Jay Ward Brown creates fund for artists, in honor of his late husband
Beloved Rappahannock artist Kevin Adams experienced an exceptionally productive period in 2017, when he relocated from the Town of Washington to the peaks, outcroppings and crannies of the Shenandoah National Park as artist-in-residence. Five years later, saddened by Adams’ death from brain cancer, friends, fellow artists and neighbors revisited the dozens of paintings and sketches he generated during his weeks in the park, alongside an array of Rappahannock landscapes.
This week, Jay Ward Brown, a lawyer and owner of the Gay Street Gallery, announced that he is establishing a fund in memory of his late husband to support other artists to work in this same setting. The Kevin H. Adams Memorial Fund for Art in the Park, builds the painter’s hope that the national parks would continue to attract not only animals and hikers, but artists who might linger and look closely.
Adams’ Shenandoah experience yielded more than 40 paintings, along with notebooks and sketches. Some were displayed in the U.S. Department of Interior in Washington, D.C.
The memorial fund will help finance programs at the Shenandoah National Park Trust that “encourage, educate, or otherwise promote artists interested in Shenandoah National Park and its surroundings as the subject of their artwork.” Adams spent hours mentoring younger artists, so honoring that priority, the new fund emphasizes support for emerging artists.
Brown said that through Dec. 31, he will match every donation to the memorial fund, up to $75,000, thus doubling the impact of any contribution. In a letter to friends in the community, Brown said he hoped others would “join me in this endeavor to nurture the artists of tomorrow and ensure that Kevin’s dream of sharing the Park’s beauty and significance lives on.”
Give online here. Contributors are also invited to mail checks to Shenandoah National Park Trust, P.O. Box 341, Charlottesville, Va. 22902, noting in the memo line that it is for the Kevin H. Adams Memorial Endowment.
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