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BMOREART’S PICKS: BALTIMORE ART OPENINGS, GALLERIES, AND EVENTS MARCH 27 – APRIL 2

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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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<><><><><><><><>MICA Store | Grand Opening
Wednesday, March 28th : 10am-8pm

The MICA Store
1501 West Mount Royal Avenue : 21217

The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) invites the public to the grand opening of its newly relocated and expanded MICA Store, now located at 1501 W. Mt. Royal Ave., with a special community event on Wednesday, March 28.
The community event will feature special discounts on #MadeInBaltimore products from local vendors including Tiny Dog Press Baltimore, Mount Royal Soap Company, Sew Lab USA, Write Notepads & Company, Creative King and Hold Fast, among others.
The MICA Store will also be selling t-shirts produced by Jubilee Arts’ Youth in Business program, and is the first brick-and-mortar location offering the shirts. Teens in the program will be onsite to talk about their products from 5:30 – 7 p.m.
Jubilee Arts’ Youth in Business is a program that cultivates the entrepreneurial leadership skills of high school aged youth in Sandtown-Winchester by providing hands on experience operating an art-based business. Youth learn how to run a successful business as a team, selling high quality art products (graphically designed screen printed t-shirts, laser cut jewelry and ceramic and mosaic goods) achieving cooperative financial sustainability. Youth owners split 100% of profits generated from revenue that is earned through their sales efforts.

<><><><><><><><>STIFF Curated by René Treviño | Public Reception
Wednesday, March 28th : 5-7pm

The Cade Center for Fine Arts Gallery
Anne Arundel Community College : Arnold

STIFF brings together six contemporary artists in an exhibit curated by René Treviño. Felons might face STIFF sentences; a STIFF knee joint is inflexible. One might STIFF a waiter for bad service; a dead body is called a STIFF. The word STIFF in the title of the exhibit references arousal, rigidity, hardness. The work all has a palpable sense of heat and energy. These six artists assert themselves into complicated conversations about race, identity, gender and sexuality, yet these works have a sense of humor (the way sex is sometimes funny) and a visual splendor.

Artists

Damon Arhos

Cat Gunn

Nathan Miller

Isabelle Schipper

Wickerham & Lomax

The Cade Center for Fine Arts Gallery is on the western side of AACC’s Arnold campus, 101 College Parkway.  Located on the main floor of the Cade building on West Campus, The Cade Art Gallery at Anne Arundel Community College features seven exhibits a year. The span of exhibiting artists is broad, yet each exhibit is focused by theme or medium.

<><><><><><><><>Ethics and the Art Gallery: Heather Darcy Bhandari & Amy Eva Raehse
Thursday, March 29th : 6:30pm

Motor House
120 West North Avenue : 21201

The Re-Model is a BmoreArt Speaker Series featuring Strategic Career Thinking from Art World Insiders

Join us for a discussion on art galleries and ethics with Goya Contemporary Executive Director Amy Eva Raehse (Baltimore, MD) and Heather Darcy Bhandari (NY, NY), an Independent Curator and co-founder of The Remix, author of ART/WORK, and former director at Mixed Greens, a commercial gallery in NY.

Thursay, March 29 / Doors open at 6:30 / Lecture at 7
Motor House Theater

Free to the public with an RSVP! Seating is limited.
Join us for a drink before or after in The Showroom, Motor House’s new cafe and bar.

New Issues of Art/Work will be available for sale !

**This event is generously sponsored by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation and Hotel Indigo.

More info:

Amy Eva Raehse is Executive Director and Curator of Goya Contemporary Gallery which represents emerging and mid-career artists in an international program focused on Post-War and Contemporary Art in both primary and secondary markets. She has curated over 100 exhibitions and has placed artworks in major public and private collections worldwide including MoMA, the Smithsonian(s), the BMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The MET, Chrysler Museum, The Whitney Museum, The Bunker, among countless others. For more than 20 years, Raehse has also remained an independent curator, taught at a number of Colleges and Universities, and lectures extensively on professional practices. A consultant and advisor to many organizations, Raehse is on the Board of Directors at The Creative Alliance of Baltimore, and the Programming Advisory at Maryland Art Place. She has juried myriad platforms including The Ruby’s and Light City, and has authored exhibition catalogue essays and articles in several publications. A member of the Association of Print Scholars and the International Fine Print Dealers Association, Raehse holds a MFA, BFA, and Certificate in Arts Management. A New Yorker by birth but a Baltimorean by choice, Raehse has worked in Museum, not-for-profit, commercial, and academic sectors of the arts. Most recently, Raehse co-produced the largest retrospective to date for MacArthur Fellow Joyce J. Scott (represented by Goya Contemporary) with Grounds For Sculpture in New Jersey.

Heather Darcy Bhandari is an independent curator and co-founder of The Remix (a project-based curatorial team), an adjunct lecturer at Brown University, and a consultant to several for-profit and nonprofit arts institutions. The second edition of her book, ART/WORK, was published by Simon and Schuster in October of 2017.Bhandari also lectures and participates in portfolio reviews and panel discussions across the country. She is on the board of directors of visual arts at Art Omi (an artist residency in Ghent, NY) and the advisory boards of artfcity (an online, art-related publishing platform), CODIFY Art (a multidisciplinary collective of QTPOC artists), and Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn. She was on the board of NURTUREart for nearly a decade. From 2000 to 2016 she was a director of Mixed Greens, a commercial gallery where she curated over one hundred exhibitions while managing a roster of nearly two-dozen emerging to mid-career artists. Most recently, she was the Director of Exhibitions at Smack Mellon, a nonprofit in Brooklyn. Bhandari received a BA from Brown University and an MFA from Pennsylvania State University. Her career began at contemporary galleries Sonnabend and Lehmann Maupin, both in New York City.

