On Saturday June 17, the town of Easton will host the second annual Delmarva Pride Festival, and I’m thrilled to announce that Shore Lit will be participating with a Pride Pop-Up Bookshop celebrating queer stories for everyone. 

We’re partnering with our friends at The Ivy, the cherished Baltimore bookstore, whose brilliant booksellers have put together a stellar collection of titles with queer and trans themes for you to browse and shop. There is truly something for everyone: romance, sci-fi, memoir, children’s, YA, poetry, literary fiction… you name it. 

We’re especially excited that award-winning author and illustrator Elizabeth Lilly will be joining us in the afternoon to chat and sign books! Elizabeth’s work for children deals with the difficulty of understanding and loving yourself: Geraldine is about a lonely giraffe navigating life in a human school, while Let Me Fix You a Plate is about the food and love in her dual Colombian and American cultures. Elizabeth finds pride and joy in her identity as a lesbian, bi-racial, Colombian Latina, and she’s put together a curated capsule featuring some of her own favorite inspiring YA and picture books. Stop by and say hi!  

What Else I’m Reading

Book-ban attempts aimed at LGBTQ+ content are soaring: seven out of the American Library Association’s top thirteen most challenged books feature queer stories. Shore Lit stands in defense of literary freedom with PEN America and the ALA, who remind us that banning books is “an attack on every person’s constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore.” 

Free people read freely, y’all. So this month I’m making a point to read some of these frequently banned titles (descriptions pulled from the internet): 

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. ALA Alex Award winner and Stonewall-Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book. “Started as a way to explain to the author’s family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity–what it means and how to think about it–for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.”

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. New York Times bestseller. “In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores their childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia.”

Flamer by Mike Curato. Lambda Literary Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. “It’s the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone’s going through changes―but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. ​Award-winning author and artist Mike Curato draws on his own experiences in his debut graphic novel.”

Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison. ALA Alex Award winner. “For Mike Muñoz, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work–and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew–he’s smart enough to know that he’s got to be the one to shake things up if he’s ever going to change his life.”

This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson. Guardian Best Book of the Year. Garden State Teen Book Award Winner. “There’s a long-running joke that after ‘coming out’, a lesbian, gay guy, bisexual, or trans person should receive a membership card and instruction manual. This book is that instruction manual. This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it’s like to grow up LGBT also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums.”

What Else I’m Looking Forward To on the Shore This Month: 

Film: Sky Hopinka @ Academy Art Museum, Easton

6:00 Tuesday, June 6

Free

The Native filmmaker and MacArthur Genius will present several of his experimental shorts, followed by a Q&A with Salisbury University professor Dr. Ryan Conrath. 

Theater: Alice in Wonderland @ Dorchester Center for the Arts, Cambridge

June 8–11

$15 adults; $10 students, Free for children under 5

Produced and performed entirely by local students, Groove Theater’s Student Lab production of Lewis Carrol’s classic is a family-friendly romp through Wonderland.

Lecture & Concert: Maryland Spirituals Initiative Gospel Concert @ The Avalon Theater, Easton

6:00 Saturday, June 17

$10

This unique Juneteenth celebration will feature artist Ruth Starr Rose’s illustrated collection of African American spirituals, which was lost for nearly a century and just recently rediscovered, with lectures from the Water’s Edge Museum scholars and a gospel choir performance. 

Book Fair: Chesapeake Children’s Book Festival @ Talbot County Free Library, Easton

10:00-2:00 Saturday, June 24

Free 

More than 20 children’s book authors and illustrators will be at the library to kick off the 2023 Summer Reading Program. The best part: any kiddo who signs up gets a voucher good for one free book from the attending author of their choice.

 

 

Shore Lit aims to enhance cultural offerings on the Eastern Shore with free community author events. This newsletter is written by Shore Lit Founder and Director Kerry Folan. 

 

Alexander Calder (1898-1976) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania into a family of artists.. His grandfather and father were known for their public sculpture commissions, and his mother was a portrait artist. Alexander, better known as Sandy, started making small sculptures of mixed materials by1902.  The first one was an elephant. By age ten, Sandy had a small workshop. However, his parents having experienced the artist life, wanted Sandy to choose another line of work. Sandy graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey with a degree in mechanical engineering. The following inscription was written in his yearbook: “Sandy is evidently always happy, or perhaps up to some joke, for his face is always wrapped up in that same mischievous, juvenile grin. This is certainly the index to the man’s character in this case, for he is one of the best natured fellows there is.” 

