Reading

BmoreArt’s Picks: Baltimore Art Galleries, Openings, And Events March 7 – 13

Previous Story
Article Image

Twenty-Two Studios in Two Days

Next Story
Article Image

An Artist-Centric Armory Week

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]!

GET BMOREART’S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

<><><><><><><><><><><>Dre Britton: Structural Integrity :: Opening Reception
Tuesday, March 7th : 6-8pm

Silber Gallery
Goucher College : Towson

Dre Britton’s work is comprised of found furniture and fractured objects culled from the city streets of Baltimore. The level of decay evident in each object dictates the extent to which Britton formally intervenes in developing his sculptures, paintings, and hybridized three-dimensional works of art. Methodically exploring these degrading structures, bolstering support mechanisms, and considering the formal elements such as; weight, mass, volume, color, and texture of each object is what drives the aesthetic choices of his studio practice. Britton’s large scale, non-functional sculptures and assemblages question the limitations of raw materials, functionality, and the value of objects we interact with daily. Most commonly found in his body of work is the couch frame; an object concealed in plain sight beneath luxurious upholstery. The process of deconstructing, then re-contextualizing these frames and scraps renders once functional apparatuses completely useless. Working with the detritus of a working-class city, Britton examines and reconciles the contradictions inherent in class differences and in the associative properties of varying kinds of urban industrial waste.

<><><><><><><><><><><>Michael Stevenson: Your Strengths Made You Stronger When You Were Younger:: Opening Reception
Tuesday, March 7th : 6-8pm

Rosenberg Gallery
Goucher College : Towson

Are unexpected events more normal than we think? Do we presume a life of predictability when, in reality, everything is up in the air, all of the time? Do we just need an orderly narrative to help us get on with our lives?

The recent paintings by Michael Stevenson, in his exhibition Your Strengths Made You Stronger When You Were Younger are affirmations of action in the face of uncertainty. They are metaphors for the need to continue to move forward even when the direction is unclear. Drawn from ideas arising out of recent political changes (did you expect the election result?) to the artist’s personal experience over the last couple of years, the motifs here are forms outlined but not described, narrative suggested but not explained – the paintings are mute and stubborn in their being. But are still there. The history of the paintings’ makings are part of the experience the paintings give, like a wall covered in posters, torn.

Can abstract paintings convey a narrative? What does experience mean, when it is converted to thought, and then words and explanations, can we retain that first fleeting feeling? Do decisions made in the past change when the truth of the matter comes to light? Michael Stevenson’s abstract paintings beg these questions and more.

<><><><><><><><><><><>Design Conversation: Complete Streets
Tuesday, March 7th : 6:15pm

Wind Up Space
12 West North Avenue : 21201

An urban planning approach called Complete Streets, which strives to create public streets that prioritize the safety of people over the movement of cars, will be discussed during a forum presented by D Center at the Windup Space, 12 West North Avenue, on March 7 from 6:15 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.

Speakers will include Bikemore executive director Liz Cornish, architect and planner Klaus Philipsen, and City Council member Ryan Dorsey, who plans to introduce a bill to make the Complete Streets planning approach mandatory in Baltimore.

<><><><><><><><><><><>Master Story Tellers: Music with Caleb Stine
Wednesday, March 8th : 7:30pm

Bird in Hand
11 East 33rd Street : 21218

Master Story Tellers at The Ivy Bookshop is a series exploring the art and craft of storytelling. Our objective is to delve into the nature of narration, gaining insight from a range of different art forms and practitioners. Literature, journalism, film, graphic design, documentary photography, music—each is a distinct mode of communication, a means of structuring a narrative employed to share information, relate experiences and tell a story.

Caleb Stine is a singer/songwriter from Baltimore whose timeless style and personal lyrics have stamped him as the cornerstone of the Baltimore folk scene. Much like his Baltimore home, Stine keeps his music honest, hardworking and unafraid to tell it like it is.  To date, Stine has released nine albums, scored music for films, acted Off-Broadway and traveled the country singing his songs

<><><><><><><><><><><>Artist as Culture Producer: A BmoreArt Speaker Series
Thursday, March 9th : 6:30pm

Motor House
120 West North Avenue : 21201

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 click here to RSVP for your free ticket.

