There is a rare elegance in the simplicity of skipjacks, a gentle reminder that true beauty is both crafted and earned

“Two Skipjacks” by Kevin Lynam.

An osprey brings home the next meal.
“Fresh Catch” by Jane Staily.

The Golden Haggadah was created in Catalonia, Spain, in c.1320. It was written in Sephardic script, and it is one of the oldest surviving and most elaborately decorated Haggadahs. It consists of 101 leaves of vellum and fourteen pages of miniatures, four miniatures on each page on a gold-leaf background. At the beginning of the celebration a child asks, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

The first set of stories tells about Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, and Joseph, who was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt. Beginning at the top right, Noah grows grapes and makes wine to offer at the altar in thanksgiving to God for saving the people from destruction in the Flood. In the same scene, Noah lies drunk and naked. His two sons cover him with a cloth, and they turn their heads to avoid seeing him in disgrace.

At the top left is the building of the tower of Babel by King Nimrod, who wanted to reach “the heavens so that we can make a name for ourselves…” (Genesis 11:4). Having been disobeyed, God will destroy the tower and cause the people to speak different languages and to separate into tribes.

The Israelites in Egypt eventually were enslaved. To regulate the increasing population of children, Pharoah ordered the deaths of all newborn Israelite boys. Jochebed placed her son in a wicker basket and hid it in the bull rushes along the Nile. Pharoah’s daughter came to the Nile to bathe and discovered Moses. She took the baby to raise as her own son and named him Moses, which meant drawn out. Miriam, Moses’s sister asked if Pharaoh’s daughter would like a wet-nurse to raise him. Moses’s own mother was given the job.

In the illustration, a servant has opened the lid of the basket, revealing the child. Pharoah’s daughter sits on the river bank. She wears the habit of a Catholic nun. The other two women are Miriam and Jochebed. The three women in the Nile are nude, a bold move by the illustrator.

Two artists illuminated this manuscript. They were influenced by Islamic and Catholic Gothic art. Andalusian Spain was ruled by Muslims in the 14th Century. Muslims, Jews, and Catholics lived together in what is considered to have been a golden age of art and culture. The background of the illustration is painted in burnished gold with stamped diamond shaped patterns and red and blue borders. The blue areas are decorated with curved Muslim arabesque patterns. At each corner of the frame is a gold box. Black floral arabesques decorate the corners.

Moses was raised by Pharoah’s daughter, and he remained in Egypt for 40 years. He witnessed the hard life of the Israelites. After the brutal beating of an Israelite worker, he killed the taskmaster. Moses fled from Egypt to Midian to escape a death sentence. He married Zipporah and became a sheep herder. At the right side is “Moses and the Burning Bush.’’ Moses tends his sheep and looks up at the bush on fire, but not burning. This artist’s depiction of God seems more like an angel. God calls to Moses. Moses takes off his sandals as he was instructed because he was on sacred ground. Moses appears a second time, hiding his face, afraid to look at God. It was not unusual for a major figure to be depicted more than once in order to tell the story. God directs Moses to return to Egypt and to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.

Moses and his wife and children are on their way to Egypt when he meets his brother Aaron in the scene at the left side of the illustration. God chose them to work together to free the Israelites.

Moses and his younger brother Aaron went to Pharoah between seven to ten times, each time demanding, “Let my people go.” Pharoah refused. Moses called upon God to send ten plagues.

First, the Nile turns to blood.

Then a plague of frogs (top right) swarms over the land and into houses, even into the Pharaoh’s palace. Moses, with his staff in the Nile, causes the frogs to scatter. The seated Pharaoh is depicted as a Medieval king.

Other plagues cause gnats and lice, flies, and disease to kill people and animals.

In the left panel, Moses and Aaron cause painful boils to infect the Egyptians. Moses, at 80 years of age, holds his staff while Aaron holds up his hand. No boils appear on their bodies. The gray tower in the scene is similar to structures with arches.

At the lower right, Moses and the Pharaoh stand in front of a Gothic style building as Moses causes wild animals to invade the city.

Plagues of hail, locusts, and darkness follow.

The final scene at the lower left depicts the beginning of the death of the Egyptian first-born. Moses directed the Israelites to sacrifice lambs and to paint the blood on the door posts of their houses in order to be spared by the Angel of Death. Camels, horses, sheep, and goats also died. At the far left, a first-born man about to die opens his coat.

