Reading

BmoreArt’s Picks: Baltimore Art Galleries, Openings, and Events September 12 – 18

Previous Story
Article Image

The Residue of Representation: Adam Pendleton

Next Story
Article Image

Fourth BmoreArt Journal to Release September 16

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]!

<><><><><><><>

THIS WEEKEND!!!!

Have you gotten your tickets yet to BmoreArt’s Magazine Launch Party??? Release of our next print journal, Issue 04: Community, happens on Saturday, September 16 at the Baltimore Eagle. Tickets and info here! We can’t wait to celebrate with you!

Many thanks to The Eagle, Pixilated Photo Booth, Elyx Vodka, and Saval foods! We are pretty sure this party (and magazine) is going to be the best one yet… Dress is fancy cocktail, leather chic, or whatever you want. We’re happy as long as you are there.

GET BMOREART’S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

We’ll send you our top stories of the week, selected event listings, and our favorite calls for entry — right to your inbox every Tuesday.

<><><><><><><><>Stephen Towns: A Migration | Artist’s Reception
Tuesday, September 12th  : 6-8pm

Rosenberg Gallery
Goucher College : Towson

Stephen Towns paintings and mixed works explore African Diaspora through portraiture, and often incorporate insects, such as butterflies, as metaphor. His work is a direct response to the many issues plaguing African American culture; issues such as loss of ancestral roots, slavery, class, education, skin tone, and religion. These works reflect Towns own struggles to attain a sense of self-knowledge, self-worth, and spirituality beyond the Christian values that are often idealized in African American culture. Drawing from personal experience and research Towns work is densely layered and symbolizes endurance, strength, and spirituality; while simultaneously embodying each of his subjects. A Migration is a collection of new and previous works highlighting the migration of Africans to the Americas. These works provided Towns an outlet to process all that he has learned about the violence of American history and impart a framework on how to navigate and articulate the current anger and frustration that exists throughout the nation and the world today.

Stephen Towns: A Migration, will be presented at Goucher College’s Rosenberg Gallery in the Kraushaar Auditorium from August 16 through October 16th, 2017.  This exhibit, which is free, open to the public, and accessible to all, can be viewed Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. An artist’s reception will be held Tuesday, September 12th, 2017 from 6 to 8 p.m. Please visit www.goucher.edu/rosenberg or call 410-337-6477 for more information.

<><><><><><><><>Jo Smail: The Past is Present | Reception
Wednesday, September 13th  : 6-8pm

Goya Contemporary Gallery
3000 Chestnut Avenue, Mill Centre #214 : 21211

Curated by Amy Eva Raehse

September 13- November 07, 2017

Goya Contemporary Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by the Baltimore-based artist, South African native, Jo Smail.

Baltimore-based, South African artist Jo Smail (b. 1943, Durban), is celebrated world-wide for her abstract paintings, drawings, collages, and prints; frequently composed through multiple states of material accruals, subtractions, and modifications.   Often said to be most profound when straddling the visual weight of presence with that of absence, Smail exemplifies the elusive nature of life by means of powerful and still vulnerable representations of the past, the present, and hints of the future.  Educated in South Africa, Smail moved to Baltimore in 1985 and has taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art since 1988. Newly retired, it may be said that the brilliance of Smail’s artwork is in both formal exploration as well as invention.  Her sagacity arrives from personal history, learning to recover and thrive following myriad adversities from her life during South African Apartheid, a devastating Baltimore studio fire (1995), and a life-altering stroke (2000). This new body of work, however, speaks very specifically to her South African origins. Digging into her archives of family recipes, documents, newspapers, and books from the 1950s-1960s, Smail makes a direct connection from the politics of the past to the politics of present day.  Through popular culture references, the socio-political content of personal effects is unearthed, echoing the often-dark history of South Africa, contemporaneously.

The exhibition “The Past Is Present” will feature 10 large paintings alongside a collection of smaller-scaled “constructions.” The exhibition’s curator, Amy Raehse, hopes the union of politic, poetry, the artist’s personal experience, and public veracity found in these boldly, hand-made, visual Palimpsest-like objects help people process the socio-political climate of today.  A catalogue accompanies this exhibition with contributions from BMA curator and department head, Shannen Hill, and local painter and MICA colleague, Timothy App.   Smail writes in the text of the associated catalogue, “The thick paint is my now, the rest is my history.”  And for the viewer, the experience is a rich mix of both.

