BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.
To submit your calendar event, email us at [email protected]!
To receive our weekly newsletter with special events and notices, add your address and click submit below.
[mailerlite_form form_id=1]
<><><><><><><><>
GirlTrek Community Walk
Tuesday, March 29th : 7pm
meets near Maryland Science Center
Inner Harbor : Baltimore 21230
GirlTrek, a national nonprofit and health movement that activates thousands of Black women to be change makers in their lives and communities through walking, will lead a community walk along Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on Tuesday, March 29th in conjunction with the festival, Light City Baltimore.
WHO: GirlTrek is a groundbreaking 3-year-old national nonprofit that mobilizes women to live their healthiest, most fulfilled lives through developing a routine of walking.
WHAT: GirlTrek will lead a 3.2-mile community walk in conjunction with the festival, Light City Baltimore.
WHEN: 7 p.m., Tuesday, March 29th.
WHERE: Along Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, following the BGE Light Art Walk route, starting at the Maryland Science Center.
GirlTrek co-founders T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison will both participate in seminars as part of Light City U, a series of four innovation conferences exploring the theme of “powering social change” at Light City Baltimore.
<><><><><><><><>
Cracking the Codes: The System of Inequity Screening +Dialogue
Tuesday, March 29th : 7pm
MICA Lazarus Center Auditorium
131 West North Avenue : Baltimore 21217
Filmmaker and Racial Equity Educator Dr. Shakti Butler brings her film, “Cracking the Codes,” to MICA to kick off a dialogue about race, implicit bias and white privilege. Dr. Butler specializes in using film to facilitate constructive conversation about structural inequity, making room for seasoned racial equity advocates and people new to the topic to add their voices.
Dr. Butler’s presentation is part of an ongoing MICA series focusing on race, diversity and inclusion. Through World Trust, Dr. Butler’s seminars create a safe space for community-building among audience members. Then, introducing a simple framework for understanding systemic inequity, Dr. Butler uses her films to generate an honest and uplifting exchange of ideas among participants.
<><><><><><><><>
Manufactured Beauty Spring Lecture Series
Wednesday, March 30th : 6pm
MICA Falvey Hall
1301 West Mount Royal Avenue : Baltimore 21217
llias Papageorgiou has been with SO-IL, a Brooklyn, New York based firm, from its inception in 2008 and has been a partner since 2013. SO-IL brings together extensive experience from fields of architecture, academia and the arts, and aims to be an idea-driven design office.
SO-IL combines minimalist construction with highly contemporary material use creating clean, idiosyncratic space. SO-IL has worked on an array of projects ranging in scale from the master plan of a cultural campus in Shanghai, China to a series of prints for the Guggenheim Museum. The firm has also won numerous awards since its inception for their work and various competitions.
<><><><><><><><>
FRAMEWORK PANEL #23: Connecting Communities Through Critical Discourse
Wednesday, March 30 : 6:30–8:30pm
NPR Studio One
111 North Capitol Street NE
Washington, DC 20002
Transformer is proud to continue our ongoing FRAMEWORK Panel Series with FRAMEWORK Panel #23: Connecting Communities Through Critical Discourse. Examining the role of critical writing within the arts community through various models of coverage and criticism, panelists will include: James McAnanaly, Temporary Art Review (St. Louis, MO); Taylor Renee, Arts.Black (Detroit, MI); Cara Ober, BmoreArt (Baltimore, MD) and Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper (Washington, DC).
Exploring alternative artist-centered platforms and how arts communities have taken the lead in nurturing critical discourse — this panel, moderated by Victoria Reis, Co-Founder, Executive & Artistic Director of Transformer, will aim to investigate current models and imagine future possibilities for creating discourse and connecting communities.
Launched in December 2002, Transformer’s FRAMEWORK Panel Series engages local, national, and international artists, arts professionals, cultural leaders, and DC audiences in conversation to create an oral ‘field guide’ to encourage and support individual emerging artists in our community, and to educate audiences through the sharing of best practices within the contemporary visual arts. FRAMEWORK Panels are presented 2-3 times per year in collaboration with a broad range of educational & cultural institution partners. Transformer is honored to have Connecting Communities Through Critical Discourse hosted by NPR at their Studio 1 theatre.
Transformer’s 2015/16 FRAMEWORK Panel Series is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Access to Artistic Excellence grant, “to encourage and support artistic excellence, preserve our cultural heritage, and provide access to the arts for all Americans.”
