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.
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Apokaluptein 16389067: Jesse Krimes | Reception + Artist’s Talk
Tuesday, February 6th : 5-7pm
Julio Fine Arts
Loyola University Maryland :: 21210
The Julio Fine Arts Gallery at Loyola University Maryland presents Apokaluptein 16389067. Working 12 hours a day while in prison, Jesse Krimes drew old master works and transferred portraits of offenders taken from newspapers on the drawings. The works became larger and turned into landscapes. Influenced by Dante’s Divine Comedy and Agamben’s The Kingdom and the Glory, panels depicting heaven and hell were added, creating Apokaluptein: 16389067. The mural was made on 39 stolen prison bed sheets that were smuggled, one by one, out of prison. The work defied the system, and continues to be a commentary on our society that promotes criminal behavior and punishes people with little thought of reform.
Since his release from prison Krimes’ work continues to investigate the human condition in an attempt to “disentangle complex value systems and hierarchies”. He lives and works in Philadelphia. Krimes is represented by Burning in Water Gallery, New York City. In 2017, he received a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Fellow, an Independence Foundation Fellow, and was a Right of Return, USA Fellow.
Join us for Jesse Krimes: Creative Expression as Resistance on Monday Feb. 5, 6 p.m. in the 4th floor programming room and hear Jesse talk about what he learned in prison. Join us the following night for a reception in the gallery, Tuesday, Feb.6, 5-7 p.m.
The Julio Fine Arts Gallery is supported in part by a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council. To discover more about Maryland State Arts Council grants and how they impact Maryland’s arts sector, visit msac.org. Support for this exhibit comes in part from the Sehn Family.
Cost/registration information:
Free and open to the public; no registration required
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Perennials : Artist Lecture and Opening Reception
Thursday, February 8: 5-8 PM
An artist talk will be held from 5-6pm followed by a reception on Thursday, February 8th, 2018 from 6-8 p.m. The event is located at 930 King Street in the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center at Montgomery College’s Silver Spring/Takoma Park campus. For more information, visit http://
The King Street Gallery presents Perennials from February 5 – March 10, 2018. Perennials is an exhibition from a collective of six artists working across media to address ideas of growth, impermanence and survival of plants within the changing American landscape.
It is the contrast between the cared for and the forgotten plants thatinterests this collective of six artists: Ellie Irons, Christopher Kennedy, Suzy Kopf, Emmaline Payette, Anne Percoco, and Valerie Wiseman. With humor, science and the extended study of art practice, the artists of Perennials engage their audience with the plant world. A perennial is broadly defined as a plant that lives for more than two years, but many perennials live much longer than that. They are the survivors of the plant world, spreading out and taking hold wherever they can. Perennials fight to survive, season after season, year after year in a world that might not want them.
About the Artists:
Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco’s (Brooklyn, NY) collaborative project, Next Epoch Seed Library is focused on preserving weedy species most likely to survive and thrive in a landscape dominated by human excess. Iterations of Irons and Percoco’s mobile library display gathered seeds, plants in growth and include instructions on how to properly expand the collection.Christopher Kennedy’s (Brooklyn, NY) work considers marginal areas such as highway underpasses and abandoned sidewalk planters. With his background as an environmental engineer, Christopher approaches the urban landscape as a field scientist, presenting his collected samples as art specimen, his findings as art ‘zines.Suzy Kopf (Baltimore, MD) uses wallpaper combines found imagery of popular nonnative houseplants. Kopf is interested in the import and domestication of plants not originally from North America to become part of the American aesthetic.Emmaline Payette’s (Brooklyn, NY) work utilizes post-consumer materials to engage her audience in questions of ecology. Her rocks and boulders made from single use plastic bags, contrasted with ‘real’ natural elements such as live plants and twigs blur the line between reality and parody.
