Ed Harvey rides out the culture wars
Ed Harvey rides out the culture wars
Longtime board president leads Arts Center in Orange with "sweetness and grace"
Ed Harvey has emerged from the cultural wars battle-worn but still thoroughly committed to his mission. Drawing on his considerable energy and people skills, the longtime president of The Arts Center in Orange, located at 129 E. Main St., outlasted the mural controversy (2022) and the blustering outrage over the drag queen’s workshop (2023). When I interviewed him recently at his elegant, modern spread in Somerset, he was happy to talk about his career in the D.C. media world and his leadership of the Arts Center.
Harvey, 77, has lived a charmed life with his wife, Ada, by his side. Friendly and humorous, he is known for his stylish eyeglasses and complete devotion to the Arts Center, which he’s served for more than two decades. But what was his life like before he moved to Orange County? That’s where our conversation began.
A “twinless” twin
Harvey describes his upbringing in Lynchburg as middle class—his father was in the family oil business, and his mother worked for a shoe company. He has an older brother and calls himself a “twinless twin,” because his twin sister died in 1989. Growing up, Ed spent summers working for his maternal grandmother on her farm in Rustburg, not far from Lynchburg. The two of them went riding together, and she encouraged his love of reading, still evident in his book-lined library.
He also got an early start with art, thanks to his third-grade teacher, an artist. Starting in seventh grade, he became active in the local community theater, on stage and backstage. Then, when he was in high school, he took a job with the Lynchburg TV station where future network star Charlie Gibson was the anchor.
With opportunities unfolding in his hometown, Harvey decided to attend Lynchburg College (now the University of Lynchburg), where he majored in dramatic arts and minored in English literature. The day after he graduated in 1969, he got his draft notice. Rolling with this abrupt change in his circumstances, he enlisted in the Air Force and sought to take a placement test in TV work. Alas, the Air Force didn’t have an exam in that field, so he was offered a journalism test instead.
His score: a shocking 45. “I was just devastated. I thought, ‘I’m gonna be typing for some ***hole for four years.’ I was so upset. The drill instructor looked at me and said, ‘Harvey, what the hell's wrong with you?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, I really am depressed.’ And he goes, ‘You dumb s**t! The passing grade's 30!’”
After a quiet year at a base in San Antonio, Harvey was sent to West Berlin. It couldn’t have worked out better for him: “I got to do all kinds of things. We did children's shows, ladies’ shows, documentaries, local news shows. I spent three years doing that and had a wonderful time.”
“Get to work!”
Back home once his four-year hitch ended, he struggled to find the kind of job he wanted and ended up at the Lynchburg station where he got his start. After three years, he took a job in D.C. doing promotional work for Channel 7, the ABC affiliate. When he didn’t see eye-to-eye with a new boss, he quit. Rather than job-hunting, he spent his days foxhunting, a longtime favorite activity.
By then, he and Ada (whom he met through a mutual friend) were married. “After three months, my mother says, ‘Edward, you're married. You’ve gotta have a job. Get to work!’”
Taking the command to heart, he found a temporary gig and then went to PBS affiliate WETA, Channel 26, where he immersed himself in the heady world of broadcast journalism in the nation’s capital. He rose from production manager to head of production managers and then took charge of the station’s for-profit subsidiary. Next, “they asked me to run all of the production facilities. So all the union people, directors, producers, camera people—all of those people worked for me.”
Harvey’s 17-year career with WETA was demanding, but from the sound of it, there was lots of fun and excitement mixed in. He met many prominent people, including Colin Powell and presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton.
I asked him what President Reagan was like. “He was really interesting. He was a very nice guy, but it was getting toward the end [of his presidency], and he was having some memory issues, and Nancy [Reagan] was pretty much in control.”
Both Powell and the elder Bush were “very businesslike,” Harvey recalled. When Powell needed to record a speech for an event he couldn’t attend in person, Harvey and his crew handled the assignment. “We were very efficient,” Harvey recalled with a smile. “He came in, he sat down and after a minute and a half, we started recording. He did perfect the first time. We checked the tape, said thank you and he was gone.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but …”
President Clinton stands out in Harvey’s recollection as the rare leader to look his guests in the eye in a receiving line and really converse rather than gazing off to the side. One time, Harvey and his crew were setting up to film a performance at the White House. Time was very short. “We’re busy setting up, and here [Clinton] comes, he wants to chat. After about 10 minutes, I said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. President, but you need to leave. We gotta get busy.’ And he left.”
