Up.St.Art Annapolis Winter 2014

ART+CULTURE+LIFE

ANNAPOLIS

WINTER 2014

Section of Mural at Park Place.

Street artist,Tikka Meszaros from Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Photo courtesy of Alison Harbaugh.

Memories make the nicest gifts

g ive t he n i ces t gif ts this ho lid a y se a so n

THE ANNAPOLIS COLLECTION GALLERY 55 west street 21401 www.AnnapolisCollection.com 410-280-1414 on gallery row in historic annapolis

CONTENTS

CANVAS

14

Notes From the Bottom Layer

By Julia Gibb

Volume 1 | Issue 1 ART+CULTURE+LIFE

WAVES

20

ANNAPOLIS

Pressing Strings

By Tom Levine

SNAP

26

The Monochrome World of Greg Schmigel

By Andrea Stuart

CONCEPT

32

No Strings Attached

WINTER 2014

By Matthew Buckley-Smith

SUP

38

Farm to Stage at Metropolitan

By Zoë Nardo

INK

44

Alive on City Dock

By Jonathan Stone

MOTION

50

A Change of Repertoire

By Emily Karcher

MODE

56

Time Capsule of Treasure

By Tom Levine

EMOTE

62

The Theater of the Absurd Omar Style

By Desiree Smith-Daughety

HOOD

68

Steel a Melody for Me

78

Everything Flows Downstream

By Patty Speakman Hamsher

By Patty Speakman Hamsher

AGO

74 8 | Winter 2014

Carr’s Beach

By Janice Hayes

COVER Camo Cat

by Jeff Huntington 2012 Magazine clippings on canvas 60 x 52 inches Courtesy of Porter Contemporary, NYC Photo courtesy of Alison Harbaugh INSIDE COVER Mural

by Tikka Meszaros Soa Paolo, Brazil Photo by Alison Harbaugh

Pub Note or ad

Mixed Media installation “The Dragon Lady” Paint, film & sound

by Jeff Huntington & Joseph Karr upstart-annapolis.com | 9

Decadent | Delicious | Daily Lunch | Dinner | Sunday Brunch

193B Main Street - Downtown Annapolis

DRY85.com

443-214-5171

Fine American Portraiture & Figures Oil | Pastel | Fusain Por traits by Moe

Moe Delaitre

Annapolis, Maryland Ussy sur Marne, France

ART+CULTURE+LIFE

ANNAPOLIS

Publisher & Creative Director Jimi Davies jimihaha@gmail.com Editorial Director Andrea Stuart andreastu@gmail.com Copy Editor Kerri Marvel Associate Editors Katrina Boldt Katherine Matuszak Contributing Editors Matthew Buckley-Smith Julia Gibb Janice Hayes Emily Karcher Tom Levine Zoë Nardo Tammy WINTER 2014 Neal Desiree Smith-Daughety Patty Speakman Hamsher Jonathan Stone Art Director Cory Deere cdeere@gmail.com

Contributing Photographers David Burroughs Rachel Fry Alison Harbaugh Jeff Huntington Emily Karcher Joe Karr Russell Cather Levi Larry Melton Greg Schmigel Fashion Director Rose DiFerdinando Advertising Jimi Davies Jimihaha@gmail.com Tom Levine Tomlevine3@gmail.com Melanie Loughry melanie.loughry@gmail.com Social Media Directors Kaitlin Stewart Monica Peterson

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UpstartAnnapolis

Mailing Address: Up.St.Art Annapolis P.O. Box 4162 Annapolis, MD 21403 410.212.4242 SUBMISSIONS: For article submissions, email proposal to andreastu@gmail.com. Up.St.Art Annapolis Magazine is published quarterly. Address: P.O. Box 4162, Annapolis, MD 21403. Subscription rate: $40, payable in advance. Single copies $4.99. Back issues, if available, $15 (includes shipping and handling). POSTMASTER send address changes to Up.St.Art Annapolis, P.O. Box 4162, Annapolis, MD 21403. Entire contents © 2014 by Up.St.Art Annapolis Magazine™ unless otherwise noted on specific articles. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is strictly prohibited without Publisher permission.

12 | Winter 2014

annapolissmokehouse.com

CANVAS

NOTES FROM THE BOTTOM LAYER

By Julia Gibb

J

eff Huntington’s paintings have a tendency to feel like portraits, even when his subjects are flora and fauna.

Jeff is my husband. We have been friends for 23 years: since we were undergraduates at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. From this intimate perspective, I can tell you that the path of his artistic obsessions can be winding

14 | Winter 2014

and sometimes dark, littered with images of shimmering beauty and crushing heartbreak. From sensuously rendered paintings of birds, flowers, and tropical fish, to portraits of young victims of the Khmer Rouge, he paints with unflagging single-mindedness and imparts his subjects with scrupulous care. Always, he returns to the human face.

`

`

upstart-annapolis.com | 15

CANVAS

Photo by David Burroughs

CANVAS

Jeff ’s earliest work, completed when he was eight years old, comprised a series: Portraits of a Toucan. Other series followed, including painted copies of Star Wars trading cards, copies of Old Master paintings, hundreds of plein air (outdoor) landscapes, and always, portraits. He is a compulsive counter and maker of lists, inclined to keep records of everything: from his vast body of work, to books read and birds sighted. His series of paintings, like his lists, seem to confer equal importance to all of his subjects; flowers are put on display in a way that is just as confrontational as the fragmented human faces representing the confusion of a mind addled by Alzheimer’s. His subjects gaze with dead-eyed stares or unsettling expressions of malicious glee. Deceptively beautiful, these paintings are eye candy that leaves the viewer with an uneasy cerebral aftertaste.

When I met Jeff in 1991, he had been painting for over a decade. Though he struggled in school, he eventually earned a General Education Development (GED) credential, created a massive portfolio of paintings, and applied to the Corcoran, where he was awarded a partial scholarship. Having found fertile ground for artistic growth, Jeff was an ambitious student with a remarkable ability to rally others to participate in extramural popup gallery projects.

At the Corcoran, Jeff became an assistant to artist and teacher William Newman, who trained him in Old Master painting techniques. This relationship would prove to be the foundation for his future painting. In addition to the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree Jeff earned at the Corcoran, he holds a Master

16 | Winter 2014

of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he attended on a full scholarship, an honor only bestowed on one student per year.

Drawn to New York City in 1998, Jeff worked as an art handler while continuing to paint prolifically. His job gave him access to the behind-thescenes art world. “How else do you get direct contact with all levels of the 'Art World Pyramid?’” Jeff said over a recent breakfast at the Metropolitan Kitchen and Lounge. “You have

period of depression. Annapolis didn’t seem to be a friendly home for his style of painting; most local art seemed to focus on the town’s maritime character.

Two years later, Jeff created an energizing workplace for himself, opening Jahru Studio, where he currently offers screen-printing and design services. In 2011, Jeff met Jimi Davies, and Jahru Studio also became home base for JaH-HaHa Collaborative Art ( Jeff Alan Huntington + Jimi HaHa). The “artners” spent the next two years producing hundreds of works, including

when he attended Omar Said's one-man play The Pear Tree, performed in a then-empty storefront owned by Brian and Sarah Cahalan, right next to their café, 49 West. He was deeply moved, not only by the electrifying performance, but also by the rapt attentiveness of the audience. The same night, Jeff was offered a show at 49 West. With a newfound fondness for the local characters that flock to the café, he set out to paint 49 portraits of these kindred spirits, often incorporating costumes and poses from the work of

to be the scum at the bottom of the pyramid.” He became animated as he quickly sketched, explaining how an art handler interacts with each tier (see pyramid graphic).

Jeff worked for such blue-chip art collectors as Marc and Livia Straus, maintaining their vast art collection. While attending one of the Straus’ parties, Jeff met artist Tim Rollins, who is known for his collaboration with at-risk students, collectively known as Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival).

Jeff ’s move to Annapolis in 2002 proved difficult. Homesick for urban life, he entered a

mixed media paintings, murals, and limited-edition prints.