<><><><><><><><>HIGH ZERO 2017
Thursday, September 14th  – Sunday, September 17th

Baltimore Theatre Project
45 West Preston Street : 21201

Join us for the 19th annual High Zero Festival of experimental and improvised music!

Details and tickets at highzero.org

Doors open 7:30 PM / Performances start 8:30 PM sharp!
$15 / $10 students, seniors, and artists (discount available at door only)

Schedule TBA!

Musicians from Afar »
Tania Chen (piano) San Francisco, CA
Michael Gayle (piano) Philadelphia, PA
Sofia Jernberg (voice) Stockholm, Sweden
Kazuhisa Uchihashi (daxophone, guitar) Tokyo & Berlin
Eli Keszler (percussion) New York City, NY
Joe McPhee (sax, pocket trumpet, reeds) Poughkeepsie, NY
Tomeka Reid (cello) Chicago, IL
Carlos Santistevan (bass, electronics) Santa Fe, NM
Sharif Sehnaoui (guitar) Beirut, Lebanon
id m theft able (voice, electronics, objects) Portland, ME
Julian Valdivieso (synthesizer, electronics) Bogota, Colombia

Musicians from Baltimore and DC »
Andrew Bernstein (saxophone)
Dan Deacon (electronics, mechanical instruments)
Baba L’Salaam (abujaphone, voice, found objects)
Jamal Moore (woodwinds, electronics, percussion)
Lexie Mountain (voice, electronics)
Paul Neidhardt (percussion)
Kate Porter (voice, cello)
Lynne Price (dance)
Shelly Purdy (percussion)
M.C. Schmidt (electronics, percussion)
Maria Shesiuk (keyboards, synthesizer)

<><><><><><><><>The Sun Ra Arkestra
Friday, September 15th  : 8pm

The Ottobar
2549 North Howard  Street : 21218

Ottobar’s 20th Anniversary/ Celebrated Summer Records 11th Anniverary bash with
The Sun Ra Arkestra
with special guest
WUME
and The Chris Pumphrey Sextet

<><><><><><><><>BmoreArt Magazine Launch Party | Issue 04: Community
Saturday, September 16th  : 7-9pm

Baltimore Eagle
2022 North Charles Street : 21218

We can’t wait to celebrate our new print journal with you!

While all of our past Magazine Launch parties have been unique, this one promises to be truly special in its own original way… It’s time to buy your tickets, pick out your favorite cocktail attire, and dust of your dancing shoes. Leather attire is encouraged, but by no means required.

This party’s host is the Baltimore Eagle. They have extended their hospitality to their sports bar, dance club, outdoor deck, and art gallery, where BmoreArt is hanging a special exhibition. The Eagle is creating a signature cocktail for the event, generously sponsored by Elyx, and a menu brought to you by Saval.

Your ticket includes a copy of the newest issue, Pixilated Photo Booth, food, drink, and the knoweldge that you are supporting BmoreArt’s independent art journal.

Our T-Shirt Ticket option includes a limited edition community Tshirt by Wickerham & Lomax, our cover models.

Issue 04: Community explores Baltimore collectives, altnerative art spaces, emerging theater groups, and artists who redefine the meaning of community in their work. Featured artists include Wickerham & Lomax, Dr. Joan Gaither, Abdu Ali, Marian April Glebes, Phaan Howng, Elliot Doughtie, Tanya Garcia, CJay Phillip, emerging theater groups like ArtsCentric and Stillpointe, and more.

Top Image: The Baltimore Girls photographed by Theresa Keil for the BmoreArt Journal Issue 04

<><><><><><><><>

Confirmed Mood
Opening Reception: September 16, 7 – 10pm

Current Space

421 N Howard St, Baltimore, Maryland 21201

Exhibition Duration: September 16 – October 1
Gallery Hours: Saturdays + Sundays 12 – 4pm

Featuring: Aschely Cone, Sutton Demlong, & Nick Primo

Shape and form, enduring elements unto themselves, ultimately give sense to composition. In the artworks of Aschely Cone, Sutton Demlong, and Nick Primo they are not merely ends. The construction of the composition is represented as both the subject and object of a complete, logical, and intuitive organization of line, color, shape, form and texture. While independent of one another, in material, ideology, and method, the artist’s unified concept of “Making as Meaning and Material as Metaphor” draws their practices together while simultaneously reinforcing their separate investigations.

