Dennis Beach loves Delaware

Dennis Beach is a man who balances intention with flow.

A respected visual artist, usually combining sculpture and painting — Beach is influenced by simplicity and essence. “My work involves processes that transform materials, quite often plywood and paint, into objects that combine the beauty and order that I mine from our natural world.”

Even if you don’t may not recognize his name, you’ve likely noticed some of Beach’s work. He has a permanent piece in the Delaware Art Museum called “Drift #19,” a rippling yellow and orange wooden piece that hangs just outside the gift shop. The new Comcast building in Philadelphia is also a permanent home for Beach’s “Curve #10,” a substantial series of wooden parentheses that evokes a tropical forest.

Beach was born in the Eastern Shore of Maryland, but moved a lot, with his father working for the government when he was a kid. It’s not hard to see the influence of his time in the Eastern Shore in the wavelike twists often found in his work. Beach later moved to Baltimore for his BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art and created a studio there. “I didn’t realize until I was about 30 that I was capable of doing things artistically and wanted to do things artistically,” Beach says. “I rented a two-car garage where I set up a studio. I think that’s the key for a large number of artists, having a space of their own to work in,” Beach said.

It was at an art show in Baltimore in 2002 where Beach met Delaware artist Toni Vandegrift. The two hit it off and Beach ended up moving to Delaware. “Sometimes you just have to listen to the signs. I kept my Baltimore job for the first sixth months, just taking Amtrak back and forth. I was doing metal and woodworking in a fabrication shop in Baltimore called Gutierrez Studios, which is still there.” Beach considers his time there to have been an integral part of his education.

The move to Delaware created a clear path forward for Beach. After arriving, he found studio space at dramatically more affordable rates than the larger cities. He received his MFA from the University of Delaware in 2005, and quickly thereafter began to craft a style that would become the seed for the work he is doing today.

Early on, Beach was influenced by the work of Anna Truitt, a minimalist artist who combined wood-working with painting in a very elemental way. “My early sculptures were clearly influenced by Anna. She also lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for some time. Originally I was drawn to the artwork, and then I realized there was a connection. Sometimes I think that maybe everything I do is an Ann Truitt sculpture or some variation.”

In developing his own organic and balanced style, Beach was intentional. “If you keep working, and are true to yourself, ‘you’ will come out.” By building upon each piece and questioning how it could be done better, he has refined his style into something that uniquely combines beauty and order. “I am often accused of using a lot of math, but I don’t. The repetition makes it look more formulaic. A lot of my work is just a series of circles. It’s not really a lot of math.”

Recently Beach has been working on some projects out of NextFab (a popular maker’s space) in Wilmington, using techniques he learned taking an Adobe Illustrator course at Delaware College of Art and Design.

The balance of running a studio and working on multiple projects at once had its challenges. Beach finds that sometimes the work dictates itself as it evolves and shifts as it’s being created. He tries to create a daily routine for each day, “Ideas often come to me in the shower. I am not a morning person so I typically get into the studio around 11 a.m. and then work until nine or so. But nothing comes with directions.”

Beach has expanded his Newport-based studio twice since taking it over. “I have a number of assistants who help with what we do here. We call this artwork but the stress can often be on the ‘work’ part of that. There is lots of sanding, shaping and cutting. There are a lot of bases and shapes that can often require having to make 120 [versions] of something. That is where having assistants is very helpful.”

Music has always been an important influence and can always be heard in his studio. For fun, Beach likes to enjoy live concerts in Wilmington, usually at the Queen, 1984, or Oddity Bar.

“Music is also an influence, it’s important to all humans. Live music in particular. What I am striving for in my artwork is a feeling, not just a visual appearance. It was something I would get at a live concert — that collection of sound, lights, emotion affecting you in different ways. I strive to create visual excitement that can be calm or kinetic. But obviously less immediate.”