Calder held several jobs as a hydraulic engineer, draughtsman, mechanic, and timekeeper at a logging camp. From the camp he wrote home to request paint and brushes to paint the mountain scenery. He started his art studies in 1923 at the Art Students League in New York City. He frequently visited Coney Island, the circus, and the Bronx and Central Park zoos. He began the creation of the “Calder Circus” (1926-1931). Over the next several years the “circus” grew to over 70 miniatures of performers, almost 100 accessories, 30 musical instruments, records, and noisemakers. Eventually the work filled five suitcases. The figures were made of wire, wood, metal, cloth, yarn, cardboard, leather, cloth, string, rubber tubing, corks, buttons, rhinestones, pipe cleaners, bottle caps, and other found objects.

Calder moved back and forth from Paris to New York from 1926 until 1933. He performed the show over 70 times. In Paris his audience included critics, collectors, and artists from the theatre, and literature, including the Parisienne avant-garde, Miro, Duchamp, Cocteau, and Leger. Paris audience members sat on bleachers made from champagne crates, and they ate peanuts. They were given noisemakers to sound when Calder gave the signal. In New York his audience included members of high society. Calder announced the acts in French or English, choreographed all the movement, gave voice to the performers and animals, played music, and created sound effects. The shows were so well received they often lasted for two hours. 

At the lower right-side corner of the display is the “Little Clown Trumpeter.” In a performance, Calder would place a balloon in the clowns mouth and then blow through the hose until the balloon burst and knocked over the bearded lady that was placed in front of him. The figures in the middle are a cowboy wearing wooly chaps, a bull made of wire and corks, a cowboy on horseback wearing a red bandana and holding his black hat, and a woman waving an American flag. A street lamp, and a dachshund fill in the left front corner. At the rear, three trapeze artists hold onto the high wire that Calder would vibrate to animate them. In case one should fall, a net was suspended beneath.

The clown (10.5’’x7’75’’x5’75’’) is dressed in a long brown coat with arms made of Yarn. Calder would strip off the clown’s clothes in layers until he was dressed in coveralls, and revealed to be a thin wire figure. The camel is a cloth sculpture sewn together and wired for stability (6.5’’x5’75’’x4’25’’). The kangaroo is made from shaped pieces of metal nailed to a wooden base on a wheel. When the kangaroo is pulled by an attached cord its legs appear to move, similar to a child’s pull toy. As a result of the success of his inventions, Calder went to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1927, to meet with a children’s toy manufacturer. They signed a contract for his Action Toys: a hopping kangaroo, a skating bear, and a goldfish that appeared to swim, opening and closing its gills when pulled.  

 

Standing in the center ring, ringmaster Monsieur Loyal in top hat and tails points to the lion in cage. Out of the cage for a performance, the lion completed a few tricks and then sat on a pedestal. The lion then dropped a few chestnuts as if popping, which were quickly removed. Calder planned to add scent to the performance, but he found musk perfume too expensive and abandoned the idea.

 

Other attractions at the Calder Circus included a sword swallower, Sultan of Senegambia, who threw spears and axes, a belly dancer who gyrated, a horse and chariot, cows, seals, a tightrope act, dogs, and other acts from the circus and the side show. The rider on the elephant appears to an English Kings Guard wearing a bearskin hat and bright red tunic. The elephant has a tube running through its body. In a performance the tube/trunk hung down as if the elephant were drinking water, but when Calder blew into the tube the trunk raised up and spewed out small pieces of paper to  give the effect of  spaying water. 

 

 Calder included well-known circus performers in his show. May Wirth, a famous bareback rider from the Barnum and Bailey circus, performed in the center ring. “Rigoulot the Strong” was a popular performer. When Calder loosened the cord, Rigoulot bent forward and picked up the barbell with his wire-hook hands. When the cord was tightened, the figure returned to the upright position and groaned. The figure then proceeded to lift the barbell backward and over his head.

During the run of the “Calder Circus” from1926 to 1931, Calder added a new dimension to the show with a series of figures constructed of wire only (1929). After meeting Piet Mondrian in 1930 and after being introduced to totally abstract art, he wrote a letter to Mondrian stating it was “the shock that converted me. It was like the baby being slapped to make its lungs start working.” It was then that Calder began to work as he said, “Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions.” He began creating his “Mobiles” in 1931.

