News

Maitz’s painting titled Forty Thieves is on display at the Cornell Museum. Image provided

By Greg Stepanich

Call them a peg-leg meritocracy. 

Or perhaps they were a band of freethinkers, governmental naysayers who rejected the repressive society of the day in favor of their own democracy of brawn, bravery —and larceny —on the high seas.

You know: pirates.

Running through Oct. 28, the Cornell Museum of Art and American Culture at the newly renamed Delray Beach Center for the Arts has been showing “Ahoy Maitz! Pirates and Treasures,” an exhibit of freebooter art by Don Maitz, a Sarasota-based illustrator who’s best-known for his iconic logo for the Captain Morgan rum line.

“Someone can look at one of my paintings and it would be like they were looking at a window into the past, through my eyes,” Maitz said. “I may be romanticizing it, but the idea is, you’ve got a porthole into an age where adventure lived.”

Maitz, 59, who moved to Sarasota in 1990 from his home state of Connecticut, is a much-honored artist in the tradition of N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle and Norman Rockwell. Much of his most celebrated work has been in the realm of fantasy and science fiction, with illustrations for books by Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and other luminaries, Hugo awards for best artist, and steady work with major New York publishers. 

His interest in the world of the pirates began during his work in the 1980s on the Captain Morgan campaign for Seagrams. The rum is named after the legendary Welsh privateer Henry Morgan, who worked in the Caribbean during the second half of the 17th century. 

Don Maitz

“In doing the research, I discovered that pirates were a society unto themselves … Some people embraced piracy, some people were dragged into it, and some people, because of the time period, they didn’t have any choice,” Maitz said. To make an effective portrayal of that world, which was in its heyday from roughly 1680 to 1725, he drew inspiration from the nostalgic art of the American West.

“The cowboy became an iconic character. And this is what I’m trying to portray with the pirates,” he said.

The show extends to the walls and two galleries of the Cornell, and includes a small section devoted to the Captain Morgan art. But the rest of it ranges widely, from works for a children’s card game, portraits, and even a small, almost-Impressionist piece, Lookout in the Bell Tower, in which a group of pirates is seen indistinctly at the top of the structure, spoiling for battle.

The exhibit, curated by Gloria Rejune Adams and the staff of the Cornell, also is laid out with young families in mind, with displays of unfortunate skeletons clutching jugs of rum with a treasure chest nearby, and that sort of thing. There also is a small cabinet devoted to relics —including an arquebus and several Philip III pieces of eight —from the 1622 wreck of Nuestra Señor de Atocha, discovered by the Key West salvor Mel Fisher in 1985.

The second floor includes some of Maitz’s fantasy paintings as well as a room devoted to a charming children’s book, How I Became a Pirate, by Melinda Long and David Shannon, in which the pages are blown up to display size and the text is given in English, Spanish and Creole. An X-marks-the-spot drawing is under some of the paintings, which is for children to look carefully at the designated artwork to find the playful place where Maitz has signed it.

Maltz credits his thorough training at the Paier College of Art in Hamden, Conn., for helping give him a secure technique, which can be clearly seen in every piece of the exhibit. He is a strong believer in the importance of being a good draftsman, and of the artistic tradition of “imaginative realism” to which he belongs.

“I’m really glad to see this exhibit going on at the Cornell, because it’s an opportunity to show people that there’s still solid drawing and painting being done, even though it’s been out of favor for so many years,” he said.

Maitz is a member of the American Society of Marine Artists, whose first national exhibit debuted at the Cornell last October and is now traveling the country. His work also is being featured in current exhibits of pirate art at Wisconsin’s Door County Maritime Museum, and of fantasy art at the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania. He also has an exhibit through Labor Day at the huge DragonCon sci-fi gathering in Atlanta. 

Admission to the exhibit is $10; it’s $6 for seniors, $4 for students, $2 for ages 4 to 12, and free for ages 3 and under. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 1 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday. 

International Talk Like a Pirate Day is scheduled for Sept. 19, which will feature a video of random people approached on the street to do their best Blackbeard impressions, culminating with a pirate “Happy Arrr!” Call 243-7922.  

The winter arts season gets going this month in South Florida, with some interesting local performances leading off the action:

Music at St. Paul’s: The series at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach begins its 25th year on Sept. 23 with the Trillium Piano Trio of Jupiter. Pianist Yoko Sata Kothari, violinist Ruby Berland and cellist Benjamin Salsbury will perform the lone Piano Trio of Gabriel Fauré, the second Piano Trio of Felix Mendelssohn, and a rarity, the Piano Trio (on Irish popular melodies) of the Swiss composer Frank Martin. 

The Trillium opened St. Paul’s last season with fine readings of trios by Saint-Saëns and Smetana, and the threesome usually draws an appreciative, serious crowd. The concert begins at 3 p.m.; tickets are $15-$20, depending on seating. Call 278-6003 or visit  www.stpaulsdelray.org for more information.

Boca Raton Theatre Guild: The theater group presents A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia beginning Sept. 28 and running through Oct. 14 at the Willow Theatre in Sugar Sand Park. The 1995 play by Gurney, a chronicler of the domestic life of the Northeastern upper-middle class, concerns a businessman in a midlife crisis who finds a stray female dog in the park that worships him and which he adopts, causing much chaos in his marriage. 

It stars Keith Garsson, Patti Gardner and Jacqueline Laggy as Sylvia, the Labrador-poodle mix. Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $25. Call 347-3948 or visit www.brtg.org. 

Arts Garage: Now into its second year of jazz and blues concerts, September’s offerings at the Delray Beach music-and-theater hotspot at 180 NE First St. include flutist Bobby Ramirez (Sept. 8), singer Paulette Dozier (Sept. 15), percussionist Sammy Figueroa (Sept. 22) and singer Alice Day (Sept. 29). It opens Sept. 1 with Olivia de la Garza, lead singer of the Miami Dolphins cheerleader’s Voices group, in a program called Songs of Love and Lust. 

All shows begin at 8 p.m., and tickets range from $15 to $30 in advance, and $5 more at the door. Call 450-6357 for more information, or visit www.artsgarage.org.