Recently Beach has been working on some projects out of NextFab (a popular maker’s space) in Wilmington, using techniques he learned taking an Adobe Illustrator course at Delaware College of Art and Design. “These techniques are a fairly recent addition for me, specifically the laser and the shopbot to help create my art. But it has really helped my process.”

Looking forward, Beach hopes to attract new collectors and have even more permanent installations. He has more projects in his mind than time to complete them.

“I don’t see artist’s block happening to me in my lifetime. I will die with things that I want to do.”

Lewis Drexel Davison loves Delaware

Lewis “Drexel” Davison, owner of Rehoboth’s renowned salon/spa and hot spot Bad Hair Day? has been through many emotional extremes throughout the history of his business, which is now entering its 28th year. For example, after 10 weeks of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, he was eager to reopen.

“We were excited to be moving back to 30 percent of our fire marshal capacity,” he says. “And we have really taken a lot of precautions. I can’t put myself in jeopardy — I take care of my 83-year old mom.”

Davison’s roots — “I am really a waiter at heart,” he says — brought him indirectly to his current career. He began waiting tables and catering in New York City, and then ended up helping create a restaurant in Kent Island, Maryland, called Sunsets on the Bay. There he met two hair stylists from Annapolis who encouraged him that his personality was perfect for the hair styling business. 

“I was initially excited about it, but after finishing hairdresser school decided it was not for me,” he recalls. “So I moved back home to my favorite place in Delaware, the most gay-friendly place in Delaware, which is Rehoboth.”

While waiting tables at a Rehoboth restaurant, Davison was given a unique opportunity when the building next door became available. “There was another waiter there who had a hair license,” he says. “And the owner said, ‘Why don’t you two open a salon there for the summer?’”

The partners branded themselves on the look of the place, with vibrantly painted walls and flowers lifted from the gardens of strangers and parks.

“We were originally going to call it Metamorphosis, but I never could remember that name and I still can’t spell it today,” Davison says. “I had a hat that I liked to wear that said ‘Bad Hair Day,’ so at the end of it all I said, ‘Let’s call it Bad Hair Day, with a question mark at the end.’”

“I love that it’s a small state and that it’s the first state. I love that it’s a community, small enough that we can know each other.”

The name was easy to remember, made people laugh, and Davison’s parents hated it. “They said, ‘Why would you use a negative name for your business?’ But it ended up being a great name.”

Bad Hair Day? had a rocky start. When Davison’s business partner quickly realized he was doing much better as a waiter than by doing $25 haircuts all day, he decided to leave. Significant money losses associated with the building’s ownership complicated things further. But Davison took over the business and ran with it.

“I was fueled by anger and determined to succeed to show them that I could make it work,” he says. “And that’s really the energy that has motivated me these last 27 years.”

Those early challenges prepared Davison for the day-to-day challenges of running a salon, which now has over 75 employees.

“It fuels me to move through the challenging times, like now,” he says. “‘Tubthumping’ (by Chumbawamba) has always been my theme song — ‘I get knocked down, but I get up again.’”

Early in the business, Davison worked nights at the Cultured Pearl to pay bills.

“It was especially challenging in the winter,” he recalls. “Sometimes I would have one client a day, and I would make her wear a coat because I couldn’t afford to turn on the heat.”

In his time in Rehoboth, Davison has experienced much of the city’s dramatic growth.

“There were a lot of us who are still here — Sam Calagione (of Dogfish Head) used to wait tables at Arena’s,” Davison says. “We both started our businesses in the same year. We were all lucky to be in the right place at the right time.”

Davison credits Joyce Felton, owner of Blue Moon and a number of other restaurants, with putting the gay community on the map in Rehoboth.

“The Moon was always the center of gay life here,” he says. “The ‘straights’ loved a good meal and what the gays had created here in general in Rehoboth. It was very shabby chic, and the gays were a big part of that.”

Davison says recently elected Mayor Paul Kuhns supports both the business and the gay communities in Rehoboth.

“We have a really good, progressive guy in there,” Davison says. “He’s smart.”

