DELMARVA ALMANAC

THE ARTS: Celebrating Creativity - Artist Interviews

Though the Delmarva Almanac is no longer being published, these videos continue to present valuable and interesting content. Public events and/or reference links mentioned in them were accurate at the time they were produced. There should be no expectation that such information continues to remain valid.

A Short History of The Rehoboth Art League

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Since its founding the Rehoboth Art League has provided a variety of art learning experiences for artists and art enthusiasts.

A. Aubrey Bodine

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Hear the story of A. Aubrey Bodine the celebrated photographer, whose daughter sells his work from her home in Denton. The late Baltimore Sun photographer never lived here but he spent a great deal of time here documenting watermen and the way of life on the Eastern Shore.

Alex Vidiani

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet this year's Sophie Kerr Prize winner: poet Alex Vidiani.

Allen Sklar

by Dana Kester-McCabe
During the summer Allen Sklar can be found running a business renting bikes on Ocean City's Boardwalk. For a good part of the rest of the year you will find him on Assateague fishing and photographing the wild horses, resident eagles, and visiting raptors like peregrine falcons and snowy owls.

Angela Herbert Hodges

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Angela Herbert Hodges pours her love for the environment and endangered African wildlife into emotionally charged water color paintings and collages. I visited her at the end of summer when you can still here the cicadas serenading us from outside her studio.

Anne Coates

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet the owner of Bishop Stock Gallery in Snow Hill which has become one of the most prestigious art galleries on Delmarva.

Arden Bardol

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Dover artist Arden Bardol who creates unique fine art jewelry using metals and polymer clay.

Aurelio Grisanty

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Artist Aurelio Grisanty has built a successful business designing stylish crisp graphic Art Deco inspired travel posters. His equally beautiful fine art paintings are more expressionistic which employ an unusual creative process that leads to paintings which build on each previous work.

Austin Barrett

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Queen Anne's County wood working artist Austin Barrett.

Barbara Lockhart

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Dorchester County writer Barbara Lockhart tells us about her latest novel of historical fiction: Elizabeth's Field.

Barbara Warden

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Milton Delaware artist, Barbara Warden, turned to drawing as her primary medium having previously concentrated on the fiber arts, specifically quilting. Her expressionistic drawings are rich with texture and movement.

Betsy Hall Harrison

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Betsy Hall Harrison is a batik artist who lives in Ocean City, Maryland and works in her studio in Berlin, Maryland. Batik is a resist technique using fabric dyes, and hot wax on silk. The colors are applied in layers beginning with lighter hues and finishing with darker ones or black.

Bill Patterson

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Milton, Delaware painter Bill Patterson.

Bill Wright

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Bill Wright is a science fiction and fantasy artist. He has a science background with a degree in biology which provides an eye for accuracy and plausibility in his life like compositions. His work has the beauty and power to inspire future exploration of this galaxy and beyond.

Bryan Russo

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Many in our area know Bryan Russo as a radio journalist but he is also a popular blues artist who has opened for a number of big name national acts.

C Mercedes Walls

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Milford artist C Mercedes Walls, also known as Cathy Walls, creates bright joyful paintings in a style that is both representational and expressionistic. She has discovered that some of the most enduring imagery is can be found in everyday experiences we can all relate to.

C. Keith Whitelock

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Salisbury painter C. Keith Whitelock may be the quintessential traditional Eastern Shore artist. A master watercolorist, he captures imagery long associated with a life which seems to be fading away, which represent the life of Delmarva's watermen.


Charles Allmond

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Delaware artist Charles Allmond who sculpts stylized birds and animals in wood and stone.

Dana Simson

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Dana Simson the owner of Chesapeake East Gallery. She is a Salisbury painter, potter, jewelry maker, and book author. Across all these mediums you can see Dana’s light-hearted style and sense of humor. She says she wants people to insert themselves into her art and interact with it.

Deborah Johnson

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Deborah Johnson is a fiber and glass artist from Magnolia, Delaware.

Debra Howard

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Debra Howard is an expressionist painter whose recent work was inspired by an artist's residency on Tangier Island. She takes just three colors red, yellow, and blue, to mix a myriad of hues that evoke the magical light she sees along our countryside.

