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
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<><><><><><><><>Interrogating the Commodification of Graffiti and Street Art Presentation/TalkWednesday, April 13th : 6:30pm
Current Space
Building upon the publication of his Routledge Handbook on Graffiti and Street Art, Jeffrey Ian Ross, Professor, University of Baltimore reviews the attempts to commodify graffiti/street art. In doing so he describes and analyzes attempts by individuals and organizations to monetize the creation, production and dissemination of graffiti/street art.
This includes, but is not limited to, efforts by the publishing, film and fashion industry to integrate graffiti/street art into their products. It also looks into how building owners, and real estate developers, have tried to attract of graffiti/street artists to neighborhoods in order to make the areas more hip, etc. in order to make the neighborhoods where these properties are located more desirable. Other examples include aerosol paint manufacturers that have established in order to capitalize on graffiti/street artists needs, wants and desires for better, more user friendly paints. Examples are primarily drawn from the United States.
http://www.routledge.com/
<><><><><><><><>Can A Comic Book Superhero and Rape Survivor Change Attitudes Toward Sexual Violence? Talk with Co-Creator, Ram DevineniWednesday, April 13th : 7-8:30pm
UMBC Performing Arts & Humanities Building
Ram Devineni is the co-creator of the innovative and hugely popular comic book, “ Priya’s Shakti,”which helps illuminate attitudes towards gender-based violence. Priya’s Shaktiarose in the aftermath of a highly-publicized gang rape on a bus in New Delhi in December 2012 that outraged India and the world. The comic book centers on the Goddess Parvati and Priya, a mortal woman devotee and survivor of rape, and is rooted in ancient matriarchal traditions that have been displaced in modern representations of Hindu culture.
Priya is the first Indian superhero who is a rape survivor and a powerful symbol supporting movements fighting against gender-based violence. Released only a year-ago, the comic book went viral with over 400 news stories and was honored as a “gender equality champion” by UN Women. Devineni will discuss the creation of the comic book, how comic books and their superheroes have become mythological icons, and how to re-imagine them to fight against real-life problems while still appealing to a popular audience. Since “Priya’s Shakti” was one of the first effective uses of augmented reality in a book format, Devineni will also discuss the design of that technology to bring a book to life. The comic book is a beautiful fusion of storytelling, technology, and social activism.
<><><><><><><><>The Beauty of PROCESS Wednesday, April 13th : 6pm
MICA, Falvey Hall
Featuring: Mark Smout of Smout Allen , London, UK
Mark Smout is a Senior lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and the co-principal, with his partner Laura Allen, of the conceptual design research practice, Smout Allen. Their work operates at the scale of entire landscapes, exploring the interplay between the natural and the man-made.
Smout Allen’s work is created through multi-media processes, often beginning with complex drawings and transforming into three dimensional mixed media constructions that are striking in their visual and information density.
<><><><><><><><>Black Space : Shake & Bake Projection by artist Bashi Rose Thursday, April 14th : 8pm
Shake & Bake Family Fun Center
“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.
<><><><><><><><>Short Films About Process Thursday, April 14th : 7-8:30pm
The Walters Art Museum
$10 NON-MEMBERS
Watch short films about processes including sourcing ceramics, quarrying marble and making books. Before each film, view 10-minute presentations on objects from the collection that relate to the corresponding film’s content. All films are unrated.
This program features short films about particular processes—sourcing ceramics, quarrying marble, and making books. Before each film, Walters conservators will make 10-minute presentations on objects from the collection that relate to the corresponding film’s content. Featuring Gene Mahon Makes Books (2013), Il Capo (2010), Rare Earthenware (2015) and Idem Paris (2013). All films are unrated.
Presented in partnership with the Maryland Film Festival . Maryland Film Festival members receive free tickets; please contact 410-752-8083, or e-mail [email protected] for the member code.
<><><><><><><><>Citizen Artist Baltimore Info SessionThursday, April 14th : 1:30pm
Baltimore Clayworks
Citizen Artist Baltimore is a non-partisan advocacy effort helping to mobilize the creative community in Baltimore City. Join Baltimore Clayworks for this brown bag lunch session to hear about recent listening sessions, the first arts and culture mayoral candidate forum and how you can make sure arts and culture is on candidate’s minds as we look to the election.
Baltimore is home to thousands of voters who are also artists, theater, concert, and museum-goers, and creative workers. They care about core civic issues like public safety and education but our votes will also be strongly influenced by candidates’ positions on arts and culture. Citizen Artist Baltimore (CAB) is a nonpartisan advocacy effort helping to mobilize thousands of voters within Baltimore City’s creative communities. The initiative is registering voters and providing the opportunity for mayoral candidates to outline their positions and goals related to arts, culture and humanities. Throughout January 2016 CAB conducted a series of listening sessions across Baltimore City. From these sessions, CAB has developed a mayoral candidate questionnaire and integrated the top priorities of Baltimore’s creative communities.
