Vicco von Voss explains his work process at his Centreville studio on Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (Photo by Jessica Harper)

When W.E.B. Du Bois deemed all art as propaganda at the height of the Harlem Renaissance movement in 1926, the Pan-Africanist historian and sociologist could never have foreseen the far-reaching resonations of his musings.

Presently, his philosophy weaves its way into the work of filmmakers, writers, painters, and even Eastern Shore-based furniture makers.

German-born wood worker Vicco von Voss fits the latter category.

The resident Centreville artist, whose decades-plus, retrospective exhibition is slated for the Academy Art Museum (AAM) in 2014, constructs entirely from salvaged material—a conscious stride that springs from deep inside his soul.

“My real passion is to take trees, which have either been blown down by a storm or taken down by tree companies, and use them as my raw material for production,” von Voss said.

von Voss personally selects the trees–often grown somewhere along Maryland’s Mid-Shore–from which he creates and then hulls them to his shop, mills them, and dries them by the inch.

“I’m basically giving that tree a second life,” he said.

Saying von Voss merely draws inspiration from the scenic surroundings of Queen Anne’s and surrounding counties would be a blind understatement.

“So much material is here,” he said. “So, when you ask, ‘Am I an environmental advocate,’ I’m really against buying wood from the rain forest when we have natural resources right there,” von Voss said.

Most of the trees he uses would otherwise be turned into firewood or discarded at landfills. And this is where von Voss’ concerns chiefly lie.

“For me, a tree is a living being … a spirit,” he said.  “…I’m not just dealing with little trees. I’m dealing with 150-year-old plus trees. I’m unfolding 150 years of history.”

An artist with a specific vision, von Voss often attracts a specific type of customer, who might hail from the Eastern Shore, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Florida, and even countries as distant as Germany, Tokyo, and China.

Vicco von Voss at work in his self-designed, Centreville studio on Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (Photo by Jessica Harper)

“It’s interesting,” he mused. “I basically attract the people who understand what I’m doing”-a tactical process that’s environmental, artful, and personal.

“A piece of wood has personality,” he said. And in working with clients, von Voss said he’s basically, “bringing personalities together.”

“What is the setting [of a home]? Is it light wood that we want? Dark wood? Cherry wood?” he said. “…We pick the mood that we want; the characteristic of the wood matches the mood that we’re trying to go with. And it’s just matching personalities of the wood with the clients.”

For von Voss, furniture is sculptural as well as functional.

“I want it to be art but not lose the sense that you can still sit in it,” he said.

And for him, everything goes back to the tree.

“If a tree took 80 years to grow, then it is my responsibility to build something that will last for 80 years,” von Voss said.

The grandson of a forester and woodcarver on one side of his family and an architect on this other, von Voss said woodworking talent has always coursed through his veins. The Hamburg, Germany native studied art and chemistry at Washington College in Chestertown. Upon graduating in 1991, von Voss headed back to Germany, where he completed a three-year apprenticeship. He then returned to his American alma mater for an assistant teaching post and met the woman (then a student, now an acupuncturist) who would become his wife. During this period, von Voss began building furniture, a job that has become his livelihood.

Presently, von Voss works in his self-designed, wooden, hull-shaped shop. Littered with his 3-year-old daughter’s playthings and filled with echoes of her “Daddy! Daddy!” shouts, the shop took eight months and four crews to complete.

This workplace, which “almost killed” von Voss to construct, mirrors his overall, eco-themed vision.

“Everything in this building is salvaged,” he said. “All salvaged material, it’s completely green. There are no chemicals. The oils I use are environmentally-friendly, the way I insulate it is environmentally friendly.”

Stacks of firewood and a beekeeping station rest in the backyard area.

Visitors often pack this shop, as well as the Carla Massoni Gallery in Chestertown to view and purchase von Voss’ work.

A little over three months ago, he began spearheading The Seed Project, an artistic support network of philanthropists, who fund his work.

