C E L E B R AT I N G T H E G O O D L I F E I N L O U D O U N C O U N T Y

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "C E L E B R AT I N G T H E G O O D L I F E I N L O U D O U N C O U N T Y"

Shana Green
5 years ago
Views:

1 C E L E B R AT I N G T H E G O O D L I F E I N L O U D O U N C O U N T Y ALT COVER IMAGE: JAKE N JENNIES, OIL ON PANEL, 16 X 12, by PAUL ZDEPSKI; SEE PAGE 52 J U LY / A U G U S T

FEATURES SPEED N BETTY, OIL ON ILLUSTRATION BOARD, 12 X 8, HOW SWEET it WAS!................................... 28 by PAUL ZDEPSKI; SEE PAGE 52 A Slice of Life Essay by Sally Pfoutz TUNES for FAMILY and FRIENDS.

2 FEATURES SPEED N BETTY, OIL ON ILLUSTRATION BOARD, 12 X 8, HOW SWEET it WAS! by PAUL ZDEPSKI; SEE PAGE 52 A Slice of Life Essay by Sally Pfoutz TUNES for FAMILY and FRIENDS Leesburg s Acoustic on the Green Concert Series by Pamela Oldham ANOTHER VIEW Artist Paul Zdepski by Maggie Wolff Peterson SPIRIT of DISCOVERY Painter Trisha Adams by Gale Waldron a SECOND LOOK Photographer Rob Rudick by Donna Cedar-Southworth ELEGY Serialized Novella, Part 15 by Judy Pomeranz 11

WORD from the EDITOR COMMUNITY SHIP OF STATE, OIL ON STRATHMORE MUSEUM BOARD, 19 X 24, by PAUL ZDEPSKI; SEE PAGE 52 The creation of art is often a solitary endeavor.

3 WORD from the EDITOR COMMUNITY SHIP OF STATE, OIL ON STRATHMORE MUSEUM BOARD, 19 X 24, by PAUL ZDEPSKI; SEE PAGE 52 The creation of art is often a solitary endeavor. But the arts-plural-are meant to be shared and enjoyed by the masses. Stilson Green knows how to share his love of music. And he s doing it in a big way this summer. We ll introduce you to tis creative entrepreneur behind the weekly live concerts on Leesburg s Town Green. You ll also meet artists Trisha Adams and Paul Zdepski and photographer Rob Rudick, each of whom is contributing to the colorful mosaic of Loudouns art scene. Art aficionados among us have two options for armchair museum tours: Sheeler at the National Gallery of Art and Girodet at New York s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Our Great Escapes visit to Cashiers, North Carolina, will have you plotting your own getaway. Closer in, you ll find multiple choices for a proper afternoon tea. And if you re heading out to the beach this summer, don t miss essayist Sally Pfoutz nostalgic look back at a long-ago trip across the Bay Bridge. Donovan Kelly transports us even further back in time for a visit to Nichols Hardware, a Purcellville institution for nine decades. Donovan also ruminates on the prospect of English being declared our nation s official language. With this issue, Judy Pomeranz brings her 15-part novella Elegy to a close. Over the past year and a half, Judy has taken us from the avenues, gardens and galleries of Paris to the angst-ridden interiors of Manhattan and East Hampton. Moreover, she has brought us along on her protagonist s 30-year quest for healing and self-discovery. We hope you have enjoyed the journey. Brava, Judy! -AR 18

4 ARTIST PAUL ZDEPSKI ANOTHER VIEW 52

5 BY MAGGIE WOLFF PETERSON PAUL ZDEPSKI, - PHOTOGRAPH by NATE S. RHODES In Paul Zdepski s world, the primitive line drawings of monsters he scrawled on his mother s used checkbook stubs as an eight-year-old are as valid an expression as anything he puts on canvas today. In fact, he plans to digitally marry the pictures, of one-eyed, bean-headed creatures and beings with arms as long as legs, with contemporary images he will soon create. He s not sure what the outcome will be, but the creative journey alone will be worth the effort. Paul enjoys playing with images. His studio, in Strasburg (Virginia) contains pieces as typical as nude studies and as odd as a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, with a neck as long and slender as a pencil, pushing a lawn mower across the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial. There s also a scene of an old and wasted Charlton Heston, shirtless and leading a meeting of the National Rifle Association (NRA) which Paul I don t believe my job as a painter is to do work that is calming, he says. I think we all have a social responsibility. painted while an NRA member himself. And a portrait of William Shakespeare, painted post-9/11, shows the Bard with sunken eyes and a shocked demeanor that Paul says represents the shaky state of Broadway theater just after the terrorist attacks on New York. I m painting what I want, says Paul, whose studio contains not just art supplies and books, but an electric guitar, a circular power saw, a Pachinko machine and a couple of skateboards. Paul keeps a mental tether on the id-driven impulses that animate children s fantasy lives. Early memory stuff should come through to make a connection, he says. Paul can remember standing on his head as a child and looking at the world upside down. The perspective it offered stayed with him. It s as if it was another universe, he says. It was that kind of our-of-the-box thinking that Paul celebrated in a portrait of Thomas Jefferson, painted with the ROBERT WILLIAMS, OIL ON PANEL, 12 X 12 53

Founding Father s face upside down on his shoulders, that was selected last year as a part of the Shenandoah Valley collection to be exhibited in the residence of U.S. Ambassador William Eaton in Panama.

