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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Design Conv0 # 94: Artists, Architects, and Making Space for the Arts
Wednesday, September 5th • 6-8pm
The Motor House
120 West North Avenue : 21201
Why do arts spaces need an architect? What can architects learn from working with an artist? What can artists learn from working with an architect?
Artists and designers can work collaboratively to make and understand space for art and culture. In 3, 20-minute presentations by artist/architect teams (of three prevalent structure typologies: performing arts/public assembly/ the theatre; mixed use/ the warehouse, live-work/domestic/ the rowhouse), Design Convo #94 investigates how artists and architects can collaboratively build a more equitable city through the lens of artist-run space.
Design Conversation #94 was developed by BARCO’s ASTA Program in partnership with AIA Baltimore and NDC. BARCO is dedicated to the advancement, development, and preservation of artist-run, owned, and operated spaces in Baltimore City. BARCO’s Arts Space Technical Assistance Program provides comprehensive advisory services to artists and property owners in the design, planning, financing, establishing, and resuscitation of arts spaces, tailored to the specific and unique needs of each artist-run project. Spaces for artists and culture contribute to the ecosystem of a thriving city, build stronger neighborhoods, and enable Baltimore’s artistic and creative talent to flourish.
Through the generous support of the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the Goldseker Foundation, and the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, BARCO is able to provide these services pro bono for eligible art spaces, and will continue to advocate for supporting artists in building and owning their spaces for the long term. For more information on BARCO’s Arts Space Technical Assistance Program, please visit www.baltimoreartsrealty.com
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4th Annual Baltimore Taxidermy Open
Thursday, September 6th • 5-8:30pm
The Walters Art Museum
600 North Charles Street : 21201
The Baltimore Taxidermy Open is one of the city’s most eccentric and fascinating annual events. Presented by the Walters Art Museum and Bazaar, a Hampden shop specializing in natural history items and morbid gifts, the event invites visitors to get up close and personal with inventive works of contemporary alternative taxidermy as well as examples of taxidermy from the Walters’ collection. Watch whimsical creations come to life as taxidermy artists from throughout the region compete for big prizes, learn more about the practice during talks and demonstrations, and use the works on display as inspiration during art-making activities for all ages.
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Pointing To The Sun: An Exercise In Abstraction | Opening Reception
Thursday, September 6th • 6-9pm
Mono Practice
212 McAllister Street : 21202
September 6, 2018 through October 13, 2018
Curator Rod Malin
Artists: David Brown, Zoë Charlton, Stephen Hendee, Terence Hannum, Bill Schmidt, Ariel Cavalcante Foster, Ruri Yi.
Mono Practice is excited to announce its inaugural exhibition, Pointing To The Sun | An Exercise in Abstraction, curated by Rod Malin. The exhibition features the work of David Brown, Zoë Charlton, Ariel Cavalcante Foster, Terence Hannum, Stephen Hendee, Bill Schmidt, and Ruri Yi.
Pointing To The Sun | An Exercise in Abstraction is a celebratory exhibition featuring the works of Baltimore-based artists that will help establish a new beginning – Mono Practice. The importance of creating public space is fundamental to the existence of the human condition. The ability to connect and participate is key to the realization of new possibilities, and new partnerships.
The practice of abstraction is the deity of creation; as of now, one million Earths could fit inside the Sun, yet the Sun at one time will be about the size of Earth. It’s in the accumulation of moments or gestures that we equivocate meaning.
TO SEE AND TO BE SEEN
-Lawrence Weiner
The work in Pointing To The Sun | An Exercise in Abstraction looks to the specific relationship between practice and abstraction, between mind and action, the here and elsewhere. The act of examining inspirational aspirations is common practice for creative fields, putting the mind in far away places to bring back to pace. For the world Baltimore is in now, it is both weirdly close and familiar, yet also undefined; by being everywhere, it is also geographically challenged. For those who are here, it is home.
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Isla: Regarding Paradise | Opening Reception + Lecture
Thursday, September 6th • 6:30-9pm
Center for the Arts Gallery
Towson University : 21252
Dates: Sept. 7 –Oct. 20, 2018
TU Center for the Arts Gallery, Towson University
1 Fine Arts Drive, Towson, MD 21252
Reception: Thursday Sept. 6, 2018, 7:30 p.m.—9:00 p.m.
Lecture: Artist Gabriela Salazar: Thurs., Sept 6 at 6:30pm in the Art Lecture Hall CA 2032
Guest curator Jackie Milad ’05 MFA, explores the theme of “paradise” and what lies beyond the typical postcard representations of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, examining these nations as complex societies struggling to assert economic independence, political autonomy and environmental justice. . The artwork featured in ISLA: Regarding Paradise utilize the etymology of the word “paradise” as a jumping off point, referring to protective structures and enclosures. Thus, architectural references such as cement and rejas, play a unique role in the work of many of the participating artists. This exhibition includes diverse mediums by contemporary artists exploring and questioning this universal concept of “paradise” and claims of its ownership.