6:30 Check in and seating will open

7:00 Discussion

8:00 Audience Q&A

8:30 – 9:30 Reception

<><><><><><><><><><><>Poems from the Mountains: New Paintings and Poetry by Bart O’Reilly :: Opening Reception + Poetry Reading
Thursday, March 9th : 5:30-7pm

Chesapeake Gallery
Harford Community College : Bel Air

<><><><><><><><><><><>The Fundred Reserve :: Official Reception
Thursday, March 9th : 6:30pm

The Corcoran
500 17th Street NW : Washington DC

Situated within the Corcoran’s Rotunda, Atrium and Gallery 1 will be the Fundred Dollar Bill Project’s 453,168 (and counting) hand-drawn representations of $100 bills from across the country. All visitors will be invited to learn about the project and create their own unique Fundreds, a currency of imagination, which will be prominently added to the presentation.

Beginning in New Orleans to its current national presence, this extensive exhibition includes documents and artifacts of the decade-long effort to represent the people against lead toxicity in our environment. The massive, operational, two-ton SAFEHOUSE Door from New Orleans becomes the portal to the Rotunda where the beautifully appointed Fundred Presentation Pallet, topped with hundreds of thousands of bundled Fundreds, can be viewed. Wall-sized photo-mapping and investigations of the lead presence in D.C., conducted by Corcoran graduate students, as well as original artworks by other students, are also featured.

Since beginning in 2006, the Fundred Dollar Bill Project has evolved into a national collective project between Mel Chin Studio, MIT Co-Lab, several universities, museums, nonprofits and lead poisoning prevention organizations, and thousands of schools throughout the United States. The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University hosts the project headquarters this year, as engagement campaigns are developed in Washington, D.C., and Flint, Michigan.

Official Reception, Thursday, March 9 at 6:30 p.m., RSVP
Join us for the official reception to celebrate the opening of the Fundred Reserve exhibit and local engagement campaign.

<><><><><><><><><><><>Topsoil :: Opening Reception
Friday, March 10th : 6-8pm

Baltimore Clayworks
5707 Smith Avenue : 21209

Bill Van Gilder, Curator
The exhibition Topsoil investigates and displays artists who dig their own clay and glaze materials or use alternative firing processes.

<><><><><><><><><><><>The Third Annual BROS Swanktacular
Saturday, March 11th : 7-10pm

2640 Space
2640 St. Paul Street : 21218

Join the Baltimore Rock Opera Society in our epic quest to find a Forever Home in Baltimore City! At this benefit party the BROS will join forces with one of the most exciting symphonic organizations in Baltimore: Occasional Symphony. If you loved Convergence Maximus, this is an evening of revelry you don’t want to miss! The crown jewel of the evening will be a totally unique and collaborative performance from our very first rock opera, Gründlehämmer, featuring the original shadowplay! The program will also feature Occasional Symphony’s most epic pieces and additional symphonic collaborations with BROS musicians.

Our silent auction this year features tons of amazing local items, as well as two “best-in-the house” tickets to Hamilton on Broadway on your choice of dates! Yes, you read that right.

Closing out the night is Sarah Sullivan and the New Old Fashioneds, bringing you the best classics of swing and jazz. We’ll have a delicious spread of gourmet foods provided by some of your favorite local restaurants, accompanied by an equally titillating selection of local drinks. Hosted at Baltimore’s historic 2640 Space, a perfect backdrop to spin our rags into royalty. We invite you to dress in your best medieval finery or your swankiest partygoing threads.
The Occasional Symphony is a Baltimore grassroots orchestra whose mission is to create innovative concert celebrations to engage the Baltimore community and illuminate the unparalleled experience of hearing live music curated for living spaces. Join BROS to create a rock palace that will enrich Baltimore for the next 7,000 years!

<><><><><><><><><><><>Leigh Ruple: Street Light :: Opening Reception
Saturday, March 11th : 6-8pm

St. Charles is pleased to present Street Light, a solo exhibition of recent work by Leigh Ruple. In these large color filled paintings, time of day is traced when the human figure transitions within its analogously atmospheric, mysterious, and temporal environment.