Bad Hair Day? has engaged in several memorable Delaware partnerships over the last 27 years — such as always having Dolle’s Salt Water Taffy in the shop, color-coordinated with each season. Other standout partnerships are those Davison has with Dogfish Head and Surf Bagel. 

“Early on, I would make body scrubs and masks out of the Aprihop beer ingredients,” he says. “And you could always have a Dogfish beer poured over your head as a shampoo bowl. We also serve beer in the shop, but we don’t call it ‘beer.’ We say, ‘Would you like a Dogfish?’”

Surf Bagel’s coffee and bagels are served at the salon when it is safe to serve food there. Bad Hair Day? also has begun a collaboration with Surf Bagel and the new Sussex County Consortium School, which aims to open satellite businesses attached to the schools to give students actual business experiences.

“We were set to open a little salon next to Surf Bagel (at the Consortium), when along came COVID,” Davison says.

The connection with Delaware has always been palpable for Davison.

“It’s home, first and foremost,” he says. “It’s accessible — you can find yourself at a red light next to the governor. I love that it’s a small state and that it’s the first state. I love that it’s a community, small enough that we can know each other.” 

On top of such connections being possible in such a small state, Davison loves that each of the state’s three counties has its own flavor.

“New Castle County has corporate and banking, but it also has the richness and splendor of the du Ponts who were such awesome stewards of their wealth,” he says. “Kent County has a richness of colonialism, the John Dickinson Mansion and the signing of the Constitution and The Green and the maypole dancing. Sussex County is like the little beach resort Riviera of the state, with its own culture and influx from all of the surrounding cities beyond Delaware. Throw in the cultural experiences we’ve had here, which we’ve always had in the north of the state, but now we also have in the Biggs Museum in Dover and the Freeman Stage in Selbyville.”

Bad Hair Day? moved to an immense new building in Rehoboth in 2016, with 16 stations almost always booked. The moment the full COVID-19 lockdown on salons was lifted, Drexel’s phone began to explode.

“The first text I got was from Mariah Calagione,” he says, “and then they just kept coming.”

Michele Xiques-Arnold loves Delaware

A CNN “Great Big Story” film crew is set up inside the First State Dance Academy in Milford, Delaware. Michele Xiques-Arnold, once a professional dancer herself, marvels at the cameras rotating throughout the space she took over almost 20 years ago — and the places it has taken both herself and her students. 

For Xiques-Arnold it all started as a child falling in love with ballet in South Carolina and finding out her father, who was in the Air Force at the time, had been transferred to Dover, Delaware. Her mother hunted around and discovered the Marion Tracy Dance studio, a connection that would unknowingly set the rest of her life in motion.

“I started training at Marion Tracy in Dover when I was 12,” she recalls. “Then it was on to North Carolina School of the Arts, Joffrey Ballet School in New York City and then my first professional work came in Pittsburgh at Civic Light Opera.” 

She found herself working with Meredith Baxter (from the TV show “Family Ties”) and aiming toward a Broadway career. “I soon found that I would make it through the dance auditions, but once I sang, they were like, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’” Following her struggle to make it on Broadway, Xiques-Arnold then did a season at the Shea Theater for Empire State Ballet in Buffalo and was later offered a contract to dance with the Atlanta Ballet.

An ankle injury brought Xiques-Arnold back home to Delaware in 2001. A string of occupations ranging from firefighter to EMT to nursing student pushed her further and further away from the magic that had driven her since childhood. 

Out of the blue, friend Maria Fry, who also danced at Marion Tracy Dance Studio, made an offer that would change her life. Fry was running a studio in Milford called A Dance Class and offered to hand it over to Xiques-Arnold, even though she had no business experience at all and was afraid to fail at something Fry had worked so hard to create. But Fry offered to mentor Xiques-Arnold for a year as well as help teach — and First State Dance Academy was born.

“Next year will be my 20th year in business.” Xiques-Arnold estimates there have been around 1800 students who have spun through her studio at that time. “The opportunities we have made for the kids, and their parents— some of the kids have taken their parents to places they would never have gone, out of the country for performances or on tours. Often these are people who don’t like to leave their state or home, who have to go outside of their comfort zone to support their kids. And they were able to share something they would have never have.”