Valerie Wiseman (Washington, DC) looks for the humor in the recent elevation of certain plants to cult status documenting indoor and outdoor plant in her mugshot series. The roughness of Valerie’s polaroids evokes a 1990’s American Apparel aesthetic that speaks to the dated aesthetic of trends.
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Baltimore Dance Project at UMBC
Thursday, February 8th – Saturday, February 10th
Proscenium Theatre
UMBC Performing Arts + Humanities Building :: 21250
Baltimore Dance Project presents a blend of new, recent, and repertory works at UMBC: Featuring the company premiere of Unravel, choreographed in 1995 by the late Eric Hampton and reconstructed by Alison Crosby, and an excerpt from Framework, one of the company’s earliest works, choreographed by the late Elizabeth Walton, the company’s founding artistic director. New works include a solo by Sandra Lacy, and Tipping Point by Ryan Bailey.
The program also includes Doug Hamby’s Square Breath, a tour de force of intensity and desperation, and Carol Hess’ LightForest, a venture through breathtaking images of nature, featuring five dancers, colorful projections and score by Timothy Nohe via wearable sound devices.
Known for its edgy artistic collaborations between choreographers, composers, sound artists, visual artists, engineers, and technologists, Baltimore Dance Project infuses visual media, sound, light and technology into riveting dance performance.
Tickets: $20 general admission, $10 students and seniors, $7 UMBC students. Tickets are available online and can also be purchased at the box office one hour prior to showtime.
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Constellations & Crossroads
Friday, February 9th – 18th
Arena Players
801 McCulloh Street :: 21201
Two short rock operas of the African-American Experience. Both presented in one night as a co-production of Arena Players & Baltimore Rock Opera Society (BROS)
Arena Players, Baltimore’s historic African American community theater, and Baltimore Rock Opera Society are partnering on an epic night of entertainment.
Determination of Azimuth traces the work and career of Katherine Johnson, a black female mathematician who rose within the ranks at NASA to become the chief mathematician responsible for computing paths for manned rocketry on the Apollo program. Katherine’s words and formulas become the elements of of a powerful journey. “Putting rockets into space is the easy part – getting them back home is where it gets hard.”
The Battle of Blue Apple Crossing is a blues musical storm where religious deities battle for the soul of a human musician in a fight for the ages. The music follows American history from gospel, field spirituals & blues to early rock and roll & garage rock.
Both shows will be fully produced musical spectacles with a live band. The 90 minute presentation will take place at Arena Players intimate space in West Baltimore. Don’t miss this historic collaboration between two of Baltimore’s most exciting community performance groups.
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Timothy J Horjus + Jim Condron | Opening Receptions + Artist Talks
Friday, February 9th : 6-9pm
Rosenberg + Silber Galleries
Goucher College :: 21204
Timothy J Horjus: Subverted Sublime will be presented in Goucher College’s Rosenberg Gallery in the Kraushaar Auditorium from January 17 through February 26, 2018.
Horjus creates artwork that functions aesthetically within the framework of high formalism and the stylistic tendencies of post-painterly abstraction. His paintings are pretty and handsome, and visually cling to the antiquated ideals of modernism, however, through a conceptual base and contemporary references, they also function within the current cultural discussion of information transmission.
Jim Condron: Diminishing Returns, a solo exhibition showcasing multiple paintings and new sculptural works will be presented in Goucher College’s Silber Art Gallery in the Sandy J. Unger Athenaeum from January 30 through March 25, 2018. An artist reception and talk will be held February 9, 2018, 6-9 p.m. And a panel discussion, Diminishing Returns: A Discussion of the Economics of Art, will be held on March 2, 6-7:15 p.m. in Goucher’s Merrick Lecture Hall, located in the Dorsey College Center. The artist, Jim Condron, will be in conversation with Doreen Bolger, former director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, David Findlay, Pugh Family Professor of Economics, Colby College, and Laura Amussen, Goucher College’s director of exhibitions and curator. The panel will discuss the economics of art.