DeMarcus Shelborne

by Dana Kester-McCabe
DeMarcus Shelborne, known to his friends as Danny, is a tattoo artist, painter, and muralist who is very busy bringing art to Milford, Delaware.

Don Cheeseman

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Don Cheeseman is a glass artist who makes fused glass sculptures, windows, and jewelry.

Dr. James Wilson - Delaware Choral Society

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Dr. James Wilson is the Artistic Director of the Delaware Choral Society and an Associate Professor of Music at Wesley College.

Erick Sahler

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Erick Sahler is a serigrapher. That is he creates prints using silkscreen. Erick’s original limited edition prints are clean stylish icons of uniquely Eastern Shore places, events, and culture. Lessons from an Eastern Shore art legend helped him get started.

Ernie Satchell

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Renowned sculptor Ernie Satchell was born and raised in Birds Nest, a tiny town on the lower Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Fred Sprock

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Snow Hill painter Fred Sprock's creative interest initially was in pen and ink drawing. But taking oil painting classes convinced him that was his medium. His has an Impressionist style. But Fred says whatever it is it is a work in progress.

Geraldine McKeown

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Geraldine McKeown is a painter who lives and works on picturesque farm in Fair Hill near historic Elkton, Maryland. Geraldine says art is a connection to the inner soul and that each painting is a direct response to a subject that has touched her emotionally. Geraldine finds that inspiration all around her.

Hannibal Lee

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Hannibal Lee, a painter living in Nanticoke with a studio in Salisbury.

Heidi Lowe

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet the jewelry designer behind the Heidi Lowe Gallery and Innovative Jewelry Studio.

Helene English

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Helene English works from the reality she observes and then projects her own abstraction and stylization on to the subjects she paints which includes the tugboats that pass by her house on the Wicomico River, carousel animals, and humorous dog scenes.

Isabel Umanzor

by Dana Kester-McCabe
For Isabel Umanzor, a native of Chile, music was an important part of her upbringing. Today, her creative expression comes in the form of both writing and performing music. She also creates paintings which are moody and expressionistic. She calls them “graphic dreaming”.

Jack Knight

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Jack Knight is a prolific artist who paints large canvases with geometric shapes and patterns in brilliant sometimes neon colors with a style reminiscent of 1960’s pop art. He also makes sculptural assemblages from found objects painted with a similar approach.

Jan Crumpley and Taylor Collins

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Jan Crumpley and Taylor Collins are friends, artists, and entrepreneurs. They have channeled their love of art and history into their paintings and the Parke Green Galleries on State Street by the Green in Dover.

Jan Kirsh

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Jan Kirsh is a sculptor and landscape designer from Bozman, Maryland in Talbot County. She creates large voluptuous fruits and vegetables that have a great sense of sensual whimsy. Jan knows how to cast an enchanted spell with her work. She says fun is really important in the garden and in art.

Jason Giusti

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Jason Giusti, a glass artist from Showell, Maryland, has a design sensibility based on simple elegant lines. Jason’s work is an alchemy between his knowledge, skill, and a sometimes-unpredictable collaborator: the fire.

Jay Fleming

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Photographer Jay Fleming has a particular passion for the waters of the Chesapeake Bay including everything above and below the waterline as well as the people who make their living off its bounty. He is coming to the close of project spanning several years, publishing a book of over three hundred of his photographs on just this topic.

Jeanne Anderton

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Jeanne Anderton says that her parents were photography buffs who encouraged her to take pictures from a very early age.

Jim Adcock

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Jim Adcock is an accomplished painter, cartoonist and caricature artist. His is most well known for his paintings of local towns and life at the beach. His work is a celebration of all that he sees, particularly that which can be found right here in Worcester County, Maryland.

John Davis Held

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet painter John Davis Held who is known for his landscapes and especially skies.

John Iampieri

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Bishopville artist John Iampieri is a screen painter. John's screens have a magical quality. They also reflect the deep cultural connection on Delmarva provided by all the people who have moved here from the Baltimore-Washington D.C. area.

