Tourism News

Shore Shakespeare Company opens its spring season with three performances of the sparkling comedy As You Like It June 1, 2 and 3 at Adkins Arboretum in Ridgely.

Directed by Christian Rogers, As You Like It is a compelling romantic adventure in which Rosalind and Orlando’s famous courtship plays out amid political rivalry, banishment and exile in the Forest of Arden. This light and most delightful comedy presents Shakespeare’s send-up of the pastoral genre popular during Elizabethan times: nobles abandoning court for the country, learning wisdom from the locals and returning refreshed and invigorated. In this, the Bard’s comedic version, the basic features are retained but are used as a backdrop for an exploration of love in all its many forms. All comes right in the end, of course.

With unforgettable characters, sparkling wit, slapstick comedy and eclectic song and dance, As You Like It has it all! Bring a chair or blanket, a picnic and a sense of humor for this entrancing game of love, lust and mistaken identity.

Performances are Fri. and Sat., June 1 and 2 at 6 p.m. and Sun., June 3 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15 and may be reserved at adkinsarboretum.org or by calling 410-634-2847, ext. 0. Information about the production is also available at shoreshakespeare.com.

Shore Shakespeare is a pan-community theatre group established to present the classic works of the theatrical repertoire and to encourage its audiences to support local community theatre all over the Shore.

Hear ye, hear ye! All are invited to revel in a day of forest fun when Adkins Arboretum celebrates its inaugural Forest Fair (with a Medieval Flair), from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.on Saturday, July 7th.

Adventurers of all ages can embark on a forest quest, visit Robin Hood’s hideout and join in medieval games. Entertainment includes falconry and beekeeping demonstrations, ballads, dance, and performances by Shore Shakespeare. Archery and swordplay will add to the fun. The truly stout-hearted may visit the apothecary for a lesson on natural remedies or forage with a local peasant.

Medieval costumes are encouraged, and imaginations are a must. Forest Fair is $10 for ages 6 and over and free for ages 5 and under. Advance registration is appreciated. To register, visit adkinsarboretum.org or call 410-634-2847, ext. 0.

Not a single bird stays still in Susan Hostetler’s paintings, drawings and sculptures on view at the Adkins Arboretum’s Visitor’s Center through June 1. Titled Shifting Shorelines, her show is full of motion with an undercurrent of concern about climate change. There will be a reception to meet the artist on Sat., April 14 from 3 to 5 p.m.

You’ll find birds flying, perching, stalking and singing throughout this show, including one full wall covered with a sweep of individual ceramic birds. But Hostetler also touches on their varied habitats with swirling leaves, flowers, seedpods, intricate clumps of moss and brilliantly hued underwater plants.

Many of this show’s works were inspired by weekend retreats at Echo Hill Outdoor School, where she and a group of artists have gathered to draw and paint on the school’s grounds, which include farmland, marshes, forests and a mile-long sandy beach.

“I always gravitated to the ‘back waters’ of the swamp and wetland areas,” Hostetler said. “They are the quiet, forgotten places teeming with life. A small mound of moss near the water’s edge is a microcosm of biodiversity containing so many intricate layers of life.”

Whether drawing or painting with gouache or encaustics, she builds up layer upon layer so as to create a feeling of translucent depth that makes her works resound with a sense of close interrelationships between birds, plants, air and water. Although she sometimes limits her palette to shades of black and white, she has a fresh and surprising way with color, mingling exuberant shades of orange, turquoise, leafy green, rust red and golden yellow.

Hostetler notes that while she has a lot to learn about birds, she is fascinated by their flight and migration patterns. Her studio in a northeast Washington, D.C., warehouse is lined with windows so that her drawn and sculpted birds inside mimic the real birds just outside.

“For us city dwellers, the bird may be the only chance we have to feel close to a wild creature,” she said. “Soaring birds are symbolic of a universal emotion of uplift and a sense of freedom.”

