Coded Memory, Carved in Time
This morning in Charlotte Hall, Maryland, under the flight of a baby eagle and the quiet rustle of fruit trees, I stepped into the world of Stuart L. Geisbert — a photographer, carpenter, musician, and steward of stories carved in wood and memory. What began as a visit to see my frames in progress became something deeper: a passage through layers of American heritage, rural craftsmanship, and shared artistic purpose.
Stu and I are both members of the Annapolis Arts Alliance, and our work is currently featured at Gallery 57 West, a juried cooperative in the city’s vibrant Arts District. Though we exhibit in different media and on different walls, it was through that creative community that our paths first crossed. Now, two of the large-format frames Stu is building will travel with my artwork to Virginia this fall, where they will be showcased in the Patterned Nuances exhibit at Pars Place.
Stu’s custom frames — shaped from aged poplar reclaimed from old barns — now cradle my acrylic works with texture and soul. My art, created through stenciling and silkscreen, explores how artificial intelligence learns: through repetition, layering, and symbolic association. Stu’s frames bring grounding to that inquiry. They speak in the language of time — the scent of wood, the weight of weathered grain, the permanence of touch.
The pieces I brought to him are part of a series exploring the fusion of cultural memory and digital learning — a visual meditation on how AI, like tradition, absorbs meaning through patterns and story.
Inside these poplar frames live canvases layered with silkscreens, binary trails, and Persian motifs. Floral patterns in blue and white bloom like ancient tilework, threaded with yellow circuit board lines that hum with hidden logic. A Persian arch opens to a secret garden where golden birds drift through layers of memory, code, and quiet wonder.
One piece, BCE to Binary, bridges past and future through that same arch — framed in digital and botanical motifs. The reference to 550 BCE nods to the era of ancient cuneiform, layered here with blossoms and traces of machine logic. It’s not a homage, but a transmission: channeling foundational knowledge into today’s digital patterns.
Stu’s frames add not just structure, but contrast. The softness of hand-cut wood tempers the sharp geometry of paint and code. They create harmony between craft and concept, rooting the futuristic in the tactile. In his woodshop, surrounded by timber and tools, we watched the process unfold.
Outside, the land speaks its own language. Rows of grapes destined for jelly. Free-roaming chickens. Black berry bushes. Pear, pecan, and almond trees. A towering windmill, its stem once a pump jack, stands as a relic of analog ingenuity. Stu explains how it once ground corn, pumped water, even charged batteries. Another kind of technology, sustainable, precise, enduring.
In one of his barns, once part of a tobacco farm, he shows us hand-split red oak sticks and beams from a smokehouse, relics of Southern Maryland’s agricultural past.
Back inside, Stu’s photographic world opens up. One of his most striking images is of the Milky Way, captured from his own 12-acre property — no filters, no special effects, just the galaxy unfurling in perfect stillness above Southern Maryland. It’s a reminder that wonder doesn’t require distance. Sometimes, all you have to do is look up. And then the tales: a photo from Dances with Wolves, where his sister-in-law wrangled horses, and he spent three days on set.
And music — always, music. An upright bass signed by legends: Kitty Wells, Emmylou Harris, Reba McEntire, Jimmy Martin. Stu once played the Grand Ole Opry, touring with the Stoneman Family. His fingerprints are on fretboards and film alike.
We leave with a rhubarb pie from his garage kitchen, where he also cans vegetables. His three English Springer Spaniels, spirited, alert, part of the rhythm of this land. He hosts private music festivals here too, hundreds gathered under stars and timber. It’s not nostalgia, it’s a living archive.
Our collaboration is framed by more than wood. It’s framed by reverence — for place, for memory, for the artistry of making. Together, we bring my work into a new kind of context, where AI meets the handmade, and digital imagination rests inside reclaimed poplar.
What is worth remembering?
Perhaps it’s this: that creativity, when rooted in land and love, becomes a kind of heritage. And in Stu’s world, everything — photograph, pie, melody, or frame — is a vessel for memory, crafted to endure.
Make sure to visit Gallery 57 West in Annapolis, Maryland, to see both of our works currently on exhibit — where natural texture meets digital reflection, and two artistic paths converge.
