13 minute read
Arts
Lisa Long, Middle School Art Teacher with Reagan Russell, Director of Visual and Performing Arts, and eighth graders working on abstract expressionist paintings
ARTS UPDATE
by Reagan Russell, Director of Visual and Performing Arts, Visual Art Chair
Even as COVID-19 presented new challenges for our student artists and program, I am proud to say that the arts are alive and well at Berwick Academy. We have paid attention to national guidelines and those set forth by the Maine Department of Education to ensure that we are able to do what we love and share it safely with the Berwick community. These guidelines have impacted our program in unexpected ways, but we have still enjoyed our performing arts ensembles, theater program, and visual arts programs. Our student artists’ willingness to be flexible, try new approaches and demonstrate their passion for their art has not changed.
Please join us in congratulating Raegan Russell, who has been named the 2022 Maine Art Education Association–Art Educator of the Year, the highest honor awarded by the MAEA. Last year, Raegan was recognized as Secondary Level Art Educator of the Year and that award placed her in the pool for this honor.
Aomori Japan student print
HASHI-AOMORI 2020 STUDENT PRINT EXCHANGE:
Welcome to the Hashi 2020 Art exhibit at Berwick Academy. This exhibit underscores an ongoing collaboration and cultural exchange between sister states of Aomori, Japan, and Maine.
There is an interesting story behind the ongoing friendship between Aomori and Maine, which started in 1889 with the wreck of the Bath ship Cheseborough off the coast of Japan and the daring rescue of its crew by the villagers of Aomori. From this relationship, there have been cultural exchanges between the two states, including the student art exchange.
Hashi means bridges in Japanese, and these exhibitions create that bridge between our student artists in Maine and Japan. The Hashi exchange began with Reagan Russell’s visit to Japan in 2018 and Lynda McCann-Olson of Greely Middle School in Cumberland, Maine, a year later. Friends of Aomori and the Aomoricity Morning Rotary hosted the exchange. While in Japan, we visited museums, printmaking studios, and, best of all, schools where we saw children in all stages of making their wonderful prints. Upon return, we shared techniques with students and built a body of work that was then shared in Maine and Aomori.
For two years, our students at Berwick Academy have participated in this exchange by creating prints in the traditional relief block printing and sending them to Japan for exhibition. Students made the prints in their art classes and in an afterschool workshop. Students loved working with traditional materials like plina wood and carving tools, and then inking the blocks exactly as do students in Japan. They were so excited to show scenes of their everyday lives through their art and share them with their friends in Japan. When the prints arrived from Japan to be shown at Berwick, our students marveled at the similarities and differences in our everyday lives.
Even in the strange and tumultuous year that it has been, we are so lucky to exhibit these prints from Japan both here at Berwick Academy and at the Greely Middle School this fall.
MUSIC
SARAH LUMMUS ’21 AND SIDDHI PORAIYAN ’23, both violinists, auditioned and were selected to participate in the highly competitive MMEA Maine AllState BOCT Honors Festival. Musicians submitted virtual auditions and the festival will be held virtually once again this spring.
ANDRE BOUFAMA ’24 auditioned and was selected to participate in the Jazz Combo for the MMEA All-State Honors Jazz Festival. The festival was held virtually for three days during January, including masterclasses, individual coaching, and performances. Andre plays electric bass in both Symphonic Band and Jazz Band and was one of three bassists selected for the festival.
THE GRADE 7 AND 8 AND UPPER SCHOOL STRINGS ENSEMBLES, under the direction of Cathy O’Brien, were represented via video submission in the Waynflete Chamber Music Festival, held virtually on March 7.
DANCE
Berwick Academy dancers have continued exploring and creating this winter, even during remote learning. Highlights have included the creativity in how students approach virtual dance classes. From dancers substituting their favorite stuffed animals for an audience to siblings and parents jumping in to dance along, it has been a collaborative experience. Berwick’s Middle and Upper School Companies are working on student choreography to create their own full dance piece and preparing for the Spring Dance Concert.
WATCH THE HASHI 2020 VIDEO TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS INSPIRING EXHIBIT. HTTPS://BIT.LY/BERWICKACADEMY
Off the Hilltop: Visual Art
SCHOLASTIC ART AND WRITING COMPETITION
Berwick Academy art students knocked it out of the park at the 2021 Scholastic Art Awards, with five students winning a total of nine awards, including four Gold Key Awards with a Gold Key Senior Portfolio. This is a highly selective competition, drawing from schools throughout Maine and representing the New England region. Gold Key awards move on to the national level in March.