Hostetler has traveled and exhibited extensively, launching a hand papermaking mill in Friedberg, Germany, and a studio in Barcelona, Spain, and her work is included in many collections. In addition to frequent shows in the Washington area, her paintings and sculptures can be seen in April in Chestertown at RiverArts and the Massoni Gallery.

She feels exhibiting in the Chesapeake Bay area is a way of celebrating the International Year of the Bird, an effort by National Geographic, Audubon and more than 100 other organizations to raise awareness of the dramatic losses among bird species around the world.

Hostetler said she chose her title, Shifting Shorelines, because it allows for various interpretations. “Though one could say that shorelines shift regularly due to tides and other natural occurrences, climate change is ‘shifting’ the shoreline, and not in a positive way.”

This show is part of Adkins Arboretum’s ongoing exhibition series of work on natural themes by regional artists. It is on view through June 1 at the Arboretum Visitor’s Center located at 12610 Eveland Road near Tuckahoe State Park in Ridgely. Contact the Arboretum at 410–634–2847, ext. 0 or info@adkinsarboretum.org for gallery hours.

The Ridgely Lions Club invites you to the 39th Annual Strawberry Festival on Sunday, May 27th at Martin Sutton Memorial Park in Ridgely, Maryland from 9am to 5pm.  This annual event is the largest fundraiser for the Ridgely Lions Club, who partner with many of the community’s volunteer and service organizations to make it one of Caroline County’s premier events. All proceeds raised by the Lions Club through the festival are used to support community service projects and local charities.

The festival kicks off at 9am with a non-denominational church service led by the Fish Locker Ministries. Starting at 8am is the 8th Annual Strawberry Chase 5K Run/Walk. All proceeds from the Strawberry Chase are donated to support the Maryland Ronald McDonald House and the Caroline County Super Summer Day Camp.

The festival gets into full swing at 10am with musical entertainment, food and craft vendors, and children’s entertainment.  The Strawberry Festival Parade kicks off on Bell St. at noon, and ends at Martin Sutton Park. The afternoon continues with raffle drawings, awards for the best parade entries, and presentation of the 2018 Ridgely Lions scholarships.

Pre-registration for the Strawberry Chase is available online at www.carolinerecreation.org for $20 until May 25.  After May 25, fees for all runners and walkers will be $25.  Kids age 12 years and younger can register for $10.  You can also register as a sleepwalker for $25 and support the Ronald McDonald House and Caroline Super Sumer Camp from the comfort of your bed.

For more information on the Strawberry Festival or the Ridgely Lions Club, please contact Lion John Voshell at 410-634-2214 or jevoshell@comcast.net or at ridgelylions@verizon.net.

The Fiber Arts Center of the Eastern Shore (FACES) has announced the launch of Get Social Delmarva, a new marketing training conference for artists, crafters, and makers of all types. The conference will take place on Friday, April 27th at Chesapeake College.

Get Social Delmarva will present social media and digital marketing training specifically designed to help artists launch or grow a creative business. Although familiarity with social media will be helpful, the conference is intended to help small business owners who have little or no experience using social platforms for business purposes. All instruction will be provided at an introductory level.

“Our goal is to empower artists and crafters to grow their business using affordable marketing tools and strategies,” said Marina Dowdall, Executive Director of the Caroline County Council of Arts, the parent organization of FACES. She said that most artists and small business owners do not have the resources to hire a marketing agency. “With today’s technology, artists can ‘DIY’ their own marketing, which allows them to grow their business more quickly and reach customers all over the world.”

Get Social Delmarva will include a keynote address on Marketing 101, which will cover the fundamentals of developing a cohesive and effective marketing strategy. The address will include an interview with Steve Konopelski and Rob Griffith, owners of Turnbridge Point, a bed and breakfast and custom bakery in Denton. The couple will share insights about what they’ve learned about growing their business using digital marketing tools.

The conference will then break out into workshops on a variety of topics. The workshops are categorized in three tracks, though attendees do not have to stay within a single track. Tracks include Facebook for Business, Visual Media, and Web Presence. Examples of workshop topics include Facebook Advertising, Selling on Etsy, and Introduction to Instagram for Business.

