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]!
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<><><><><><><><><><><>Made in Baltimore Presents: Workshop Wednesdays
Wednesday, February 15th : 6-8pm
Open Works
1400 Greenmount Avenue : 21202
Workshop Wednesdays is a business development event series targeted to maker and small manufacturing companies. Come learn tips and tools from experts in a wide range of business services, and network with fellow makers with snacks and drinks.
Please join Made in Baltimore at Open Works for the forth session of their monthly Workshop Wednesday speaker series: How Money Works for the Creative Entrepreneur with Greenworld Bookkeeping:
By popular demand, this workshop will focus on taxes and bookkeeping for early-stage creative companies. Green World Bookkeeping will present an hour-long workshop covering topics including cash flow, salary income taxes, handling multiple streams of income, arts district tax credits, and much more. Snacks and drinks will be provided to take the edge off!
<><><><><><><><><><><>Visiting Artist Lecture: Hank Willis Thomas
Thursday, February 16th : 5:30pm
York College Galleries, Wolf Hall
422 Country Club Road : York PA
NYC-based conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas will speak at York College of Pennsylvania, where he is currently exhibiting 71 works from his Unbranded: A Century of White Women, 1915-2015 series. Building on ideas explored in his series, (of which 8 works are currently on display in downtown York,) Thomas’ “unbranding” technique tracks notions of virtue, power, beauty, privilege and desire in mainstream America.
Spanning the rise and decline of print advertising, provides a gamut for the ideal feminine type that has been marketed to individuals across gender, racial, and socio-economic lines throughout the past hundred years. Thomas scoured archives in search of images that challenge history, societal values, and modes and trends of identification perpetuated by American consumer culture.
All events are free and open to the public. Contact gallery director Matthew Clay-Robison at [email protected] for additional information or visit yorkcollegegalleries.com.
<><><><><><><><><><><>Chesapeake Fine Art Studio Student Exhibition : Opening Reception
Thursday, February 16th : 6-8pm
Crystal Moll Gallery
1030 South Charles Street : 21230
For the month of February 2017, Crystal Moll Gallery will showcase selected works by artists who have participated in workshops and weekly classes at the Chesapeake Fine Art Studio in Stevensville, Maryland.
Chesapeake Fine Art Studio is the perfect venue for artists to develop and refine their skills in the visual arts. The studio offers 3200 square feet of open working space and hosts classes, workshops, personalized instruction, open life drawing sessions and brings in ‘the best instructors from all over the world’ including: Ken Karlic, Hai-Ou Hou, Palden Hamilton, Abigail McBride and many others.
Artwork in this exhibition will be judged by Baltimore artist and CFAS instructor, Palden Hamilton. Awards will be announced during the Artists’ Reception on February 16th
<><><><><><><><><><><>Lom Nave Love : Film Screening
Friday, February 17th : 7-8:30pm
MICA Brown Center
1301 West Mount Royal Avenue : 21217
You’re invited to help us kick-off the national tour of the film, Lom Nava Love, the unflinching story of Black families in inner city Baltimore harnessing their strengths to challenge the systems and institutions that would dictate their realities.
Centered on the work of community organizer Shirley Foulks and directed by Youth Resiliency Institute founder Fanon Hill, Lom Nava Love documents Foulks’ engagement with families in public housing and how she uses art to communicate the abilities, strengths and power to effect change that Black families innately possess.
After the screening, internationally renowned singer/songwriter Navasha Daya will perform a selection of songs from the film’s soundtrack and Fanon Hill and Shirley Foulks will talk with WEAA radio host Marc Steiner about the creation of the film and how artists can work in communities. Other performers include Mighty Mark, Baltimore club music DJ and producer for TT THE ARTIST ’06 (General Fine Arts), and Rashad “Hurricane The King” Hawkins.
For more information: http://events.mica.edu/
<><><><><><><><><><><>Talk About Teapots : Gallery Tour with Exhibitions Director Mary Cloonan
Friday, February 17th : 6-7pm
Baltimore Clayworks
5707 Smith Avenue : 21209
Free and open to the public.
Please R.S.V.P.
You are cordially invited to join Mary Cloonan for a guided tour of our Teapots VIII exhibition to talk about not just the form and function, but the techniques used to create these sought after vessels. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the logistics of gallery installation as well. Home-baked cookies will be served!
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with Moves Like MacGuyver @Baltimore Jewelry Center
Reception Friday, Feb 17, 6-9 pm
Join us for the opening reception of the next exhibition at the Baltimore Jewelry Center. with moves like MacGyver is a traveling exhibition, organized by Sara Brown and Marissa Saneholtz, and juried by Timothy Lazure and Randy Long.
with moves like MacGyver examines the creative lengths to which makers will go in order to complete a piece that they did not originally have the tools necessary to do so.
The exhibition features the work of 12 jewelers and metalsmiths. Each artist has two pieces in the exhibition: one jewelry object or small sculptural piece, displayed alongside a specialized tool that was created by the maker for the sole purpose of completing that object, with the premise that neither item would exist without the other. Participating artists are: Autumn Brown, Harlan Butt, Jim Dunn, Chris Hentz, Nicole Jacquard, Kerry McGeein, Tom Muir, Mary Raivel, Justin Tejeda, Billie Theide, Demitra Thomloudis, and Kathryn Wardill.