While his career was in D.C., Harvey was spending much of his free time foxhunting in and around Orange County. He and Ada bought land in Somerset in the mid 1990s and made plans to retire there after their new house was completed. Eventually, in a conversation the opposite of the one he and his mother had years earlier, Ada issued an edict. As he remembers it, “My wife looked at me and she said, ‘I can't finish this house without you. You’ve gotta quit.’”
So he did. After giving a year’s notice, he retired in 2000, and he and Ada moved to Somerset the following year. His active involvement in the local arts scene happened quickly. One day, while he was in Orange, the Arts Center caught his eye. “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a really cool place.’ I walked in and I was wearing Dansko clogs, and Amy Hunt [the center’s executive director at the time] looked at me and she goes, ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ I laughed and said, ‘Well, not really, but somewhat.’”
“The kids in the summer camp stole my heart”
Soon, Harvey became a member of the Arts Center board and a couple of years later, he was elected board president. What made him jump in so swiftly? As an arts lover and an experienced potter, he was naturally drawn to the center, he explained, but there was something else at play: “Early on, watching the kids in [the Arts Center’s] summer camp just stole my heart.”
Harvey was busy on other fronts, too. He served on the board of the Keswick Hunt Club for 15 years and as hunt club president for nine. He got involved in Virginians for the Arts, a grassroots organization that lobbies the legislature on behalf of the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Still, the Arts Center was never far from his thoughts.
For many years, he and Executive Director Laura Thompson were the organization’s public face. After Thompson’s death from cancer in 2019, the board hired a new executive director: Anna Pillow, a New York-based artist and arts educator with family roots in Orange County. Young, hard-charging and bursting with new ideas, Pillow landed in Orange shortly before the pandemic drew the curtains on normal life. Throughout the protracted crisis, Pillow and her staff found creative ways to help support the community—by live-streaming arts activities, for instance, and providing arts and crafts kits that people could pick up outside the center. Exhibitions eventually continued, with gallery visitors required to make reservations to avoid close contact with others.
Once it was deemed safe to do so, the Arts Center resumed its opening night receptions and in-person classes in painting, drawing and clay. Over the past couple of years, Pillow has also hosted residencies by visiting artists, brought the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts art mobile to Orange and added new classes, all with enthusiastic support from Harvey and the rest of the board.
Mural, mural, on the wall …
In a milestone accomplishment, Pillow obtained grant money in 2022 from the National Endowment for the Arts so that the Arts Center could sponsor a public mural competition and install the winning artists’ murals on three buildings in Orange. All was going according to plan until Lena Murray, a newcomer to town and a classically trained artist and art teacher (briefly interested in entering the mural competition herself), took umbrage with the chosen designs and launched a social media campaign expressing her feelings.
Though not exactly constructive, Murray’s many posts (and the responses she received) did expand the local conversation about what public art should and shouldn’t be. The three winning murals eventually went up, though two were moved to new locations—the owners of the original sites having bowed out due to public pressure.
In a surprising twist, Lena and her husband, John Murray, later opened an art school right next door to the Arts Center. Perhaps someday these neighbors will become best buds, though there’s something to be said for the creative foment arising from competition.
What a drag
Last year, the Arts Center was back in the news when Pillow scheduled a makeup and fashion workshop to be led by hairstylist and drag performer Chris Overton. Overton’s drag name is Wisteria Ivy, and the workshop was titled “Build a Babe.”
Once locals saw the workshop announcement, the culture wars belched and burbled back to electronic life. Vituperative hotheads hollered into the ether with their usual dyspeptic gusto.
It was another tough go ’round for Pillow and Harvey. They postponed “Build a Babe” indefinitely (a decision that upset those who’d signed up for it and others who saw nothing wrong with it). Then things got worse.
In a transparent display of alpha male bullying, a 4-1 majority of the Orange County Board of Supervisors defunded the center, much to the outrage of its many local supporters. This tempest in our own little teapot was written up in the Washington Blade, an LGBTQ publication. The widespread publicity led to a modest boost in private donations.
That boost was temporary, however. Though it’s in no danger of closing, Harvey told me that he is concerned about a recent drop in private support. The shift is especially irksome because he wants to see a renovation of the building completed during his tenure on the board. The costly project would entail installation of an elevator to the unused space upstairs, which he would like to see transformed into artists’ cubicles, with room set aside for a performance area.