Jim Condron: Diminishing Returns, incites viewers to examine the application of the economic principle of the law of diminishing returns to art and art making in the 21st century. The paintings in the show range in size from 5 x 6 inches to 90 x144 inches. Each painting gradually increases in size while maintaining the project’s foundational proportion. The sculptural works in the show reference farming practices and consider the framework by which the economic concept of the law of diminishing returns was founded and explained. The agriculturally based sculptures and abstract paintings also investigate the law of diminishing marginal utility. A highlight of the show is a sculpture made from a vintage 1940’s General GG tractor in a bed of Red Bird Peppermint Puffs. Visitors are invited to experience the principle of diminishing marginal utility by eating as many of the candies as they like.
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200th Anniversary Celebration Frederick Douglass Day
Saturday, February 10th : 12-4pm
Reginald F. Lewis Museum
830 East Pratt Street :: 21202
Celebrate the 200th birthday of Maryland abolitionist Frederick Douglass at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum with an array of activities honoring this iconic statesman. John Stauffer, a professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University will present a lecture on Frederick Douglass’ America. Other activities will include readings of Douglass’s speeches by living history re-enactors, a talk on Mapping Douglass by Johns Hopkins University Professor Lawrence Jackson and a children’s art and story hour with illustrator London Ladd on his recent book, Frederick’s Journey: The Life of Frederick Douglass.
FREE
Schedule of Presentations
Noon and 2 pm
Children’s Program: Drawing Workshop and Illustrator’s Program with London Ladd
12:30 PM
Lecture/Digital Presentation: Mapping Douglass with JHU Professor Lawrence Jackson
1:30 PM and 3:30 PM
Frederick Douglass Living History Presentation with Michael Crutcher
2 pm
Lecture: Frederick Douglass’ America with Harvard University Professor John Stauffer
Washington Post Article: Five Myths about Frederick Douglass by Henry Louis Gates and John Stauffer
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Ryan Syrell // Elsa Fitzgerald | Opening Receptions
Opening Reception Saturday, February 10: 4:30 – 6:30
Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower First Floor and Mezzanine Galleries
21 S Eutaw St, Baltimore, Maryland 21201
Image Credit: Ryan Syrell – Desk at Night
The Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower presents two new exhibits: Adventures Close to Home by Ryan Syrell in the First Floor and Mezzanine Galleries, and Elsa Fitzgerald: The Art of Lace by Stacy Stube in the Studio Resident Gallery on the second floor. Both exhibits are on view Saturdays from February 3 through July 25, 2018 from 11am to 4pm. A free opening reception takes place Saturday, February 10 from 4:30 to 6:30pm where guests have the opportunity to view the exhibition, meet the artists and enjoy light refreshments. The Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower is managed by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts and is located at 21 S. Eutaw Street.
The works in Ryan Syrell’s Adventures Close to Home depict intimate domestic spaces and objects – paintings which grow out of running dialogues and exchanges, relationships, personal histories, and trajectories. They navigate bedrooms, kitchens, tables, desks, and dressers – seeking out, and celebrating a cluttered and cacophonous intimacy. They present keys, cups, plants, computers, paintings, pens, shadows, movements, and absences with equal significance. Syrell paints in a manner that articulates a sense of movement, interconnectivity, and slippage with regard to language and perception. These paintings inhabit the peripheral moment before sensation and language are reconciled in one another. Simultaneously joyful and anxious, manic and celebratory, these spaces can feel overwhelming or claustrophobic, but also by turns calm, ludic, and absurd. The artist employs a form of painting concerned with imbuing vitality into the mundane — seeking out, amplifying, and articulating beautiful moments without ignoring the pervasive anxiety of the time.
It was on Bali, “Island of the Gods,” that designer Stacy Stube was inspired to create the luxury fashion house of Elsa Fitzgerald. Inspired by the island’s traditional Kebaya dress, the exhibition The Art of Lace features nostalgic, detail-oriented fashion dresses created by Stube, a current Bromo Tower resident artist. Many of her pieces feature hand-sewn floral lace motifs that combine 1920’s elegance with Balinese craftsmanship.
Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower is open every Saturday from 11am to 4pm. Guests have an opportunity to view artwork throughout the building, including 15 floors of working artist studios and special exhibits. Visitors can also learn more about the historical building and participate in a tour of the clock room ($8).
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April Camlin: Tight Craft | Opening Reception
Saturday, February 10th : 7-10pm
Current Space
421 North Howard Street :: 21201
Current Space is proud to present Tight Craft, a solo exhibition by April Camlin.
Opening Reception : February 10, 7 – 10pm
Exhibition Duration : February 10 – March 4
Gallery Hours : Sat & Sun, 12 – 4pm
I have wrestled with the hand in my practice. I am a weaver, a slow goer. Working within a medium loaded with historic, personal mythologies – stories that involve oppression, coercion, globalization, industrialization, manipulation…but also life, blood, ritual, love, mysticism, death, resistance, rebirth. My loom is powered only by my own body and my resolve. Why is this important to me? This process demands everything from my hands, and while they go about their assigned task, my mind is free to go exploring. Whose long-forgotten chronicles am I picking up on as I cast my shuttle?
There has been much critical discourse surrounding the rift between fine art and craft. Many art historians make the argument that this is a gendered schism. Navigating the psychological terrain of being a female identified person working within a historically gendered medium has been complicated for me. Am I perpetuating stereotypes by working with this medium? What role did my own socialization play in my gravitation towards the loom?
These questions have caused me to look deeper into the whys of weaving. It is through the resulting ruminations that I have come to understand the deeper, transcendent forces surrounding this craft. The histories of struggle and resistance and life that are woven into this tradition speak volumes about the power of cloth. The act of weaving holds immense potential to connect and educate, and to subvert the forces of capitalism that have taken hold of the very fibers of our being. To labor with love at the loom is to dance with gestures of autonomy.
Tight Craft is the culmination of a year and a half of untangling my own repressions using needle and thread. The title is taken from a common phrase tossed around in craft communities. It’s meant to invoke a value hierarchy based on successful execution of a work. In this context, success is defined by technical prowess, mastery of a skill. But I resent the notion that because my work is complex and labor intensive, and made using expensive tools, it must implicitly hold more value. Is tight craft just another system of repression, of valuing pre-existing structures over intuition?
How are we instructed to value our work? Often the numbers seem totally disconnected from any rationality, and the price structure creates a strange sort of appraisal system: that which costs more must inherently be of higher value, and therefore is more desirable to the collector. On the other hand, if you value your work based on how many hours it takes to construct, you may as well be punching a clock on an assembly line. And as artists, here we are, wage workers once again! Art is meant to free us from these conditions, not mirror them. In the new paradigm, labor does not exist as a signifier of monetary value.
It’s with these sentiments in mind that I’ve decided to price all work in this show using a random number generator set to a value threshold between 0 and 10,000. These numbers aren’t representative of anything real. If the value assigned to a work of art is not related to the labor invested, that labor is then liberated, a meditative act of self-expansion. The works in this show were generated in a state of mind freed from the illusion of financial security. The system of capital is beyond repair – it must be broken, unraveled, one thread at a time. TIME IS NOT MONEY. TIME IS TIME.
I am a Baltimore based labor artist, percussion enthusiast, and ventriloquist. My work is a product of my lifelong interest in textiles, repetition, intuitive mathematics, and labor. It is the means through which I engage in self-reflection and self-expansion. I am currently a member of the MICA adjunct Fiber faculty family and a full-time artist/musician. I want to talk to you about what we can build together.
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2018 Rubys Grant Workshop – Baltimore City
Monday, February 12: 6-7:30 PM
The Motor House
120 W North Ave, Baltimore, Maryland 21201
