Wholly Hopkins
22 Johns Hopkins Magazine • Winter 2011
Museums
Zelda the painter
W
hen Laura Somenzi came to Johns Hopkins University in fall 2009, she had no idea she was going to continue the university’s impromptu relationship with one of the 20th century’s most infamous celebrity couples. The history of art major from Colorado had never seen the visual art created by the wife in that couple. All she knew was that as the recipient of a Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship, she would have the opportunity to conduct humanities research that would lead to an exhibition of some sort. The results of her two years of work can be seen in Zelda Fitzgerald: Choreography in Color at Evergreen Museum & Library. “I really wanted to present Zelda as an independent, artistic entity,” Somenzi says of the exhibition. “I wanted to show how she approached artwork on a theoretical level and also how she was able to use art to create an independent identity for herself, distinct from her husband. She was a dancer, she was a painter, she was a writer, [and] how she used art was a distinct way to redefine herself continuously.” Her husband, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, became a defining Jazz Age figure thanks to 1920’s This Side of Paradise and 1925’s The Great Gatsby. But Zelda’s life and identity were intimately wrapped up in his fame. “One of the paradoxes about her glamorous role as a flapper is that it gave her a freedom and a lot of liberty just to be herself,” Somenzi says. “The flapper was sexually liberated, but at the same time it was only a means to get married. So once she’s married, it’s over, and she becomes Scott’s wife. But she’s also a writer, so there’s an artistic competition, and she had to find her own identity and reappropriate herself.” Youth, beauty, talent, fame, scandal, alcoholism, falls from grace, madness, early deaths at 44 (him) and 47 (her)—if there is a celebrity couple more definitive of 20th-century America than F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, tabloid journalists and culture critics have yet to find them. Zelda’s fame, however, has only recently been examined on the merits of her own output. Nancy Milford’s best-seller Zelda: A Biography kick-started a reexamination of Fitzgerald’s creative output following its 1970 publication. And it was around that time that Evergreen House acquired seven of Fitzgerald’s drawings, six of which hang in Somenzi’s exhibition.
Homewood Photography / Will Kirk
T. Voekler
in tandem with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to raise seed oysters in floating contraptions then help 200 other families raise them on beds in Virginia’s rivers. But his urban experiment is another animal entirely. Inside the greenhouse, he must monitor water conditions, such as acidity, bacteria, and nitrate levels, so that the 300 fish he will soon raise in four 250-gallon tanks remain healthy. Water laden with bacteria and waste from the fish tanks will be filtered out in a separate tank and used for compost. What’s left of the wastewater will be mixed with new bacteria. That brew then will be used to nurture herbs and vegetables in two 18-foot-long “grow beds” that will float in a small pond. Even though that all may sound appealingly symbiotic, with the waste of one food system used to feed another, Love still has to “One way to know how figure out how to make the workhealthy the fish you’re ings of the greenhouse, which on loan from the city of Baltieating is is to raise it ismore, sustainable. He’ll likely have yourself.” to contend with urban issues like insects, mice, roaming foxes, and vandals. The size of the project is hardly imposing. Love wanted to make sure it didn’t scare people off so many would follow his lead. “I wanted this to be large enough to be impressive, but small enough that one person could run it,” Love says. There will be more than enough work for him to do, not to mention a litany of questions he’ll have to deal with on a daily basis: Will energy costs to heat and cool the operation make it too pricey to grow the food? Will the food be raised cheaply enough to make it attractive to growers at home and in neighborhood groups? (The food produced in the Cylburn greenhouse will be donated to local charities.) What kinds of food for the fish can be garnered in a sustainable way? The Center for a Livable Future is planning tours at the greenhouse for college students, teachers, and researchers. Faculty members and student volunteers will be encouraged to use it as a lab. But even before it was up and running, the greenhouse/farm had already gotten a steady stream of attention. Urban farmers and those who want to be have trekked to Love’s operation. Many express a wish to do what he’s doing. Some offer to volunteer. Some come for an even simpler reason, he says, even though it doesn’t exactly apply to his project: “They want to reconnect with the soil.” —MA