“Flying Mallard” by Sandy Alanko

If it’s November in Easton, you can’t help but notice that the streets are busier, tents are appearing throughout town, and talk is all about the upcoming Waterfowl Festival. Inside Studio B Art Gallery, featured artist Sandy Alanko’s work fits the moment—paintings of water, marsh, and the wildlife that define the Shore. Watercolors that catch early light, wings over water, and the quiet places that define the festival.

“It’s my favorite show of the year,” Alanko said. “I’ve been coming for about eight years, and I love nature, conservation, and painting animals. It fits me so well. The fact that the proceeds go for conservation makes it even more meaningful.”

Her ties to that mission run deep. “I visit a lot of wildlife refuges, especially Blackwater,” she said. “They’ve benefited from Waterfowl Festival support over the years, and that makes me feel like we’re all part of the same circle—artists, collectors, and the environment we all care about.”

Her paintings grow from that connection.. One of her newest shows an osprey nest perched on Taylor’s Island. “You can see it from the back window of the little restaurant there,” she said. “It’s built on the pole that holds the fire siren. People wondered what would happen when the siren went off, but the ospreys just ignore it. For me, the painting was complex with all those twisted branches—but I loved it.”

“White Pelican on Ice” by Sandy Alanko

Her interest in the natural world began long before she called herself an artist. “When I was a little girl in Illinois, I made it my mission to learn the names of everything in the backyard—birds, insects, reptiles,” she said. “By fifth grade, I could identify all the local birds.”

That curiosity led her to spend several years working with the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History on a coral island off the coast of Belize, along with her husband. “We hosted scientists from all over the world,” she said. “Because of the research done there, the island and surrounding reef were declared a World Heritage Site. The biodiversity was extraordinary.”

It also changed how she looks at a subject. “I’ve always had a sensitivity for habitat restoration,” she said. “Painting is a way of paying attention—to light, to movement, to balance. It’s my way of showing respect.”

Alanko works in several media but sees herself primarily as a watercolorist. “It’s so transparent,” she said. “When it’s used right, light bounces between the pigment and the paper and gives the painting a glow. That’s what creates atmosphere. When I want a painting to feel airy and alive, watercolor is what I reach for.”

For landscapes, she paints on site when she can. Wildlife is different. “Animals don’t pose unless they’re asleep,” she said. “So I take photos and work from them. It’s still about watching and noticing.”

Her return to Studio B for Waterfowl Festival weekend brings her back into a familiar circle of artists and collectors. “I was honored when Betty Huang asked me to come back as a guest artist,” she said. “My work looks beautiful there. I can’t wait for people to stop in during the festival and talk about what they see. That’s what makes this weekend special.”

The feeling is mutual. Gallery owner Betty Huang is thrilled to have Alanko back. “Sandy, other than being a fabulous human being and a fabulous artist, does such beautiful work,” Huang said. “She brought paintings in oil, pastel, watercolor, and gouache, and they’re all amazing. She has always painted such beautiful waterfowl-related pieces, and that’s why I wanted to feature her again.”

Huang sees Alanko as part of the fabric of the gallery. “She’s a member of the Working Artists Forum, she’s local, and she’s so willing to share her techniques. It’s wonderful to be able to promote our own artists during an event that’s so much a part of Easton.”

She added that the Working Artists Forum, of which both she and Alanko are members, will also hold its annual Waterfowl Festival show at Christ Church. “It’s such a great partnership,” she said. “The Festival and Christ Church have supported the arts community for so long, and it gives people another chance to see what our local artists are doing.”

Even with artists from across the country represented, Studio B keeps a strong local focus. “I have award-winning artists from Maine, California, Texas, and Florida, but it’s important to highlight the incredible talent right here,” Huang said. “These artists aren’t only accomplished; they’re generous people. That’s just as important to me.”

That spirit carries through the town each November. The days leading up to the Waterfowl Festival are among Huang’s favorites. “Along with Plein Air Easton, Waterfowl is when the town really comes alive,” she said. “The streets are busy, the galleries are full, and everyone is talking about art. Easton is a charming, historic town, but it also has a cosmopolitan side. We really do have the best of both worlds.”