<><><><><><><><><>
Jailbait and Blackbird Opening Night + More Shows
Thursday, March 31st : 7pm
BBOX, The Gateway
1601 West Mount Royal Avenue : Baltimore 21217
Not every love story is a fairytale. In fact, love and sexual intimacy can be forbidden, uncomfortable and even dangerous. The Maryland Institute College of Art’s (MICA) Rivals of the West Theatre Company will use the power of artistic expression to explore those themes through a thought-provoking evening of theater and discussion Thursdays through Sundays, March 31 through April 10, 2016. Performances will take place at MICA’s BBOX performance space, located inside The Gateway Building at 1601 W. Mount Royal Ave. Tickets are $10 for students with ID and MICA community and $15 for the general public.
The critically acclaimed plays Jailbait by Deirdre O’Connor and Blackbird by David Harrower each shine a light on the morally complicated world of sexual relationships between adults and children. In Jailbait, O’Connor explores what happens when a high-school girl attempts to use intimacy with an older man as her key to entering adulthood. In Blackbird, Harrower delves into the relationship between a young woman and the man who was arrested for sexual assault against her.
MICA’s presentation of these two plays provides a forum for discussing tough questions about love, sex, intimacy and choice.
NOTE: These productions may not be appropriate for all audiences as they do include sexually explicit dialogue.
<><><><><><><><>
Paul Johnson Pop-Up Book Artist Extraordinaire Lecture
Thursday, March 31st : 7pm
McGuire Hall
Loyola University of Maryland : Baltimore 21210
Paul Johnson is a successful pop-up book artist with work in such collections as the Tate Gallery, London; the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York; and the National Gallery, Washington DC. Dr. Johnson has an international reputation for his pioneering work in developing literacy through the book arts.
<><><><><><><><>
A Conversation with Linda Montano
Thursday, March 31st : 6:30pm
Haebler Memorial Chapel
Goucher College : Baltimore 21204
Performance artist Linda Montano will be visiting Goucher on Thursday, March 31, 2016. She will be speaking/performing in the Haebler Memorial Chapel at 6:30pm. Linda Montano is best known for her video work and her endurance performances which she has been making since the 1960s. Please invite anyone who may have an interest in this important feminist artist.
This presentation features a performance. The artist invites attendees to come dressed in all one color of the rainbow or all white.
Here is a link to Linda Montano’s website if you would like more information about her work and her background. http://
The lecture is free and open to the public. Ms. Montano’s visit is generously sponsored by the Nancy G. Unobskey Visiting Artist in Modern and Contemporary Art Program.
<><><><><><><><>
Convergence Maximus
Thursday, March 31st : 7 & 8:30pm + Friday, April 1st : 8 & 9:30pm
Baltimore War Memorial
101 North Gay Street : Baltimore 21202
Featuring Concert Artists of Baltimore and Baltimore Rock Opera Society (BROS) Baltimore, MD
The colossal worlds of rock and classical music collide in an epic musical fusion that features excerpts from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and selections from original BROS rock operas, Murdercastle and Valhella. Located at the War Memorial Building, 101 North Gay Street (special thanks to the War Memorial Commission). Supported by PNC Bank.
<><><><><><><><>
Aphorisms on Gender
Friday, April 1st – Sunday, April 3rd
Church on the Square
1025 South Potomac Street : Baltimore 21224
Aphorisms on Gender is a new original work commissioned specifically for Cohesion’s Trans* Voices Workshop Series. The piece centers around Nora, a non-binary person, as they struggle to determine their identity and navigate a world that often rejects the authenticity Nora strives for. In styling the piece as Aphorisms, or a series of passages and thoughts coming together to form a whole, Stanley speaks to the often fractured nature of identity and how we as humans go about determining it for ourselves.
The Trans* Voices Workshop Series is a season-long endeavor to increase trans* visibility and open discussion about trans* issues. Three new and adapted scripts will receive one weekend of performance each after a short rehearsal and workshop period, with the goal of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each and readying them for full production. Cohesion is proud to partner with Iron Crow Theatre on this series and is seeking additional community partners to maximize the impact and facilitate discussion around these vitally important plays.
