THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 18, 1995 TAG: 9510170085
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Around Town
SOURCE: Linda McNatt
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
First, Phyllis Andrews helped to plan the 1996 Woman's Club of Smithfield calendar. Then, she helped to draw it.
Now she's ready to sell it. And it's still one of the best buys in town.
The popular calendar hit the streets earlier this month, still only $5 in its 13th year of publication.
Andrews, also a club member, is one of eight artists who contributed this year. She's a third-time winner in the calendar contest.
Andrews studied art and fashion design, worked for a package design company in Charlotte before she married, raised a family and took up art again as a hobby.
She and her husband, Russell, originally from Zuni, moved back to Isle of Wight County in 1988 after retirement.
It took a state woman's club award for her pastels to prompt Andrews to enter the calendar contest, open every year to artists throughout the area.
Bob Hart, husband to Sylvia Hart, another club member who works hard to promote the calendar, goes out into the county and takes photos of homes and buildings a committee has decided might be good subjects for the calendar.
Artists interested in submitting their work meet with the committee and choose the photos they'd like to reproduce.
This year, Andrews sketched ``The Glebe'' on Waterworks Road as her entry. The small house, built in 1780, is on part of a tract of land sold to the Newport Parish Vestry by William Rand in 1754. The tract continued to be called the Glebe - a word referring to land belonging to a church - until 1804. In 1807, it reverted to the county to be used as a poorhouse and workhouse. It remained a poorhouse until 1899, when the remaining 200 acres were sold at auction to Ezekiel W. Jones.
Andrews' contribution to the calendar is a depiction of what is actually two small houses joined and commonly known as ``The Glebe.''
It is one of 12 homes, public buildings or interesting areas selected for this year's calendar.
Gracing the cover is Tim Edwards' sketch of the Julius D. Gwaltney House at 304 Church St. Often called ``the most photographed house in Smithfield,'' the beautiful Victorian home was built in 1901 and is immaculately maintained by Julius Gwaltney's widow, Henrietta, who still lives there.
Edwards, son of Judge Robert Edwards and Vern Edwards, is in his 11th year of drawing for the calendar. He was a high school junior in 1985 when he first entered the competition. Since then, the man who would be an engineer, has graduated from Duke University, received a master's degree from Stanford University and is working on a doctorate in electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Edwards lives with his wife in Baltimore, but he still enjoys drawing for the calendar.
Also celebrating 11 years is Sandra Killette, one of the founders and former co-owner of The Collage gallery. Killette now lives in North Carolina but maintains her ties to Smithfield through friends, the Isle of Wight Arts League and the calendar.
The Woman's Club hopes to sell 1,500 copies of the calendar, Sylvia Hart says. They've been able to keep the price down because of contributions from area businesses and individuals.
One of the nicest pieces this year, for the November page, is a scene from Ft. Boykin, showing the little cottage, the rail fence, with peacocks on the lawn.
For December, it will be Benn's United Methodist Church.
Proceeds from the calendar are spread through the community. The Woman's Club has donated to the library, the museum and the Tourism Bureau. The club gives out four annual scholarships and contributes to a scholarship for P.D. Pruden Vocational-Technical School.
Calendars are available from any member of the Woman's Club of Smithfield, from the Smithfield Branch of the Isle of Wight County Library and from the county museum. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by LINDA McNATT
Phyllis Andrews helped draw the 1996 Woman's Club of Smithfield
calendar.
by CNB