Through this partnership, Jeff discovered that Annapolis had a burgeoning community of talented artists. Fortified by new friendships, he became involved in local outreach programs, mentoring young artists and teaching collaborative art with Jimi. He is an adjunct professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, where he continues the lineage of Bill Newman's teachings along with his own style of collage painting and collaboration.

Jeff ’s latest project, 49@49, was conceived last September

Old Masters, but sometimes using the subject’s own garb and accessories.

Though it is sometimes hard for Jeff to articulate just why he finds the human face such a compelling subject, this time, the answers come easily.

“It’s all about reaching out.

It’s like the Daniel Johnston drawing that says ‘Hi, How Are You?’ The big art world is full of cliques. The Annapolis art community is about artists helping other artists,” says Jeff. He hopes that 49@49 will help to focus attention on the vibrant, if sometimes hidden, art community in Annapolis. █

CANVAS

He is currently represented by Porter Contemporary in New York City; Reyes + Davis in Washington, D.C.; Gallery 1301 in Baltimore, MD; and The Annapolis Collection Gallery. Visit www.jeffhuntington.com.

Xenia Cage 2014 acrylic and oil on canvas 34 x 30 inches courtesy of Gallery 1301, Baltimore, MD photo courtesy of David Burroughs

West Coffeehouse, Winebar & Gallery in Annapolis, MD.

Mandela 2014 magazine clippings and acrylic on masonite 34 x 30 inches courtesy of Culver McCall and Porter Contemporary, NYC photo courtesy of the artist

q Solo show at Gallery 1301 in Baltimore, MD w Group show organized by ART in Embassies at the Ambassador’s Residence in Manila, Philippines e Solo show in Sao Paolo, Brazil r Solo show at 49

Strummer 2014 acrylic and oil on masonite 34 x 30 inches courtesy of Gallery 1301, Baltimore, MD photo courtesy of the artist

FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS INCLUDE:

Harriet Tubman and the idea of the code quilts associated with the Underground Railroad 2014 magazine clippings and acrylic on canvas 34 x 30 inches courtesy of Gallery 1301, Baltimore, MD photo courtesy of Alison Harbaugh

upstart-annapolis.com | 17

get to

THE POINT

410.544.5448 | thepointcrabhouse.com 7 0 0 M i l l C r e e k R oa d A r n o l d , M a r y l a n d 2 1 0 1 2

49westcoffeehouse.com

WAVES

I

f it’s a Thursday evening and you’re in Annapolis, it’s a pretty sure bet that you’ll find Jordan Sokel hard at

work. Same place he’s been, pretty much every Thursday, for the past seven years.

Unlike many of us who would chafe at the routine, Sokel is a happy man. He’s at the Rams Head on West Street, playing his guitar and harmonica and singing and just having a good old rock ‘n roll time. His band, Pressing Strings, landed this gig in 2007 and Sokel is the last of the original group still standing. The current lineup is one of the big reasons he is smiling. The band has trimmed to a trio: guitar, bass, and drums…and they sound great.

Photo by Cory Deere

20 | Winter 2014

Pressing Strings

Bassist Nick Welker joined about three years ago after he and Sokel met at a party. Sokel invited him to sit in with an earlier configuration of Pressing Strings. The band had never had a bassist, but when they finished Sokel asked him to join the band.

Welker had no idea he had been in an audition. He smiled and said “yes.”

Brandon Bartlett, the drummer, grew up with a father who played drums. He started playing when he was five. And as he remembers it, “I was better than him by the time I was seven.” Twenty five years later, he’s still at it. He’s honed his skills in NYC working for Niles Rodgers and studying at the Drummers Collective.

And after a year with Pressing Strings, I’m guessing that he’s still better than his father.

I first heard Pressing Strings perform at the downstairs tavern at the Rams Head. When I walked in close to eleven-o-clock, the room was packed and the crowd was dancing and I was hooked. It was one of those

WAVES

By Tom Levine Photos by Alison Harbough

upstart-annapolis.com | 21

moments when you happen upon a band that immediately gets your attention. The material is almost all original, words and music courtesy of Sokel who is a singer/ songwriter at heart. His songwriting and musical tastes have evolved over the last seven years as Pressing Strings has remolded itself. The touchstones are American roots music: funk, blues, soul, R&B, folk, and jazz. And if you think you occasionally hear a bit of that infectious off-beat rhythm of reggae, you’re right. But while the band is a touch of all of these things, in the end they are none of them. Their sound is their own. Even when they are playing a cover, they own it. A song may be half over before you realize, “Oh yeah! That’s a Paul Simon song.”

WAVES 22 | Winter 2014

The night before the Rams Head show, I went to hear Sokel perform solo at Dry 85 on Main Street, a room that gives a nod to American whiskies as much as Pressing Strings does to American music.

The room was decidedly less energetic than the Rams Head, which was as it should be for a singer with only his acoustic guitar and his harmonica. It was a joy to hear Sokel sing. His voice was melodic with a hint of rasp, his songs soulful and real.

As good as Sokel was as a solo artist, I wasn’t prepared for the plugged-in trio at the Rams Head. The sound was full, the music rocked, and the audience couldn’t sit still. Nobody was politely sipping fine whiskey. They were knocking back shots and dancing out of their shoes.

Bartlett’s drumming was always right where it should be. With Welker’s bass they provided a solid bottom for Sokel’s guitar and voice. They made the kind of music that gets you bouncing before you know what hit you. The audience was theirs. As Thursday evening became Friday morning, nobody was shouting out drunken requests for their favorite Jimmy Buffett/Eagles/Fleetwood Mac song and nobody was ready to leave. In his song, “Live Wire (Gold Standard)” Sokel sings to us (a bit defiantly), “I’m going to test the room with original tunes.” Now, after seven years of working his music, he can finally smile and stop testing the room.

His band is spot on and the audience is loving it. █

Photo by Dan Gillespie

Photo by Jamie Horrigan

WAVES

Photo by Dan Gillespie

upstart-annapolis.com | 23

The nature of art is the art of nature.

410.266.8586

stewartlandscape.com

SNAP

26 | Winter 2014

The

MONOCHROME WORLD of GREG SCHMIGEL

By Andrea Stuart

Photos by Greg Schmigel

1986. The sky weighs heavily upon a water-stained concrete barrier.

Fingers of moss stalk it from the opposite side, adding the only discernible color to a monochromatic street line. Geometrically banal buildings sulk in their stillness while passersby carry wilted postures, some of whom don black garments draped over slumped shoulders that are loosely strung to kyphotic spines. Entering East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie creates a diluted sense of humanity, like walking into 1940s Germany, where the scent of oppression loiters and desperation is seen in sterile facial expressions.

G

reg Schmigel, then a junior in high school, was ankle deep in an overcast encounter, just yards from the kaleidoscopic “Free World,� only he was anything but dismissive of the experience. On

the contrary, he seems to have extracted something ethereal that has colorized his current black and white street photography.

A graphic designer and photographer, Schmigel is attracted to cultural textures. upstart-annapolis.com | 27

SNAP

As happy accidents go, his first experiences with mobile street photography began with a cavalier iPhone 2G purchase.

Inconspicuous and gritty, the iPhone became Schmigel’s preferred travel companion.

He found himself digging for his camera phone each time the streets moved him. “At the amateur stage, I tried different things, learning from books and friends. Then, I was introduced to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s street photography,” says Schmigel.

Although he had previously admired Garry Winogrand’s street photography and had indulged in hobby photography with his Canon, he didn’t develop a relationship with the art form until a friend of his, Ricky Carioti, a Pulitzer Prizewinning photojournalist with the Washington Post—whose work Schmigel respects—suggested

28 | Winter 2014

that Schmigel become acquainted with CartierBresson’s photographs.

A denizen of the world, Schmigel harbors appreciation for diversity. To him, there is something about Cartier-Bresson’s work—the juxtaposition between sincere depictions of tragedy, symbols of hope, and seemingly mundane moments that take on three-dimensional qualities through emotions born from right timing and angles.

Street photography has allowed Schmigel to become aware of his surroundings in a way they didn’t exist before.