<><><><><><><><>
Traces, Ni de aquí, Ni de allá Opening Reception
Friday, April 1st : 6-9:30pm
Area 405
405 East Oliver Street : Baltimore 21202
WORKS BY: Gabrielle Velez, Edgar Reyes, Irvin Morazan, Ricardo Ruiz, Nicoletta De La Brown, Krissty Beatres, Ryan Flores, René Treviño, and Justin Zachary
CURATED BY: Ashley Delara DeHoyos
Thinking about the accepted norms and distorted influence of the Western lens on arts and culture, TRACES questions and confronts the Eurocentric standards and expectations too often placed on Latinx artists. Inspired by yearlong individual and group conversations about the cultural complexities of Latinidad, TRACES highlights the effects of acculturation and assimilation on artists working under a presumed Latin American umbrella.
TRACES, examines the aesthetic of American’s visual and social culture and is the result of how identity, locality, and heredity can influence or affect artistic practice and visual art making. Using personal perspectives and stories to questions what it means to be living in America with an ethnic identity, TRACES, unpacks the cultural assumptions and expectations of nine artist straddling a cultural line and feeling like they belong neither here nor there.
<><><><><><><><>
Make a Rug from Recycled Material Workshop
Saturday, April 2nd : 11am-1pm
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive : Baltimore 21218
Join us for a suite of programs that connects the art, materials, and ideas in the Commons Collaboration between artist Marian April Glebes and The Loading Dock, the nation’s first successful, self-sufficient, nonprofit building materials reuse center. Programs begin this February and continue through August.
Teaching artist: Nancy Hotchkiss
Topic: Turn scrap material into beautiful rugs
<><><><><><><><>
TRANSPORT: By Foot, Wheel, and Wings Opening Reception
Saturday, April 2nd : 6-8pm
Towson Arts Collective
40 West Chesapeake Avenue : Towson 21225
TRANSPORT, is a visual arts and design exhibition that includes models of vehicles such as antique bicycles as well as paintings, photographs, and sculpture depicting how we carry and transport ourselves as well as our goods. See how antique vehicles contrast to those from the space age. Stop by the opening reception Saturday, April 2, 6-8pm to view Classic Cars along the street. Or come to the after party to enjoy Easy Rider on our big screen! The exhibit will end Sunday, May 1 during the Towson Spring Festival. Kids of all ages are invited to draw fantasy vehicles on TAC’s community art display board. For more information: www.towsonartscollective.org
Artists in the exhibition include: Candy Aaron, Shelley Amstel, Jennifer Berk, Steve Bleinberger, Alice Faber, Nicole Fall, Neil Feather, Howard Greenberg, Peggy Foley, Harrison Hart, Gary Kachadourian, Dan Keplinger, Perry Kapsch, Charles Mens, Andy Mezensky, Esther Sharp, Dennis Simon, James Warhola, and Al Zaruba.
<><><><><><><><>
Symphony Number One
Saturday, April 2nd : 7pm
Light City Baltimore
Harbor East : Baltimore
Mark your calendars, this is going to be huge! Symphony Number One will perform at the inaugural Light City festival this coming April! We’ll be celebrating with a tribute to Baltimore like no other. Here’s the lineup:
Pierre Boulez – Dérive 2
Jon Russell – Light Cathedral
Joel Puckett – Southern Comforts: Mint Julep (feat. Nick Bentz, Violin)
Ben Kapilow – Happy Birthday Variations
Dylan Arthur Baker – Seaside Wingding (feat. Sarah Eckman McIver, Flute)
Alexa Rinn – Lights on the Night Harbor
Dan VanHassel – Passing in the Night (feat. Michelle Rofrano, Conductor)
Ben Goldberg – President Street Station
Sean William Calhoun – Pyramid Song [Radiohead arr.]
Paul Richards – Harbor Music [based upon Händel’s Water Music]
Andrew Boss – Saxophone Concerto (feat. Sean Meyers, Saxophone)
Jonathan Hugendubler. Composer. – Dimethyltryptamine
“HydroPrismEchoChamber” celebrates McKeldin Fountain, soon to be a part of Baltimore’s past. McKeldin witnessed the history unfolding around it for 33 years. Our piece celebrates the life and times of McKeldin Fountain–specifically as it relates to the notion of work–through period music, costumes, and dance. Performers in the amphitheater–within sight of McKeldin Square–will pay homage to the Brutalist sculpture and the people who pass by daily on their way to and from work.
FREE and open to all
Tuesday, March 29: 7:30, 8:30 and 10:30pm
Saturday, April 2: 8:00 and 10:00pm
This is a performance of historic significance! HydroPrismEcho[Chamber] is the very first, all-female-identified cast. (A few men are holding props).
