Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones

HAILED BY CRITICS AS ITS "FIND OF THE YEAR" IN 1908, Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones was the art world’s "golden girl." She knew the spectacular was within her reach. And then she disappeared.

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Biographers International Organization

The story of Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones shared a stage with the biographies of Lyndon Johnson, Jim Thorpe, Cleopatra, and Oprah Winfrey at May's BIO convention held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Inspiring weekend. Kitty Kelley (center in photo) called the quest to spread ESJ's story the kind of "passion" she loves.

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New Jersey Book Festival

Thanks to everyone who came out June 12 to support local and national authors at the New Jersey Book Festival, BookNJ. About 1000 people turned out for the 100 or so authors. I enjoyed being on a panel with (left to right) Marjorie Jones and Sheila Isenberg from 1-1:45pm talking about "The Biography: Am I just spreading gossip? Writing about the Lives of Others."

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WYPR - Maryland Morning

Barbara is a guest on the WYPR Maryland Morning program discussing her book Elizabeth Sparhawk Jones: The Artist Who Lived Twice.

Listen to the interview

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Canton Book Lecture Series, October 2010

Visiting hometown of Canton, MA, to participate in their successful lecture series.

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Baltimore Book Festival, November 2010

Getting a hug from the popular local symbol "Miss Baltimore Hon" 2009, the beehived and cat-eyed Charlene Osborne, and fellow author at the well-attended event.

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PAFA Art-at-Lunch, February 2011

Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones: Painting on the Pulse (Speaker: Barbara Lehman Smith).

Listen to the presentation

About the Author

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After inadvertently rescuing the artist’s scrapbooks from an incinerator, Barbara Lehman Smith first wrote about Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones for Pennsylvania Heritage magazine in 1995. As a feature writer who specializes in health, history, and the arts, she continued on to other projects but kept coming back to the Sparhawk-Jones story. “It seemed every few weeks I learned new information from range of sources—one day an email from a relative in Russia, another day from an art curator in Michigan—and began following one thread to the next. Those who care about Sparhawk-Jones’s work and life and influences are deeply passionate, and that motivated me to weave those threads back together as best I could with this biography,” says Ms. Smith of Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones: The Artist Who Lived Twice.

Currently a contributing writer for AVALON, a new lifestyle women’s magazine based in Massachusetts, Barbara Lehman Smith has written professionally for more than twenty years including work for the national sports magazine, Triathlete, Physician’s Practice Digest, Maryland Family, Towson Times, Baltimore’s Child, and Martha’s Vineyard magazine, and many other newspapers and publications. With additional experience in public relations and marketing, she also manages Smith Publications, LLC. For eight years, she taught a writing and graphic design class geared bls with the incomparable ruth gurin bowman fall 2010 for publications at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, in the Graduate and Professional Studies program. A member of American Independent Writers, Inc., based in Washington, D.C., and the Biographers International Organization, she also belongs to the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society.

Ruth Gurin Bowman, curator and art historian, who conducted the final 1964 interview with Sparhawk-Jones for the Smithsonian, Archives of American Art was a significant influence.

Ms. Smith earned her M.A. from the University of Baltimore and her B.A. degree from the University of Maryland. A native of Canton, Massachusetts, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband, Chris, and their three children.