Exhibition dates: February 17 – March 31, 2017
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Art@Work Info Session
Saturday, February 18th : 1pm
Jubilee Arts
1947 Pennsylvania Avenue : 21217
Art @ Work, produced by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, Jubilee Arts and 901 Arts, seeks youth artists, teaching artists and artist interns to participate in Art @ Work 2017. The five-week mural artist apprenticeship program returns on June 26 through July 28, 2017 for its third year. Applications and information on Art @ Work can be found on www.promotionandarts.org.
The first information session for interested youth will be held Saturday, February 18 at 1pm at Jubilee Arts, 1947 Pennsylvania Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217. Parents are encouraged to attend. For more information, Call 410-752-8632 or email [email protected].
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Local Color Podcast Live at Exittheapple Artspace
Saturday, February 18th : 2-4pm
Exittheapple Artspace
2334 Guilford Avenue : 21218
Local Color: A Baltimore Podcast is a podcast about Baltimore’s local color; the artists, entrepreneurs, business owners, community leaders…anyone that’s doing something to tell the story of our great city.
Join us for this live taping of Local Color as host, Jason Van Slyke sits down with our Principal Artist Pierre Bennu. The two of them will discuss topics including Pierre’s artistic practice, ExittheApple’s history and upcoming events and programming.
After the conversation stick around for a DJ set by Pierre!
Pierre Bennu is a multimedia artist working in paint, film, digital video, sculpture, sound art, puppetry and performance. Pierre grew up in the 80s in NYC and graffiti artists were his first superheroes. They showed him the creative potential in everyday objects. Even today, Pierre finds himself inspired by the surprising material, the under appreciated subject, the alternative perspective, the unlikely surface. His work centers around nontraditional representations and nature themes; on blurring the lines between culture and self-concept. Pierre relishes in working with found materials and is enamored with the story implied in the object. Why was it discarded? What was its former life? Once he has created a painting, portrait, collage, or film using this material, does its previous life speak to its new context in a compelling way? This conversation/tension/relationship between an object and a subsequent creative use harkens back to graffiti and hip hop, the original inspiration for the work.
If you are interested in using Exittheapple Artspace, read more about the rental spaces at Exittheapple here.
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Open Hours: BALTI GURLS
Saturday, February 18th : 2-3pm
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive : 21218
Join the BALTI GURLS for an intimate screening of the Chicago-based webseries Brown Girls. Described by its creators, writer Fatimah Asghar and director/producer Sam Bailey as, “An intimate story of the lives of two young women of color. Leila is a South Asian-American writer just now owning her queerness. Patricia is a sex-positive Black-American musician who is struggling to commit to anything: job, art, and relationships. While the two women come from completely different backgrounds, their friendship is ultimately what they lean on to get through the messiness of their mid-twenties.” The screening will followed by a 30 minute web Q+A with the series director Sam Bailey.
Open Hours is a monthly program hosted at the BMA. The public is invited to propose events, workshops, lectures, and experiences to take place in the Joseph Education Center. Open Hours events are about creating community together through conversations, exchange and learning. All Open Hours are free and open to the public.
Open Hours is generously sponsored by PNC Bank.
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Tea with Myrtis
Saturday, February 18th : 3-5pm
Galerie Myrtis
2224 North Charles Street : 21218
Tea with Myrtis is a series of art salons where we engage in lively conversations with artists, art collectors and the nation’s leading arts professionals to discuss trends in the contemporary art movement. Share in delectable treats and enjoy delicious teas from the Tulsi Tea Collection provided by our sponsor Organic India.
Guests: Stephen Towns, Artist and Tim Gordon, Film Critic
Moderator: Myrtis Bedolla, Founding Director, Galerie Myrtis
Take Me Away to the Stars, explores how violence is processed through escapism, religion and myth. Using the historic and mythological chronicles of Nat Turner’s historic slave rebellion, artist Stephen Towns’ exhibition constructs a contemporary story through drawings, paintings and quilts.
Join artist Stephen Towns and film critic Tim Gordon for a lively discussion about the exhibition and the timely cinematic prospective from the 2016 film The Birth of a Nation. Myrtis Bedolla will serve a moderator.
Tea served with savory treats starting at 3:00pm. Discussion begins at 3:45pm
$20 per person :: Register Here
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10 Minutes Tops! The All New Resident Artist Open House
Saturday, February 18th : 6-8pm Artist Talks / 8-10pm Open Studios
The Creative Alliance
3134 Eastern Avenue : 21224
Join all 8 resident artists – Amy Sherald, Paul Rucker, Alice Gadzinski, Tiffany Lange, Adam Davies, Cameron Shojaei, Jerry Allen Gilmore, and Alfonso Fernandez – plus special surprise guests from 6 – 8pm for 10 Minutes Tops! Each resident will present their artwork for a maximum of 10 minutes or provide a special performance or unique collaboration. Expect to see spectacular work by painters, puppeteers, video artists, photographers, and sculptors. Each resident’s segment will be completely distinct and provide a compelling, quick but fascinating introduction to their work and process.