Calder gave the last performance of the Calder Circus in 1961, for the filming of Le Cirque de Calder by Carlos Vilardebo. The Whitney Museum in New York City raise $1.25 million in 1932 to the purchase the Circus. The work continues on display at the Whitney.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 

Easton Elementary School in Easton has brought history to life with a remarkable living history museum in its cafeteria. Spearheaded by fourth-grade teacher Joanna Morris, with the assistance of the Avalon Foundation, students immerse themselves in their chosen historical figures, conducting their own research and biographies of their favorite GOAT.

The Spy spent a few moments with Joanna, her crew of dedicated volunteers, and a cast of famous heros.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about the Avalon Foundation please go here.

One thing the hardships of the pandemic forced us to do was to determine how to spend our time during its long months of self-isolation and monotony. For creatives, the long blocks of time held a silver lining—time to explore their art form.

For retired emergency room physician Michael Stang, the pandemic’s mandatory partitioning of life offered a chance to rekindle his lifelong affection for writing. 

That love for writing, meditative walks along the Gunpowder River north of Baltimore, and a fascination with regional history led to a series of ideas Stang began to shape into stories.

The result was The Monster of Gunpowder River and Other Fabrications, a collection of seven short stories Visionary Art Museum director Rebecca Hoffberger calls “seven wonder stories, each structured upon a skeleton of geographic and historic truths…and gifted breath by the pure power of imagination.”

Michael Stang will share his stories on Wednesday, May 31, at 6 m at The Retriever Bar as part of the Bookplate ongoing Authors and Oysters series. 

For more event details, contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or [email protected]. This event is free and open to the public, and reservations are not required, however the event on 6/14 with Smithsonian curator, Eleanor Harvey, will require reservations to guarantee a seat. Reserve your space by calling the shop at 410-778-4167. The next Authors & Oysters is scheduled for 6/7 with local favorite Jamie Kirkpatrick. All events are held in the back room of The Retriever, located at 337 ½ High Street in Chestertown, Maryland. 

This video is approximately five minutes in length.

 

Hung Liu had many talents. She was a painter, photographer, video maker, and a printer. Since 2006, several of her paintings have been chosen to be woven into tapestries. In 2004 she attended the Tamarind Workshop at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, established in 1960 to advance the art of printmaking in America. There she developed a unique style of printmaking that involved layers, also in her paintings. Hung Liu won in 2011 the SGC International Award for Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking. 

 

“Dandelion with Mallard” (2016) (32’’x31’’) (monoprint with hand leafing and hand coloring) is from a series titled Drifters. On a road trip with her husband in the summer of 2014, Hung Liu began to photograph dandelions.  Large paintings from the series are titled by location: “Deadwood,” “Little Big Horn,” and “Mt. Rushmore.” Hung Liu appreciated the fact that dandelion seeds are migratory, they cross all earth and water barriers, and then multiply in new lands. The painting and prints depict dandelions past their prime, their blossoms going to seed. Their life is ending but is regenerated by the seeds.

The familiar Hung Liu circles and drips continue in this print. She also adds a brightly colored Mallard duck, in Chinese tradition a symbol of prosperity, abundance, and good luck.

Hung Liu visited the Oakland County Library in California in 2015 to study the archives of Dorothea Lange and the other photographers of the WPA (1939-43) who documented the Great Depression in America.  “Migrant Mother” (2015) (66”x66”) (oil) was one of the first of many paintings and prints in Hung Liu’s exhibition American Exodus. She commented,“This landscape of struggle is familiar terrain, reminding me of the epic revolution and displacement in Mao’s China. Only, now I am painting American peasants looking for the promised land.” 

Although the Dorothea Lange image is familiar to most viewers, Hung Liu said she finds “true inspiration…to discover, to excavate, to peel off the layers and try to find out what was there that got lost, for there is always something missing.” In “Migrant Mother” the face is the same as Lange’s photograph, but the poses of both mother and child are slightly altered, and a background is added. The figures are placed in a room, its dreary grey-brown color resembling a tent, not a house. A kerosine lamp and a bowl are placed on the table,

To offer hope in an atmosphere of despair, Hung Liu has painted a pink square on the wall, and the image of man’s hand holding a bouquet of freshly picked daisies. Daisies are an international symbol of purity and innocence. They represent new beginnings, and they bring joy. She said, “We can adopt each other’s children, so why can’t we adopt each other’s ancestors.”