Joyce Zeigler

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Joyce Zeigler is a very prolific painter who was born and raised on a farm that is now part of Tuckahoe State Park near Denton, Maryland

Kirk McBride

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Kirk McBride is inspired by those special moments when the light plays across the landscape - making magic. Kirk paints in an Impressionist style with brush strokes that flow with an easy casual grace.

Kyler Taustin

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Kyler Taustin the creative director of The Brown Box Theatre Company, a traveling troupe of players based in Boston who visit us here on Delmarva every year.

Lesley McCaskill

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Painter Lesley McCaskill moved to lower Delaware, after a long career as an art teacher in Bethesda Maryland. Lesley works primarily in watercolors. Her paintings are optimistic with a bright cheery color palette. These reflect her personality and her love for her surroundings.

Lillian Rippa

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Smyrna artist Lillian Rippa is a master of Chinese Freestyle brush painting. Lillian practices her brushstrokes just about every day. She says that this discipline makes her more confident and actually gives her a sense of freedom in her work.

Lois Engberg

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Salisbury native, Lois Engberg has found a way to bring together several things she loves: painting, antiques, and gardening. She creates classic oil paintings with elements of each of these things.

Lori Conner

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Lori Conner is a self taught muralist and art teacher with a studio in Milford, Delaware a town with a vibrant and growing cultural scene.

Lynne Lockhart

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Lynne Lockhart is a native Eastern Shore artist who is known for impressionist paintings of landscapes, animals, and more. She creates masterful paintings with brush strokes that not only look effortless, but whose subjects look as if they could jump off the surface and come alive.

Marc Emond

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Marc Emond is shop owner and a fulltime artist. He values being authentic to his own unique vision above all else in is work. Like most artists he found his calling early in life.

Mark Reeve

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Mark Reeve is a realist painter who is doing a series about Century Farms in Delaware. His goal is to connect with his audience beyond simply adding beauty to their lives.

Maureen Bannon

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Stevensville artist Maureen Bannon who paints lovely landscapes in oils. She chooses quiet pastoral scenes that seem to have a story to tell: a boat yard, marsh grass poking through a fence, or a garden fountain and flowers in sunlight.

Maureen S. Farrell

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Maureen S. Farrell a Cambridge, Maryland artist who creates mixed media works. She takes an expressionistic approach to storytelling through collages depicting women walking singly or in groups.

Maurice Spector

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Maurice Spector grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania where he learned to love the land and working with his hands. Now he lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, on another farm creating timeless paintings, and unique sculptures.

Megan Burak

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Using photo-realism, Berlin, Maryland painter Megan Burak explores ideas about things like privacy and relationships. Her goal with each composition is not to tell one specific story but leave the viewer wondering and imagining a story.


Michele Green

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Plein air painter Michele Green's studio is the wide-open marshes of Somerset County, Maryland. Her daily year-round almost-all-weather discipline requires not only physical strength but tough tenacity.

Mike Dendler

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Chincoteague sculptor Mike Dendler who works primarily in bas relief.

Mike Quattrociocchi

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Mike Quattrociocchi was introduced to woodworking at a very young age. When he was nine, his father and his uncles fixed up a barn for their use as a woodworking shop. They taught him the basics and he has been creating things ever since.

Monika Lilley

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Monika Lilley is a fiber artist who runs the Upper Room studio in Berlin. She creates images of landscapes which invoke the wonder of nature. She calls fiber art a "made-from-scratch" art and she loves to introduce others to the joys of working in this medium.

Myrna McGrath

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Myrna McGrath became a well-known and widely collected Eastern Shore artist with her prints of her hand drawn maps illustrated thematically with lighthouses, ducks, crabs, or other familiar symbols of Delmarva. Landscapes, flowers and birds populate her paintings.

Nancy Orme Mysak

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Watercolor painter Nancy Mysak grew up on the Eastern Shore and continues to live and paint in Eden, Maryland. Her paintings celebrate the beauty of her surroundings. Nancy treats each piece as an experiment combining mercurial transparent washes with controlled detailed brushwork.

Nancy Thompson

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Nancy Thompson paints in a variety of mediums but watercolor is her favorite because she can carry it with her wherever she goes. She took it up as a favor to friend.