Conference attendance has been limited to 100 people to ensure smaller class sizes in the workshops. Attendees will also have the opportunity to eat lunch with instructors and ask them questions in a small group setting.

FACES has received grant funding from Rural Maryland Council to help launch Get Social Delmarva. Rural Maryland Council supports projects that foster economic growth in the rural areas of the state. The arts are a key component of the tourism and downtown development strategies for small towns throughout the Eastern Shore and broader Delmarva region. The headline sponsor of Get Social Delmarva is Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area, an organization that promotes the heritage and unique communities of the Mid-Shore.

Registration for Get Social Delmarva is now open at GetSocialDelmarva.com. Tickets are $79 per person. There is a 20% discount for FACES members.

Do you have amazing photos of Caroline County? Enter them in the Caroline Office of Tourism’s March/April photo contest! Every two months, a new photo contest will be announced on the Caroline County, MD Facebook page. Participants are invited to enter up to five photos in each contest. The winner will receive a $50 gift certificate to the Caroline County business of their choice.

How to Enter

Photos may be entered by posting them to the Caroline County, MD Facebook page with the hashtag #CaptureCaroline or by emailing them to info@visitcaroline.org. Entries are due by 12pm noon on April15th. When submitting an entry, please provide a title for the photo and share details such as the location, the date taken and/or event name.

All eligible entries will be posted in an album on the Caroline County, MD Facebook page on April 16th, where the public will be invited to vote on them by liking the photo of their choice during a two-week open voting session. The winner will announced on the Facebook page on May 1st, 2018.

Please make sure that your submitted photo is high resolution. Contest winners will be asked to submit a high-resolution file suitable for print reproduction of at least 300 dpi at 8 x 12 inches (2400 x 3600 pixels). Photos with watermarks are not eligible. If the photograph includes a recognizable person, a model release must also be completed and submitted. Model releases can be downloaded here.

The March/April photo contest categories are:

• Spring Fun

• Art, History, Festivals & Events

• Shopping and Dining

Note: By entering your photograph(s) in the Caroline County Photo Contest, you acknowledge and grant permission for it to be used by the Caroline Office of Tourism in a variety of promotional materials, including newsletters, advertisements, brochures, media kits, websites, social media sites and other print and digital communications.

Dust off your running shoes and start training to hustle for the herd! Runners, walkers, families and nature enthusiasts are invited to Adkins Arboretum’s 13th annual Arbor Day Run on Sat., April 7. Proceeds benefit the Arboretum’s goat herd, used for targeted grazing of invasive species.

Featuring 5K and 10K races, a free One-Mile Fun Run/Walk and a free Healthy Kids’ 100-yard Dash, the Arbor Day Run is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy an early-spring morning in nature. Participants will pass the Arboretum’s goat herd on the cross-country course plotted along a network of scenic, easily navigable trails.

Check-in and day-of registration begin at 8 a.m. The Healthy Kids’ Dash begins at 8:50 a.m., followed by the 10K Run at 9 a.m., the 5K Run at 9:05 a.m. and the One-Mile Fun Run/Walk at 9:10 a.m.

Awards will be presented to the overall male/female master winners and to the top two male/female winners in categories 15 and under through 70 and older in 10-year age groups. Bluepoint Race Management will provide chip timing for the 5K and 10K races. Post-race festivities include refreshments, an awards ceremony with one-of-a-kind tree ring medals and a native tree raffle

Registration is underway, with a discount and an Arbor Day Run T-shirt for those who register for the 5K and 10K by March 25. Fun Run and Healthy Kids’ Dash participants may order T-shirts for $10 each. For fee information or to register, visit adkinsarboretum.org or call 410.634.2847, ext. 0.

The Arbor Day Run is generously sponsored by Bay Imprint of Easton.

Discover the beauty of Caroline County’s river trails on a guided kayaking trip on the Tuckahoe on Saturday, April 21st! Maximize your confidence prior to trip departure with basic boat handling and safety instruction starting at 2:25pm, and launch from the Hillsboro Boat Ramp at 3pm.