Leads Arts Center with “sweetness and grace”
Regular visitors to the Arts Center value it greatly and speak highly of Harvey’s steady leadership. Carol Couch, a former member of the Orange County School Board, rarely misses an exhibit opening, which she attends with friends. The opening night reception is “a very pleasant social outing,” she told me by phone. As for Harvey, she said, “He’s friendly and easy to talk to. He always seems to be in a good mood and is welcoming to everybody. Those are gifts.”
Gerilee Hundt of Orange, who used to work at the center and continues to participate in its activities and events, had this to say: “Ed provides continuity from the past, working with Laura [Thompson’s] more traditional approach, to the present, very different vision of Anna [Pillow’s]. He has handled every change and crisis with such sweetness and grace.”
When I asked Harvey to sum up his thoughts about the Arts Center, he sent me these comments via a follow-up email:
“It's been really interesting to watch the Arts Center change with the times. After a survey last year, we realized that the majority of people in Orange do not work [locally], so we changed the hours and days of operation to meet the needs of our community. So far, so good. People’s desire for classes varies with the seasons, with pottery and painting being popular currently. Our free class for kids on Saturdays is also a very big hit.”
Despite recent upheavals, he said, “I look forward to the Center continuing to grow and meet the artistic needs of our community. I am always optimistic for the future.”
Gordon-Barbour Elementary School to open a few days late
Orange County Public Schools will begin the new academic year on Wednesday, Aug. 7—except in Gordonsville. Children enrolled at Gordon-Barbour Elementary School start on Monday, Aug. 12, due to extensive building renovations still underway. In a letter posted on the OCPS website, GBES Principal Brandi Shumake writes that the work includes “renovation of the annexes, HVAC replacement throughout the building, roof replacement, tile replacement and painting.”
She continues, “Due to the extensive nature of these projects, we must delay Gordon-Barbour's first day of school to ensure that projects are completed and teachers have adequate time to prepare classrooms for our students.”
Gville kids, enjoy your extra days of summer vacation!
Artist’s Loft
Philip Dean Miller is our featured artist. The Orange resident paints, draws and etches; he is also a photographer. Relevant to his painting and commentary below, he wrote me that he’s lived for months at a time in India: “At first, I lived up in the foothills of the Himalayas in a little town called Mussoorie. I was there for three months or so studying Hindi as a means to stay out of the monsoons. I then traveled to Jaipur, Rajasthan, for a while so as not to be walking through clouds. My second stay was in Jaipur for the most part and that lasted about four months. This was the beginning of a gig as a cameraman for a Fulbright scholar doing research on roadside shrines.
“My third stay was in Mysore, Karnataka, for six months, and then I was off to Jaipur again for another three. This trip was a continuation of the roadside shrine project. My last time (so far) was to the Burdwan/Kolkata area of Bengal for several weeks and then off to Jaipur once again. My wife [Kiki Petrosino] and I were in Burdwan to lecture on the creative process in the arts.”
Philip’s commentary
The main vehicle of my art practice is based in the Vedic concept of Likhita Japa. Japa is the repetition of a chosen or gifted mantra. Likhita is a term that refers to any kind of mark produced in concert with the mantra. In keeping with this process, I believe that the painted mark is a physical extension of my meditative process through time. This facet of my work was developed over time while living in India.
Speaking to a more traditional Western aspect of my work, I would state that the concept of pentimento is quite important. Pentimento refers to the presence or emergence of earlier marks, images or forms that have been changed or painted over. The form of the painting is related to the “history” of marks produced in part to create the whole. The record or appearance of these preliminary marks reveals themselves through the process of painting, glazing and the reduction through various methods of the glazes. I repeat this process of painting, glazing and reduction until an instinctual balance occurs within the work. This instinctual balance can be construed as the exhaustion of confusion, for me (as the artist) at least. Hopefully, some sense of this process is conveyed to the viewer through the image. —Philip Dean Miller, philipdeanmiller.com
Local obits
Of note: Sibyl Burton Johnson, 89, of Orange, and Lloyd Thomas Nicholson, 81, of Orange. For more local obituaries, go to the funeral home links at the top of the Byrd Street home page.
Hi, Ed! So thrilled to see you so happy.
Victoria
Ada & Ed Harvey are two of my favorite people. Orange is so lucky to have both of them in residence.
Wat Ellerson