When asked about the challenge of going from dancer to instructor, Xiques-Arnold is clear. “When you are directing, and not on the other end anymore, it’s hard not to miss it. It’s almost like a drug, a healthy drug being on the stage, doing something you’ve strived for. It takes years to get over, the performance high and the rollover coaster of it. But I am really happy to have done it, and to have kids who I can work with to produce what is in my mind on a stage.”

“It’s my dream to have access to a performance arts center in or near Milford that has all that is required to put on a proper ballet.”

“Next year will be my 20th year in business,” Xiques-Arnold notes, estimating there have been around 1,800 students who have spun through her studio in the last two decades. “The opportunities we have made for the kids and their parents — some of the kids have taken their parents to places they would never have gone, out of the country for performances or on tours. Often these are people who don’t like to leave their state or home, who have to go outside of their comfort zone to support their kids. And they were able to share something they never would have.” 

When asked about the challenge of going from dancer to instructor, Xiques-Arnold is clear.

“When you are directing, and not on the other end anymore, it’s hard not to miss it,” she says. “It’s almost like a drug, a healthy drug, being on the stage, doing something you’ve strived for. It takes years to get over, the performance high and the rollercoaster of it. But I am really happy to have done it and to have kids who I can work with to produce what is in my mind on a stage.”

Xiques-Arnold has many student highlights, but one of the most memorable is Anna Edmondson.

“I saw something in her and let her parents know she might want to consider going somewhere year-round,” Xiques-Arnold recalls. “She was that rare combination of the right body type for ballet and had boundless passion. Sure enough, she was accepted into the Kirov Academy of Ballet in D.C., where she studied for four years and then ended up at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. She was the only American at the time, and she came from Delaware!”

Another student of Xiques-Arnold’s, Jayna Ledford, is featured in the CNN “Great Big Story” documentary (https://youtu.be/fD_3lUpCTM0) recently filmed at the studio. Ledford is a transgender woman who was at Kirov Academy before coming out as female and came back to train with Xiques-Arnold afterward.

“It’s created some amazing conversations,” Xiques-Arnold says. “This a public dance school, and it’s open for anyone and everyone.” 

The business challenges of running a dance studio have pushed Xiques-Arnold to innovate. She’s currently working on Wizarding World of Ballet — the first ballet built around a Harry Potter theme. This is part of a series of ballets that she has coined as Cinemaballet (https://www.facebook.com/cinemaballet/).

“I wanted to create something with a hook outside of ballet to entice people to check out a show,” she says. “I started with ‘Twilight,’ which was a huge success. Then ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ ‘Annie the Ballet,’ ‘Alice In Wonderland’ and ‘Duke Ellington’s Jazz Nutcracker’ at the Schwartz Center in Dover.

“I am always working on the business, right up until I go to sleep.”

Xiques-Arnold says the largest challenges are production costs and having to rely so much on volunteers, both things that having a proper venue locally would fix.

“It’s my dream to have access to a performance arts center in or near Milford that has all that is required to put on a proper ballet,” she says. “It would be a bigger draw for us. Something with professional lighting, sound, dressing rooms and location support.”

“It’s actually a real opportunity for a growing state, and I think it would be embraced. It would also mean is more professionals coming out of Delaware, more Delaware students getting scholarships and opportunities that they would not have otherwise. And that’s just for what we do. Imagine the ability to bring in larger music acts, comedians, etc. to the area. It would be a great draw for whatever town is able to have the vision.”

Xiques-Arnold was Delaware Division of the Arts (DDOA) Individual Artist Fellowship winner as an Emerging Artist in 2014. She recently received a 2020 DDOA Fellowship, this time as an Established Professional.

“There have been so many challenges, and you can take that in a number of directions,” she says. “I like to think it has driven me to make this better and reinvent.”