SALISBURY — At the Meet the Artists Reception at Waterworks Visual Arts Center held Dec. 6, the community was given the opportunity to see and hear local history.

This special event featured several exhibits, one of internationally known artist Maria Bennett Hock’s 46 oil paintings, which were inspired by the 1937 photographs of Bostian Alley taken by the late Alex Smoot and Margaret Boylan Smoot, also on display.

“We welcomed just over 100 guests to meet artist Maria Bennett Hock and to admire the beautiful people of Bostian Alley she lovingly brought to life in oil,” said Anne-Scott Clement, executive director of Waterworks. Guests filled Waterworks, and prior to the start of the program, strolled around looking at these two exhibits, along with the Modern Masterpieces display, all of which are scheduled to remain until August 2025.

Clement welcomed everyone and directed them to the Osborne and Woodson galleries where they heard Andell McCoy of Mt. Gilead, share a live performance as Betty Lou Smith, a former resident of Salisbury’s Bostian Alley. Smith was eight at the time the photographs were taken by the Smoots, and at the age of 69, wrote her memoirs about Bostian Alley, McCoy said, who added that Smith had recently died at 94.

When they called and asked her to help at the reception, McCoy said, “I was delighted to be asked to do the reading.”

“Andell McCoy’s performance awed the crowd with her rich, captivating voice as she shared excerpts from Betty Lou Smith’s memoir, ‘Missing Bostian Alley,'” said Clement.

Taking on the role of Smith, she said Bostian Alley is where she grew up and back in 1937 when the photos were taken over the course of three Sunday afternoons, it was the poorest part of Salisbury.

When she wrote her memoirs, Smith was a preacher and credits Bostian Alley for her becoming one. She said it was there in that community that “you could run into anyone’s home and find love … that’s why I want to tell you about it. Love Alley. That’s what it should have been called. Look at the love in these photographs.”

The community was knocked down 10 years later, Smith wrote, “but it lives on in my heart.”

She sharing about the happy times there in Bostian Alley, singing and dancing and the care and concern they showed one another, which she experienced when her parents died plus the fact that if someone came hungry, they were fed and if you had no place to stay, they were taken in.

“We had God on our side,” she continued. “We learned at an early age, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’”

The presentation concluded with Smith’s comment that many wish they could go back to that community and the memories and “go back to die there. Love Alley, oh yes, that’s what it should have been called.”

The crowd moved to the Stanback Gallery Hall and YPG Gallery, which houses Hock’s “Remembering Bostian Alley” series of oil paintings of the photographs. Hock spoke to the group telling of her start in the art world and how these photos changed her and how she was drawn to paint them.

Hock said she was born to a military family and married a military man and therefore has lived all over the world, but feels that it “really informs what I do today,” she said.

At the age of 50, she decided to go to college and was accepted at George Mason University and had a great experience. 

“I got straight A’s,” she said, “except for the B that I got in art,” which brought lots of laughter from the crowd.

By the time she completed school, Hock said she was really excited about art and when she turned 58, she thought about painting.

“I don’t know what made me think that. I had never touched a brush,” Hock said.

But she attended a local school and while she said the instructor was great and learned from it, she said she was awful but kept painting. However, it was sporadic over the next couple of years, she said.

“I would paint for a little bit and wonder why I couldn’t get better,” said Hock.

It was after one of her instructors told her to practice and paint every day if she wanted to improve that she “took that to heart” and has painted or sketched every day.

She found herself improving and joined groups and started stretching herself now showing all over the United States, Japan and Australia after which she decided to apply to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to be a copyist and was accepted and visited every week while living there, painting the masters, learning lots while she did so, she said.

During this time, she was having shows and one was to be at Waterworks in Salisbury and decided to visit and see the gallery and met Clement and was shown the Smoot photos during their tour.

“That’s when I feel like my life changed because I saw these pictures by Alex and Margaret Smoot. I can’t stop looking at them,” she said of her time there.

After talking with Clement, who asked Hock if she was interested in painting these photographs.

“I had fallen in love with the photographs,” she said. So her answer was “yes, of course I wanted to paint them” with a goal of showing the emotion that she herself had felt when she saw the paintings. It was this emotion that drew her to want to paint them.

“When I saw that emotion on their faces, it just touched my heart, and I thought, more people have to know about these pictures,” said Hock, adding that she loves to paint people and faces.

She said the Smoots are geniuses and admires their composition and how they capture people, noting that their pictures invite people into the Alley and are very welcoming.

It’s like you are right here and are a part of the courtyard, she said as she pointed out one of the pictures of the families standing in the courtyard of the community having fun on a Sunday afternoon.

“They’re candid, but they’re not. They’re just really slices of their life,” said Hock. “It’s pictures of their community.”

Clement said that “the Public Art Commission is diligently working on designing a bronze plaque, which will mark the site of Bostian Alley.  We hope to install and dedicate it this coming spring.”

An added surprise was when Clement called Hock and said, “guess who is going to be next door” to your exhibit. And when she heard the names of Picasso and other masters, she said “my head was just exploding.”

Pointing to the wall where her exhibit hangs and then saying Picasso is on the other side, she said with a big grin and with laughter in her voice, “we are basically on the same wall, and I’m taking that to the bank.”

Hock and McCoy each talked about what a great facility Waterworks is and were appreciative of Clement and the staff.

Hock said it meant the world to her to have her exhibit there and at 72, to have a solo show “is a big deal.”

McCoy, who is also a painter, has come to see exhibits and knows everyone at Waterworks from her times visiting she said, but hasn’t done anything for them before.

So when asked for her help with the project, she came to see what they wanted and was glad to be a part of this special project.

In addition to being a painter, McCoy said she is also a life coach, has a degree in journalism, taught at a community college, is a poet and got her master’s degree in marriage/family therapy in Los Angeles where she went to try acting, which she said she hated. She also went to law school, which she also hated.

McCoy said she was “very pleased that I get to connect with these people even though I didn’t know them” and to hear Smith’s story and see the photographs and paintings. “It really enlivens my spirit.”

Clement said the event was “lovely in every way, magical.”

For others in the community, it was also a special experience to be at the reception.

Diana Cummings said she had been looking forward to this portion of the show that has been running.

“This is a night of a lifetime,” said Marianna Swaim, as she spoke about how it “melds historic Bostian Alley and these old photographs that thankfully have been preserved and this amazing vision of Maria Bennett Hock, internationally renowned artist, who was so mesmerized that she had to bring it into her imagination and create her oil paintings to honor some of the happiness and joy that the people in Bostian Alley had.”

Several members of Hock’s family were at the reception including her husband Bruce and one of her three brothers, Vince Bennett, and his wife Murielle, who came from the Cincinnati area.

Bruce said Maria takes this very seriously and has grown a lot over the last few years.

“She is truly dedicated to doing this,” he said, adding that he wished he had her discipline to do what she does.

Bennett said his sister has had an “amazing journey, and he has watched her “grow in confidence as she has discovered who she is as an artist. And she’s gone from taking every bit of criticism to her heart to where people give her criticism now she goes, oh, OK. It’s been fun to watch.”

Hock said she has totally enjoyed doing this entire project. Stretching out her arms at varying lengths to make her point, she said, “in my life, I feel like I have this much life to live and this much left to learn. I just can’t wait to see what’s next.”