Sunset, Sunday, 12 July 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

The best thing about yesterday’s visit to Frederick, after the lunch, was going to the Delaplaine Center for the Arts. What a place! Along with the beautiful Carroll Creek “linear park” and the trompe-l’oeil Community Bridge mural project, the Delaplaine makes you wonder how a town of 60,000 can possibly do so much. 

The Delaplaine was featuring its regional juried exhibit (closing on the 19th) and an exhibition, ‘Urban Landscapes’, by Stephen Hay. We only had time for the large regional exhibit, but I sensed, on the way out, that I had missed something by not going through the Hay show as well, and a visit to his site confirmed that for me.

In the juried show, I was struck by many things, including the works of Robert Stuart Cohen, who does mesmerizing semi-abstractions using repeated brocade-like patterns. His painting ‘The Yellow Box’ made a big impression on me, partly because the title added a third dimension to what might otherwise have been perceived as a (phenomenally complex) two-dimensional design – the ‘yellow box’ became for me like a marble sarcophagus or holy object, an ark.

But all four of us ultimately were glued to the works of Michael Douglas Jones of Damascus, Maryland – and I’m glad I have links I can give you, because they’re difficult to describe. Even when you first see them and think they’re collages of found objects – albeit rare ones from past centuries – they’re remarkable. As you keep looking and realize that Jones has created these objects or made them what they are – they become nothing short of amazing.

For me, the significance of the Delaplaine – this was my second or third visit – is the sense that it gives me of the Frederick art community as open and expansive. It somehow avoids the insularity or cliquishness you find in other places. Further, it’s not elitist, yet it avoids elitism without pandering or compromise. 

Another town of this size, this close to major cities (Frederick is in some ways a satellite of both Washington and Baltimore), could become drained of identity. A town in Virginia with a similar name, last time I checked had long suffered that fate (in relation to Washington). Residents sometimes call that place ‘Dead Fred.’ I can’t imagine people saying the same about the Fred in Maryland.