In her paintings, Cone employs the archway and the shield as motifs to express notions of obstruction, access, and denial. Stark chalk lines and color fields scaffold together and reveal the supporting structure of her images. The arch/void and shield/form, employed to suspend entry and exit into the paintings are empowered by their monolithic size and form; they exact on the viewer a duality of passive depths and/or an active concealment of space.

Dissimilarly Demlong invites viewers into light-hearted conversations full of wit and sophistication. Labor intensive hand-cut joinery is literally softened with pigmented flock and interwoven string. He transforms expert woodworking and craft into an act of play that is simultaneously effortless, whimsical, and indicative of dedicated personal industry.

Also resolutely dedicated to craft, Primo’s artworks are influenced by the rigors of making, but reflect the aesthetics of urban revival and decay within Baltimore and Washington DC. Construction materials, building principles, and the contrasting effect between degradation and “new-ness” are examined in his sculptures through a lense of formalism and material. Invoking elements of structure and functionality, his artworks are deliberately ambiguous but not ambivalent to the their associations within the built environment.

Preoccupied with how and where form is imbued with meaning, Cone, Demlong, and Primo, access a formal language in their artworks that utilizes the material anatomy of their compositions as vehicles for inquiry. Anni Albers’ material centric ideology in the following excerpt from Material as Metaphor 1982, speaks to a commonality embraced by each of them:

“We are finding our language, and as we go along we learn to obey their rules and their limits. We have to obey, and adjust to those demands. Ideas flow from it to us and though we feel to be the creator we are involved in a dialogue with our medium. The more subtly we are tuned to our medium, the more inventive our actions will become.”

Though disparate in their handling of material to create artworks, Cone, Demlong, and Primo pose similar questions to their environments. They intuitively discover form and content in their day to day, and seek unconventional methods to embody concepts in the materials they have chosen, or in some cases, the materials that have chosen them.

<><><><><><><><>

Radical Jewelry Makeover: Baltimore Symposium!
Sunday, September 17th  : 10am-5pm

Baltimore Jewelry Center
10 East North Avenue : 21201

Join us for a FREE day of jewelry events open to the public! The Symposium will be held in conjunction with the ongoing Radical Jewelry Makeover: Baltimore project and will feature jewelry demos, mini-workshops, visiting presenters, social activities, & more, all focused on exploring the ways in which jewelry impacts our lives, culture, and environment! This event will take place at the Baltimore Jewelry Center and our neighbor Impact Hub.

This event is made part in possible by a grant from the William G. Baker Memorial Fund

Related Stories
Baltimore news updates from independent & regional media

This week's news includes: J.M. Giordano's Key Bridge community photo essay, changes at BOPA, Area 405 returns, Baker Award finalists announced, MacKenzie Scott's $2M donation to two Baltimore non-profits, Celebrating Joyce J. Scott, Maryland Film Festival updates, and more!

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

This Week:  I don’t dream of labor exhibition ongoing at the Galleries at CCBC, Visiting Voices: Supporting Disabled Artist-Educators and Learners lecture at MICA's Hurwitz Center, Womxn of the World Poetry Slam at the Baltimore War Memorial, Trans Day of Visibility at Red Emma's, and more!

Baltimore news updates from independent & regional media

Six Baltimore Artists Selected for Acquisition by JHU, Joyce J. Scott interviewed about her BMA retrospective, Lane Harlan, Carlos Raba, and Rey Eugenio's Mexican + Filipino Pop-up, Monica Ikegwu on CNN's "Art is Life" segment, Mark Rothko works on paper at the National Gallery of Art, and more!

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

Collection Connections at The Walters celebrates female leadership in conservation, Arts Every Day Cocktails and Conversation at The Peale, Dr. Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson lectures at The Lewis Museum, Xavier Hardison, BlissArmyKnife, and Jennifer McBrien opening reception at Bromo, and more!