His eyes, able to focus on the peripheral world as clearly as that which is mesial, may as well be periscopes capable of discerning moods, grains of truth, and emotive qualities in otherwise ordinary scenarios.

Inconspicuous and gritty, the iPhone became Schmigel’s preferred travel companion.

“When I began snapping shots with my phone in 2008, I just thought I’d take a few casual pictures,” says Schmigel. And then, something unexpected happened. “That’s when I became more serious about composition, light, and trying to compose meaningful photographs on the street.”

His previous camera, the Canon EOS 30D, became all but exiled as the iPhone made more and more appearances.

Part of the appeal is in how the palm-sized device can seem unobtrusive in comparison to the colossal cameras most photographers use. Where a subject might feel bullied by a telephoto or macro lens, subjects respond favorably (and candidly) to the petite, familiar, and relatable mobile device.

“Some photographers use mobile cameras as discretional devices, but I hold it like a camera,” he confesses. “There is truth to the fact that you are able to get in close to people on the street and they don’t realize. But the edge for me is that I still treat it like a camera. For me, it is about the comfort of using it.” What street photography has really done for Schmigel is open a dialogue

says humbly while speaking about his propensity toward linguistics. “However, if you ask me to recite the periodic table of elements, you’ll never get it out of me.” A chuckle escapes him.

There are recurrent splashes of levity as he shares memories from his time in Belgium. “I used to ride my bike 12 miles to school every day, rain or shine.

It’s just how they did things,” he says. In the winter, armies of droplets would splatter on the umbrella he held overhead while the remaining drops bypassed the portable shelter, creating a soggy mess of his exposed clothing. When he arrived home, his favorite dish was often awaiting him: stamppot, a comforting medley of mashed potatoes, endives, and other vegetables, a Dutch staple.

“Little things like that I hold dear to me.”

Schmigel’s photography is perhaps born from moments like these, eschewing gratuitous and tailored concepts, and instead producing bite-sized snapshots of life, fermenting moments that become at once breathless and eternal—eliminating the need for a prologue.

Schmigel recently put his mobile shutterbug skills to the test when he covered the 2014 Silopanna Music Festival.

Nervous at first, he treated the experience like street photography, unsure of how it would unfold. “I remember being in the pit when the bigger bands were playing. I’m standing next to a guy with a 300mm lens, and we’re doing the same thing,” says Schmigel.

“It was rewarding when he turned to me, gave me a head nod, and said, ‘Do your thing, Man.’”

Running on the philosophy of “connected photography,” Schmigel continues to open new lines of communication between his camera and subjects, encouraging others to do the same. “You don’t need a reason or a certain type of camera to take a picture,” he adds. “Chase Jarvis said, ‘The best camera is the one that’s with you.’” █ Schmigel ’s works will appear alongside the work of Andy Warhol, Jules Aarons, Larry Fink and others during The Social Medium exhibition at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA, from October 31, 2014 through April 19, 2015.

To view the works of this artist, please visit www. justwhatisee.com or follow the artist on Instagram @justwhatig.

SNAP

between him and his subjects.

Perusing Schmigel’s projects (namely “Just What I See” and “We’re All Strangers”) feels a bit like reading a memoir written in pencil on the back of a smudged napkin, previously tucked in with pocket lint before eventually being matted, framed, and hung in a gallery beside Andy Warhol and Baron Wolman: the inane and carnal filaments of life marrying to make a perfectly comprehensible tapestry.

After his stay in Germany, Schmigel lived in Belgium for a year with a host family, who quickly became an extension of his paternal family. It didn’t take long before he learned the native tongue, eventually becoming fluent in Spanish and Dutch, as well as conversational in German and French. “I dabble in Italian, too,” he

upstart-annapolis.com | 29

Cosmopolitan

By Andrea Stuart with Tammy Neal

K

nitted with walls of ever-changing vignettes that flaunt the artistic influences of Stella Breen Franklin, One Petticoat Lane serves up a retro collection of inimitable consignment paraphernalia that speaks to the aesthete.

One Petticoat Lane came into fruition three years ago, its success partly attributed to Stella’s education in London, where she specialized in fashion and textiles. A former art educator and a paragon in the world of aesthetics, Stella possesses a discriminating eye for fashion and artifacts that transcend time, her passion for art having fortified a lucrative career as an expert purchaser, a responsibility she currently embraces as the owner of a chic boutique.

The name One Petticoat Lane was born from the reflection of London’s cosmopolitan flair, its function further inspired by the eco-consciousness practiced throughout Europe.

“In England, recycling and reusing items is a normal way of life,” says Stella. “It’s part of our culture. We’re also very interested in preserving the past; allowing history to become a part of our

30 | Winter 2014

by Design

future.” Annapolitans seem to agree with this eithos as demonstrated through their support of One Petticoat Lane; perhaps not so surprising for an ecologically burgeoning maritime town entrenched in its own historical nuances.

In keeping with these concepts, Stella has curated a sanctuary for distinctive pre-loved fashions and home accoutrements; designer items that seem immaterial due to their ability to survive trends.

“Everyone has their own style; it goes beyond what’s popular,” she says.

One Petticoat Lane’s vintage furniture and perennial home pieces are composites of historical context; each one tells a story.

“All the pieces in my store are embedded in art history in one way or another,” says Stella. Only here might you find a vintage stop sign inspired by Andy Warhol’s pop art alongside a handcrafted burl wood coffee table. “The shop is eclectic with a modern twist and extremely

interesting; it has a dynamic and very positive vibe,” adds Stella.

Perhaps more closely related to a museum than a shop, One Petticoat Lane is clearly designed to present a visual feast. In this way, it firmly integrates into the community, championing for artists and designers. One Petticoat Lane is keeping history and culture alive, and it’s doing so with panache. █

One Petticoat Lane

2 Annapolis St., Annapolis, MD 21401 410.541.6443 • onepetticoatlane.com

Original Oil Paintings by Jeff Huntington Black & White Photographs by David Hartcorn

See what happens when you combine artists, musicians, ďŹ re-breathers, actors, burlesque performers, raconteurs, iconoclasts, muses and great minds into two mediums of portraiture.

Available at 49 West Coffeehouse Winebar Gallery 49 West St. Annapolis, MD 21401 or at 49at49.com Proceeds benefit YWCA Annapolis $49 + shipping and handling

CONCEPT

32 | Winter 2014

W

hat Joe Knaggs and Peter Wolf did five years ago took more than guts. In 2009, at the pit of the recession, the two men left top executive positions at PRS (Paul Reed Smith) to open a business making artisanal guitars that retailed for about the price of a decent used car. Just a year later, in Frankfurt, Germany, the partners unveiled three original lines of instruments at the international trade show MusikMesse, and Knaggs Guitars became an industry reality.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED

By Matthew Buckley-Smith

Photos by Larry Melton

Today, Joe Knaggs is still happiest working in the shop. Peter Wolf spends much of his time there too, although he’s principally the business mind in the partnership. He commutes daily across the bay, from his home in Annapolis to Greensboro, where the guitars are made by a small, comradely team, each a former PRS employee. When I ask about the challenges they faced getting started in the early days, Wolf gives a clipped laugh and says, “It’s a long process from a couple pieces of wood to a guitar.” Or from a guitar to a guitar maker.

Knaggs grew up in Maryland, where his talents shone from early on. In middle school, teachers encouraged him to paint murals in the hallways, and in his free time he took pleasure in camping alongside local rivers and falling asleep to the

upstart-annapolis.com | 33

CONCEPT 34 | Winter 2014

Both Wolf and Knaggs like to say that the luthier left PRS because “eventually the painter wants to sign his own paintings,” but the truth is that the company was very nearly called Chesapeake Guitars. It was only at the prompting of the graphic designer Markus Kaes that Knaggs first considered branding the guitars with his own name.

