A Newsletter for the Friends of Weymouth                                                                             Winter-Spring 2013

BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

 

Suzanne Daughtridge, President; Lou Gentry, Vice President; Randall Phillips, Treasurer; Sondra Nelson, Secretary; Malaika Albrecht; Jack Binning; Larry Cohen; Rita DiNapoli; Marilyn Grube; Lois Holt; Susan Huston; Andrea Wise-Leech; Sara Lindau; Jeffrey Mims; Jean Neil; Ray Owen; Dominick Pagnotta; Talmadge Ragan; Margaret Rich; Elaine Sills; Stephen Smith and Jim Williford.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The Holidays have come and gone and the New Year has begun.  With it our thoughts turn, once again, to James and Katharine Boyd and the culture they brought to our area.  James’s passion for writing and riding to the hounds, their joint  preservation efforts, and their celebration of the arts is well known, in addition to their hospitality.  By extension, the Women of Weymouth continue the Boyd’s tradition with their Christmas Open House.  Carols at Weymouth featured the newly formed “Weymouth Singers,” who did a splendid job, along with others who did readings and recounted stories of days past.  The four-day long Open House with all its activities was a happy beginning to the holiday season, and Weymouth is deeply indebted to all the volunteers who made it such a success.  Every year the Women of Weymouth end our year and begin the next with this celebration, for which we are grateful and applaud them.

Looking forward to our spring programs, you will note more classical chamber music concerts in our Great Room as well as a “Then and Now Equestrian Exhibit” which is planned for April.  We have retained literary professionals to judge our Moore County Writers’ Competition and trained musicians to judge the Music Committee’s Young Musicians’ Festival. Other programs, which reflect Weymouth’s History, will also take place during the course of the next twelve months which will be emailed to you.  There is no end to the entertaining, educational, and inspirational programs that Weymouth volunteers are developing for our future.  Happily, these efforts also extend into our gardens and grounds and you will note the Weymouth Gardeners’ Plant Sale in April.  Much is in the works, to include a revamped website with more information on what is going on at Weymouth and which will picture the many volunteers who keep Weymouth going, and the various “happenings” and events that take place.

Changes in the landscape will be taking place over the next few months.  Boxwoods in the parterres will be removed as a result of the nematode infestation and will be replaced with heartier, disease-resistant shrubs; trees and shrubs around the house will be trimmed and cut back to allow continued painting of the exterior, and the concrete pergola will be removed to provide the historic long view from the house towards Weymouth Woods and Fayetteville.  Over time various shrubs planted too close together or in inappropriate areas (for healthy growth) will be removed with some being transplanted elsewhere and others not needed being sold where possible.

Weymouth is here for the entire community to enjoy and we invite the entire community to be here for us.  Weymouth and its 22+ acres cannot survive into the future without the public’s financial support.  As we face an estimated $50,000 deficit at the end of this fiscal year, renewed membership and fundraising efforts will be an important focus.  It is particularly apparent as we work at stabilizing the foundation of the barn and repairing and replacing its many components–the roof, the siding,  the outbuildings and paddock fencing necessary for equestrian pursuits.  If you recall, the barn has been on the property since the early 1900′s and was a main impetus in bringing James Boyd to our area, given his memories of frequent visits to Weymouth when his grandfather was alive.

MUSIC PROGRAMS

The 2012-2013 Chamber Music Concerts opened with two full houses featuring Brian Reagin, violinist, and Frank Pittman, pianist, September 30, and the Georgia Guitar Quartet on October 4.  Audiences responded with standing ovations and requests for return performances in the future.  Your enthusiastic support for the concerts helps assure the future of chamber music at Weymouth as originally envisioned by the founders.

The remaining schedule for the year is:

$$ Sunday, January 20, Special Fundraiser to honor Elizabeth Stevenson Ives with Dimitri Shteinberg, Piano.

“Shakespeare in Song,” February 10, with Andrea Edith Moore, soprano, David Heid, piano, and Duke University Students as narrators.

$$ Thursday, February 14, 12 noon:  A luncheon and “Music with Love and Affection,” will be presented by Jesse Davis, Methodist College. Admission $20.00.  Reserve early, as seating is limited, 692-6261.

The Young Musicians’ Festival, February 16 and 17:  Frank Pittman, Meredith College will be the adjudicator.  The winners will perform on Sunday, February 17, at 3pm.  Sue Aceves, Festival Chair, will be assisted by members of the Music Committee.

March 10, Quercus, a Raleigh based quartet, comprised of two members of the N.C. Symphony, David Marschall, viola, Bonnie Thron, cellist, and Carol Chung, violin and Frank Pittman, piano from Meredith College.

The Ciompi Quartet with Joseph Robinson will perform Sunday, April 7, with Eric Pritchard, violin, Hsiao-mei-ku, violin, Jonathan Bagg, viola, and Fred Rami, cello.   Members of the Ciompi Quartet are all professors at Duke University where the ensemble was founded in 1965.  Joseph Robinson, a native North Carolinian, is the former first chair oboist with the New York Philharmonic.

$$ Thursday, April 11, at 12 noon:  Another musical luncheon will feature, by popular demand, Lydia Gill and her sister Maryann Cantrell-Colas, duo-pianists.   The exciting Schubert “Fantasy in F Minor” will be part of the program.  Admission:  $20.00.  Reserve early, as seating is limited, 692-6261.

All events are in the Great Room, with concerts at 3 p.m.  Admission is by membership or $20. Post-concert receptions are made possible by the Sills family.