We are delighted to share the stage with so many local artists including Katherine Fahey & Annie Howe Papercuts, Lynne Tomilson and Colette Searls, Big Whimsy, Olu Butterfly and the DewMore Baltimore, Revolutionary Motion, 901 Arts, Schroeder Cherry, Single Carrot Theatre, Creative Alliance, and Thick Air Studios.
<><><><><><><><>
Virginia Poundstone: The Blue Rose
April 2 – May 1, 2016
510 W. Franklin Street . Baltimore, MD 21201
PHOEBE is pleased to present the first exhibition of Virginia Poundstone’s work in Baltimore, Maryland.
Blue is the most elusive color in botany. The molecular structure that creates a true blue hue is an extremely complicated mix of pigments, enzymes and minerals. The scarcity of this perfect mix is precisely why these blooms are so desirable. As with any luxury product, knock-offs abound.
The Blue Rose (1) Nature does not make a blue rose. Laboratories around the world have been racing to crack Nature’s code to force it to do so. After more than a decade of research, the closest a partnership between a Japanese consumer product company and an Australian biotechnology company has been able to achieve is a pale purplish blossom. While genetic engineers continue their efforts, factories have been filling the market’s desire by using fabric dyes to turn white roses blue. These falsies are the subject of this show. It is significant that the dyed blue rose thrives in the marketplace demanding a price almost four times as much as its unmanipulated counterpart. Injected with pigment, like botox injected into faces, these engineered roses become artificial stand-ins for the meaningful scarcity Mother Earth provides. Maybe this show should be called Artificial Becomes Most Meaningful. Not yet. The show is called The Blue Rose.
<><><><><><><>
A Temporary Curse Opening Reception
Saturday, April 2nd : 7-10pm
Bb
427A North Eutaw Street : Baltimore 21201
Noa Glazer
Stephanie Hier
Michael Bussell
She whispered a prayer for strength and her wishes wafted away like seeds in the wind.
—Seedcradle Witch, Magic the Gathering Shadowmoor Expansion
To make glass, a manufacturer heats silicon dioxide to 3090ºF, the temperature that marks its shift into liquid form. As the white hot substance cools, it settles into an amorphous solid, that is, a material with some of the crystalline order of a solid and some of the molecular randomness of a liquid. Along with ceramic and diamond, it is one of the harder materials readily available from home. Its 5.5 rating on the Mohs scale indicates, simply, that it will scratch most materials before they scratch it.
A piece of sea glass is a glass of milk is a mitten is an unopened letter. It carries……….I can’t remember. This piece of sea glass is pretty soft; it must be old. This one is actually just a grain of sand; it must be really old.
<><><><><><><><>
Adrift: Surrealistic Photomontage by Greg Dohler – Opening Reception
Saturday, April 2nd : 5-8pm
Full Circle Gallery
33 East 21st Street : Baltimore 21218
Dohler’s photomontages are inspired by the curious connections made in the unconscious mind, when random memories are free to merge and form introspective vignettes. The works find acceptance and beauty in the impermanence of all things.
Join us for the reception, Saturday April 2 5-8pm.
Show Dates: March 26 – April 30, 2016
<><><><><><><><>
Hoi Polloi: An Experimental Fashion Event
Saturday, April 2nd : 5:30 & 8:30pm
Lithuanian Hall
851 Hollins Street : Baltimore 21201
The 2016 Experimental Fashion Event is designed, directed and produced by the artists and designers from MICA’s Fiber Department’s yearlong Multi-Media Event class. Together, they will collaboratively transform Baltimore’s Lithuanian Hall into a venue for innovative fashion, costume design, performance art and soft sculpture. This annual event features individually crafted bodies of garment-based work exploring the intersection of fashion and art.
‘Hoi Polloi’ comes from the Greek word πολλοί, meaning “the common people.” The Experimental Fashion Event artists and designers have come together in a single collaboration from diverse points of view, seeking to challenge the normalcy of fashion. Furthermore, Hoi Polloi: An Experimental Fashion Event collaboration features themes from darkness to ultimate joy surrounding the human experience.
This fashion event that many in Baltimore flock to each year, represents a variety of concepts and skill sets, with work speaking to the performative nature of fashion and the overlapping of the runway, the stage and the theater of the streets. The evening will involve more than 300 people, including designers and their models and performers.
