JODY JENKINS, Filmmaker & Journalist
Monday, March 5 - Friday, March 9
Mr. Jody Jenkins is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker from Tampa, Florida. He is currently a Ted Scripps Fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he is researching and screenwriting a documentary on the causes of Haiti's long-term economic, health, and environmental problems. He is the writer, producer and reporter of "American Jihadist," a feature-length documentary film looking at the motivations behind one man's decision to fight for his religion. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in January 2010. It went on to win four other Best Documentary awards after showing in nearly 40 festivals around the globe. Most recently Jenkins has been an editor at France 24, a twenty-four-hour news network in Paris that broadcasts in French, English and Arabic. He has covered the Czechoslovakian and Romanian revolutions, the Kurdish refugee crisis in the wake of the first Gulf War, and the Serbo-Croatian and Bosnian wars. His work has appeared in Salon, The Spectator Magazine, Fodor's and many other newspapers, magazines and literary journals. His prose poetry was recently commissioned by Comma Workshop, a hand quilting company in Boulder, Colorado, and was stitched into its latest collection that was unveiled at New York's SoHo House gallery in October, 2011. He has also worked variously as a lumberjack, an itinerant farm hand, a crewmember for a hot air ballooning company, and as a barge pilot cruising the rivers and canals of France.

MARC CASTELLI, Painter & Environmentalist
Monday April 2 - Friday, April 6
Darrow will host painter and environmentalist Marc Castelli for a public exhibition of a collection of his paintings titled “Art and The Chesapeake Watermen” in the School’s Joline Arts Center. The exhibition will be on display throughout the month of April in the Joline Arts Center and is free and open to the public during school hours. During his stay, Castelli will also meet and dine with faculty, lecture, lead master classes with students and teachers, and a host question-and-answer session.

Castelli paints in watercolor on paper, working from photographs that he takes himself. “Art and The Chesapeake Watermen” is a series of 23 paintings that capture the lives and vocations of fishermen and workers on Chesapeake Bay from their vantage point. “I first started painting the workboats of the Chesapeake from the dockside views that were the only angles available to me at the time,” Castelli said. “Now I spend hundreds of hours each year out on the water with the watermen.”

Through the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies Program, Castelli’s work has been requested for ambassadors’ residencies in Brazil, Qatar, and Madagascar. Through the U.S. Information Service, he has exhibited his work in individual shows in Bombay, India, and Muscat, Oman. Sailing magazine has regularly featured his articles and paintings on log canoes and traditional workboats of the Chesapeake. His America’s Cup paintings from the last four defenses and challenges have also been featured. The prestigious Mystic Maritime Museum Gallery has recognized him as a Modern Marine Master for several years. The quality of his dedication is reflected in the numerous private and corporate collections of his work, both nationally and internationally.

Castelli will visit classes, lecture, and hold a question-and-answer session on Tuesday, April 3; will conduct a master class on Wednesday, April 4; and will participate in art classes on Thursday, April 6.

Each year, Darrow’s Visiting Artist program brings accomplished artists to our campus for extended stays. Visiting artists share their work, expertise, training, and inspirations to lend insight into the working world of artists.