Want to learn more? Immediately after the presentations, follow the residents to their second floor live/work studios from 8 – 10pm for the Annual Resident Artists Open House reception. Visit each studio to see high level artwork and works-in-progress. Enjoy one-on-one conversations with each artist, and perhaps find that perfect piece of artwork for your collection! While the Residency Program plays a prominent role in many Creative Alliance activities, the Open House is one of the few times during the year when you can spend time with the artists in their home environments, learn, relax and have fun – all in one great event!
Short bios for each artist are included on the following pages, full bios can be found on the Creative Alliance website, right here!
<><><><><><><><><><><>Conscious Migration : Opening Reception
Saturday, February 18th : 6-8pm Artist Talks / 8-10pm Open Studios
Y:ART Gallery
3402 Gough Street : 21224
Y:ART Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of its tenth exhibition, featuring the work of three well-established artists: Jim Hake, Nancy Valk, and Quentin Moseley. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, February 18, 2017 from 6pm-9pm.
Conscious Migration assembles three accomplished practices, each contributing a valuable perspective to Y:ART’s seasonal narrative. Paying homage to this natural transition, the exhibition optimistically anticipates the coming of spring. Remembering the turbulence of a frozen landscape, we begin our migration from the deep bitterness of winter toward warmer weather. Cooperatively, the exhibition showcases and acknowledges the elegance of the cold, as it is a testament to the authoritative beauty of nature. Conscious Migration examines the multifaceted value of art, existing cross-disciplinary and influencing every aspect of how we perceive the world.
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Michael Jones McKean: The Ground : Opening Reception
Saturday, February 18th : 6-9pm
Hutzler Brothers Palace Museum
210 North Howard Street : 21201
The Contemporary presents The Ground, a solo commission by New York and Richmond-based artist Michael Jones McKean, at the historic Hutzler Brothers Palace Building, located at 200 North Howard Street. The project is free and open to the public from February 18 through May 19, 2017.
Hutzler Brothers Palace, erected in 1888, and originally advertised as a “museum of merchandise” was the first department store of its kind in Baltimore. In the shell of this former emporium, McKean has fabricated a massive, multi-room, two-story structure, an architectonic labyrinth enfolding diverse aesthetic languages and multiple modes of representation. He merges the museological, the domestic, the store display, the geological, the theatrical, and the digital. In its totality, he has created an extended metaphor on “place”. Not place as a stagnant reality fixed in time, but as an emergent, fecund, and evolving set of conditions metabolizing past histories into the present.
With The Ground, McKean proposes longer overlapping and diverging timelines where human and non-human actants live in close, nonhierarchical proximity with their time scales flattened and enmeshed. Here, a handmade replica of the human brain co-mingles casually with that of a wolf, whale, cat, and elephant. An out-of-time cave diorama shares a wall with twelve heads, possibly those of costumed members of some undetermined, future leaning, pan-cultural cult. A mise-en-scene built of clay and dirt depicting people participating in a water birth of a new human conflates the contemporary and historical, creation myth and quotidian, abject realism and magic realism.
<><><><><><><><><><><>Lunchtime Lecture: George Ciscle
Monday, February 20th : 12pm
Fred Lazarus IV Center
131 West North Avenue : 21201
Join MFA Illustration Practice for a Lunchtime Lecture with curator George Ciscle.
George Ciscle is the founder and first director and curator of the Contemporary Museum. For four years he promoted the careers of young and emerging artists, whom he often scouted by visiting artist’s colonies and graduate schools. Working with young artists and students as a gallery director led Ciscle to conceive what he thought of as an “un-museum,” which would challenge existing conventions for exhibiting art. The Contemporary Museum was founded by Ciscle in 1989. Following seven years at the helm of the Contemporary Museum, Ciscle became Curator-in-Residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
<><><><><><><><><><><>Rubys Artist Project Grants: 2017 Workshops
Monday, February 20th : 6pm
Motor House
120 West North Avenue : 21201
Attend a grant workshop to learn about the application process for a Rubys Artist Project Grant as well as about general grantwriting tips and strategies. RSVP to attend any of these workshops here.
<><><><><><><><><><><>Looking Ahead: Reserve your ticket to our artist talk!
Artists as Culture Producers: Sharon Louden, William Powhida, and Cara Ober in Conversation
Join us on Thursday, March 9 at 6:30 pm with NY-based artist and author Sharon Louden. After the international success of Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists, Louden returns to Baltimore with NY-based artist William Powhida to discuss her newest book Artist as Culture Producer. The informal discussion will focus on Culture Producer’s concept: the value of artists who promote the work of other artists. The talk will include BmoreArt’s Cara Ober, one of the 40 featured artists in the book.
This lecture is free and will be followed by a reception at Motor House for guests. There are 150 seats available, so reserve yours today – here.
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