Nick Serratore

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Pastel painter Nick Serratore is a founding member of the Milton Arts Guild and the Studios on Walnut, in Milton, Delaware. In addition to the usual landscapes and seascapes that one might expect for our region, Nick finds great inspiration in the wild meadows and woodlands here

Noreen Taylor

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet artist Noreen Taylor who uses a technique called Theorem Painting.

OC Wild Imagination Safari

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Recently I interviewed local artist Marc Emond who showed me this fun painting he had done of Ocean City. I was reminded of an idea I had for a photo essay. I've been wanting to capture the imaginative "wildlife" of Ocean City in their natural winter habitat.

Patrick Henry

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Patrick Henry is perhaps the preeminent Impressionist painter from Worcester County. Patrick sees his work as a spiritual calling. He is prolific, painting a variety of subjects including rural Delmarva, and scenes from his travels.

Patti Backer

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Patti Backer paints large eyed-creatures and fantastical scenes on wood, old furniture, and canvas. She describes her art as "a mix of folk and lowbrow… sweet and sinister." She is part of a new generation of folk artists bringing a touch of whimsy to the art world.

Paul Volker

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Snow Hill artist Paul Volker has done thousands of satirical paintings showing various animals doing very human things. He uses unconventional materials to create his paintings and bas-reliefs: house paint and recycled paper pulp. Paul wants to challenge the viewer to think beyond the ordinary.

Rafael Reyes

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Rafael Reyes, of Ocean Pines Maryland, creates paintings and inlaid wood bas reliefs. His works combine multiple images in a stylized kaleidoscopic effect. This abstraction and layering give the viewer an intriguing visual puzzle to sort out.

Ric Conn

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Ric Conn is known for his realistic pastel paintings of birds but he has devoted most of his time recently to more expressionistic images depicting contemporary young women. Ric says his work is mostly realism, real objects drawn or painted to look like themselves.

Rich Smoker

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Rich Smoker is a master waterfowl sculptor from Marion Station, Maryland. He has what many artists dream of: a life making art for a living. But, he's not in it for the money. What Rich wants people to see is a guy who loved his work, who loved going to his shop every day.

Rob Brownlee-Tomasso

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Rob Brownlee-Tomasso is a painter who treats his subject matter to a graphic sensibility with black outlines, many layers and uncommon ingredients. He takes an unusual approach to his materials. For him it is all about breaking the usual conventions of art.

Rusty Mumford

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Rusty Mumford, the director of the upcoming Community Players of Salisbury production of Steel Magnolias.

Sarah Lyle

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Sarah Lyle says that she declared at the age of seven that she was an artist and has been ever since. She works in a variety of mediums, including painting, ceramics, printmaking, and more.

Scot Dolby

by Dana Kester-McCabe
You might say that Scot Dolby is a fly fisher who paints. Or you could say that he is a painter who loves fly fishing. After a career as an elementary school teacher, Scot decided to take up both these endeavors full time. Scot is now known for his paintings of freshwater fish and landscapes.

Stasia Heubeck

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet Stasia Heubeck a realist painter who lives in Ocean Pines, Maryland.

Susan Holt

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Susan Holt, of Salisbury, Maryland, breaks out from traditional art supplies to create thought provoking art installations, large three-dimensional works of art which are meant to be immersive interactive experiences for the viewer. Her creations take the viewer to unexpected places.

Susan Mayberry

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Susan Mayberry is a Queenstown artist with an eclectic set of mediums. She makes her living primarily as a muralist. She also accepts commissions for faux finishes, and oil paintings. And she produces fine art crafts.

The Fiber Arts Center Of The Eastern Shore

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Amy Jacocks tells us about the Fiber Arts Center, in Denton, Maryland, an organization that is here to promote and educate people about the fiber arts here in our community.

Tony Townsend

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Tony Townsend is a photographer from Ocean City, Maryland, who captures the drama and beauty of scenes he visits throughout his travels. Two tragic events in his life set him on the path of becoming a photographer.

Wende Woodham

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Meet artist Stevensville, Maryland artist Wende Woodham who paints with ribbons.

Will Hemsley

by Dana Kester-McCabe
Will Hemsley has creativity and the life of an Eastern Shore waterman in his blood - quite literally.