Andrew Bouvier ’21
Pathways in the Arts Scholastics Gold Key Award A Balanced Earth
Mischa Landgarten ’23
Scholastics Silver Key Award Eye Portrait 2
Jenny Ma ’21
Scholastics Honorable Mention A Cruel, Crazy Beautiful World
Camden Chase ’21
Scholastics Honorable Mention Changing Home
Mischa Landgarten ’23
Scholastics Silver Key Award Broken Portrait
Jenny Ma ’21
Scholastics Silver Key Award Me Praying and Blaming -A Reflection on the Coroavirus Pandemic
Jenny Ma ’21
Scholastics Gold Key Portfolio Award Senior Portfolio - Me
Caleb Weinstein ’22
Pathways in the Arts Scholastics Gold Key Award Copper Ruby Cylinder with Vanilla Iris Weaving
Caleb Weinstein ’22
Pathways in the Arts Scholastics Gold Key Award Black Wavy Bowl with Enamel White Weaving and Lipstick Red Lip Wrap
BERWICK ACADEMY THEATER PRODUCTIONS
Teaser scene from Mere Mortals shown under the Hilltopper Tent
While the impact of COVID-19 on theater is certain, this year offered unique opportunities for students to devise, workshop scenes, and film their performances.
The Upper School Fall production, a series of five comedic existential one-acts by David Ives and Christopher Durang and directed by Upper School Art Teacher Hevia Paxson had student actors leaning into new opportunities to create theater. One of these short plays, Mere Mortals, was performed live under the tents, and the entire group collection was videotaped and shown to students in a socially distanced viewing in the theater.
The Upper School Winter production, Making the Cut is a piece that has been written largely by the cast about the production of a fictional Broadway review in the time of COVID-19 and featuring some of the music from Chorus Line. In production at the time of this writing, the video will be available to students and families after April 1, when there will also be a student screening of the film. The piece is directed by Middle and Upper School Art Teacher, Hevia Paxson. Seniors in fall or winter casts and crew: Elle Bailey, Sam Campagna, Megan Case, Sarah Lummus, Cormac Feeley, Lisa Parker Feld, Camille Gaudette, Ryan Gurrisi, Mae McDougald, Natalie Nahas, Emily Ney, Hayden Quinn, Riley Quinn.
The Middle School production of Aesop’s (Oh So Slightly) Updated Fables features student actors and crew members in Grades 5-8 delving into updated comic versions of Aesop’s fables. Students rehearsed on Zoom throughout the winter months, and the play will be performed and videotaped in midApril. It will be made available to the students and families. The performance is directed by Upper School Art Teacher Hevia Paxson and Lower School Music, Middle School Chorus Music Director Page Rich.
YOUTH ART MONTH
This year a virtual exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art highlights one student artist from each Berwick Academy division. To view the collection, visit www.portlandmuseum.org/yam-2021
1918 Flu Pandemic
by Brad Fletcher, History Teacher and Berwick Archivist
As the School’s Archivist, I’ve been asked several times over the past year about Berwick’s response to the 1918 influenza pandemic. To my surprise, there is little to no mention of it in the archival record. There is nothing in the School’s history. There is nothing in the Board of Trustee meeting minutes (although those meetings occurred once a year in June, bracketing and missing the critical autumn phase of the pandemic). There is nothing in the newspaper accounts or town reports we have. Searches turned up no official communications of any kind, which is not to say they don’t exist, but I couldn’t find them. But digging deeply into the files finally revealed two passing references from members of that year’s senior class, establishing that, indeed, the School did respond to the crisis.