At the right, “Pharoah’s Army.” depicted as Christian knights with their familiar 14th Century pennants, armor, spears, and shields, follow the Israelites. On the left, Moses uses his staff to part the Red Sea so the Israelites may pass safely. The sea then swallows up Pharoah’s army.

Preparations for the Seder dinner are depicted on this page. At the top right, Miriam, the sister of Moses, joins some women, swaying to the music they are playing on 14th Century instruments. Miriam holds a rectangular timbrel, an ancient percussion instrument made of stretched animal skin on a rectangular wooden frame. Metal hoops were attached to the edges and when stuck or shaken made a jingling rhythmic sound.

At the top left, the master of the house sits under a canopy and distributes matzoh (unleavened bread) and haroset (sweets made of nuts and fruit) to a woman with six children, representing fertility. The Midrash, a Jewish text that was written to fill in gaps in the Torah, refers to Leah, Jacob’s wife, as the mother of six sons.

At the lower right, the house is being prepared for Passover. The floor is being washed and ceiling beams are dusted,

At the lower left a lamb is being prepared in the traditional kosher method. The animal must be healthy and conscious. The shochet, who is trained and certified, cuts the neck to insure a swift and humane death. The lamb is then hung to drain the blood. Finally, it is cooked in a large pot over a roaring fire.

The richly decorated Golden Haggadah likely was commissioned by a wealthy Jewish family. Jews were among advisors to and confidants of the Muslim caliphs during the “Golden Age” of Spain. The Golden Haggadah is a significant work that testifies to this spectacular and exception period in history.

What are you having for lunch today?
“Hungry” by Jim Preston

From the beginning, Sherald’s painting focused on black people: “I understand the importance of being represented at a cultural level and being able to see reflections of yourself, and society, and in culture. I basically paint people who I want to see exist in the world, but then I also want to create a narrative that’s extricated from a dominant historical narrative…In a way, it’s become a form of social justice for me because I’m doing a job now.”

Sherald invites real people she meets to her studio where she photographs them several times until she finds an image she wants to paint. Her forte is portraiture: “I synthesize my own archetypes and icons to create playful yet sober portraits of Black Americans within an imaginative history where I do black my way, in the European tradition of painted portraiture.” The story each portrait tells is a combination of reality and fantasy.

“The Fairest of the Not So Fair” (2008) (72’’x67’’) (oil) was inspired by the mirror in Alice in Wonderland that the Queen of Hearts repeatedly asked who was the fairest of them all. The young black woman is dressed in a gold and white ball gown, and she holds a gold mirror. Posed against a mottled red background, she stands ready to go to the ball. But can she? The historical portrait icon should be a white woman. Sherald questions race, identity, and expected standards. Would this Alice be accepted or excluded by society? The white feathers covering her eyes lend a sense of mystery, or anonymity.

Another Sherald signature is the color of the subject’s skin, painted with the colors black and Naples yellow. The result is neither white nor black, but gray. Neutral. Her paintings are large. Her early paintings were of single figures set before mottled backgrounds. The careful poses and clothing are part of the story.

Sherald’s titles are as important as the images themselves. They are meant to be read carefully and to generate thought. She commented, “My paintings imagine the versions of ourselves that thrive when extricated from the dominant historical narratives…”

In more recent paintings, Sherald added background landscapes. “A Midsummer Afternoon Dream” (2021) (106’’x101’’) (oil) features a beautiful young black woman, wearing a bright blue dress and leaning against a yellow bicycle. Sherald’s colors always have been vivid. The subject stands on a green lawn, made more intense by her white tennis shoes, the black and orange stripes of the bicycle wheels, and the white picket fence behind her. The color yellow is used for the tall sunflowers behind the fence and the sunflowers in the orange basket of the bicycle. A white farmhouse with a red brick chimney is set in the distance behind the fence at the right. It is hard to find. In the bicycle basket are purple, blue, and white daisies. An albino Pekingese dog sits at the front of the basket. The handlebars are reddish brown, as are the centers of the sunflowers. The touches of orange in the subject’s visor and the bicycle basket and wheels complete the color palette. The blue sky is slightly cloudy. Noticing all the details in a Sherald composition is an essential part of experiencing her work. She is quite brilliant.