The excursion includes includes snacks, trained guides and up to 2-3 hours on the river. Kayaks are provided, and the fee is $25 for the general public or $15 if you bring your own kayak and for YMCA members. The reservation deadline is the Wednesday before the trip. Don’t miss this perfect opportunity to paddle south on this beautiful river! For more information, contact 410-479-8120 or Visit CarolineRecreation.org.

There’s a powerful sense of the spirit of the Eastern Shore in Discovering the Native Landscapes of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Adkins Arboretum’s nineteenth annual Juried Art Show. On view in the Arboretum Visitor’s Center through March 30, the show celebrates the Arboretum’s conservation mission and captures multiple aspects of our landscapes and waterscapes, from the familiar to the playful to the stunningly beautiful. 

The show was juried by Benjamin T. Simons, director of Easton’s Academy Art Museum. Both he and the artists will be on hand for a reception from 3 to 5 p.m. on Sat., Feb. 10 to talk with visitors about the work in the show.

From 115 entries submitted by 45 artists from Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Georgia and Washington, D.C., Simons chose 23 works for this show. 

“I was mindful that the works would cohere as an exhibit and also relate to our landscape,” he explained. “There are various traditions represented, like plein-air, pastel, oil and sculpture, and I was glad to see there’s an etching because we’re introducing etching at the Museum, and there are some nice drawings, as well. A skillful drawing is really a pleasure.”

Simons awarded the annual first-prize Leon Andrus Award, named in honor of the Arboretum’s first benefactor, to Baltimore artist Karen Klinedinst for her three haunting photographs shot and processed on her iPhone. Although her work was new to him, Klinedinst is a frequent visitor to the Arboretum, photographing its grounds and teaching workshops in iPhoneography. Taken at the tidal Black Marsh Natural Area in the upper Chesapeake, this trio of photographs focuses on egrets in the expanse of their native habitat and calls to mind the radiant beauty and nuanced details of nineteenth-century Romantic paintings. 

Speaking of the luminescent quality of Klinedinst’s work, Simons said, “To me, it has a kind of ‘nature-photography-meets-Civil-War-era-photography’ feeling, and that’s what I found so appealing about it. They’re printed on vellum with white gold leaf, which gives them really a special glow.” 

Simons awarded the Leon Andrus second prize to Francesca Blythe of Potomac for “Wood Shell,” a sweeping driftwood sculpture burnished with velvety smoothness to a deep warm brown.

“She’s seeing something there that’s very spectacular,” he said. “It’s got an elegance of line to it, sort of a pointing finger quality, kind of an ancient hand, or a dragon head.”

Simons also awarded three Honorable Mentions, choosing two paintings and a drawing. The drawing, “Silhouette: Caledon Marsh I” by Donna Frostick of Henrico, Va., is a very unusual work made with a Sharpie marker. Drawn with intricate strokes of stark black on bright white paper, it hums with energy.

“It’s a strange effect that that produces,” Simon commented. “It’s funny because you get a reflection off the water just by leaving it blank.”

The two paintings he chose are very different from one another. “Pioneer Point,” by Washington artist Carol Rowan, is a skillful and meticulous rendering in oil paint of a traditional Eastern Shore scene with two workboats moored in a quiet cove. “Foggy July (Leonard Cove, Trappe, MD),” by David Leonard of Easton, is also an oil painting, but its loose, spontaneous style captures a momentary impression of a small dock and pilings shimmering in the heat and humidity of a summer day. Simons was pleased to find such singularly varied approaches to the Eastern Shore landscape.

“That’s probably what unifies the show the most, the sense of place,” he commented. “Almost all of them convey a sense of place that’s one of the most powerful parts of living here.”

This show is part of Adkins Arboretum’s ongoing exhibition series of work on natural themes by regional artists. It is on view through March 30 at the Arboretum Visitor’s Center located at 12610 Eveland Road near Tuckahoe State Park in Ridgely. Contact the Arboretum at 410-634-2847, ext. 0 or info@adkinsarboretum.org for gallery hours.