He came in like a whirlwind, Paul says. He was a man on a mission. According to Camille Benton, an art conservator for the U.S.

6 Founding Father s face upside down on his shoulders, that was selected last year as a part of the Shenandoah Valley collection to be exhibited in the residence of U.S. Ambassador William Eaton in Panama. Eaton, who is from Winchester (Virginia), found the piece in an exhibit of local artists at the nonprofit Shenandoah Arts Council gallery in Winchester. At the time, Paul was a council board member. He came in like a whirlwind, Paul says. He was a man on a mission. According to Camille Benton, an art conservator for the U.S. State Department, selecting art for the ambassador s residence is a diplomatic perk. Some diplomats want all contemporary pieces, or all romantic landscapes. Eaton selected 15 Valley pieces. For Paul, the image of Jefferson carries a message. The reason his face is upside down [comes from] the word play that he looked at the world differently from his peers, he says. Trained as an illustrator, Paul believes art is a form of communication and uses his work to project his point of view, at the risk of being preachy, he says. Whether the message is political, as in recent pieces that comment artistically on war, or farcical, as in a piece that combines an image of the cartoon Astro Boy with other pop-culture staples, Paul us art as an idea medium. I don t believe my job as a painter is to do work that is calming, he says. I think we all have a social responsibility. Paul grew up as the second youngest of seven children to a solid working-class family in New Jersey, in a house constructed by his father, a former missionary and a brick mason by trade. I got all the hand-medowns, he says. The knees were already blown out by the time I got the pants. Once his grade school teachers told Paul s parents that he should be focusing on art, they enrolled him in a class at a community college. The images he conceived came strictly out of his imagination. Comic books were a luxury not budgeted in the Zdepski household. If I wanted something cool, I had to draw it, he says. When he was 16, his father purchased an entire art studio from an auction. From brushes and paints, to stretched canvases and a handmade easel on which Paul still paints, his 54

father bought the lot and brought it home. Instantly, the teenage artist was supplied not only with materials, but the visible patronage of his parents.

When college time came, Paul applied to only one, The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and was accepted.

7 father bought the lot and brought it home. Instantly, the teenage artist was supplied not only with materials, but the visible patronage of his parents. That was enough, he says, For me, growing up as one of seven, you don t get the one-on-one time that a single kid gets. When your father does something like that, you think, This is my direction. When college time came, Paul applied to only one, The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and was accepted. But by the time he graduated, computer-generated art had replaced hand-drawn commercial pieces. Illustration is dead, Paul says. The computer has made things very easy. People with limited skills have the ability to create illustrations. Paul followed the dot-com boom to a magazine printing company in Strasburg, which was beginning to offer an online presence to clients. But then the bubble burst. I made it through five rounds of lay-offs before my department was eliminated, Paul says. He received his pink slip the same week as closing on his new home. hat, who has the means to release a tornado upon whomever does not pay him money. Tornado Joe is my (working title) name for him, says Paul, whose preliminary work for the book has included making clay sculpture of Joe s head, as well as a couple of pigs and other creatures. These he will spotlight and photograph to see precisely how light plays across the planes of their bodies. Preliminary illustration studies already include the image of a highly shocked cow, with splayed legs and bulging eyes, being propelled into the sky. But he landed on his feet. Today, Paul designs for Sandy Lerner, the corporate tycoon who made her first fortune co-founding Cisco Systems and today runs a variety of enterprises from Ayrshire Farm, her estate near Middleburg (Virginia). For one of these ventures, the classical music label Dorian Records, Paul designs CD art. He also designs menu art for Lerner s Upperville restaurant, Hunter s Head Tavern, signs for her boutique butcher shop in Middleburg and magazine advertisements for Ayrshire interests. It s the best day job, Paul says. There s a lot of diversity and freedom. But there s a lot of impermanence because it s digital, and its temporal items. Currently, the work that interests Paul is a children s book he is both writing and illustrating. It s his first at becoming an author, and the challenge is detectable. I m not sure what age level I m going for yet, he says. Paul says the idea for the story came to him in a dream, and the work to date bears the hallmarks of fantasy. The story concerns an evildoer, with a long pointed chin and broken top But not everything in Paul s catalogue is hallucinogenic. The annual Art at the Mill show, which is mounted in the historic gristmill that gives the Clarke County town of Millwood its name, collects the best work regionally and exhibits about a thousand pieces for sale. Paul painted some typical still lifes and animal portraits-the kinds of things that people buy for their homes. One collector bought three of his pieces. That, he says, encourages you to do more. Additional examples of Paul s work can be viewed at FACING PAGE, TOP: DAVID IN THE HIGH MEADOW, OIL ON CANVAS, 18 X 14, AND THOMAS JEFFERSON, OIL ON STRATHMORE MUSEUM BOARD, 10 x 15 ; THIS PAGE, LEFT: COVER FOR THE AMES PIANO QUARTET CD, DIGITAL, 4.75 X 4.75, AND BULL MARKET, OIL ON STRATHMORE 55

grand guignol the painting and drawing of paul w zdepski

grand guignol the painting and drawing of paul w zdepski grand guignol: a sensational drama, often structured in short scenes with violent or horrific subject matter, that aims to shock its audience. 3electric