Of all his upcoming endeavors, von Voss said he is most excited about his 2014 exhibition at AAM.

“…I’m actually more alive, than I’ve ever felt,” he said. “All these years, I’ve worked on mastering timber framing, and mastering furniture framing, and worked-on mastering my personal skills. I feel like now that I’ve mastered all of them, I want to take my design-level to another stage.”

His exhibition for AAM has granted him that golden chance, as well as an opportunity to venture outside his comfort zone.

“With the work I’m creating for the academy right now,” von Voss said. “I’m trying to get out of my own box.”

For information about von Voss’ projects and upcoming exhibitions, visit  www.viccovonvoss.com.

Violist Maria Lambros poses with her prized instrument. (Photo by Carol Shulman)

Not every adult can retrace their career pursuits to proclivities sparked at youth, although many might wish they could.

But Maria Lambros is one of the lucky ones.

The internationally-feted violist’s interest in what she does daily sprang from the purest form of recognition there is: a mother noting her child’s preciously precocious, pre-adolescent wonder and then passionately urging on the inborn gifts fueling that curiosity.

“When I was 8 years old, my mother saw that I was very busy with my hands, that I was always cutting paper and drawing,” Lambros, a Montana native recounted. “And so she thought, ‘Let’s find something complicated for her to do, so she can stay busy with them.’”

Enter the violin.

“The minute I got that violin in a case … I just fell in love with it,” Lambros said.

A natural progression would follow suit.

“I think when you’re a child you just don’t really notice how hard it is. I always thought it was fun,” she said.
Lambros latched onto the instrument during her school-age years with an affectionate aggression, playing it throughout elementary and high school and then switching to the viola at age 18 before entering college.

A former member of the Mendelssohn, Meliora, and Ridge String Quartets and founding member of La Fenice, Lambros has received a Grammy Award nomination, the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, and Europe’s Diapason d’Or, and has recorded for RCA, Bridge, and Telarc.

She has appeared at chamber music festivals around the world, including the Yellow Barn Music Festival and School in Putney, Vermont, where she is on the artist faculty, and those of Aspen, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Caramoor and the Spoleto festivals of the US and Italy.

The Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival (this year set for June 2 to 16 in Easton), of which Lambros is an 18-year participant, has etched a distinct place in her heart.

“The colleagues I get to play with every year are wonderful musicians and people, and I love the audience members,” she said, “We get to know them, and they have us over to their homes and they take beautiful care of us.”

The Chesapeake festival includes a unified foundation unlike any Lambros has seen at similar events.

“The festival has an exceptionally strong support system,” she said. “The Chesapeake has extraordinary audience participation, which helps the well-being of [the entire event].”
Lambros attributes a large part of the festival’s success to its Artistic Directors Marcy Rosen (cellist) and J. Lawrie Bloom (clarinetist).

“They are fabulous musicians, and…they really know how to put together interesting programs and wonderful groups of people.”

The event typically draws a menagerie of cultures, something Lambros said is expected.

“In the music world, it’s very fluid. People from all over the world come together through the common language of music,” she said.

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and New York University, Lambros moved to Maryland in 2002, where she took a job at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.  She currently teaches there.

When it comes to challenges, Lambros cites the viola’s size as a major one. Few realize, she said, the physical toll it can take.

“The viola is big. So you just have to keep yourself in really good physical condition to play it,” she said.

And then there’s the mental component.

“You have to stay relaxed, flexible and balanced to be able to express intense emotion without creating excess tension in the body. It’s that balance between intensity and relaxation,” Lambros said.

And like most musicians, each of Lambros’ days differs from the last. For her, a given work day usually consists of a combination of teaching, practicing and rehearsing.

Some days include travel and performing and listening to other musicians in concerts or master classes.

“There is actually no ‘typical’ day for most musicians, and the variety in our days keeps the life exciting and challenging,” she shared.