Designers: Caroline Creeden ’16 (Fiber B.F.A.), Taylor Dunn ’16 (Fiber B.F.A.), Jenelle Legge, Sarah Lo ’16 (Fiber B.F.A.), Elizabeth Nguyen ’16 (Fiber B.F.A.), Zach Snyder ’16 (Fiber B.F.A.), Kat Zotti ’17 (Fiber B.F.A.), Arooj Qamar ’16 (Fiber B.F.A.), and Tess Wypkema ’16 (Fiber B.F.A.), and collaborators Lo Ashford ’16 (Fiber B.F.A.) and Stella Lee ’16 (Fiber B.F.A.).
<><><><><><><><>
“not really here” curated by Nada Alaradi – Opening Reception
Saturday, April 2nd : 7pm
Platform Gallery
116 West Mulberry Street : Baltimore 21201
Where are you?
Traveled across continents.
In between spaces,
neither here nor there.
In between languages.
Across times zones
Who are you?
not really here explores the space between flight and settlement, knowing and not knowing, belonging and separation, fulfillment and loss, as informed by international migration. The exhibition brings together four conceptual artists who, after relocating to another part of the globe, express a duality between their country of origin and where they currently live.
<><><><><><><><>
Black Space : unFaded featuring Tiffany Jones
Sunday, April 3rd : 3pm
New Beginnings Barbershop
1047 Hollins Street : Baltimore 21223
“Black Space” is a series of community events and related exhibitions that explore rites of passage, tradition, home, culture, and identity within Baltimore’s African American Community. Curated by Rhea Beckett, “Black Space” pairs local artists with businesses and their communities across Baltimore to create site-specific artworks exploring rites of passage, tradition, home, culture, and identity within Baltimore’s African American Community. Artists and communities will work together during the months of November to April, culminating in a series of community events and related exhibitions beginning April 03, 2016.
Black Space aims to bring socially engaged and relevant arts programming to everyday community spaces in order to reach as many people as possible.
<><><><><><><><>
Sonnet City | Forest Forms Opening Reception
Sunday, April 3rd : 2-5pm
Project 1628
1628 Bolton Street : Baltimore 21217
Paintings | Minas Konsolas
Photographs | David Valle
Poetry | Agnes Osinski, Amanda McCormick, Edgar Silex,
Gina Caruso, Linda Joy Burke, Jennifer Keith, Jennifer Lee,
Leslie Miller, Patricia VanAmburg & Ron Williams
<><><><><><><><>
Hand Drying in America Talk by Cartoonist Ben Katchor
Monday, April 4th : 5:30pm
101 Mattin Center
Johns Hopkins Homewood Campus : Baltimore 21218
Award-winning cartoonist and graphic novelist Ben Katchor will present an illustrated lecture on his work April 4 at Johns Hopkins University.
Katchor’s talk, “Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories,” starts at 5:30 p.m. in Room 101 of the F. Ross Jones Building in the Mattin Center on JHU’s Homewood campus. A book-signing will follow. Admission is free and open to the public.
Subtitled “Picture-recitations from 18 years of comic-strips about architecture and urban design from Metropolis magazine,” Katchor’s talk bears the same title as his most recent anthology, published by Pantheon Books in 2013. Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories was included on Time Magazine‘s and NPR’s Best Books of the Year lists and was named one of The Daily Beast‘s Top Coffee-Table Books of 2013.
Tom Chalkley, a cartooning instructor at the university’s Center for Visual Arts, describes Katchor as “the rare cartoonist who raises the picture-story to the level of literature—his stories are mysterious, allusive, at once banal and surreal, examining the random forces of history and culture in the America of his imagination.”
In 2000, Katchor became the first cartoonist to receive a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He is an associate professor at Parsons School of Design/The New School in New York City, where he directs the Illustration program.
“Katchor is an urban visionary, building his stories brick by brick from the detritus of the metropolis: the derelict buildings, the unremembered districts, the flotsam and jetsam of the streets,” writes Los Angeles Timesbook critic David L. Ulin. “His is an aesthetic of ephemera, but an ephemera that transcends itself, in which loss leads to wonder and then, inevitably, back to loss.”
Katchor’s other books include Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, Hotel & Farm, The Jew of New York, The Cardboard Valise, and Shoehorn Technique. In addition to Metropolis, his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Jewish Daily Forward, and numerous weekly newspapers. He has collaborated with composer Mark Mulcahy on six music-theater shows, most recently The Imaginary War Crimes Tribunal.
Katchor’s appearance, his first at Johns Hopkins since 1999, is co-sponsored by the Center for Visual Arts and Homewood Arts Programs.