Ruple’s studio practice includes drawing daily, creating a timeline of scenes in diary format. These scenes are translated through fantasy into the structures of her painted world. High chroma gradients embody the emotional experience of navigating the architectural environments of New York City where the artist lives.

These scenes tell stories about Leigh’s emotional states or the imagined emotional states of other people. Painting renders unquantifiable feelings into transformed hand crafted images. Temperatures become the tonal articulation of figures but the figures and their worlds share very similar color codes. This color sharing allows for moments when the body is the environment and vice versa.

The scenes are from NYC but they have a familiarity to any city and to any pedestrian, allowing the viewer to feel that they have been to this place or seen this person before. The handmade gradients are finessed with a squirrel brush method. This smoothes our vision, slows us down, and asks us to spend time looking closer, seeing the scene anew.

More info at: www.stcharlesprojects.com, insta: @stcharlesprojects

<><><><><><><><><><><>“”Air Quotes: Jennifer Grimyser :: Opening Reception
Saturday, March 11th : 7-10pm

Guest Spot @ The Reinstitute
1715 North Calvert Street : 21202

Guest Spot @ THE REINSTITUTE is excited to announce Jennifer Grimyser’s solo exhibition, “”Air Quotes. The exhibition will open on Saturday, March 11, 2017 and will be on view through Saturday April 15, 2017. The Opening Reception will take place on Saturday March 11, 2017 from 7pm-10pm.

Photography is known for its contentious history surrounding issues of body politics and legitimacy. Our understanding of history is greatly influenced by the reliance on pictorial memory. Today, society has difficulty discerning a multitude of independent objectives. Manipulation and speed are fundamental to our visceral and political landscapes, contributing to our inability to decipher raw data in real time.

The cultural phenomenon of hyper-connectivity has institutionalized the id.

Thephysicalgesturing of air“quotes”signals the critique of falsehood, similar to the way in which the snap of the fingers punctuates the urgency of time. Jennifer Grimyser’s exhibition “”Air Quotes examines the cultural conditioning through which digital photography desensitizes society’s preconceived ideas around the manipulated image. The exhibition is at the juncture of digitization and the aesthetics of a studio-based practice. Jennifer Grimyser’s photography utilizes both iconography and language for a comparative synthesis of play, physicality, and medium.

<><><><><><><><><><><>Abdi Farah: America’s Team :: Opening Reception
Saturday, March 11th : 7-10pm

Platform
116 West Mulberry Street : 21201

Platform Gallery is pleased to present AMERICA’S TEAM, on view at 116 W Mulberry Street. AMERICA’S TEAM is a solo, multi-disciplinary exhibition of works by ABDI FARAH, an artist from Baltimore, MD currently living and working in New Orleans. AMERICA’S TEAM is a new body of work by Farah that is complete with programming throughout the two months of the exhibition.

“The specific phrase is a feat marketing coined by the Dallas Cowboys in the 90’s to signify that although they were based in a particular city in Texas, they, above all others in the hearts of the country are, “America’s Team.” More generally, the phrase describes a specific group of people chosen to represent another specific group, but by whose choice? As we witnessed in the recent election the right to define ourselves or choose those who represent us is rarely a straightforward, painless, or fair process.

The works in this show represent groups of individuals linked by a shared affiliation, affiliations that are chosen and at other times forced upon or inherited. Formally the works presented employ a collage aesthetic, incorporating various languages of representation and image making. In all of the works I am in search of the place where collective and individual identity intersect and either conflict or cohere in compelling ways.

Many of the works incorporate sewing and embroidery. There is a simultaneous aggression and fragility to sewing that I hope embodies the malleability of identity and the tenuous nature of our freedom to self-determination. Freedom that if mistreated may, like an intricate quilt or tapestry, begin to unravel.” – Abdi Farah

<><><><><><><><><><><>Not the Grammys :: Opening Reception
Saturday, March 11th : 7-10pm

Terrault
218 West Saratoga Street : 21201

Terrault is pleased to present NOT THE GRAMMYS, juried by Stephanie Barber, Mina Cheon, and Amy Sherald includes work from a selected group of eleven diverse artists. This exhibition gave an opportunity for artists from any range of experience, location, and mediums to participate and have their work considered. The selected works span from painting, photography, scupture, and more.