<><><><><><><><>Whitfield Lovell | Artist Talk
Thursday, March 29th : 7-8:30pm

Goucher College Kraushaar Auditorium
1021 Dulaney Valley Road : 21204

Whitfield Lovell is internationally renowned for his installations that incorporate masterful Conte crayon portraits of anonymous African Americans from between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement. Using vintage photography as his source, Lovell often pairs his subjects with found objects, evoking personal memories, ancestral connections, and the collective American past. In 2007, Lovell was awarded with a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, often referred to as the “genius grant.”

Works by Whitfield Lovell are featured in major museum collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY: The Smithsonian American Art Museum & The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, DC; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, and many others.

He will talk about his work, his practice and his experiences as an artist.  He will also lay groundwork of the African American experience from reconstruction through the civil rights era. Lovell creates installations informed by contemporary art practices, folk art, vernacular art, and the physical conditions of marginalized communities. His work references the history of African-American community along with being current with culture and ultimately the larger culture of America. Lovell is visiting Goucher as a part of the Center for Art & Media 2018 Unobskey Visiting Artist Series.

This event is free and open to the public, but tickets should be reserved online at http://tickets.goucher.edu or contact Goucher’s Box Office at 410-337-6333.

<><><><><><><><>Hot Bits Queer Erotic Film and Arts Festival + GRL PWR XXX After Party
Saturday, March 31st + Sunday, April 1st

Creative Alliance + Trips Place Lounge
3134 Eastern Avenue : 21224 + 1813 North Charles Street : 21218

Hot Bits celebrates Queer/Trans and People of Color and their pleasure, empowerment and self love. Hot Bits is part of re-writing the alienating categories defined by the mainstream commercial porn and sex industries of who/what is desirable, and what desire looks/feels like. We believe erotic art holds the potential for uncovering the sexual self-determination necessary for fully liberated connection and healing.

Hot Bits is a platform to encourage making and sharing art and encourage first-time filmmakers and DIY projects. They curate a range of erotic indie video, soft to hardcore, as well as performance and visual arts.

This event is 18+

++++ Saturday, March 31st ++++

Join your favorite girls at the Hot Bits XXX Queer Porn Festival after party at Trip’s Place Lounge. We got two bad ass Djs from Philly, your favorite Baltimore Dj Isabejja and the hosts are stacked. You might just get a super special GRL PWR performance 😉

DJS:
bb basura (Philly)
precolumbian (Philly)
Isabejja

Hosts:
GRL PWR
Topshelf
Abdu Ali
Abz aka Abbey Parrish
Kotic Couture
Jaki Griot (Perverts of Color)

<><><><><><><><>Lydia Pettit | Artist Talk
Saturday, March 31st : 2-3:30pm

School 33
1427 Light Street : 21230

Join us on Saturday, March 31, at 2pm for an Artist Talk with Lydia Pettit!

Lydia’s work is currently on view as a part of her solo exhibition entitled BIG SEXY in our Main Gallery and Project Space.

BIG SEXY, an exhibition of paintings by Lydia Petitt, is an exploration of what it means to live after experiencing abuse, and how to come to terms with and respect the body you’re given. After years of unhealthy and traumatic relationships resulting from warped self-image, the artist uses painting to construct worlds that describe the emotional shifts and waves that one goes through in recovery. Pettit’s compositions shift between confrontational and minimized figures, each representing the duality of the strength survivors of abuse are “supposed” to feel, and the fear and doubt they carry with them. Color mirrors emotion, bold brushstrokes emphasize thick flesh, and depictions of tender moments in the bathtub are followed by those representing the melodrama of depression and panic. In BIG SEXY, Pettit seeks to reclaim authority over her image – she’s sharing her own fat, white, unconventional body, and her life inside of it.

Lydia Pettit is an artist and curator from Towson, Maryland. After graduating in 2014 from the Maryland Institute College of art, she opened Platform Arts Center, a studio building, and Platform Gallery, a contemporary art gallery that focused on showing local and regional artists. She ran the gallery with her partner until 2017, and is currently focusing on her painting practice. Pettit is a two time recipient of the Elizabeth Greensheilds grant for representational art. She currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

<><><><><><><><>Women’s History Lecture by Dr. Deborah Willis – Posing Beauty
Saturday, March 31st + Sunday, April 1st

Reginald F. Lewis Museum
830 East Pratt Street : 21202

As a student in the 1970s, Dr. Deborah Willis came to the realization that images of black beauty simply did not exist in the larger culture. Determined to redress this imbalance, Willis examined everything from vintage ladies journals to black newspapers and started what would become a lifelong quest. In this lecture, Willis will discuss the visual history of black women, while reevaluating the idea of beauty from a collection of familiar and unknown photographic works of black women, citing the cultural and sociological histories of the past 300 years.

Book-signing will follow. Books will be available for purchase in the Lewis museum shop.

Let us know you are coming by RSVP. Museum Admission is payable the day of the event.

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