And if there’s one misconception Lambros seeks to dispel, it’s that the music she carries in her spirit is not as dry and inaccessible as it’s so often painted.

“Classical music is interesting, soulful and exciting,” she said.

For more information about the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, visit www.chesapeakechambermusic.com.

Whether by accident or on purpose, that’s been Federalsburg-based artist Jack E. Sealman’s trademark since he first began. And throughout his 55-plus year career as a watercolorist, oil painter and sketch artist, the 70-year-old has stuck with it.

Magnification of the minutest details defines his portfolio—a Mid-Shore art-splattered menagerie chock-full of seaman etchings, oil-drenched beach and  pastoral scenes, and barnyard snapshots that he shares cheerily on a quiet, mid-morning in early April.

“Sometimes I look for things a lot of people don’t see,” said Sealman, as he hunched over a wall tapered with the darting eyes of wild foxes, the hidden-most crevices of railway stations, flashes of chestnut interior encased inside a cherry red,‘50s-era Ford pick-up, and the unbroken reflection of a waterfront mansion on a wavy sheet of Chesapeake Bay streams.

“They could be anything—the crickets, little animals, the deer,” he said. “Sometimes, there are things you don’t really notice or that people probably ignore. I snap a picture of it and keep a record of it.”

These records comprise the foundation of works that currently hang or have hung on art gallery and historical society walls across the Eastern and western shores of Maryland, in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia galleries.

Sealman’s work has been commissioned by everyone from circuit court judges to around-the-way, Shore-born brethren, and everyone else in between.

He even made a bit of history in 1964, during his four years at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore.

“A teacher wanted a group of us to go to Assateague and paint whatever we wanted there,” he recounted. “[A write-up on our work] ran in The Baltimore Sun.”

This collection of work included a stunning, oil-canvas rendering of the Assateague shoreline by Sealman. He said the work contributed to Assateague becoming a nationally recognized state park in 1965.

“It felt good … doing something for the state,” Sealman said, recounting that time.

If there’s one thing that fuels his desire and interest in painting, it’s simply audience reaction.

“Sometimes I’m at a show and will get a nice comment. That makes me feel good,” he said. “I don’t have to sell anything. Just word of mouth about the things I’ve been doing [matters].”

The son of a Manhattan dressmaker (his mother) and grandson of a Paris-based motion picture reel (his grandfather), the third-generation artist said his creativity courses through his veins, as much apart of him as flesh is to bone.

He shares a Smithville split-level home, which doubles as his studio, with his wife Barbara and their two dogs—Lola, a massive, black Rottweiler mix with a proclivity for leg-licking, and a golden Lab named Sandy.

Having a desire stoked is one thing. Actually following through on that emotion is another. So what keeps this 70-year-old following through?

Perhaps the purest inspiration there is.

“I sort of quit three times,” Sealman said. “But my wife says you better keep doing it.”

A cyclist breezes past Chesapeake Bay streams during one of the Six Pillars Century Bicycle Tours. (Photo courtesy of Character Counts Mid-Shore, Inc.)

For western shore dwellers, Dorchester County is more of a beginning and less of an end—just one of a handful of Eastern Shore counties along U.S. Route 50 that vacationers must traverse before reaching the comfy confines of an Ocean City hotel, bed and breakfast or inn.

But way down deep, in the heart of historic Cambridge, there rests a biking trail extending from the greenery of Great Marsh Park to the Osprey-filled environs of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, which for five years has drawn anywhere from 800 to 1,000 cyclists of all ages from cities as near as Washington, D.C., states as far away as California, and countries as distant as Malaysia.

One event unites them all: Character Counts Mid-Shore, Inc.’s Six Pillars Century Blackwater Bicycle Tour, a non-profit-led initiative and event slated for Saturday, May 4 at 7 a.m. that raises funding for more than 8,000 students from elementary and middle schools in Caroline, Dorchester and Talbot counties.