The more one learns about Knaggs and Wolf, the more both men seem motivated not so much by hunger for personal glory as by devotion to an almost platonic ideal of beauty––both in the thing made and in the making of it. When asked about his long-term vision for the company, Wolf ’s aims are both high-minded and touchingly modest. “Twenty-five, thirty people,” he says, “that’s the goal. I personally would like to know everyone’s names, their children’s names, their girlfriends’ names.” What drives him today is the same thing that drove him as a salesman in Koblenz. “Taking something that nobody knows and turning it into something a lot of people know.” Knaggs, he believes, is a talent to bet the ranch on.

Asked whom he’d most like to see playing a Knaggs, Wolf is quick to name the artists who’ve already collaborated with the company. Most recently, they put out a limited-run, black-and-pink, Kenai guitar designed to the preferences of Steve Stevens, long-time guitarist for Billy Idol, and as Wolf says, “one of the greats.” But Wolf also insists, “I’m trying to look at younger players, female and male.”

Just this week, he’s going to hear a few of them play at the Metropolitan Kitchen and Lounge here in Annapolis. But he won’t rule out a couple desert island picks: “If Jeff Beck would pick up a Severn, maybe a Choptank,” he muses, naming two guitars from the Chesapeake series, “that would blow my mind. And Jimi’s not around anymore, but if he were, I would definitely give him a Severn.” █

...as by devotion to an almost platonic ideal of beauty––both in the thing made and in the making of it.

Peter Wolf & Joe Knaggs

CONCEPT

sound of running water. Even in boyhood, both Knaggs and Wolf identified themselves through music.

Although neither performs publicly as much as in the old days, Wolf is emphatic, “We can actually play those instruments he makes.”

All of Knaggs’ early loves intersect today in his sleek, comely instruments, each of which bears the indigenous name of a North American river–– with a whole line devoted to the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. But long before he was stamping headstocks with his own name, he cut his teeth constructing guitars for Paul Reed Smith. Over twenty-five years, Knaggs became a defining voice of design in that company, ultimately overseeing both R&D and Private Stock, the highest of the PRS highend. Knaggs even began putting together preliminary designs for his Chesapeake series, in hopes that it might become a special line at PRS. It never did, but Smith graciously let his old friend take the Chesapeake plans with him when he left. Those plans later became the first guitars to be produced under the Knaggs name.

Wolf came to the business from a different background––and a different country. Born in Koblenz, Germany, he grew up in a house full of musicians, where he learned to enjoy classical music, jazz, and of course rock ’n’ roll. Having completed his compulsory military service––including, apparently, a stint intercepting Cold War radio transmissions from the Soviets––he played in local bands while getting a handle on the distribution end of the music business. In 2003, he moved to the U.S., eventually becoming Director of Sales and Marketing at PRS, where Knaggs had been working since the early days. The two men learned that they shared an enthusiasm for soccer as well as rock ’n’ roll, and eventually grew to be good friends. Along the way, Wolf says, “I realized who the real design force was in the company.”

upstart-annapolis.com | 35

MORE THAN JUST A T-SHIRT. SCREEN PRINTING & DESIGN

|

ANNAPOLIS, MD

|

BLKANKR.COM

A jewelry and accessories boutique 12 Annapolis street www.sparrowcollection.com

SUP

38 | Winter 2014

FARM TO

S TA G E AT M E T RO P O L I TA N

By Zoë Nardo Photos by Emily Karcher

group of colleagues sit under a white umbrella and cheers their glasses to it finally being five o’clock. Just like that, our attention shifts from the hustle on West Street back to the relaxing atmosphere surrounding us. “It’s really all about serving good food and letting people have fun and catering to the locals,” Jody says as we mosey along the deck past the two large cabana-style couches. We weave around the tables and make our way down the dark-stained wood stairs to the second floor.

A

I’m on the only rooftop bar this side of the Eastport Bridge. The sun is trumping clouds as I’m brushing wind-blown hair out of my eyes to peer over the 3-footglass wall surrounding the deck. “The rooftop deck is everyone’s favorite place,” says Jody Danek, one of the owners of Metropolitan Kitchen & Lounge. “It’s the only place to get breezes like this.”

The breeze isn’t the only thing that sets Metropolitan apart from other Annapolis restaurants. Jody and Gavin Buckley, the second owner, wanted to create a place that exudes comfort. “We’re about arts and entertainment, we’re about good local food. And we are about music,” he says, pointing to a group of people posing with one of the painted chicken sculptures. “And we are about community involvement.”

The Annapolis community has Jody and Gavin to thank for the painted chicken sculptures.

Two years ago they decided to bring more art to the streets of Annapolis.

He proudly stares at the people gathering around the bird outside of the O’Callaghan Hotel. “It’s amazing how many people get their picture taken with them.”

upstart-annapolis.com | 39

Chef Steven

SUP

He stares down West Street; it’s a nostalgic area for Jody. He’s worked on this street for over 20 years. He met Gavin while he was waiting tables. They became friends, dated girls that lived in the same house and then in 1999 opened their first restaurant, Tsunami. All on West Street.

“We were waiters and bartenders and servers and I managed at Rams Head and I was like ‘If I keep working this hard, I’m going to open my own restaurant,’” Jody explained, and so they did.

All their restaurants have an ambiance focused on similar facets of entertainment. Jody shrugs and says that it just makes sense. “It’s a convergence of all of our interests.

I love music, good food and art, and so does Gavin.”

There aren’t televisions anywhere. I ask Jody why that is when Steven Grant, the executive chef, greets me as he exits the kitchen. He stands alongside the smooth wooden bar that spans the length of the room. “They purposely really try to promote the arts,” he answers quickly and

40 | Winter 2014

“We’re about arts and entertainment, we’re about good local food. And we are about music.”

Tom

showcase their work on the walls.

“Art programs are decreasing in size and are not relevant anymore, so what we do is allow them places to hang their art.” Artists are typically local. Most artists are solo but others come from local schools, tattoo shops or nonprofits.

We all decide to head down the last flight of stairs to the first floor.

The rustic wood walls, original tile floor and folk music mixed with a little harmonica makes me feel at home. “That’s what I want people to feel like when they walk in,” Tom says. “It’s a community spot where friends, family, kids, just everyone is at home. Not a place where one type of person or certain people can hang out.”

Jody and Steven solidify plans to meet later on the boat as I exit.

I realize that Metropolitan is more than a restaurant; it’s a presence that brings Annapolis together, but also sets them apart █.

SUP

Jody & Gavin

then elaborates. “It’s true no matter where you go downtown there are big plasma-screen TVs. It’s cool and refreshing to come here where they have a better commitment to the arts.”

Steven is committed to the food. For the summer menu, he tried to create dishes using ingredients from local farmers. “By supporting local farmers, those dollars stay here in town,” he says. “We’re trying to stay as local as possible.”

He readjusts his hair, a bun at the top of his neck, and tells me where he purchases his ingredients.

One stop is the Anne Arundel County Farmers’ Market every Tuesday and Saturday. “It’s cool to talk to the farmer who said ‘I literally picked this yesterday and brought it to the market today.’”

He hopes through this menu he can reach out and make a connection with the locals.

“It’s tough sometimes, but at the same time it’s just about going that extra mile,” he says, beaming. “Hopefully our menu reflects that and people appreciate it.”

Jody and I go through a short hallway into another room.

It’s dark with few couches sporadically placed so that all have a view of the stage. While there is live music on the roof six nights a week, Jody tells me that the main acts perform here. Whether it’s live music, comedians, hypnotists, or karaoke, this is the place to find it.

The stage isn’t the only focal point of the second floor. Tom Hanna, the general manager who has joined our conversation, says every six weeks different artists

upstart-annapolis.com | 41

Photography + Filmmaking www.sugarfarmproductions.com

INK

44 | Winter 2014

Alive on City Dock

By Jonathan Stone Photos by Joe Karr

Then, we learned to capture the wind, to strain the perfume from the air, our ever-present playlist a cupboard full of the preserves from last year’s gooseberries. Do we want our art to be pure simulation? In the seventeenth century, if you couldn’t take your part in voice or instrument in the

music-making, you were rude, a bumpkin. Now a person who cannot discuss American Idol may find himself odd man out in a conversation.

Is this a desirable trajectory?

