Meet Our Artists!
Candy Cummings
Tammy Vitale
Ritch Bullis
Taylor Gregg
Abigail Engel
Candy Cummings
I left St. Mary's county, my birthplace, in 1968 to study Fine Arts in Philadelphia at Temple University's Tyler School of Art. While pursuing a career in catering following college, I remained open to the Creator's creativity within me, drawing on people, places, and experiences. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
Tammy Vitale
Celebrating the Divine Feminine that is in all of us, Tammy Vitale's ceramic sculptures are inspired by her love of ancient as well as new mythologies. Unsing the female form as a starting point, Vitale creates a space between viewer and viewed where old stories blend with new and take on nuances brought by the viewer's own experience. Thus, with each viewing, as the viewer's personal experience expands and enlarges, the story becomes something that grows as between creator and created, and it is not always clear which is which.
Vitale's pieces are allowed to "name themselves" either as she creates or after they are hanging for a while. "It is always wonderful when a piece knows its name from the beginning. But I've had several pieces change their names after taking some time with something I thought up to fill an interim. Since I put their names on their backs, it gets awkward when a name changes. I've learned to be patient and listen for the true name." She recounts how she has even had names arrive in dreams.
By using traditional forms of women's bodies Vitale can use the finishing of each piece to inhabit both the spiritual and material through symbols and objects culled from nature, and by shells, nuts, and other found articles from her travels.
Works she calls "clay collages" grew out of "totems" she started making to use up test tiles from her 7.5'x11' public art work entitled "Chesapeake" for the town of North Beach in Calvert County, MD. She was surprised and delighted when the first totem brought an offer to join a gallery cooperative so she experimented with making more totems from shards she had in her yard. "Now nothing gets wasted," she says, "and if something blows up in the kiln or during a raku session it isn't too much of a tragedy since I know it will eventually find its place to be." She has been known to take a hammer to finished whole work just to see what new whole will emerge from the broken parts. "For me there is something about healing, about remaking that which is broken or considered useless, that speaks to the human condition."
Each form Vitale makes stays open to possibility and acknowledges the change inherent in possibility. "I always know when something requests to move from an idea to a concrete form, that someone, somewhere, is looking for this energy. My purpose is to create it in a form and get it out where the seeker can find it.
"Clay teaches me to be patient, to respect the integrity of the material and to delight in all the ways it allows me to express energy. I learn from every piece of work I make that one finished piece is often only a beginning."
Ritch Bullis
Ritch Bullis was born and raised in Upstate New York. During his childhood, he spent much of his time walking in the woods, which surrounded his home and family farm. Ritch became interested in photography through a “crash” course offered at a local high school. He was only 12, but he was hooked. He convinced his dad to buy an inexpensive 35mm camera, which Ritch took everywhere. Ritch had a keen eye for composition. Eventually, he would catch the attention of the high school art teacher, who coaxed Ritch to submit photographs for local high school competitions. Ritch won many awards and was ultimately selected as one of fifteen students in the state of New York to participate in a “Summer School for the Arts” program in Buffalo, NY. There he spent the summer of 1982 working under photography instructors trying to further develop the creative approach to a photograph. Based on his previous photography, Ritch was offered a scholarship to the “School of Visual Arts” in New York City. Unfortunately, at that time, family commitments prevented Ritch from attending and he later joined the Navy.
Ritch landed in Southern Maryland, on his second enlistment, in 1986. He decided to settle in Southern Maryland and left the Naval Service in 1989. Ritch completed college and is now an electrical engineer working as a civilian for the Navy. He calls Leonardtown home and lives there with his lovely wife and two great children. Ritch spends much of his time with his family camping, fishing, hiking and photographing in the local state parks. He tries to photograph objects, frequently trees, whose beauty is often taken for granted and overlooked. Ritch’s love for the outdoors, which he carries with him from early childhood in New York, is evident in his photography.
Taylor Gregg
Taylor Gregg, former Photography Editor and Asia Area Specialist at
National Geographic magazine, began his journalistic career in the U.S.
Navy, and later was editor of a weekly newspaper in Canal Winchester,
Ohio. He left Ohio for Washington, D.C. and became a Cultural Affairs
Officer for the Japanese Government. He moved to become editor of an
international monthly professional engineering magazine before joining
the National Geographic staff in 1974. While at Geographic he
produced/edited more than 50 stories over 13 years. His free-lance
photography was published in the Washington Post daily and Sunday
editions, the American Institute of Architects magazine, American
Forests magazine, etc.
He has taught photojournalism at George Washington University and
American University, and was Program Director for the Asia Society. He
teaches Digital Photography in St. Mary's County (Recreation & Parks)
and is Director and Varsity Head Coach of the St. Mary's Ryken Sailing
Program on Breton Bay in Leonardtown.
Abigail Engel
No biography yet available.
All biographies were written by the individual artist or a third party unassociated with Room with a Brew, LLC writing on behalf of the artist.