Despite the fact that their proceeds keep a vital youth resource running, many of these participating cyclists remain clueless as to what “Six Pillars” means.

“I would say that what surprises me is the number of people who sign up without really knowing where their dollars are going to,” said Susan Luby, executive director of Character Counts Mid-Shore, Inc. “They see Six Pillars Century, but they never really take the extra step and find out what we do.”

If its 15-year track record is any indication, Character Counts has done and continues to do quite a bit.

Nearly 270 volunteers also called Character Coaches are dispatched to Mid-Shore schools, mostly at the elementary and middle levels, where they devote a mere 15 minutes per week in classrooms, sharing six principles (or Pillars). Each principle corresponds to a given color. They include: trustworthiness (blue), respect (yellow), responsibility (green), fairness (orange), caring (red), and citizenship (purple).

Local Language, Arts and English teachers have followed suit, namely through their classroom implementation of the Laws of Life Essay Contest, in which their pupils write essays each fall about how these principles play out in their daily lives.

About 1,473 essays were submitted to this year’s contest, which included 20 participating Mid-Shore schools. The grand prize winner took home a $2,500 scholarship.

In 2007, the Maryland Department of Education evaluated the Character Counts Mid-Shore programs impact in area public schools. The percentage of schools demonstrating an increase in attendance equaled 62.5 percent out of a possible 100. Those who demonstrated a decrease in office referral, suspension, and honor roll rates, totaled 59, 47.9, and 61.5 percent respectively.

Fees paid for or donated to the Century Bike Tour comprise a major chunk of the Character Counts’ $124,000 annual budget, said Luby.

Prospective cyclists have the option of registering for one of four courses: the 11 Mile Family Ride (the cheapest of the four), the 37 Mile Fun & Fitness Ride, the 56 Mile Egaleman Iron 70.3 Course, and the 100 Mile Century Course. The course houses six rest stops. Replete with water, Gatorade, and snacks, each rest stop represents one of the Six Pillars. Riders partake of breakfast in the morning and a picnic lunch once the Tour concludes.

Aside from funding, the success of the event hinges upon an intricate network of helpers—each excelling in their assigned role.

“It’s a lot of work,” Luby said. “We can only do it through sponsors, cyclists, and the volunteers who come together to help us do this.”

At least 75 to 100 volunteers are needed to “pull the [Century Tour] off,” according to Luby.

“These people [meaning the cyclists] are spending their money to come do this. If their experience is not a good one, they’re not going to return,” she said.

Organization, Luby said, often emerges as the most challenging aspect of planning the Centuries.

But her colleague, event coordinator Linda DePrima, said the Century crew members have risen to the challenge.

“We’ve done very well with that,” said DePrima, who served as Character Counts sponsor coordinator at Easton Elementary for 10 years. DePrima mans the 80-mile rest stop on Tour day. “We have key people who come back here year after year and do certain things.”

Luby echoed, adding that, “… And it’s all done behind the scenes, where the cyclist doesn’t know. They are seeing a wonderful thing. And that’s the whole key.”

First-time attendees can expect a wildlife wonderland: eagles, ospreys, and turtles. The ride to the Refuge, added Luby, takes visitors “off the beaten path and into a beautiful area.”

“When you go through Hoopersville, it almost looks like a little Welsh Fishing Village because it’s so quaint,” she said, adding that guests also pass Harriet Tubman Memorial.

DePrima gleans one of her greatest thrills from watching the cyclists heartily embrace an activity that stands to benefit thousands of local, young lives.

“We’re always clapping and cheering them on as they come 80 miles up over a hill and break over a bridge,” she said. “We’re right at the bottom. They come tearing off. It’s just so much fun seeing them come out.”

For pricing information or to volunteer (either for fun or to fulfill a service learning requirement), sign up as a business sponsor, or register as a cyclist, contact Luby or DePrima at 410-819-0386 or sixPillarscentury@gmail.com.

