Frederick County's Sugarloaf Mountain is a solitary peak, the only true mountain in the Maryland Piedmont. Sugarloaf is a monadnock, an Indian term for a lone hill that has risen above the surrounding land by surviving erosion over millions of years. The substance of the mountain is quartzite, an extremely durable stone made of interlocking quartz crystals. This stone is exposed at the mountain's crown. In the 1700s the quartzite was mined for glassmaking and building.

Native Americans, early European explorers and Confederate and Union troops all used Sugarloaf to observe the countryside for miles all around. Frank Lloyd Wright once designed a spectacular building, an observatory, for its summit. It was never built but later Wright recycled the design for the Guggenheim Museum in New York, one of the 20th century's greatest buildings.

The Dreaming explores the visionary capacity of everyday people of all backgrounds and ages who have no special training in creativity or the arts. It investigates the potential in everyone to imagine, to dream and to create, and it symbolizes how these dreams interweave to form human society.

Frederick City itself is a kind of monadnock, a city that has endured, surviving the erosion of the years and providing unusually clear, long views of human history.

The substance that has allowed Frederick to survive the ravages of time is the most potent force humankind can bring to bear: the imagination. Quartzite is hard but the imagination can transform it into delicate art glass that is preserved for centuries in museums. Iron is rigid, but the mind can form it into shapes that everyone who passes must reach out and touch.

Frederick was built over centuries by artists and designers and craftsmen who first imagined and then built it, piece by piece, into a graceful place that has survived conflict, human slavery, multiple wars, the ransoming of the city by hostile troops, economic depression, lethal epidemics, catastrophic flooding, and massive economic changes wrought by the global economy. Surrounded by bland new development, the city retains a powerful sense of place. It is human scale, handcrafted over time by countless participants of many backgrounds and ethnicities. The result is an interwoven fabric of small, interlocking visions. It feels different to walk Frederick's streets.

The first European to build a home in the new city of Frederick Town was a folk artist, musician and calligrapher as well as a school teacher. The first developer offered incentives to artisans and craftsmen to bring them to Frederick at its inception, and many settled here to create a city whose beauty and prosperity were remarked on by many 18th century visitors. Over time the the area developed a unique identity and character as what historians have called a Crossroads of Culture. Artists of many kinds left their imprints on both the local and the national culture. One was the attorney/poet for whom the Francis Scott Key Hotel was named.

German settlers made Frederick a leading glass blowing center in America in the late 1700s.1

Frederick is thought to have been a (perhaps the) leading glass-making center in the nation in the late 1700s. When glass artworks from the New Bremen Glass Manufactory first began to surface in the early 20th century, experts doubted such beautiful and technically advanced glass art objects could have been made in America at that early time. But they were, here in Frederick County, near Sugarloaf Mountain.

Were you aware that visitors traveled from distant cities to see performers at Frederick's City Opera House in the 19th century? That the banjar, once made from gourds by slaves, is the common root in most American popular music, from jazz to rock to ragtime? That one of the first truly great early American sculptors grew up as a Frederick County farm boy? That the greatest innovator in contemporary stained glass history and a leading 19th century artist was educated at Mount Saint Mary's University in Emmitsburg? That America's greatest fashion designer was born and raised in Frederick? That the 20th century's greatest avant garde jazz trumpet player was born locally and traces his musical heritage through generations of Frederick County residents, all the way back to slavery? That Frank Lloyd Wright designed one of his most visionary buildings for Frederick County?

Shared Vision sponsored a summit of local historians early in 2004 to explore Frederick's cultural history.

These stories and more are the forgotten foundation of Frederick's rich heritage and the cultural legacy that inspires The Dreaming. This artwork will reclaim and explore Frederick's place as a Crossroads of Culture — a home to the imagination since its founding in 1745 and before.

The Dreaming also calls attemntion to the nature of individual vision, through the personal contributions of people of all backgrounds and ages. The capacity to imagine, to dream and to create is a universal gift that is not limited by talent, education, age, gender, economics or ethnicity. You are invited to contribute both your personal vision and your historical knowledge to this project.

1.Courtesy the Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware. Museum purchase with funds provided by Henry Francis du Pont.

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The Vision • The Process • A Place of Dreams • Imagination • The Glass Veil
The Weaving Layer • Carved Stone • Dream Pool • Artistic Team