Alanko feels the same. “Easton is the hub of the Mid-Atlantic for art,” she said. She would know. Besides the Working Artists Forum, she’s part of the St. Michaels Art League and the Academy Art Museum community. “There are so many ways to grow and share your work,” she said. “It’s a very supportive place to be an artist.”

When she isn’t painting, she’s often on the water. “My husband and I belong to a kayaking group,” she said. “We go out every Wednesday to explore the tributaries that feed into the Chesapeake. I love reflections on the water and the vegetation along the shore.”

Sailing has been another lifelong thread. “We once took our boat to Bermuda and back,” she said. “So yes, I’m comfortable on the water.”

Her new work includes a series of large water birds that look ready to lift from the paper. “Watercolor is flat compared to oil,” she said. “So I started painting the bird on another sheet, then layering it—sometimes three layers deep—so a wing or a beak comes forward toward the viewer. It gives the impression that the bird is about to fly right out of the frame.”

She’s also discovered a way to display her watercolors without glass. “I found a spray that makes them UV-protected and waterproof,” she said. “It means people can see the work directly. There’s no reflection, no barrier.”

Her goal is simple. “I hope people see the beauty of the animal or the landscape,” she said. “And maybe it makes them want to preserve it.”

Huang believes that respect is what makes Alanko’s paintings stand out. “Her work reminds people what’s worth protecting,” she said. “You can see her love for nature in every piece. When people come into the gallery and see her paintings, they feel that.”

The Waterfowl weekend is an important time for Easton, and Studio B on Goldsborough Street is bringing Sandy Alanko’s world of water and wings into the heart of the festival.

Studio B Art Gallery is located at 7B Goldsborough Street in Easton.

Emily Rich still gets a thrill when the newest Bay to Ocean Journal lands in her hands.

“It’s always exciting to see the finished book,” she said. “You see all that work, all those voices, come together. It feels like a community in print.”

Now in its seventh year, the annual literary collection from the Eastern Shore Writers Association (ESWA) brings together poets, essayists, and fiction writers from across Maryland and beyond. This year’s edition once again captures the range of creativity connected to the Shore—work that is personal, place-based, and deeply human.

Like any good story, the journal’s own beginnings are part of what makes it special.

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The journal was first published in 2018 under then-ESWA President Ron Sauder, who wanted to give local writers a dedicated outlet for their work. “Ron started the Bay to Ocean Journal, and I took it over the following year,” Rich said. “I’d already spent many years editing literary magazines like *Little Patuxent Review* and *Delmarva Review*, so I was excited by this new challenge.”

For Rich, who now serves as both editor and president of ESWA, the journal is about far more than publication. “We felt local writers really needed a space where they could all get together,” she said. “And it’s more than just being able to be published. It’s the community that forms by all being part of this journal.”

That sense of connection runs through the 2025 edition, which—without anyone planning it—ended up circling around the idea of time. “With each edition, a theme seems to rise,” Rich said. “They’re not chosen in advance.This year, a lot of people wrote about the concept of time and the way it blurs—when you lose someone, when you reconnect with someone, a lost child, or an elderly parent. Some people discovered secrets about their own heritage. Both the poems and the prose touched on that. It’s really interesting how, for whatever reason, themes will emerge. It wasn’t like the judges were looking for those pieces,” she said. “That’s just what we got.”

And what they got, she said, was strong. “Since we started the journal, the quality of submissions every year has gone up. That makes me feel really good,” Rich said. “When you have to look at pieces several times to decide if they make the cut—that’s a good feeling. It means the journal is really succeeding.”

Each year, she and a small team of volunteer editors read through dozens of submissions, looking for what she calls *the spark. “I hate to be a literary editor stereotype,” she said, “but it really is just something that strikes you. It’s got an emotional spark, a good story arc.”

To keep things fair, the editorial process is blind. “Everything comes to me, but when I send it to my staff, it’s all blind,” she said. “That really helps because we’re a small community. My poetry editor has even said, ‘I know who this is—they’re in my writing group.’ So reading blind helps you focus only on the work.”

Among this year’s standouts is the opening poem, On a Path Austere and Certain, by Diana Fusting.“She talks about how, in the process of going from a child to an adult, she’s learned to quantify everything—from her weight to her GPA—and how she’s longing to get back to that spark of not having to worry about those things,” said Rich. “It really set the theme.”