It seems we are willing to accept the intrusion of heavily commoditized technology into virtually every aspect of our

INK

T

he defining characteristic that has always made music uniquely beautiful among the arts is its evanescent quality. An arc of notes upon the air, tasted on the palette of the mind, then gone like windblown flowers, but leaving its trace in memory and desire.

upstart-annapolis.com | 45

INK 46 | Winter 2014

human interaction. (Marriage counselors report new complaints that partners compulsively check their devices during sex.)

For hundreds of thousands of years, music has been both the medium and insignia of our social cohesion. Now it is a force for social disintegration, each of us pushed into the digital consumerbubble of our own private 24-hour playlist. Every digital simulation replaces a human presence, and the possibility of mutual recognition in the shared “Gift of Art.” Given the gift of human embodiment, we passively accept the cheap copy. All of which is why I like to perform in the street, outside of every structure greedily clamoring to skim the gold off of art by filtering it through a cash register.

I play Samba, an art which starts under the copper sheen of a tropical sky, in the dust raised by the dancing feet of people who have nothing but can still raise this joy above their suffering, and ends, as Brazil opens like a flower to the world, through the transformation of a musical alchemy, in an art made of whispers, spider webs and moonlight. The money men called it Bossa Nova, which Sambistas despised as a mere marketing term. In Annapolis, it is worth roughly ten dollars an hour in the street.

One day, three years ago, I was playing at the Annapolis City Dock, sitting next to the Alex Haley statue. (It is regrettable that many Annapolitans I speak to seem to be unaware of the

significance of this statue, which marks the spot from which hundreds of thousands of human souls were sold into slavery.)

There are quite a few people here on this beautiful and busy Saturday. Off to one side, toward the back, three women are standing and listening. One is perhaps sixty and Caucasian, one is fortyish and Hispanic, and another beautiful girl of about seventeen, is black. This girl is moving gently in a way Americans do not know how to move, suggesting that her body knows everything there is to know about samba. She seems to be restraining an impulse—I know she would like to dance, so, over the microphone I suggest that she step to the center and show us what Samba really is when it’s at home on a Tuesday.

She is embarrassed and demurs, but her companions prevail upon her and she steps to the center.

I play classic Samba from the 1930s, Ary Barroso’s Aquarela do Brasil and other classics while, for about 20 minutes, with a posture like a candle flame, she makes her Samba; sweet, shy, composed, proud, and happy. It is good that I am not reading this music because I can barely see her through my tears. I am an aging white bohemian playing Afro-Brazilian music, while this miracle of a beautiful girl, whose ancestors could have been sold on this very spot, dances through the threshold of her womanhood, the unduplicateable gift of an embodied human moment. █

INK

“

Then, we learned to capture the wind, to strain the perfume from the air, our ever-present playlist a cupboard full of the preserves from last year’s gooseberries.

upstart-annapolis.com | 47

.

see this. hear this.

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MOTION

A CHANGE OF REPERTOIRE Annapolis Ballerina Ponders Her Ultimate Pas De Deux: Life after Dancing

By Emily Karcher

I

n a basement ballet studio at the Dance Academy in Severna Park, Margaret Hannah stands with her hands on her hips, a black shawl tied around her waist, counting beats to piano music. On a white wall nearby, a decal spelling “dream” beckons through simple swirls and calligraphy. Hannah’s blue eyes peer into the studio mirrors, her brows a bit furrowed. “Tendu, plié, sous-sus!” she shouts to the intermediate/advanced class of adolescent girls behind her, all in pink tights, black leotards, and classic hair

50 | Winter 2014

buns. Their legs equally lanky and muscular, they suck in their tummies, stretch their arms, and lift up onto their satin pointe shoes, all in unison. All with discipline, with focus, and with complete precision. Well, almost.

“They get so mad at themselves,” explains Hannah over coffee at 49 West on a bright morning in late June.

Having recently retired as a professional dancer, her words are reflective. “It’s very hard to teach teenage girls not to show anything emotion-wise. It’s very hard for dancers because when

Photos by Emily Karcher they mess up, they want to stop and think about what they did. You sometimes have to rehearse how to keep going because that’s what you have to do on stage.”

Whether art imitates life, or vice versa may be a clichéd debate. But for Annapolis ballerina Margaret Hannah, who at 28 has traded the stability of a career as a professional dancer for the unpredictability of life as a college student, the art of composure is perhaps more relevant than ever.

“I didn’t want people to be like, ’Oh, Margaret, it’s time,’” she chuckles, mimicking

a sideways whisper with a voice both lively and lyrical.

Humility aside, she says the decision to retire was agonizing, admitting she could have gladly danced professionally for at least three more years.

Watching her port de bras in lead roles of Swan Lake, the Nutcracker, or her last performance in Sleeping Beauty, it might be hard to understand why Margaret Hannah would quit dancing when local companies were begging her to stay.

“I never wanted to retire on a bad note,” she says, while steam from her white

MOTION upstart-annapolis.com | 51

MOTION

coffee mug twirls around her finger nails, each painted with alternating blue and red polish for Independence Day. If Margaret Hannah would have allowed bad notes to dictate her dancing career, she would have quit before even discovering Annapolis. She would have surrendered to the burnout and weight struggles she experienced at a professional dance company in Arizona.

“My mom says ballet is the only thing I’ve ever been 100 percent sure about.” She thought about quitting in Arizona, but at her mother’s suggestion, Hannah searched for a better fit. She found it at Annapolis’ Ballet Theatre of Maryland, and Hannah says, she immediately got the “fire” back for dancing professionally.

Hannah’s move to Annapolis was her debut into the city she now calls home, the city in which she says she has “grown up as an adult” since 2005. It’s the same city she has chosen for her wedding next year to fiance, Annapolis musician Tobias Russell.

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Hannah put on her first ballet slippers at the age of three, but became serious by age 10. In high school, she danced in festivals in Austria and Scotland. At 18, she put off college and left her closeknit family for a paycheck as a professional dancer at an Arizona dance company. Soon after, she joined the Ballet Theatre of Maryland, and most recently, she danced for Manassas Ballet Theatre in Virginia.

52 | Winter 2014

“The question all dancers have is, ‘What do you want to do after you finish dancing?’” she explains.

“And I realized that my passion has slowly gone to teaching.”

For the decade Hannah has spent dancing during the day, her evenings have been spent teaching everyone from preschoolers to fellow professionals. In addition to her work at the Dance Academy, she also teaches at Bowie’s C&C Dance Company and offers private instruction for students traveling across the Beltway to train with her in hopes of going professional one day. Hannah’s goal in obtaining her bachelor’s degree through courses at both Anne Arundel Community College and ultimately at the University of Maryland, is to instruct at the high school and university levels so that, eventually, she can be home— rather than in a studio—at dinner time.

Dianna Cuatto, Artistic Director of Ballet Theatre of Maryland, says Hannah’s charisma is her greatest asset as an instructor. “She is one of those teachers who will inspire a new generation of dancers,” Cuatto says, stressing the importance of instructors who emphasize students’ attributes over weaknesses.

Watching Hannah is like a meditation as she stands in her grey leotard and tights in pointe shoes alongside her students at

the barre, her shoulder-length auburn hair pulled back low. She demonstrates proper postures and piques with flushed cheeks and a stream of French commands, and in no way does it seem her retirement could mean an end to her dancing.

Hannah knows it might seem backwards to have gone professional before obtaining a degree, but it’s a step that Lynda Fitzgerald, head of Anne Arundel Community College’s dance department, says will benefit Hannah and her students. “The dance component is critical to be an effective teacher, and coming back to school is critical,” says Fitzgerald, a mentor and advisor to Hannah. “She’ll be able to relate to the dancers, and no degree can give you that experience.”

To Hannah, part of relating to her students means understanding every dancer’s unique battle with individual imperfections; first, admitting them and then striving to overshadow them. “It’s a beautiful challenge going to the studio every day and knowing that I don’t have perfect turnout, and then working towards something,” adds Hannah.

