“Flora and Fauna” – Patricia Windrow remembered…

Savannah Long of Front Royal,  University of Virginia freshman, poses beside her award-winning art. Family photo.

FRONT ROYAL – By local standards, artist Patricia Windrow was a relative newcomer to Front Royal, but the town and Warren County art lovers, indeed the entire northern Shenandoah Valley, drew her to their collective hearts. She arrived with husband Howard Klein in 1990 and died in 2013.

She was widely known for her paintings of flowers and her unique wood sculptures of fish, hence the “Flora and Fauna” theme that the Patricia Windrow Arts Committee chose for a second annual exhibition in her name at the Blue Ridge Arts Council (BRAC) gallery on Main Street Sept. 10. Windrow and Klein lived in and around New York for many years before settling in Front Royal. They turned the old Scott’s hardware store in Front Royal into a gallery shortly after their arrival.

Committee chair Sue Riner-Biggs chose the occasion not only to feature some of Windrow’s art pieces, but also to display the works of three young local artists, Cheyenne Jenkins and Savannah Long, Skyline High School, and Cameron Lower, Warren County High School. The trio, now attending college, were the second group of three to win Patricia Windrow Arts Committee awards established just last year. Two attended the exhibition – Long made a hasty trip back from the University of Virginia where she is a freshman, while Lower, who attends LFCC in Middletown, joined Riner-Biggs as a greeter for the show.

Windrow was said to be passionate about encouraging artistic talent in children. She taught art in the Lincoln Square Academy in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s and occupied a first floor studio on West 74th Street.

Jimmy Gaudreau, mandolin, and Mooni Klein, guitar, entertained until the time that Windrow’s husband, a former New York Times Music critic, joined the string duo with a stirring solo rendition of classical music on BRAC’s grand piano after strong encouragement by several attendees.

In addition to Riner-Biggs (president)  and Klein, the local committee comprises Anna Arena, Joan Kaye, Julie Covert, Allison Cusato, Jospeh Gillette, Janet Myers and Beth Waller. An array of hors d’oeuvres was by Joan Kay, The Woodward House on Manor Grade.