“Tobacco Sharecropper” (2017) (monoprint with silver leaf) (33”x33”) depicts a barefoot and bare legged little girl helping her father pick tobacco. Hung Liu’s introduction of metal onto the surface of the print achieves a unique multicolored, mirror-like surface that reflects light. Her art education in China included painting of Russian Icons where precious metals, particularly gold leaf, were layered onto the image to increase its spirituality. Hung Liu’s inclusion of silver and gold leaf serve the same purpose. The images of the past are not lost, but brought back from history and preserved for the future.  

Hung Liu states: “With this new body of paintings, I would like to summon the ghosts from Dorothea Lange’s brilliant [black and white] photographs…I personally identify with Ms. Lange’s photographs since I am myself an immigrant from China and was caught up in wars and famines…forcing my family to migrate elsewhere. As an American citizen, I am very passionate about how painting American subjects remind me so much of those of my homeland.”

An exhibition of Hung Liu’s work was scheduled to open on December 6, 2019, at the Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. The exhibition was abruptly cancelled in November.  Hung Liu had agreed to remove a few of her paintings that were considered too controversial, but the reason for the cancellation was suspect, permits to bring her work into China were denied. In an interview with Art News (2019) Liu stated, “The message is anti-war so I thought it was OK. When I talked with my Chinese artist friends about it, they just said one word: Hong Kong.” Hung Liu held a cancellation party on the day the show was supposed to open.

“Sanctuary” (2019) (72”x72”) (oil with gold leaf) depicts a Mexican mother and her baby boy. Hung Liu’s concern for immigrants included those Mexican, Guatemalan, and Central American migrants arriving in large numbers at the American border. She visited the Texas border and talked with and photographed many migrants. The expression on the face of this mother displays a mixture of emotions: joy, thankfulness, relief, and many more. Previously, Hung Liu painted Madonna-like figures in different forms, both Chinese and African American. In “Sanctuary,” Hung Liu placed a solid gold leaf circle behind the woman’s’ head. It is a reference to the Virgin Mary, to the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe, to the halo always around the head of the Buddha, and it represents the sun and hope.  

Hung Liu retired from Mills College in 2014, but she never stopped working. She died on August 7, 2021 as the result of pancreatic cancer. She was 73 years old. She was an internationally respected and beloved artist, and her work was exhibited in over fifty solo exhibitions.  Memorial exhibitions continue to be scheduled world-wide. Her paintings remind us that everyone, no matter the race, religion, or place in the world, should be respected and honored. Having come from an authoritarian country, she loved American democracy. She remarked: “The story of America as a destination for the homeless and hungry of the world is not only a myth. It is a story of desperation, of sadness, of uncertainty, of leaving your home. It is also a story of determination, and—more than anything—of hope.” (Hung Liu, 2017)

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 

“When I got the United States, I had already lived half my lifetime in China. I did not really think about this; I just got on with my studies and trying to make a success of my painting career…. But I always felt I should be doing more, because of the Cultural Revolution and so on.”  Since her arrival in San Francisco in 1984, Hung Liu’s paintings have dealt with the cultural history she uncovered in old photographs. “I use historical photographs, they’re already grainy and really blurry–so it’s like memory, like our sense of perception, out of focus over time.”

Another of her frequently represented themes is the struggle of so many Chinese people who were displaced as a result of disruptions caused by famine and war. “Refugees: Woman and Children” (1999) (80’’x120’’) is from a series titled Refugees. Everyone, from the very young to the very old, is affected. The old woman has become responsible for two babies placed in large woven baskets.  Sadly, Hung Liu also recognized the photograph might have depicted a mother desperate to sell her infants, not uncommon in China at the time. Her ability to communicate to the viewer sensitive facial expression is remarkable. 

To counteract desperation of the mother, she includes images of hope for the future. In China the crane and sparrows are powerful symbols of happiness. Lotus blossoms grow from the mud and muck at the bottom of ponds, but the flower rises above to bring great beauty and happiness into the world. It is a symbol of resurrection. The images of the Buddha bring a message of hope and a blessing to guide the family to a better life. Hung Liu’s emotional connection to the people, and her painting of the events, is sensitive and strong.  Viewers can easily connect to the people and their circumstances.

“Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth” (2007) (80”x80”) was the cover painting for the exhibition catalog Daughters of China. Hung Liu titled the exhibition after a Chinese propaganda film she had seen in 1948. “Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth” is a photograph of eight paramilitary women who threw themselves into the river rather than be taken prisoner during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

 

Among the paintings in Daughters of China, several were titled “Tis the Final Conflict” (2007) (66”x66”). The paintings feature the incredibly expressive faces of individual Chinese warrior women, in groups, alone, and some with their fallen comrades. They are a compelling reminder of the terrors of war.

Hung Liu witnessed the Wenchuan earthquake in 1976 that killed 240,000 people. She painted “Richter Scale” (2009) (80”x160’’) in response to the 8.0 earthquake on May 12, 2008 in Sichuan. The quake killed 90,000 people, including the children attending an elementary school, largely as a result of the soddy construction of the building. She was in China in May 2008 for two solo exhibitions of her work in Beijing and to paint landscapes when the earthquake occurred. 

Building materials and bits and pieces of destroyed items are piled high in this thirteen-foot-long painting. A young girl and her little sister sit amidst the devastation. White birds, like angels, fly over the debris but can do nothing. At the upper right an animal’s eye, orange and black, looks out from the pile of wood. 

Hung Liu’s exhibition titled Apsaras (2009) was installed in 2009 at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York City. “Richter Scale” and other paintings of victims of the earthquake were included. Many of the portraits were simply titled Apsaras and a color. Many are of children with bandaged faces. “Apsaras – White” (2009) presents a poignant image of an old woman’s response to what she has seen. The Apsaras, the swirling female figure in blue, tries to bring what comfort she can to the grieving woman. The Apsaras is a beautiful heavenly maiden found in both Buddhism and Hinduism. The Apsaras sings and dances, a much-needed presence bringing calm and hope.

Hung Liu and her husband Jeff Kelley visited Qianshan in the summer of 2006. The province encompasses almost one thousand mountain peaks and forests where Buddhist and Taoist monasteries continue to function. Liu Weihua, Hung Liu’s beloved grandfather, was the foremost Chinese authority on the temples, stone steles engraved with carvings, caves, and carved stairways that populate the area. He photographed them for years; his book Qianshan was published posthumously in 2002. Hung Liu’s exhibition Quinshan: Grandfather’s Mountain (2013) included 14 paintings based on his photographs. “Grandfather’s Rock” (2013) (48’’x60’’) is one of her paintings. Grandfather Liu, a large stone stele from which water flows into a stone basin, and a cluster of yellow chrysanthemums, and the trees in the foreground, all carefully painted, occupy the center of the composition. The distant trees with cloudlike foliage dissolve into the sky. Hung Liu uses two styles of painting, realistic and abstract, to focus viewers’ attention on the transition from earth to sky.  

The cluster of yellow chrysanthemums, a symbolic element in the painting, represents longevity, wealth, and tranquility. The flower is native to China and important for 3000 years. The plant grows in the early spring, but does not bloom until fall. It is a popular flower in Chinese gardens, and in paintings, pottery, and poetry. It is treasured for its medical qualities.

“The Botanist” (2013) (96’’x54’’) is a portrait of Hung Liu’s grandfather. He was a major influence on her life. Liu Weihua focused his life-long study of Qianshan ecology as well as the religious shrines. Hung Liu commented, “I remember a lot of things: his face, his demeanor, his body language. He had hands that were very soft and big. So those kinds of things were very important for me as part of these paintings.”

“Silver River” (2013) is a mural Hung Liu painted on a long wall in the San Jose Museum of Art for her exhibit Questions for the Sky. The brochure accompanying the exhibition states that it is “A meditation on the fleeting nature of life and death, the work itself is ephemeral by design: it will disappear forever when the exhibition ends on September 29, 2013.” Climbing ladders and scaffolds, Hung Liu painted the mural in just one week. 

 Hung Liu painted “Sliver River” (2013) (detail) using traditional black paint in the style of historical Chinese scrolls. Her personal symbols, circles, lotus flowers, and an Asparas, are painted in color.  A video of the work in progress was accompanied by three other Hung Liu videos titled Black Rain, Candle, and Between Earth and Sky.  The videos contained photographs taken by Hung Liu each day with her iPhone the year after her mother died. 

The series of articles on Hung Liu will conclude in the next issue of the Spy.

In my work, my experience as a Chinese immigrant to the United States is quite important, and I also discovered some very important historical photographs, both in the U.S. and in China. We were never allowed to see such photographs when I was in China.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.