Art at the Point -- September 26, 2020, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Art at the Point will happen in 2020! We are excited to announce Point of Rocks Commons Park as the venue this year!
We are now taking artist applications and inquiries to display. Please email Carolina or head over to our Apply page and download the application if you are an artist who would like to sell and/or demonstrate your work with us this year!
Located 15 miles from both historic Leesburg, VA, and Frederick, MD and an easy hour drive from either Baltimore or Washington, DC.
Art at the Point is organized by the Point of Rocks Ruritan Club. We believe in the power of music and art to transform our community. Come take part in the celebration with us this year!
Lend a hand to Art at the Point and become a Volunteer or Sponsor! Click to learn how you can help.
We are now taking artist applications and inquiries to display. Please email us or head over to our Apply page and download the application if you are an artist who would like to sell and/or demonstrate your work with us this year!
Last Year's Juried Exhibiting Artists include:
Kelly Aubrecht Aubrecht and Co.
Ellen Carpenter www.facebook.com/HandmadeByEllenCarpenter/
Christopher B. Fowler Christopher B. Fowler Photography
James R. Demory, II, Moonlighting Pens
Laurie J Hartman, That's Glassic
Nora Echeverria/Anna Scott www.hatsandspats.com
Allison Cook, Delaney Clay Art
Charles Mens & Veronica Mens
L.E. Shipman, Painter
Jean Phillips www.phillipsfarmphotography.wordpress.com
Maryanne Reimer, Jewelry
Ronald Ford
Melissa Ringer, Spirals and Such
Dave & Marta Kelsey, Whiskey Creek Wood Works
Diana Shutt
www.dianashutt.com
Young Artists Studio
Young artists can try their hand at puppetry in the Young Artist Tent. There is always something fun to do at the Young Artists Studio!
Arts Outreach
Featuring award winning artist Lee Newman with the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center. He will be on hand to teach and inspire artists both new and experienced.
Our 2020 Music Lineup is sure to please the crowd! We're bringing back top festival favorites, by popular demand!
THE MAIN LINE GRAVY SOPPERS
The Main Line Gravy Soppers are an old time string band featuring Rebecca Adams on clawhammer banjo, vocals, and dance board; Jeffrey Adams on guitar; Jason Miller on fiddle, vocals, and banjo, and Johann Miller on stand-up bass and vocals. Their songs range from fast raucous vaudeville numbers to haunting old fiddle tunes, always telling a story. Rebecca, Jeff, and Johann create a driving rhythm while fiddler Jason gets the crowd jumping out of their boots. This combination of music and G-rated rowdiness makes a big time for all listening. The Main Line Gravy Soppers are quickly becoming favorites at local venues in Frederick County, Maryland and Loudon County, Virginia where they delight folks from 3 years old to 91.Web Site
Marv Ashby and High Octane
Peter and his key board return to AATP. A 20 year resident of Point of Rocks, MD and frequent performer in the area including our local St. Paul’s Episcopal Church plus local wineries & restaurants. He can be heard playing all styles of music ranging from Classical, Jazz, Blues, New Age and Neo-Classical. Web Site
Slant Light Poets
1
Cicadas, geese on the river, crickets at the back door.
In those places where
humans have long chosen to live,
the days are family
and the voices
are in the air for the hearing.
Summer of 1856: CF Wenner’s 90 foot boat returns light from Georgetown. The lockkeeper at Lander tells us he got to see the piano that will be a gift for Wenner’s wife.
Peter the piano guy had an 88 key portable Fender Rhodes electric piano in high school. His friend the guitarist had a VW Rabbit. When they loaded the keyboard into the back seat it stuck out both sides of the car and they had to tie the doors closed.
The years greet each other on their own native land.
The plein air painters unpack their cars in the railroad parking lot.
The Piscataway on the island are building a fort large enough to contain 18 long houses. A couple of them poled a canoe over in the morning for nails, powder and shot.
I came to Maryland from Kazakhstan when I was eight months old. I’ve lived most of my life in Point of Rocks. And this year I’m Miss Point of Rocks. I guess you could say I’ve come a long way in more ways than one.
1864: The war created shortages of everything in Loudoun County. No sugar, no tea, not even needles to mend their clothes. Mosby to us was as much thief as warrior. Today his cavalry rode in and liberated every bit of fabric in Point of Rocks. The calico raid.
1906: William Dewey Taylor was driving his father’s canal mules at 6 years old. With a hundred tons of coal you have to start them slowly so they don’t just break the tow rope. He gets his pay at Georgetown and there’s a
candy store on M Street.
In this quaint sweet town there was a family feel— people used to talk to strangers.
A cub scout returns to the tent— I got two cookies for helping someone.
We brought over Irish to build the railroad. It turned out they were from two feuding counties. We had to work them 20 miles apart so they wouldn’t waste time killing each other.