Image and at top: Joiri Minaya, Labadee (2017), (still) HD video, 7 min 10 sec
Lecture | Artist Gabriela Salazar
Sept. 6, 6:30pm | Center for the Arts, Art Lecture Hall, CA 2032
1 Fine Arts Drive, Towson, MD 21252
Exhibition opening reception to follow Salazar, an artist featured in the exhibition Isla: Regarding Paradise, works in sculpture, drawing, writing, and site interventions to investigate the relationship between human-made spaces and structures, and the unpredictable or invisible forces that act upon them, reframing how we are affected by the changes in what we create. FREE
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Survival Bias /// Floating on Mended Boats | Opening Reception
Friday, September 7th • 7-10pm
Current Space
421 North Howard Street : 21201
Current Space is proud to present Survival Bias, featuring the work of Brittany De Nigris and Adam Milner and Floating on Mended Boats, a solo exhibition by Seth Adelsberger. Please join us for the opening reception.
Exhibition Duration: September 7th – 29th
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, noon – 4pm
Survival Bias, a two person exhibition by Brittany De Nigris and Adam Milner uses extractions, fragments, impressions, traces and recordings to investigate how the immediate present is structured. Things that define their own what, where and when, are in fact the accumulation of more than one subject, place and time. Each artist employs distinctive tactics to create compositions or arrangements that reference notions of the everyday and deep time interacting in the same space. Survival bias, or survivorship bias, is a term which points to the fact that some artifacts last longer than others, creating an inaccurate perception of the past. In data analysis, total failures are often ignored because they were so fleeting as to not even be within records, creating a false sense of optimism– the ship which doesn’t return from its voyage is not included in the analysis of how to improve the next ship. De Nigris and Milner, however, use sculptures, wall works, and video to embrace and redefine failure; carefully housed artifacts fade away or delicate assemblages crack and shift. Things are given very carefully articulated lives, and also allowed to have their own physical realities that must be contended with — there is both a liveliness and a stillness within everything.
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Floating on Mended Boats
Floating on Mended Boats is an exhibition of small acrylic paintings and photographs made by Seth Adelsberger while on Tilleard Projects’ artist residency in Lamu Island, Kenya during August 2018. These experimental paintings expand Adelsberger’s process oriented approach to abstraction, incorporating an expanded range of color, new paint blotting and transfer techniques, and the use of painted and collaged pieces of found concrete sacks. The work is in response to living in close proximity with the water, Lamu’s boat culture, and the textured weathering of ancient painted walls and boats in the process of being repaired.
Lamu Island is a part of the Lamu Archipelago in Kenya. It is situated 212 miles northeast of Mombasa where the sea channel has to be crossed by boat to reach the island. Lamu Town is Kenya’s oldest continually inhabited town, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and was one of the original Swahili settlements along coastal East Africa, founded in 1370. Only two cars operate on the island, one an ambulance and the other a police vehicle. Navigating the island is typically either by foot, boat, or donkey (and more recently by motorcycle although no formal roads exist.) Tilleard Projects has hosted its residency program in Lamu since April 2017. There are three sessions a year hosting 3-4 artists that live and work in the Ras Firdaws house located on the water between Shela and Lamu Town.
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On The Other Side of Freedom Tour | Deray McKesson
Saturday, September 8th • 7pm
Baltimore Soundstage
124 Market Place : 21202
Join DeRay Mckesson – the internationally recognized civil rights leader and host of the podcast Pod Save the People – for a timely conversation on culture, social justice, and politics. Drawing from his own experiences as an organizer, educator, and public official, DeRay will explore the issues of the day and discuss the subtle structures and inherent biases that impact our communities. The conversation will also examine the core themes of DeRay’s upcoming first book, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FREEDOM: The Case for Hope, a meditation on resistance, justice, and freedom, and an intimate portrait of the Black Lives Matter movement from the front lines. DeRay will be joined by special guests in each market for a live, no-holds-barred conversation about inclusion, community, and progress designed to empower a new generation of leaders. Every ticket includes a copy of ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FREEDOM by DeRay Mckesson (a $25 value).
DeRay Mckesson is a civil rights activist, community organizer, and the host of Crooked Media’s podcast, Pod Save the People. He started his career as an educator and came to prominence for his role in documenting the Ferguson protests and the movement they birthed and for publicly advocating for justice and accountability for the victims of police violence and the end of mass incarceration. He’s spoken at venues from the White House to the Oxford Union and universities and appeared on TV shows across the political spectrum. He was named #11 on Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders list and Harvard’s Black Man of the Year in 2016, among his many other accolades. A leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement and the co-founder of Campaign Zero, a policy platform to end police violence, he lives in Baltimore, Maryland. ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FREEDOM: The Case for Hope is his first book.