In this way, ballet serves as a life lesson, highlighting those things at which you excel and working on what needs improvement. But most of all, find contentment in the process because the process is the destination. █

MOTION

...find contentment in the process because the process is the destination.

upstart-annapolis.com | 53

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MODE

Time Capsule of TREASURES

By Tom Levine Photos by Rachel Fry

B

y the time she was in the fifth grade, Cyndi Ryland was 5 feet 10 inches tall, a sequoia among saplings. At an age when most of us would have done anything to shrink into the crowd, Ryland couldn’t. In fact, she realized that she liked being different. Spending time with a neighbor who had an antique business, she quickly knew that the malls of North Jersey were not for her. She had discovered a world of vintage fashion, a world

56 | Winter 2014

of beautiful clothes that had elegance and grace and a touch of cool. That was the world in which she wanted to live and there was no turning back.

After almost 21 years of buying, selling, and refining her taste, Ryland remains passionate and driven about that world. Luckily for us, she moved Retropolitan, the fabulous vintage clothing and antique shop she owns with her daughter Caitlin, from Ellicott City to West Annapolis two years ago.

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MODE 58 | Winter 2014

When you walk into Retropolitan, it might take a few minutes to “get” what is going on. It is this. In Ryland’s words, “fashion is not just what we wear, but what we surround ourselves with.” The clothes and the antiques belong together. They are of the same eras, generally early to mid-20th century. You can find yourself the perfect outfit, right down to shoes and hat, slip into the changing room, come out a little more elegant, glide across the room, seat yourself on the red and white vinyl 1950s jackknife sofa (yes vinyl… “better living through chemistry” is a bit of a theme here), light up a Lucky and get ready to pitch a fabulous idea to Mr. Draper.

If your pulse quickens a little too much at the whiff of midcentury, you would be wise to down a couple of martinis before walking in and spotting what has to be the best Heywood Wakefield piece ever. The dressing table is all angles and mirror, almost an optical illusion.

It dances and makes every other Wakefield you’ve seen look anemic. Turn around and you are drawn like a moth to the iconic and pristine George Nelson Bubble Lamp, another nod to the marriage of petrochemicals and great design. Peer inside and you will spy the slightly yellowed Howard Miller and Company paper label attesting to its 1950s pedigree.

Imagine if, like Ryland, you’ve studied French in college and have spent much of your adult life as a French teacher. You don’t want your French to get rusty, so you’d better get yourself to Paris

satisfies every hunger, only more so.

It is a light fixture to build your life around.

There are so many vintage hats here, fedoras and the like, lining the shelves that you can almost taste the crispy sizzling pork bellies nestled on beds of organic micro-greens, about to be devoured by crowds of hungry Brooklyn hipsters. The dresses recall Lauren Bacall leaning against a wall, the glamorous cut of her long perfectlytailored dress showing us all what is elegant and graceful and beautiful about the fashions that Ryland has spent the past 21 years collecting and selling.

You may get a sense that you are walking down the boardwalk in 1920s Atlantic City, the thrill of the jazz age and the edginess of violence stoked by a thirst that Prohibition won’t quench. This era comes alive at Retropolitan, a world of perfectly preserved flapper dresses and men’s bathing suits that left everything to the imagination. Ryland’s eye is so good and her collection so strong that when HBO needed to dress the cast of Boardwalk Empire they turned to Ryland, and UPS did a brisk business hauling Retropolitan clothing to the New York soundstage. For all of Ryland’s passion and drive she can’t help but smile when she tells you about the fashion director who called from the set to tell her that he was sending back those men’s pants because didn’t she remember that the scene was set in 1923, and of course that button on the waist wasn’t introduced until 1927? She knew that she had met her match. █

MODE

as often as you can. And if you’re in Paris and you have a little time to kill, you might decide to learn a little bit about vintage French lighting fixtures—just enough so you can have a Parisian dealer lead you down a cobblestoned street in an outer arrondissement, past an old concierge and up a stairway wrapped around a courtyard, into a flat that has been stripped bare except for its rare and majestic 1930s Ezan chandelier (which even the Parisian has not correctly identified, but which you just know is exactly that). Soon after, you’re on a rickety ladder gingerly lowering this light, which is anything but light, to the Parisian and your husband, who reluctantly agrees to give up his parka (he really is a good sport) to swaddle this stunning piece of Art Deco that quickens your pulse with its modern-machined elegance and its irreplaceable glass shades faintly tinted with cobalt and its original crystal rods. And which has necessitated a not insubstantial transfer of family assets to the Parisian, and which is soon to be carried down the stairs by the good sport, who has just realized that he will be hauling this piece, which somehow won’t fit in a taxi, for several kilometers through the cold, gray February day to another Parisian who will pack it and ship it back to Maryland, where it can be hung in Retropolitan and elicit a slight gasp from a local magazine writer who instantly and vividly remembers sitting under a chandelier-perhaps an Ezan, in a Montparnasse brasserie surrounded

by Parisians who can never be anything but fashionable and beautiful and whose style and food

upstart-annapolis.com | 59

Rachel M Fry Photography | ra ch e l m f ry.c o m

EMOTE

R E T A E TH OF THE D R U S AB e l y t S Omar-

THE

aughety

By Desiree Smith-D baugh ar Photos by Alison H

62 | Winter 2014

upper half is gs, his severed s talking man without le . a pear tree He’ t ns ai ag up g leanin of his life circumstances about how the half. in n being blow have led to him ther, ge to e av we onologue Themes in his m ur family, , sacrificing for yo ry te htul ad ng di inclu setting up a weig dal thoughts, and ici su g in nc rie pe ex . is The Pear Tree less vest bomb. This Omar Said is fear s art. hi to es m co when it d ne scene The aforementio e, surrealist is his avant-gard the style one-man play in t: spare et ck of Samuel Be entation es pr in theatrical sophical but deep on philo orking very nudging. “I’m w ories and hard to share st el are worth experiences I fe Omar. es sharing,” shar te some ci in “And if I can out of t gh ou fire and th done my e I’v en th people, political, job. The social, sues and economic is in my e, we deal with ar stantial um rc ci opinion, the re, society, injustices of cultu d a side government, an a country in g in liv of effect erce and shaped by comm ty. We er intellectual prop here, ew m so have to start ought’ ‘th e m to s and it seem e to start, would be the plac ould be the and discussion w ep.” intuitive next st

EMOTE

A

upstart-annapolis.com | 63

EMOTE

The vehicle for emes of e work exploring the th , paint, and do th ional ad ct re un sf dy d an adultery do. In less than the he has set out to is ay pl is th in family king, he has five years of wor icide bomber. su a of y or at rg pu ng n’t know much enjoyed teachi “Admittedly I do e dl id M t,” s lo te at Ba eculate a about it, so I sp ng hi ac co , ol Scho . confesses Omar tors, e States, and directing ac Th in up ew gr Omar t, ar doing visual Egyptian but he’s from an e, ag and creating art g in family, experienc s as concept for hi as social income, and race , ct fa In . o gs tw writin living in constructs from s. It tie un co he has written d an yl ar different M ed fin de four short, and was included how he th le op pe , 11 two feature-leng e 9/ t by others. “Befor ou ab s, screenplay ispanic. It t assumed I was H or sh t ac eight oneis probably went to ‘this kid g in ud cl in plays— t traveling ar a terrorist.’” Bu d se es producing The Pe itn w so al to Egypt, he ll Tree—and two fu alized, “There prejudice and re e th er ov l plays. le al are stupid peop A graduate of world.” his UMBC, he feels to identify He chooses not ed lp he rs professo y particular himself with an eal y an e ac pl him attain the id he es do culture, nor education. While of his identity g strong evidence , er nd interested in actin ity, ge into race, ethnic he , ol in high scho . “It’s my age, or sexuality r ran through othe in Annapolis. experiences.” ch su s, and doing improv tie g ili in ib m ss or po rf pe nding launch His efforts in Whether it’s atte puter science m to t co no as e er w d ee e—complete applié The Pear Tr parties as a mim otography, as he to ph or d ce an en di au e th ed face, vely he demonize with white-paint llege. But intuiti icide co su to a of t ou ro ng of a mime on hi somet make a he turning the idea anted to work on light w gh hi to and-out to t bu So r, do bombe head from wnionate about. its ss pa is lt th fe of he le gg es ielder with the personal stru martini-glass-w theater. His grad a d ie er ud id st ns he co “I ment—to but unnamed man. a sense of entitle t school suffered, n’ gh es hi do in ho w on latex-based his myself a pers donning a liquidng ge he discovered ni lle ar co le in is t bu e. ng him appear t his strid know anythi mask that makes ning style and hi Omar ar .” le se el ne ad yo re an, one who m an just like t of time to to be an elderly ts locally, “It takes me a lo ac t bu ly d, al ins and he ob co is gl thinks r I’m fin keeps dropping Bates anything but afte at ng hi up until , ac rt te em pa g th y in g er includ owly pickin perform ev sl sm to ia le us ab th en I’m is H ns take pity, seeing Middle School.