Learn about the arts and culture issues that matter most, read the candidates’ positions, register to vote, and make your voice heard in the Primary Election on April 26, 2016!
For more info visit: http://citizenartist.vote/
<><><><><><><><>Once in a Lifetime Film ScreeningThursday, April 14th : 7:30pm
The Gordon Center
MARYLAND PREMIERE | Drama | France, 2016 | Director: Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar
SPECIAL GUEST: Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Professor of Film & Moving Image at Stevenson University, filmmaker, and film commentator.
A history teacher at a French high school is determined to give the best education she can to her underprivileged inner-city pupils. Overcoming their apathy, however, proves to be difficult until she tests her classroom with an assignment on the theme of child victims of Nazi concentration camps. The project is met with resistance until a face-to-face encounter with a Holocaust survivor transforms the students’ attitudes dramatically.
Winner, Audience Award, Santa Barbara International Film Festival
<><><><><><><><>Good News Baltimore LIVE :: Place Matters: Vacancy, Access & Equitable Development Thursday, April 14th : 6-9pm
Impact Hub Baltimore
While Baltimore has ample vacant and available property for commercial and residential use, there are disparities in access to quality housing and property management. Place matters, but for whom? This discussion explores the consequences of those inequalities, highlights community driven solutions and tools for first time home buyers.
<><><><><><><><>Richard Niessen: New Graphic Design – Wm. O. Steinmetz ’50 Designer-in-Residence Lecture Thursday, April 14th : 7pm
MICA, Falvey Hall
MICA hosts international graphic designer Richard Niessen for the annual Wm. O. Steinmetz ’50 Designer-in-Residence Lecture on Thursday, April 14, 7 p.m. in Brown Center’s Falvey Hall (1301 W. Mount Royal Ave). Niessen is known for his stunning posters and typography, innovative institutional identities and collaborations with artists. While at MICA, he will also conduct workshops with graduate and undergraduate students.
For the lecture, Niessen will introduce his body of work and discuss “The Palace of Typographic Masonry,” an imaginary, game-like structure that is the subject of his outstanding experimental poster series.
“The corridors, rooms, courtyards, gates and galleries of this [imaginary] building are explored via a series of journeys that take the shape of (fictional) exhibitions, workshops, debates and reading sessions,” Niessen said. “Each trip is condensed into a ‘tracing board,’ a printed, illustrative aid that the user can use to amass knowledge.”
His book Hermetic Compendium of Typographic Masonry is an extraordinary portfolio of richly layered prints. He has lectured and exhibited his works internationally, in addition to conducting workshops with students and designers worldwide. A selection of Niessen’s recent posters is on view at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York City, in the exhibitionBeauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial , through August 2016.
<><><><><><><><>13th Annual CityLit Festival Friday, April 15th – Saturday, April 16th
The thirteenth annual CityLit Festival will expand with a new venue and new partners, kicking off on the evening of April 15 at the Maryland Institute College of Art and continuing throughout the day on April 16 at The Enoch Pratt Free Library Pennsylvania Branch (morning) and the University of Baltimore (afternoon). The festival will showcase more than thirty (30) authors, poets, and presenters and include a poetry slam, book arts session, and free critiques from notable authors and editors.
Friday, April 15 at 7pm
Claudia Rankine at MICA in Falvey Hall, The Brown Center
Saturday, April 16 at 10:30am
Claudia Rankine at Pennsylvania Avenue Branch
Saturday, April 16 from 11am –6pm
CityLit Festival main venue at University of Baltimore
Check www.citylitproject.org for updates on the full schedule.
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Out Of Order 2016 April 15, 2016
Maryland Art Place’s Annual Spring Benefit, Silent Auction and Party!
Join us at this year’s Out of Order event on Friday, April 15, 2016 to view and bid on works from a wide range of regional artists – from emerging and student artists to established professionals. We look forward to seeing you!
Purchase Tickets Here!
For inquiries related directly to Out of Order, please contact (917) 545-5385.
<><><><><><><><>MICA Grad Show Opening ReceptionSaturday, April 16th : 4-7pm
Collecting Now : Talk and Reception Saturday, April 16th : 7-9pm
Baltimore Museum of Art
In celebration of the exhibition New Arrivals: Gifts of Art for a New Century , please join us for a lively evening of short talks on collecting, preceded by refreshments and an exhibition tour with BMA Senior curator Rena Hoisington.
Speakers include:
Michael Connor , Artistic Director, Rhizome , on collecting in the digital ageJay Fisher , Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, BMA, on connoisseurshipElisabetta Polidori , paper conservator, The Walters Art Museum, on caring for works on paperAndrea Pitzer , author, The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov Darnell Burfoot , private collector, on collecting challenging works of art
$45 Members | $50 non-Members
<><><><><><><><>Up Resting Workshops Saturday, April 16th : 1-4pm
1401 North Fremont Avenue : Baltimore 21217
Upresting is a sound installation, instrument, and tool for community expression. A patch created with the programming language Max/MSP, Upresting places the participant in a quadrophonic environment left with nothing but a microphone. The participant may speak/sing/shout/emote into the microphone and hear his or her voice get turned into the articulations of many. You might just think that you’re at a protest or rally — the awesome power of a group harnessed by the singular. This experience is meant for everyone who deserves the opportunity to be heard and has been denied that opportunity.