The concerts are made possible by grants from the Arts Council of Moore County, the North Carolina Community Foundation, and private donations.  The Young Musicians’ Festival is sponsored by the generosity of Ralph and Vivian Jacobson.

 

CAROLS AT WEYMOUTH

Carols at Weymouth, graciously sponsored by Pinelawn Memorial Park for the third year, featured Talmadge Ragan, daughter of N. C. Poet Laureate Samuel T. Ragan, Jane McPhaul, a friend of Katharine L. Boyd, and Cos Barnes, former Writers-in-Residence Chair.  The Weymouth Singers, directed by Erin Plisco of Pinecrest High School, premiered with selections from the Renaissance and Baroque periods.  Leah Godfrey, David Mosely, and Aaron Carlyle completed the ensemble.  All singers are music educators in the public schools of Moore and Richmond counties.

 

A SPECIAL INVITATION:

 

We Request the Pleasure of Your Company

at the

Elizabeth Stevenson Ives Memorial Concert

to Benefit the

Preservation of Weymouth

Dimitri Shteinberg, Pianist

 

Sunday, the Twentieth of January

Three o’clock

Great Room

Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities

 

R.S.V.P. by January 15^th – 692-6261                                                      Reception Immediately Following

              Space is Limited

 

$30 per person – $50 per couple

Donor: $150 – 2 tickets & program recognition

Contributor: $250 – 4 tickets & program recognition

Benefactor:  $500 – 4 tickets, reserved seating & program recognition

Sponsor: $1,000 – all of the above & public recognition at the concert

 

Weymouth Center is a 501 (C)(3) not for profit organization

 

FINE ARTS LECTURE SERIES

Face to Face: Portraits from Public and Private Life

March 14, April 4, and May 2, 2013, at 10 a.m.

Pause in front of any portrait hanging on the museum wall and you will want to uncover the story behind the person within the frame.  The clues to deeper acquaintanceship are all there, in the forthright gaze, characteristic gesture, and costume and décor of a particular time and place.  The 19^th century art critic and poet Charles Baudelaire demanded that a portrait present the natural drama inherent in every man (or woman).  And from the 15^th century onward, viewers of portraits have responded to the invitation to create a biography for the sitter, often letting their imaginations run away with the historical facts.  Just think of the mysteries surrounding the most famous portrait in art history, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.

Three lectures will trace the shifts in portrait subjects and styles through the decades of the 19^th and 20^th centuries in France and America.  At the end of the 18^th century in France, commissioned portraiture ceased to be the privilege of royalty and became the means by which up-and-coming bourgeois couples announced their status in society.  No one presented the doyennes of Parisian salons in more flattering detail than J.A.D. Ingres and when his meticulous technique for capturing physical likeness and fashion was superseded by the camera, the great photographer Felix Nadar provided an album of who’s who in French culture at mid-century.  With the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, portraiture became a more private affair, practiced among a group of friends who painted one another as they worked or played, and when they needed to clarify their aesthetic priorities, as Gauguin and van Gogh did in 1888, they exchanged self-portraits, rather than letters.  Early modernist artists Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso painted their wives and models obsessively, but with each portrait, the women in their lives became harder to decipher in the riot of brilliant color and fractured forms that increasingly dominated the painted surface.  Finally, in the 1960s, pop artist Andy Warhol restored portraiture to its public function when he reproduced the iconic images of Marilyn, Jackie, and Liz from the commercial media.  These celebrity portraits offered no new insights into their subjects, but simply returned their best known images to an adoring public, Marilyn with her tousled blonde hair and Jackie in mourning attire.

Lecturers are Molly Gwinn, Ph.D., and Denise Drum Baker.  Molly is an art historian who has presented the spring lecture series in the past and has offered courses for the Center for Creative Living at Sandhills Community College.  Denise is an artist and professor of visual arts at Sandhills and has lectured frequently at Weymouth.

THE JAMES BOYD LIBRARY

          The North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame book collection has recently received two gifts.  The first is from Charles Blackburn, a 5 volume photocopied set of Sam Ragan’s Southern Accent literary columns.  The second is the gift of Thomas Meyer, 8 volumes by Jonathan Williams, avant-guarde poet and founder of The Jargon Press.

 

James Boyd Book Club Spring 2013 schedule:   2 pm, Conference Room

 

January 15^th            Lee Smith, Mrs. Darcy and the Blue Eyed-Stranger

February 19^th        Elizabeth Spencer, Knights & Dragons

March 19^th              Guy Owen, The Ballad of The Flim Flam Man

April 16^th                The Black Bard of North Carolina, George Moses Horton,

Joan R. Sherman, ed.

May 21^st                   Wilma Dykeman, The Tall Woman

 

More about the Hall of Fame at www.nclhof.org for info about each author, links to related websites, and selection criteria.

 

WOMEN OF WEYMOUTH

Christmas House 2012 has come and gone, and once again it was a very successful event.  The Christmas House Committee did a wonderful job organizing the event.  Many, many thanks to everyone for their work.  We could not do this event without the numerous volunteers who help make Christmas House successful – so thank you to all of you who contributed your time.  And, of course, a very special thank you to Hope and Alex for their patience, cheerfulness and a great deal of hard work during Christmas House week and during the entire year.

2013 will begin with a program about Moore County Free Clinic.  Mr. Tony rice will be our guest speaker.  The Women of Weymouth meetings begin with coffee at 9:30am followed by a business meeting and program at 10:00am.  Guests are welcome.

Happy New Year!
Jean Neil, President, WOW