Those who can’t attend can donate as a ghost rider at active.com by typing in Six Pillars Century. Event T-shirts (printed in Maryland for the first time this year!) are included with the registration fee.

Growing up in Upper Marlboro, Md. — a small, mostly rural town a mere 25 to 30 minutes outside of Washington, D.C. — I often used the world’s largest museum complex as my cultural playground.

From afternoons passed throughout the decorated hallways of The National Portrait Gallery in Chinatown to summer camp trips at the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum’s Milky Way-like Einstein Planetarium, an admiration for all things historic and artistic has manifested in me throughout my coming of age.  At the Planetarium, I remember sinking into deeply into my theater seat while gazing up at the artificial salt-and-peppery expanse suspended above me. Encased within those stars was future of all I had ever hoped to become.

As a newspaper journalist based on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, I now mesh memories of those jaunts across the National Mall with stories that bring the images on the walls and artifacts in the cases to life. 

My twenties were a period of exploration — time spent traveling, interning, post-graduate schooling.

In 2011, I spent what proved to be the most transformative summer of my life at Princeton University, where I worked as a science writing, communications intern for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL).  The bulk of my work involved highlighting the accomplishments of the lab’s scientists, showing how their work benefits the larger community. My first GFDL story focused on the lab’s contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Nobel Peace Prize-winning international body of scientists that convenes every six years to deliver an assessment report on the state of the earth’s climate.  I profiled and photographed visiting Hollings Scholar Arielle Alpert, an Earth and Planetary Sciences major at John Hopkins University, who worked on a hurricane research project with two of the lab’s mid-level scientists. I also worked closely with GFDL Communications Director Maria Setzer to complete a series of profiles called “Meet Our Scientists” – a set of biographies about the many climatologists, oceanographers, and physical scientists who keep the lab running.  

I studied Mass Communications at the College of Notre Dame in Roland Park, Baltimore my freshman year of undergraduate school, where I made the dean’s list.  After my father fell ill in 2001, I transferred to Bowie State University, where I graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in English, concentration in Creative Writing in 2004. The summer following graduation, I accepted a communications internship with NOAA–an off-and-on partnership that would last seven years.  From January 2005 to 2006,  I dedicated a year of AmeriCorps service at the Volunteer Center for Anne Arundel County in Annapolis. The rest of that time was spent traveling (including a sojourn in CapeTown and Johannesburg, South Africa) and figuring out my next move.

Deciding to further my education in early 2007, I made the leap from creative writing to journalism by taking continuing education classes at Georgetown University and eventually earning a Master of Journalism degree in May 2011 from University of Maryland, College Park’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, an experience which proved as harrowing as it did helpful.

 During my capstone semester at UMD, I covered the health beat for the university’s wire Capital News Service (CNS) headquartered at the National Press Club in the nation’s capital and became the only student that semester to be published in the Chicago Tribune (twice) and Los Angles Times online. My CNS articles were  featured in several outlets. Aside from the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times online, I garnered bylines in Insurance and Financial Advisor, the Arizona Daily Sun, New York Daily News, AFRO, the Maryland Daily Record as well as radio station websites 1430 Annapolis,  Maryland NPR affiliate WYPR, and WTOP.

I have also reported, researched, and freelanced for a handful of news outlets, most notably U.S. News & World Report, Howard University’s (No, I didn’t go there. People always ask me that.) The Hilltop, and Street Sense–a paper dedicated to Washington, D.C.’s homeless population. I currently edit four magazine supplements for The Easton Star Democrat — Chesapeake Brides, Chesapeake Healthy Lifestyles, Chesapeake HomeStyles, Chesapeake Mariner, and Chesapeake 360. Through them, I provide editorial content from the Chesapeake region and Delmarva peninsula. Feel free to contact me at 301-455-0162 or jessicarharper@gmail.com.

This reporting portfolio includes a mix of audio slideshows, photography, creative writing, hard news dailies, long-form features, and video packages.