A little girl points out when you brush your teeth on a canal boat you have to remember which bucket is town water and which is canal water. The littlest kids were chained to a post on roof of the cabin so they wouldn’t fall in. They could play as far as the chain reached. Mostly the boat families didn’t know how to swim.
2
I’ve lived in point of Rocks for over thirty years. I remember one Halloween, when we watched all the kids come around the hill like a train of flashlights it reminded me of Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin.
My family is from Finland.
1832: the race between the canal and the railroad for the narrow stretch between here and Harper’s Ferry was settled in court. The B&O won with Daniel Webster as their lawyer.
In ’35 Charles Johnson’s surveyors were here laying out streets for a town. In ’42 slaves from the Duval Plantation were building St. Paul’s Episcopal.
The voices are in the air for the hearing.
The horn they blow on the boat is a call for the lock tender.
Dan Phillips said the Blue Lodge, home to the Masons since 1898, was used for the town offices for a time. They used to hold dances until the stage became the kitchen in this building “where good men are made better.”
Marilyn Mille, a plein air artist, knows the former pastor of The Solid Rock Church. He once lived on her Woodsboro farm. She says the new pastor is a woman.
In 1836 the B&O Baltimore issued a rule that the steam engines had to be shut down and horses pull the trains past here because of how badly the locomotives frightened the mules.
After a heavy rain the snakes would come up on the path. Horses would go crazy. Our mules were not as afraid. I complained to my father about the snakes and he told me to get up on the trailing mule and ride.
The Fox family were canal boat people in the late 1800s: boatmen, captains and lock tenders up at lock 29. Joe Snyder was a captain there, too.
3
A lady from the local dance troop told us around tax time the bluebells bloom near here by a sycamore grove.
It’s a loop, the trainmaster says. The tank car trains of Bakkan oil going East to the refineries and ports are well North of us, along the great lakes and through Upstate New York. It is the empty cars that return through Point of Rocks, Brunswick and Cumberland to Ohio and the Mid-West.
The ethanol trains through here eastbound, though, are loads for Baltimore, Richmond and Newport News.
The peepers on spring mornings, too… Voices.
They would give us a couple weeks’ notice and drain the canal around December. The boats that weren’t in drydock just sat on the bottom. We got to go to school for a couple months. They filled it again when the bluebirds came back in April.
A dollar a ton for coal Cumberland to Georgetown.
Zhanna told us in eighth grade she and her friend made a documentary film called “The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal: Opportunities Within.” They interviewed Rangers at the park office and did voice-overs of scenery on the canal and river.
The Masons’ Lodge flooded to the ceiling. The families took the furniture home to keep it dry as it wouldn’t fit up the narrow stairs.
Lida and Lizzy Dutton and their cousin Sarah Steer wrote a pro-union newspaper behind Confederate lines in Waterford of Loudoun County. With wit, humor and courage they defied Stonewall Jackson and Colonel Mosby’s Raiders to give encouragement to the Union soldiers here.
Somehow the Waterford News got smuggled to Baltimore, printed, and sent by rail to the Point of Rocks Post office.
Samuel Means, the B&O Stationmaster was another abolitionist from Waterford who formed a Troop of Union Rangers here.
At night father would sleep in the cabin and my sister and I would ride the mules. Father wanted us to sing the whole time so if he woke up he would know we were still there.
A lady let me pet her dog. Its name was Snickers.
We offered a little girl a poem for free. She said no thanks.
In these places where humans have long chosen to live
poets wake up at night
and the years are singing
and we know they are still there.
Slant Light Poets at “Art at the Point” 2019
The Aillery Family
The Crum Family
The Galvan Family
The Roebuck Family
Karen Webb Family
The Maier Family
The Burrell Family
Ron Kohler
To become an Art at the Point Sponsor follow the Donate link or send us an email at aatp@pointofrocks.org
The Entertainers
The Friends of the Edward F. Fry Memorial Library of Point of Rocks will be on hand with special activities for younger readers.
Carolina Swyers, Event Co-chair
Sue Sanders, Event Co-chair
Charlie Crum, Food
Peter Roebuck, Sponsors
Ron Kohler, Young Artist Studio
Charles Crum III Visual Arts, Web Design
Dennis Galvan Music, Treasurer, PORR
Marcel Aillery, President, PORR
Nicole Mantle, Secretary, PORR
Thanks to all the volunteers, artists, and musicians, and to the many people who have helped to promote Art at the Point. For more Information or to become a sponsor contact AATP Chairperson Carolina Swyers at aatp@pointofrocks.org
The Point of Rocks Ruritan, chartered in 1956, is a chapter of Ruritan National, a non-profit 501(c)4 community service organization, dedicated to improving communities and building a better America through Fellowship, Goodwill, and Community Service.
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