Upresting is split into two parts: 1) Workshops and 2) Performances. Both the workshops and performances are FREE.
Workshops: During the workshops, members of the community and public will be able to participate with Upresting. They will get to pick up the mic and say whatever they have to say. In addition, members of the activist communities who focus on the arts will present on their work, sharing techniques and strategies for effective activism.
Workshops will take place:
Saturday, April 16 and 23 1-4pm
1401 N. Fremont Ave., Baltimore, MD 21217
Featured participants will include Kwame Rose and members of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle , like Lady Brion and DevRock.
If it is scheduled to rain during either day of the workshops, please check back to this website for updates.
<><><><><><><><>Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See the Stars Opening Reception Saturday, April 16th : 7-10pm
The Former Peale Museum
Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars, a new body of work, including installations and performances, focuses on DeVille’s ongoing research of the Peale Museum’s building and the unruly nature of history. Founded as an arts and natural history museum, the original vision for the Peale Museum, by its founder Rembrandt Peale, was to create an institution that was simultaneously entertaining and scholarly, and to be used as an instrument of democracy. The building operated as such until 1829, going on to become many firsts including Baltimore’s first City Hall and the location of several of Maryland’s first public schools for African-American children.
Much of the building’s timeline had to be unearthed for this project, rediscovering facets of its past that had fallen through the cracks of time. In her work, DeVille’s investigations lead to the construction of narratives, environments, and experiences which reference histories that are often overlooked or forgotten. For this project, DeVille postures the Peale Museum’s site as a theoretical passage through spacetime, creating shortcuts for long journeys across history. Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars contributes both original research and new perspectives on little-known narratives and lost years of the Peale Museum’s building, opening the door for conversations on education, legislation, cultural preservation, and art’s ability to challenge our notion of time and history.
Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See The Stars is free and open to the public—additional information can be found at contemporary.org.
<><><><><><><><>Driven To Abstraction Saturday, April 16th : 5:30-8:30pm
The Motor House
Join us for an exciting evening of art and music in the new Motor House performance space, featuring work by five painters of original abstractions: Maria Mendoza
Wendell “Solely Supreme” Shannon
Janet Olney
Alfonso Fernandez-Vazquez
Daniel Stuelpnagel
THE MEGADRIVES !!
Meet The Artists: each will have art works on display and for sale, and we will inspire a multi-faceted conversation about the evolving role of abstraction in contemporary art.
Our venue occupancy is limited, this event is likely to sell out soon!
<><><><><><><><>2016 Marquee Ball Saturday, April 16th
The Creative Alliance
A t ransforming cultural force, champion of artists, incubator for Baltimore’s diverse arts landscape , and anchor for Highlandtown’s revitalization – the Creative Alliance celebrates 21 years!
Join us to toast to the future with more exceptional programming and an exciting expansion of our arts education programs.
Our COLOSSAL 21st BIRTHDAY BASH on April 16 includes 3 cosmic parties in one night! Stellar live music, futuristic costumes, galactic décor, wild performances, live and silent art auctions, interactive art installations, delectable fare and cosmic cocktails!
OUR HONOREES: Senator Barbara Milkulski
Lea Gilmore
<><><><><><><><>Art of the Collectors V Opening Reception Sunday, April 167th : 4-6pm
Galerie Myrtis
Galerie Myrtis located at 2224 North Charles Street, presents Art of the Collectors V curated by Myrtis Bedolla. Opening Reception: Sunday, April 17th, 4:00 – 6:00 pm. Free and open to the public. Gallery Talk: The Intelligent Collector: April 30th – Saturday, 2:00 – 4:00 pm. Free and open to the public. Limited Seating, RSVP by April 20th. Panel Discussion: Preserving your Cultural Legacy: Sunday, May 22nd, 2:00 – 4:00 pm. Offered as part of the Tea with Myrtis art salon series. Fee: $20.00
Galerie Myrtis presents Art of the Collector’s V an exhibition that explores the role of the collector in preserving culture and building legacy through art collecting. The show will feature works of art created by preeminent American artists whose imagery connects us to our past and serves as a bridge to our future. Offered for sale are rare paintings, original prints, photographs and sculptures held in private hands for generations and important works of art from institutional holdings. Featured artists: Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden, Camille Billups, James Denmark, Grace Hartigan, Palmer Hayden, Alvin C. Hollingsworth, Francisco Mora, Lenore Tawney, Hale Woodruff, works of African art and more…