The poem is followed by a short story about “a man at the end of his life who’s lost his daughter and wife,” she said. “Instead of focusing on the loneliness of that, he finds a place of peace where he feels their presence. It’s really very heartwarming.”

Though the journal welcomes submissions from across the Mid-Atlantic, its roots stay close to home. “There’s no requirement that your piece be about the Shore,” Rich said. “But people love this place, so often their work reflects that love of place. You do have to be a member of the Eastern Shore Writers Association to submit, so everyone has some connection with the community.”

Even the cover stays true to that mission. This year’s artwork by Naomi Clark Turner depicts a view of Oxford. “We always look for local artists,” Rich said. “Naomi lives outside of Oxford, and it just felt right.”

Inside, readers will find everything from poignant essays to pure fun. “There’s one really sweet love story,” she said. “And one hilarious story that starts with a woman describing being on an academic quiz show. She grew up outside Cambridge and tells this story about how she and her teammates tried to get away with saying crazy things on air—like claiming she was a snake handler. It was just so funny to see that side of someone I know as a serious professional.”

For Rich, those discoveries are the best part. “Writing is such a vulnerable endeavor,” she said. “You’re putting yourself out there to be read and judged. That willingness to open up and be part of something—it binds you. It’s a common experience every writer has to go through.”

That shared vulnerability is what fuels the broader ESWA community, including the annual Bay to Ocean Writers Conference, held each March at Chesapeake College. Many contributors discover the journal through the conference and later return to submit their own work.

For those hesitant to take that leap, Rich keeps it simple. “You’re never going to find out unless you do,” she said. “Being a writer without getting rejections is like being a boxer and not wanting to get hit. That’s just part of the game.”

Of course, the writing has to be polished. Her advice to anyone thinking of submitting: “Always have someone else read it—someone who’s going to be honest with you.”

Editing, she admits, has changed her own writing. “The one thing I’ve learned is that you can always cut,” she said. “People think, ‘I can’t get rid of this,’ but you can. You don’t need all the backstory. Just jump right in and get people hooked. You can always fill things in later.”

Outside of the journal, Rich continues to write and teach. Lately, she’s been digging into her family’s history. “My great-grandfather was a gold miner in the 1870s,” she said. “He traveled all over the West—from Virginia City to Helena to Mazatlán. I found his grave—it’s just a metal plaque in the Masons’ cemetery, and he’s there by himself. So I’m trying to piece together that story.”

She also teaches memoir workshops. “Everybody has a story, and that’s what I love about it,” she said. “For memoir, you’re supposed to keep it real, but you can bring in dreams, musings, conjecture. There’s room to play with memory.”

If there’s a thread connecting all of it—editing, teaching, writing—it’s her belief that storytelling builds community. “This is really a labor of love for me,” she said. “It was important to me to work on something that gives space to local writers. I’d really like to encourage those writers out there—join ESWA and submit.”

This year’s Bay to Ocean Journal will officially launch with a book party in Berlin this December, followed by sales at the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference at Chesapeake College next spring. Copies are also available on Amazon and at ESWA events throughout the Shore.

Submissions for the 2026 edition will open in March 2026.

“When you see it all come together,” she said, “it feels like holding up a mirror to our community. You see the heart, the humor, the grief, the love—all of it. That’s what writing is for.”

For additional information, go to: https://www.easternshorewriters.org/

In 2011, more than thirty kids—participants in a summer camp run through the Academy Art Museum—came together to create a large mosaic mural on the side of a building then known as Eastern Market Square. The site, now home to Tiger Lily and Harrison’s Liquors, still displays the mural, which includes references to a marketplace that no longer exists.

The idea for a mural came from artist Jen Wagner, who by 2011 had already spent several years creating community mosaics across Dorchester and Talbot counties. In Easton alone, she’d led projects like the farm scene mosaic that now hangs at the public library (installed initially at the Red Hen), and the heron mosaic on the side of what used to be the blind store on Harrison Street.

What started as a conversation with Cathy Witte, who managed the Eastern Market Square building at the time, helped spark this particular project. “There was just a synergy,” Wagner said. “We started talking, and the project came together fast.” At the time, Easton didn’t even have a formal process for approving public art. “That had to be created for this project,” she said.