“A God Blessed Land” (“Empire of Dirt”) (2022) (96”x103”) (oil) is a portrait of Denzel Mitchell, Jr., a Baltimore farmer and executive director of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore. The setting is a field and a green John Deere tractor with a pink steering wheel. The tractor is meticulously painted. The shine of the paint, the tire treads, and the shadow and light on the yellow wheels are mesmerizing. The grass is not perfectly green; the dirt, dried stalks, and dark-shaded stalks add variety to the palette. Denzel Mitchell’s white T-shirt and blue-jean overalls are a reference to the clothing worn by members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights movement. She and Mitchell had become friends.

Growing up, Sherald spent summers on a farm. She wanted to make a statement about the ownership of land and what that meant for black families. She also wanted to remind the viewer of the significance of black farmers in America’s agricultural history. The electrical fence across the green field goes almost unnoticed. But it is significant.

“Kingdom” (2022) (117”x93”) (oil) is a depiction of a young black boy on the top step of a playground slide. Like the John Deere tractor, the slide’s metallic surface is meticulously painted. The top step is placed in the center of the composition. The boy wears a blue denim jacket with a sherpa collar, and his T-shirt is white with red stripes: red, white, and blue. He is comfortable at the top of his world. There is a sense of hope and possibility. In the museum, he stands above the viewer and calmly looks down. For the moment, he is the King of his World.

The titles of Sherald’s paintings are as important as the images. “To Tell Her Story You Must Walk in Her Shoes” (2022) (54”x43”) (oil) really does not need comment. Sometimes the message is simple. The design on the sweater says it all.

“Trans Forming Liberty” (2024) (10’x6.4’) (oil) is a portrait of black artist Arewa Basit, who identifies as a non-binary trans-femme, in the pose of the Statue of Liberty. Sherald altered the pose. The color of the gown is ultramarine, and the hair is fuchsia. There is no crown. The statue’s right arm is fully extended and holds the torch. In the portrait, Basit holds at shoulder height a bouquet of Gerbera daisies, symbols of joy and hope. Her modern gown has a thigh-high slit that reveals leg. The pose is familiar, as is the hand on hip gesture. This Lady Liberty is confident, imposing, and questioning. Sherald says her painting “exists to hold space for someone whose humanity has been politicized and disregarded.”

The painting is part of Sherald’s American Sublime exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, open through April 5, 2026. The exhibition was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2024 and the Whitney Museum in New York in 2025. It was to open at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The painting became controversial, considered to be too DEI (diversity, equality, and inclusion). When Museum officials decided not to include the painting, Sherald canceled the entire exhibition. She wrote to the Museum, “I entered into this collaboration in good faith, believing that the institution shared a commitment to presenting work that reflects the full, complex truth of American life. Unfortunately, it has become clear that the conditions no longer support the integrity of the work as conceived.”

“Portraiture has always been my way of asserting presence—of creating visibility where there has too often been erasure.” (Amy Sherald)

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.

Suzanne Stoltenberg has been hauling this project all over Talbot County.

There are paper triangles, poster board signs, prompts, pens, glue, tape, and the fabric backing that will eventually hold it all together. There is also Stoltenberg, sitting behind a table, convincing people they really do have something worth writing down.

Stoltenberg, a member of the Working Artists Forum, is leading a public project tied to Talbot250 in which people are invited to write a few lines on individual paper quilt pieces. Those pieces will become a large paper quilt that will be displayed at the Market at Dover Station in Easton when a Talbot 250-themed exhibit opens in May.

Before that happens, though, Stoltenberg is still collecting memories and thoughts.

There was a time when she realized she would need more than 200 pieces to create the project, this alarmed her.

But then people started writing, and that perspective changed. “The truth is, it has been fun. It’s been fascinating. It’s been a history lesson. I’ve met so many interesting people.”

Some write about what they love about Talbot County. Some write about what life was like here years ago. Some honor a person who changed their life. Some write about farming, working on the water, a town they grew up in, a school, a family member, a coach, or a piece of county history they do not want forgotten.

The idea began at a general Working Artists Forum meeting, when members were being asked to come up with ideas for future exhibits. Stoltenberg had been following Talbot250 and noticed that organizations around the county were beginning to create events tied to the semiquincentennial.