Annapolis denize down language, in t ng se ki as ea le br ab lu le va ne” to help. multip makes him a entering his “sce ce and deriving ink en th nt r se te a ea th d an d some teens ” acting class Omar once foun eanings out of it. m eboards e at id ed the w tank. with bikes and sk where He also discover r fo ul ef lp do a at he gr to is Omar eater that and asked them availability of th e life he is th a local d st an g pa in e— n tic lif ru no in he is s to offer, t. He would . ha bi e ea or ar m lis lti po Ba na le fresco diners, creating in the An of younger peop e coffee shop’s al th th l ar al de ot e sp th n tio him with terror ging it to “It’s like a vaca looking behind ing. So, he’s brin d nd an te st at to s em se asing him. aracters time.” Time at these teens ch ople, creating ch write, pe t, e si th to m hi g in still, allow

64 | Winter 2014

“

nnapolis and A s e v lo o h w erformer ting the o ....a fearless p m o r p , e il h ving here a w bsurd. anticipates li surreal and a

EMOTE

ly something “That was probab from a cartoon they recognized a kid. I knew when they were existing] scene n there wasn’t [a d absurdist for surrealist an d to showcase theater. I wante t in Annapolis this as my debu received quite and it has been ts and nonpositively by artis ” artists in town. mething that So, if you see so tside the norm seems a little ou rhaps do a in Annapolis, pe may be your double-take; this m O ar Said, a first glimpse of er who loves m fearless perfor ticipates Annapolis and an , promoting le hi w a living here absurd. █ the surreal and

upstart-annapolis.com | 65

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HOOD

68 | Winter 2014

STEEL A MELODY FOR ME

By Patty Speakman Hamsher Photos by Larry Melton

U

ntil I reached the fifth grade classroom, it seemed like business as usual at Odenton Elementary School. Most classrooms were quietly engaged in seatwork and the hallways were empty. But upstairs, in the fifth grade classroom, students were on their feet, thinking hard, highfiving, and nearly singing.

Amidst the controlled chaos were two or three teachers, grinning as their carefully planned lessons started to click with each of the small groups of students crowded around and pouring water into a large beaker with hash mark measurements. Kevin Martin, an artist in residence, walked around with his guitar; literally mixing fractions and music, and making a beautiful melody.

Kevin has been building and playing steel drums (or pans) since he fell in love with one about 20 years ago. A graduate of Cornell University, he no longer dons a suit and heads to an office to work with finances. Rather, he applies himself to getting drumsticks into as many hands as he can through teaching, outreach, and sending his handmade instruments all over the world.

upstart-annapolis.com | 69

On a regular Friday afternoon in April, two fifth grade teachers played a song they had just learned the day before. Their students lit up at the sound and the chance to engage with math in such a new way.

“When you’re an artist, you have to be several different things,” Kevin told the hushed students who began bobbing their heads in anticipation of the song he hinted at with just two plucks on his guitar. He knows this from experience.

Kevin currently travels throughout Maryland, New Jersey, and Eastern Pennsylvania as a roster artist of Young Audiences, a non-profit organization that works with educational systems, the arts community, and private and public sectors to provide arts education to children. He has

HOOD 70 | Winter 2014

taught workshops, conducted teacher trainings, completed residencies, and lead assemblies in nearly one hundred schools.

In 2012, he was named “Artist of the Year” by Young Audiences of Maryland.

He has also traveled to Trinidad to see pan yards and steel drum ensembles up close, playing his way there on a cruise ship. This pilgrimage unleashed his ability to master the craft of creating various types of steel drums. He sells them through his business, Rockcreek Steel Drums, and donates them to school groups and churches where he conducts his workshops and lessons.

When he’s not giving lessons or pounding out new pan drums in his studio, Kevin can also be found playing gigs with his bands, Bermuda Blue and The Geckos.

HOOD

The first drum he and his brother Sean ever made sits in his studio, bearing the breezy light blue color of the calypso band’s name. Kevin goes on tour four or five times a year with The Geckos, who play original tunes and covers. Both bands play on drums made in his studio.

Just inside the door of Kevin Martin’s backyard studio space is a hand drawn calendar on the wall. Without the help of a fancy app, it organizes the next six to eight months of his life with color-coordinated push pins that visually divide his time between the multiple streams of musicallyinfused income that make up his life. There is also a color for family time, blocking off a few days or weeks here and there for time to spend with his wife and young son.

The calendar is an unassuming piece of art, a creative symbol of the handcrafted life of this artist. It occupies wall space near crayon-drawn thank-you cards and a photo of two Afghan girls playing a steel tongue drum that Kevin made on the night of President Obama’s first State of the Union address. Sitting on the shelf below it is a steel tongue drum he made for his son’s most recent birthday. He will make another one for him this year and another the year after that as a way to symbolize the importance of the day.

In the coming year, Kevin plans to head out on the road and reach young audiences in the Midwest and southern states. He will station vans full of his instruments in various locations, making them available to schools and other groups when he is not there.

When he flies back, they will be ready for him so he may continue to inspire a whole new group of teachers and their students. █

upstart-annapolis.com | 71

AGO The MC Hoppy Adams getting them excited ( TONIGHT - TONIGHT - TONIGHT!)

CARR’S Tonight!

Tonight!

Tonight!

was heard along the Eastern Shore, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and as far west as Ohio.

The disk jockey on the air was none other than Charles “Hoppy” 74 | Winter 2014

Adams broadcasting from WANN-AM, Annapolis, MD. WANN was founded by Jewish immigrant Morris Blum in 1946; Bach to bebop was the original music format that changed to an R&B format, Savoy Swing Time. The reception was tepid.

It was 1948 when Blum decided to change the format to “Race Music,” as it was called during Jim

Crow segregation, targeted for black listeners. At that moment, WANN was intricately involved in creating the proving ground for musicians on the “Chitlin Circuit”… “Carr’s Beach.”

Carr’s Beach was owned and operated by Elizabeth Carr Smith, daughter of former slave Frederick Carr, who, after 50 years of service to the United States Naval

Academy, purchased 114 acres of farmland along the end of Edgewood Road. Elizabeth was one of five children, the others named Minnie, Nancy, Florence, and William, all of whom became tenants in common at the death of their parents.

By 1940, Minnie, Nancy and William sold their interest to Elizabeth and Florence.

Sarah Vaughan on the Bandstand

BEACH

By Janice Hayes

Florence Sparrow developed her portion of the land into Sparrow’s Beach, added ball fields, a Ferris wheel, cabins, beauty and singing contests, musicians, and comedians.

Carr’s Beach served the day tripper, swimmers, and fisherman, and provided accommodations for boarding and home-cooked food. Both beaches were extremely

popular for blacks, free from racial prejudice.

Nineteen forties Maryland was known as the “Sin Capital” of the East Coast, ripe with opportunity for all manner of venture capitalism. In 1943, the State of Maryland legalized gambling in Anne Arundel County with other counties soon to follow. While

Photos Courtesy of Maryland State Archives

slot machines were exempt from sales tax, the state levied one-half a percent on receipts for an estimated $50 per week, per machine. The leading manufacturer of onearmed bandits was also located in Maryland.