The pandemic hit Maine hard, as it did everywhere else, with the first cases occurring in late September. They were traced to Maine soldiers staging for the war in Europe at Fort Devens in Massachusetts. As sickness swept the Army camp, state medical professionals responded and unwittingly brought the flu back with them upon their return home. One of those officials was later registered as the first death in the state on September 23, 1918. By late September, the numbers were rising rapidly in larger cities and mill towns, with increasing deaths reported. Like other schools, Berwick Academy opened in early September, and the year started smoothly until, as Gertrude Joy recorded in the Senior Class History, “On September thirteenth the unexpected happened. Because of the prevalence of Influenza everywhere, we ceased our voyage and anchored. Four weeks elapsed before we resumed our course and we then resolved to work with new vigor to make up for the lost time.” Writing months later, at the end of the school year, it appears that she was wrong about the date, as the flu had not yet arrived in Maine by the thirteenth. A more likely date for when the school closed is suggested in the diary of her classmate, Harold Goodwin, who simply noted, “No school” on Friday the twentyseventh and nearly every day over the weeks to come. A month later, on Monday, October 28, he wrote, “Went to BA. School began after having closed a month on account of Spanish Influenza.” Brief as they are, the references in Goodwin’s diary and Joy’s class history reveal that the Academy was ahead of the curve in responding to the growing crisis. On the twenty-seventh, Goodwin’s first “no school” day, the state’s public health commissioner urged wearing masks and the closing of movie theaters and other places of public gathering but did not believe it necessary to close businesses or schools. There was pushback. Clergy bristled at suspending church services, officials in Portland rejected a call for masks, while a public health official in Lewiston dismissed the measures as unnecessary as there was no pandemic. As late as October 8, the governor still exempted schools and churches from his plea to suspend all public assembly.
The remaining months of the year were the worst, though the pandemic seesawed into the spring of 1919. October 1918 was the deadliest month in Maine, with more than 20,000 reported cases and 1,300 deaths. By November, the number of cases tripled, while the death count fell by two thirds. December saw the number of dead rise to more than 500, while new cases fell sharply. The four final months of 1918 witnessed greater than 120,000 cases of influenza in the state, with 2,500 deaths directly attributed to the virus and at least 500 more due to secondary causes, the largest number being bronchial pneumonia. Before retreating in May 1919, the virus claimed nearly 2,000 additional lives. In a startling statistic illustrative of the pandemic’s grim calculus, the 1918 statewide birth rate exceeded the death rate by just two per 1,000 people. For York County, the margin was even narrower, averaging only one more birth than death per thousand. Given all of this, the question remains: How and why is there so little about it in the School archives? I can only suggest some possible ideas. As to the lack of official records, back in the days before computers and Zoom, perhaps there wasn’t much to communicate. School just stopped. One theory is that there were no policies or procedures to put in place, no remote learning, and, therefore, not much to say. It also appears that South Berwick was among those towns with a small, mostly rural population, spared the worst of the pandemic. Through the terrible days of autumn 1918, South Berwick recorded seven deaths, on par with comparably sized towns of Kennebunk and York. Unfortunately, the year-end state report does not indicate how many cases there were, but, again, it was perhaps again comparable to York, which listed fewer than 300 cases, resulting in five deaths. If such is the case, then the flu would have posed a very real and frightening risk, but one successfully managed through precaution and care. No doubt the early closing of Berwick Academy, then the town’s high school, proved a wise decision in that success. As for the students, most notably twelfth graders Gertrude Joy and Harold Goodwin, after a month’s hiatus, they were eager to return to school with, in Joy’s words, “new vigor to make up for the lost time.” The diary of Goodwin, who was elected president of his class, offers a renewed whirlwind of activity; the boys club, sports practice, senior play rehearsal, planning Halloween festivities, and, as the Cogswell Medal recipient, his studies. For Goodwin, all else was eclipsed on November 11 by the news of the armistice ending the war, which he had followed with detailed fascination for four years in his diary, writing on that day, “War over! BA parade this morning. Whee!” Life, in other words, went on.
History Department Chair Brad Belin delivering Veteran’s Day speech
VIRTUAL VETERANS DAY
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to welcome servicemembers to our traditional all-school assembly in honor of Veterans Day. Instead, a message was live streamed from the Hilltopper tent. So many members of the extended Berwick community, including current parents, grandparents, siblings, faculty, staff, and alumni, count themselves among the many who have served in this vital role for our country and our world.
“We are grateful for your service,” said Head of School Jim Hamilton in a message to veterans. “Our Hilltop proudly remembers our alumni who fought in both World Wars and gave the greatest gift of all. Veterans, on behalf of the entire Berwick Academy community, we extend our gratitude to each and every one of you. Thank you for protecting our freedom.”