“When I saw that, I thought, ‘That’s a great idea,’” she said. “We can do something different, in addition to painting and doing scenes from Talbot, which will also be a part of our contribution.”

That ‘something different’ turned into a larger exhibition effort. Diane DuBois Mullaly suggested Dover Station as the location. Maggie Sarfati joined in. Stoltenberg took charge of the quilt, which became the public piece of the project.

As for why a paper quilt, Stoltenberg’s response was, “It’s hard to write on fabric.”

So people are writing on paper shapes that can actually hold ink and be read, and those shapes are being attached to a fabric backing. Stoltenberg has spent plenty of time testing glues, testing tape, and figuring out how the whole thing should be laid out.

She also realized she had to consider the simple question of whether anyone would be able to read it once it was hanging on the wall.

“I planned to have four down and three across,” she said. “But then I laid it all out…and I said, ‘Now wait a minute. I don’t think I can read the one up there.’”

So that had to be rethought.

That practical side of Stoltenberg comes through a lot when she talks about the project. Yes, it is art. Yes, it is public art. But it is also a table, some prompts, and one person trying to get another person to stop for a minute and remember something.

So far, she’s taken it to Water’s Edge Museum during Black History Month, to the library several times, to the YMCA, and to Working Artists Forum gatherings. Sometimes she plans ahead. Sometimes, she just has the materials in the car and brings them out if the opportunity feels right.

And along the way, she has learned that most people need a little push.

“When people approach the table, what I tell them first is, you could do anything, because it has to come from you, and it should be more personal,” she said. “

She gives them prompts and paper to draft something if they need it, but mostly she talks with them until something surfaces. A person. A place. A story from childhood. A work history. A town. A memory that has probably been sitting there for years without anybody asking for it.

Once they put pen to paper, the stories can be remarkable.

“What has happened, it’s taken a life of its own,” she said, “because the stories are incredible and fascinating.” Some are deeply personal—a coach who changed someone’s life. A woman who helped a person get off drugs. A grandmother who raised them. Somebody who showed up when it mattered.

Other messages are more directly historical. These include the first police commissioner, Walter Chase, who wrote about attending segregated schools, and a woman who told her she had gone to a one-room schoolhouse in Copperville.

Not every entry is dramatic, and Stoltenberg is fine with that. Some are simply lovely, she said. People writing that they moved here years ago and found good friends. Someone remembering rowing on the Choptank. Someone appreciating what they love about our county.

Stoltenberg wrote one herself, acknowledging people who stood out to her. “When we first moved here, a neighbor I hadn’t met brought a hot apple pie over. And the guy across the street, when it snowed, plowed my driveway without even asking.”

That’s the kind of thing that keeps showing up. Not official history exactly, though some of that is there too. More of the history people carry around with them. The lived-in kind. The story of a place told through the people who made it feel like home, or who helped shape a life in some quiet way.

The mix of the stories and people matters to Stoltenberg. She has made a point of going after them.

She has tried to include teens through the Academy Art Museum and the library. She has gone to Black History Month events because she wanted different voices represented. She has gone to the senior center. She has gone to the Y. She wants the finished piece to reflect more than one age group, one neighborhood, or one slice of county life.

The quilt will be hung when the exhibit opens on May 2 at the Market at Dover Station. Stoltenberg said there will also be another chance that day for people to take part by helping create a smaller quilt on site.

So even then, it will not quite be finished.

For now, she is still in the collecting stage, still out there with her table and her prompts, still trying to get people past that first instinct to say they do not know what to write.

Asked what she hopes people will feel when they see the finished quilt, Stoltenberg said, “I think they’re going to feel like we’re part of a community and that people are listening and want to hear about them.”

She does not try to overstate it beyond that.

“I think it says what it says itself without me thinking what I’d like it to say,” she said.

Still, she said, if there is one thing she keeps hearing from those who contributed, it is this: “This is an excellent area to live. There’s great beauty. There’s a huge, rich history… no matter how diverse we really get along, we’re good neighbors.”

This Saturday, she’s hoping to hear more of it.” Stoltenberg will be collecting stories from 9 a.m. to noon at the grand opening of the new St. Michaels Library and from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. People do not need to be artists. They do not need to be writers. They just need a memory.