The Numbers King of Baltimore, William L. “Little Willie” Adams, was drawn to the ambience of the

Annapolis Neck Peninsula; there was black folk, black music, black food, waterfront property, and an opportunity to invest in the future. By 1944, Adams purchased land formerly owned by Frederick Carr at Chunks Point from the Eintracht Club. Adams built cottages and renamed the property Elktonia Beach. upstart-annapolis.com | 75

At the death of Elizabeth Carr in 1948, her son Frederick Carr became the new proprietor of Carr’s Beach. With Elizabeth Carr-Smith out of the way, “Little Willie” Adams seized the moment to become intimately involved with Carr’s Beach and shared his vision for the future of the “Beach” with the new owner, Frederick Carr. Consensus led to the establishment of the Carr’s Beach Amusement Company, formed with $150,000 in venture capital from Maryland’s most notorious gangster, “Willie” Adams.

Ella Fitzgerald on the Bandstand

AGO 76 | Winter 2014

With this influx of capital, rides and amusements were constructed for children, the midway was lined with one-armed bandits, an openair pavilion for entertainment was constructed called the Bandstand, and a nightclub named Club Bengazi was erected after a hot spot in Washington, D.C. aimed to draw high rollers and entertainers from D.C. to Carr’s Beach.

The Carr’s Beach Amusement Company hired Baltimore music promoter Rufus Mitchell as Beach Manager, who in turn hired WANN’s Charles “Hoppy” Adams, the stalwart

promoter of music and products for blacks, as emcee for Sunday afternoon music revues. On Sunday afternoons, “Bandstand on the Beach” was broadcast live to blacks as far west as Ohio.

The perfect storm was brewing: legalized gambling; waterfront property on the Chesapeake Bay for leisure activities for blacks; the charismatic

owner in Parks Sausage, was at the center of this political and economic engine never to be seen again until the opening of Maryland Live!

Entertainers arrived to Carr’s Beach with thousands of black patrons packing the pavilion: Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Billy Eckstine, Ray Charles, Ella

Boxer Joe Louis. (Sp ent time at Carr's whi le training - Stayed at Eltonia Beach own in Cottages ed by Gangster Wil lie Adams from Balt imore)

“Hoppy Adams” on WANN radio in constant contact with The Crowd in the open Air Pavilion ready for the show the black community; Rufus Mitchell, beach manager Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, James and music promoter with ties to Brown, Etta James, Jackie Wilson, Dina the Royal Theater in Baltimore; the Washington, Otis Redding, Lionel Howard Theater in D.C. keeping the Hampton, Ike and Tina Turner, Lloyd entertainment coming; and “Little Price, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Willie” Adams, investor and owner of The Temptations, The Supremes, James the “Sphinx Club,” the “Charm Center,” Berry, The Shirelles, The Drifters, The numerous Baltimore clubs, and part Coasters, Chuck Berry, and many more.

While the Carr family, investors, vendors, and record companies lined their pockets, so did the locals. Black teachers worked the beaches while out of school for the summer, teen youth parked cars, juke joints kept a steady flow of business, black bus companies appeared and, George Phelps of the

1974 with 8,000 in attendance and 1,000 turned away. Forty years ago, Carr’s Beach closed their gates and the memories abound from the white community listening on Back Creek to the locals who loved the local band, the Van Dykes, who opened for numerous entertainers.

Carr’s Beach; where my mother, the late Virginia Phelps Hayes won numerous jitter-bug contests, employed

by Elizabeth Carr while a college student 1939-40, where her youngest brother, my uncle, George Phelps, Jr. founded the Special Deputy Sheriffs, will forever be our family bedtime story, “Spinning Sand into Gold.” █

Anne Arundel County Sheriff ’s Office hired 225 black men as special deputy sheriffs to keep law and order during the summer season at its height.

Frank Zappa was the last entertainer to perform on the Bandstand during the summer of

The last parcel of the Carr’s family estate was purchased by Adams in the name of his business partner Theo Rogers. The property known to the locals as Bembe Beach or the “Rogers Property” has been annexed to the City of Annapolis and is currently under development.

Recommended reading:

The Land Was Ours: African American

Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South,

AGO

MC Hoppy Adams on the Bandstand awarding the winner of the Beauty Contest

Andrew W. Kahrl, Harvard University Press, 2012.

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EVERYTHING FLOWS DOWNSTREAM

By Patty Speakman Hamsher

I

jump in with a smile so wide that my teeth are unable to stop the water from rushing into my mouth, then my nose, and my open eyes, wide with the excitement that summer is here, that boating weather has come, that the icy winter has not destroyed the life that teems within these waters around me.

I am a child of the Chesapeake Bay. I have spent summers fishing and swimming and racing boats, kneeboards, and oversized inflatable tubes within her waters. I have sat at long tables covered with brown paper and cooked

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crab shell and oyster fragments plucked from her slow waves. I have ended waterfront days feeling sun kissed, water logged, and humbled by breathtaking sunsets that glow on the surface, just before the fireflies take over.

Yet, I am admittedly uneducated about the daily fight and struggles that lie below the Bay’s aqueous façade. In a water system that spans a massive 64,000 square miles of rivers, tributaries, and creeks that touch six states as well as the District of Columbia, it is not surprising that a healthy balance is a constant struggle

Photos by Russell Cather Levi

for the creatures that live there.

“It took the Bay decades to decline,” says Tom Zolper, Maryland Communications Coordinator for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Pollution from the 17 million human beings living in the Bay watershed and ten times that number of livestock are the main threats to the Bay’s health.

Exhaust from our cars and power plants, manure and fertilizer from our farms, pesticides from our lawns, and sewage from our treatment plants and septic systems have all contributed to the problem.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) is committed to four basic strategies to Save the Bay™—they advocate, restore, educate, and, when all else fails, litigate. Founded in 1967 by a group of Baltimore businessmen, CBF came out of the need for private sector organization that could work on behalf of the Bay. The founding group was charged by then Congressman C.B. Morton to “build public concern, then encourage government and private citizens to deal with these problems together.”

Nearly 50 years later, the organization has grown from a membership of 2,000 to 200,000 people committed to the work that CBF does throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. This work is not done remotely from a bank of cubicles in a glass-windowed office space. CBF is a farm in Upper Marlboro that is a model of sustainable agriculture and a network of farmers who teach other farmers how to reduce pollution and increase profits; an oyster center in Shady Side where oysters are grown for

building man-made reefs; a fleet of boats and remote education centers for hands-on Bay experiences and environmental literacy; and a grass roots army that advocates for legislation to improve the bay’s recovery at the local, state, and federal levels.

“We’re now in the long, gradual climb back to health,” Zolper says hopefully.

“We’ve cut pollution to the Bay almost in half over the past 20 years.” But scientists warn that we need to continue to drastically

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reduce nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment pollution in order for the fish, crab, and oyster populations to rebound and for our grandkids to have the opportunity to see their feet in the water as our grandparents did.

“We also will have to grow smart, avoiding sprawl development, which adds new pollution and negates our work,” says Zolper.

To borrow the tried and true cliché of things that require a village to prosper, restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay is no exception. Over three hundred species of fish, numerous varieties of shellfish and crabs, land and submerged aquatic vegetation, and 80 | Winter 2014

countless birds and land beasts depend on it, to say nothing of the surviving family traditions that either generates money or memories for one generation to pass on to the next.

CBF is devoted to restoring a national treasure that ripples with the wind and breathes life into the cities and towns that touch her fickle tides. With effort and the commitment of many, the restored health of our Chesapeake Bay will yield clear and healthy waters for many summers and generations of bay-loving children to come. █ To learn more about the CBF’s efforts, visit www.cbf.org.

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Binho Ribeiro (Sao Paolo)

Rodrigo Branco (Sao Paolo)

Jeff Huntington (Annapolis) in collaboration with Jesse James (Baltimore)

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Charles Lawrance (Annapolis)

Vermelho Steam (Sao Paolo)

Tikka Meszaros (Sao Paolo); Gen Duarte (Sao Paolo)

Aspire Amaze Appreciate