The following animals are ready to be adopted from the Brandywine Valley SPCA in West Chester.
Ginger
Ginger
Ginger is a warm-hearted pooch in the market for a loving family to call her own. Ginger loves human touch and seeks any and all forms of affection. This good girl takes treats gently and walks well on a leash. In playgroups, Ginger was very open with the other dogs and greeted everyone appropriately, though she does enjoy a calmer play style in her canine friends. She’s looking forward to meeting your family and any other dogs at the house before going home. You can adopt Ginger for a fee you name through Sunday, June 27.
Ashes
Ashes
Ashes is a plus-size beauty with a gorgeous grey and white coat and fluffy paws to match. The laidback senior gal will make the perfect addition to your couch. In return for a quiet, caring home in her golden years, she promises purrs aplenty and loving companionship. Being over 6 months of age qualifies Ashes for the shelter’s $10 Cool Cat adoption special running from June 19 through the 27.
For more information, go to www.bvspca.org or phone 484-302-0865.
Ralston Crawford: Air & Space & War runs through Sept. 19
A lazy Sunday morning in late June, warm and muggy, was a good day for the Brandywine River Museum of Art to reopen to the general public after a three-month hiatus for some renovation. New restrooms, a redesigned gallery, a new sculpture out front, and a new exhibit featuring the works of Ralston Crawford is on display for the reopening.
The sculpture Boy with Hawk, which greeted visitors for years has been replaced with a pair of entwined peacocks entitled Tipping Point by Rikki Morely Saunders now rests on the grassy outdoor pedestal. But for the museum, it’s what’s inside that really counts.
Bomber: Ralston Crawford (1906-1978), Bomber, 1944, oil on canvas, 28 x 40 in. Vilcek Collection, VF2016.03.02. The image is based on a photograph Crawford saw.
For the more traditional Brandywine art fare, a wide-open second-floor gallery with an airy feel features the words of both N.C. and Jamie Wyeth, while the third floor displays the new exhibit, Ralston Crawford: Air & Space & War.
The Canadian-born Crawford grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., traveled the Great Lakes with his sea-captain father, and studied art in California before coming east and living and painting in Exton and Chadds Ford before WWII. He enlisted in the Army Air Force where he created maps and weather charts, creating a visual representation of weather patterns, which are the basis for the weather maps of today.
Tipping Point replaces Boy with Hawk on the big pedestal outside the main entrance of the museum.
He also saw images of wreckage and destruction that influenced his abstract art. A case in point is “Bomber,” a painting based on a photograph he saw of a plane that had crashed into a home. After the war, he went to Bikini Atoll to witness nuclear bomb tests. He did several abstracts of what he witnessed there.
The exhibit, which runs through Sept. 19, was organized by the Vilcek Foundation in collaboration with the Brandywine and includes 80 works — drawing, photos, and paintings. The works form a narrative of his WWII involvement.
Emily Navratil, the curator for the Vilcek Foundation, said Crawford’s military experience and familiarity with military aircraft “forged the themes that he would explore for the rest of his artistic career.”
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
