when I took it in. Or was it just my imagination? I don’t think so.

Several other paintings were chosen, it seems, to show the geographical extent of Tankersley’s plein-air experience, ranging from 2015’s “Curacas Ball” at Plein Air Curacao, South America, to “The End of the Island,” painted at 2019’s Plein Air Easton’s “Tilghman Island Paint-Out” at midday.

You’ll also see decades-apart Tankersley self-portraits, from her current home and studio on Aurora Street, still evoking fresh oil scents, to her first studio in Arlington, Virginia, in 1990. No such sniffs. One of my favorites comes from the mouth of what defines our region: “Bound for Baltimore” depicts in large-frame oil the view of Bay meets Ocean as you approach by automobile one of the apertures of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in far southeast Virginia. I vividly recall feeling on my first crossing that we might drive directly into the ocean before the enveloping tunnel ahead became apparent. Still-life drama in oil.

For this 20th Plein Air Easton, Tankersley serves as awards judge of the festival, managed by the Avalon Foundation.
Gallery Happenings During Plein Air Easton
“Reflections: Nancy Tankersley,” through July 28, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St.
“Fabulous Forgeries” and Kevin Fitzgerald, through July 29, Troika Gallery, 9 S. Harrison St.
New artists at Zebra and Spiralis galleries, through Aug. 18, 5 N. Harrison St.
“Variations 3.0,” opening night July 12, Trippe Gallery, 23 N. Harrison St.
First Friday Salon, July 5; still-life demo, July 16, Studio B, Goldsborough St.Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic and editor now living in Easton.

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