Fast forward 14 years, and even though the mural has held up well over time, Wagner says it’s due for a refresh. “Some of the panels are obsolete,” she said. “For one, it’s not called Eastern Market Square anymore.” So she is returning to the wall—this time teaming up with Lauren Dwyer, Early Childhood and Youth Education Coordinator at the Academy Art Museum (AAM), to bring in a new generation of young artists. Through a series of summer camps, kids will not only be learning the mosaic process—they’re actually designing and building the new panels themselves: drawing, cutting glass, placing tile, and grouting, just like the kids did back then.

But unlike the original, which unfolded as a full-on street production beside Route 50, this time the work will happen in the comfort of Wagner’s studio. “There’s a little disappointment that we won’t be outside,” she said. “That first one was a spectacle. We had 30 kids in each camp, the younger ones one week and the older ones the next. I’d show up on Saturdays during the farmer’s market, and people would stop and say, ‘Can I help?’ And they’d add a piece. It became a community thing.”

Dwyer is helping coordinate the 12 youth art camps AAM will run this summer, three of which are specifically focused on mural mosaics. “We’ve done one in June, and have one in July, and one in August,” she said. “Each camp has new registrants, so there’s potential for 36 different kids to be part of this.” The mosaic camps are open to children ages 8–12. “This is their moment. It’s been 14 years since the last one. I really don’t want this opportunity to slip by.”

The panel replacement will focus on the middle sections of the mural, with the flower and market scenes from the original preserved on either end. “We’re thinking about doing more of an Eastern Shore scene in the center,” Wagner said. “We’ve been discussing design ideas. It won’t be a carbon copy of what was there.”

She jokes about being a tough instructor, yet Wagner is clear about the value of what these young artists are gaining. The mural-making process is collaborative and fast-paced, which means kids learn more than just art techniques. “You have to make a lot of decisions quickly,” Wagner said. “And we’re on a deadline. That’s a valuable thing to go through—dreaming big, turning it into reality, sometimes reining it in based on the project. There’s a lot of creative problem-solving baked in.” There is also the responsibility she feels to the community. “We approach it as real work. These kids put in a full day’s work in a few hours.”

From Dwyer’s perspective, the mural project isn’t just about art—it’s the kind of collaborative learning she believes leaves a lasting impact. “It’s true problem-solving,” she said. “Not on a worksheet—real collaboration. These kids are working with others who have different ideas and different backgrounds. That’s what sets them up to be successful adults. And they get to say, ‘I did this. I had a part in this.’”

Each of the three mural camps will run for five days, with the kids working together to complete as many panels as possible. “We don’t know how fast they’ll go,” Wagner said. “One group might get two panels done. Another might only finish part of one. But the most important thing is that the work is good. We’ll set a realistic goal and go from there.”

And if they don’t finish? That’s by design, too. The team plans to open the project to the broader community once the camps wrap up. “We’ll create some workshop opportunities where anyone can come in and add their mark,” said Dwyer.

It’s a fitting continuation of how the first mural came together, through layers of community involvement and connection that stuck. “Almost all of the kids from 2011 are still in touch,” Wagner said. “They’re all over the world now. They have families and careers. But we’ve been sharing stories. It’s been wild watching them grow up. They’ve taken their engagement photos in front of that mural. It’s been a part of their lives. And I get to be a little part of their lives too, which is fun.”

She’s hoping the next chapter adds a new layer. “It would be great if some of those original kids—now parents—bring their own children to be part of this one.”

And for Wagner’s stepping back into the process feels meaningful. “It feels good to come back and do another big one,” she said. “And I’ve matured a little too.”

To follow along with the project, updates will be posted on the Academy Art Museum’s social media channels and Jen Wagner Mosaics’ page. If the project runs past the August 8 camp deadline, opportunities for the community to join in will be announced there as well.

As for the final unveiling, it’s still a ways off—but there will definitely be one. “We’ll have a splash,” Wagner promised. “And maybe we’ll get some of the kids to come talk about it, too. They’ll blow your mind. They really will.”

Val Cavalheri is a writer and photographer. She has written for various publications, including The Washington Post.  Previously she served as the editor of several magazines, including Bliss and Virginia Woman. Although her camera is never far from her reach, Val retired her photography studio when she moved from Northern Virginia to the Eastern Shore a few years ago.. She and her husband, Wayne Gaiteri, have two children and one grandchild.