<><><><><><><><><><><>FATHOM: Identity in Abstraction :: Opening Reception
Saturday, March 11th : 6-8pm

Creative Alliance
3134 Eastern Avenue : 21224

Resident artist Alfonso Fernandez’s large scale paintings, alongside Rachel Rotenberg’s enormous wood sculptures, explore the depths of contemporary abstraction where identity is both alluded to and allowed to remain a mystery.

FREE – Please RSVP!

<><><><><><><><><><><>Arts Every Day 10th Anniversary Symposium
Saturday, March 11th : 8:30am-3pm

Baltimore Design School
1500 Barclay Street : 21202

$40 General Admission
$25 Educator Admission
Breakfast and Lunch Included
Arts Every Day (AED) celebrates 10 years of bringing art to Baltimore City Public Schools with a two-day anniversary event at the Baltimore Design School on March 10-11, 2017. The celebration kicks off with an Recognition Ceremony to recognize the individuals and organizations who have made an impact on the arts in Baltimore City Schools over the last ten years. The second day will feature a day-long symposium that will convene a cross-section of teachers, administrators and artists to discuss the state of arts education in Baltimore and address how we can prepare for the next generation of creative thinkers in the city.

The symposium on March 11th will feature keynote speakers Paige Hernandez , a Baltimore School of the Arts Alumnus, performing artist, director, choreographer, and playwright, and Stefanie DeLuca, co-author of Coming of Age in the Other America. Stefanie will discuss how youth can be motivated by an “identity project” — or a strong passion such as music, art or a dream job– to finish school and build a career. Featured workshops throughout the day include: Blurring The Musical Lines: Improvisational Hip Hop Meets Classical with Baltimore Boom Bap Society, Where Do We Go From Here? A Call To Action with Circles of Voices, Social and Emotional Learning in a Creative Classroom with Futuremakers, and Don’t Sweat the Technique: Hip Hop Strategies for the Classroom and the Stage. Learn more about the events at www.artseveryday.org/anniversary

<><><><><><><><><><><>Artist Conversation: Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo in Conversation with Senior Curator Kristen Hileman
Sunday, March 12th : 3-4pm

Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive : 21218

In conjunction with the closing of Front Room: Guerrilla Girls, hear from one of the legendary Guerrilla Girls artist-activists, Frida Kahlo, in conversation with Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Kristen Hileman. The conversation will reflect on the Guerrilla Girls’ legacy and the importance of the group’s work to expose sexism and racism in the art world, politics, and popular culture. It will consider the merits and challenges of anonymity as an intentional strategy for social change, and examine museums as sites for social and political discourse.

Reservations Required

Related Stories
Baltimore art news updates from independent & regional media

This week's news includes: For Freedoms NGA residency, Chad Helton named CEO at Enoch Pratt, BOPA update, Baltimore Sun Guild rally, The Shape of Power at SAAM, Nancy Proctor leaving The Peale, Academy Art Museum's new director Charlotte Potter Kasic, Latinx artists, and more!

The best weekly art openings, events, and calls for entry happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas.

This Week: Free Fall Baltimore, Deerhoof /Pearl /Mowder Oyal at Ottobar, Doors Open Kick-Off, Ta-Nehisi Coates at Pratt Library, New/Next Film Fest, In the Stacks Concert Series at Peabody Library, Our Art Room Artist Collective exhibition opening reception at The Peale, and more!

Maryland’s Democratic Champion for the US Senate

Maryland Cannot Afford to Turn the US Senate into Republican Control

Baltimore art news updates from independent & regional media

Celebrating André De Shields, BOPA bailout, Creatively Black Baltimore exhibition at Harborplace, Pedro Ledesma III wins the Trawick Prize, Ammoora makes NYT best restaurants list, Esther Kläs at CPM, BMA's 110th anniversary, Leslie Malin of Chesapeake Shakespeare interviewed by Rob Lee, and more!