There are moments when Mother Nature is anything but gentle.
“The Strike” by Russ Levi

The Academy Art Museum is pleased to announce two compelling spring exhibitions now open at 106 South Street in Easton, Maryland. A Fragile Symbiosis: The Sculpture of Ernest Cox and Teddy Johnson: Window Views are accompanied by a season of special programming including a Members-only reception, an opening reception, an artist talk, and a hands-on painting workshop.

A Fragile Symbiosis: The Sculpture of Ernest Cox The Academy Art Museum presents the most comprehensive exhibition of Ernest Cox’s work in nearly thirty years, celebrating the distinguished career of the longtime Easton resident and sculptor (1937–2024). A Fragile Symbiosis brings together more than 20 sculptures that trace the full arc of Cox’s artistic vision—from his early “Slab Series” of wall-mounted works fashioned from fabricated and salvaged metal, to his intricate later multi-part assemblages.

“Curating this exhibition offered me an opportunity to engage deeply with Ernest Cox’s sculptural practice. His extraordinary ability to transform disparate materials into cohesive and compelling forms is truly remarkable and unique,” said curator Brian J. Lang, Director of Curatorial Affairs, Academy Art Museum. “Whether visitors knew Ernie personally, or are encountering his work for the first time, I hope this exhibition brings renewed attention to the sophistication of his craftsmanship and his lasting contribution to the artistic community of the Eastern Shore.”

Organized by the Academy Art Museum, A Fragile Symbiosis is presented in conjunction with Rauschenberg 100: New Connections and illuminates the deep, enduring relationships formed among artists who came to call the Eastern Shore home. On view through May 24, 2026.

Teddy Johnson: Window Views Teddy Johnson: Window Views presents a body of paintings drawn from two distinct but deeply resonant locations: the artist’s home in Baltimore County and the sun-drenched hills of Chianti, Italy, where Johnson has been a frequent artist-in-residence at La Macina di San Cresci. The Italian works, with their weighty architecture framing centuries of agricultural landscape, stand in vivid contrast to the Baltimore paintings, in which Johnson sets his domestic interior in quiet dialogue with the life unfolding just beyond his windows.

With close observation at the core of his practice, Johnson uses windows and doors as compositional devices—simultaneously openings and barriers—that frame landscape as both f iction and documentation, as static interior and endlessly evolving exterior. The result is a body of work that rewards sustained looking: the more one lingers, the more fully one inhabits the threshold between two worlds.

Johnson is Academic Chair of Visual Arts and Associate Professor of Art at Anne Arundel Community College. His previous solo exhibitions include The American Poetry Museum, the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower, and the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley. His paintings have been featured in Baltimore Style Magazine and on Fox 45’s Hometown Hotspot. On view through May 31, 2026.

Related Programs:

• Opening Reception & Artist Talk with Teddy Johnson Saturday, March 21, 2026 | 2-3:30 p.m. Join artist Teddy Johnson for an opening reception in celebration of his exhibition, Window Views. Stay for an in-depth artist talk in which he will discuss the ideas and processes behind Window Views—from his residencies in Italy to his walks through his Baltimore neighborhood, and the way close observation transforms an ordinary view into a charged pictorial space. This free event is open to the public

• Member Reception for A Fragile Symbiosis Friday, March 27, 2026 | 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. Museum Members are invited to an exclusive preview reception to celebrate A Fragile Symbiosis . Not yet a Member? Join today, membership benefits begin immediately. To become a member, visit: academyartmuseum.org/support/membership/.

• Painting Workshop: Navigating Change in Landscape Painting April 25–26, 2026 | Two-Day Workshop with Teddy Johnson In conjunction with his exhibition, Teddy Johnson will lead a two-day, hands-on painting Workshop. Drawing directly on the themes of his exhibition, Johnson will guide participants through the challenges and possibilities of painting landscapes in f lux—capturing light, atmosphere, and the shifting relationship between interior and exterior space. Space is limited; early registration is strongly encouraged. To register, visit: academyartmuseum.org/weekend-workshop-navigating-change-in-landscape-painting/

“I like seeing how the sky and water look kinda like the same…you can’t tell where one starts or the other ends. Blue everywhere now.”

“Blue” by J.P.Henry

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