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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Winter Exhibitions 2018 | Opening Reception
Friday, December 14th • 6-9pm
School 33
1427 Light Street : 21230
Your silence will not protect you. (Main Gallery)
Image caption: Alex Callender, “Beyond the Borders of New Space and Lost Time”
Curated by Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, “Your silence will not protect you.” presents five black womyn artists from across the country: Akea Brionne Brown, Alex Callender, Vickie Pierre, LaNia Sproles and Gracie Xavier in a group show about black womyn’s experiences in America—past, present and future. The title references Audre Lorde’s seminal essay on activism, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.”
“Your silence will not protect you.” addresses many silences, both historic and contemporary. This multimedia exhibition explores subtle variances and correlations across a broad spectrum of experience for black womyn today. Considering contemporary tropes concerning black womyn’s bodies, the commercialization of blackness and the continued haunting of the American past, the five artists presented content with the status quo both in broad social terms, but also within hierarchical art world structures. Here, past is more than present—it is consciousness.
Nature As A Metaphor For Economic, Emotional
And Existential Horror (Members Gallery)
Image caption: Images of works from “Nature As A Metaphor For Economic, Emotional And Existential Horror”
“Nature As A Metaphor For Economic, Emotional And Existential Horror” by Stephanie Barber utilizes words as sculptural elements to contemplate the morphological state of language and nature. This third iteration of the project includes still photographs, hand lettered texts, vending machine sentences, viewfinder essays and a single channel video.
Barber has created a diverse body of work in a variety of media. The poignancy of life, considered through small imagined biographies, playful and rigorous poetic essays, song-poems, screenplays or haiku-esque distillations of everyday moments is her most traveled terrain. Barber’s films have received solo exhibitions at MoMA, New York City; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco; National Film Academy, Prague; Lowenbraukunst, Zurich; Anthology Film Archives, New York City, among others. Her books These Here Separated… and Night Moves were published by Publishing Genius Press, and her collection of short stories All The People was published by Ink Press Productions.
Labor of Suggestion (Project Space)
Image caption: Emily Culver, “Labor of Suggestion” (detail)
“Labor of Suggestion” by Emily Culver is devoted to inhibiting and obscuring direct access. Evocative of shelving, food presentation and preparation, the works presented recall scenarios in which objects of desire are within view yet out of reach. Unlike a consumer ogling sweetmeats, the voyeur’s gaze in this space becomes obstructed by a thin film—a skin barrier that reduces both the silhouette and the detail of the contents inside to a fuzzy blur. Through the diffusion this visual information, the relationship between bodies in the space becomes one of pure speculative experience. Existing primarily as sculpture, objects, and jewelry, Culver’s work explores notions of intimacy, (non)functionality, gender, and identity through corporeal qualities.
*Exhibition descriptions provided by artists and curators.
Under $500 Affordable Art Sale
Friday, December 14th • 7pm
Maryland Art Place
218 West Saratoga Street : 21201
Maryland Art Place invites you to join us at our sixth annual UNDER $500 affordable art sale this December! On Friday, December 14 at 7 o’clock join us for a first-come, first-served opportunity to purchase affordable and original works of art. The event will feature the work of Baltimore and surrounding area artists at a price point of $500 or less. Purchase work at any point throughout the evening and take home that night!
Featured artists include:
Seth Adelsberger, Jill Adler, Erin Barach, Kyle Bauer, Emily Campbell, Schroeder Cherry, Atsuko Chirikjian, Se Jong Cho, Nicole Clark, Bobby Coleman, Courtney Cooper, Pete Cullen, Jessica Damen, Alex Ebstein, Maria-Theresa Fernandes, Erin Fostel, Ric Garcia, Eric Garner, Helen Glazer, Cat Gunn, Jessi Hardesty, Caroline Hatfield, Gregory Hein, Elli Hernandez, LaToya Hobbs, Don James, Sanzi Kermes, Rosa Leff, Giulia Livi, Jon Mallis, Dereck Mangus, Antonio McAfee, Mike McConnell, Bruce McKaig, Lee Nowell-Wilson, Salvatore Pirrone, Geraldine Pontius, David Salgado, Linda Smith, Katie Sowinski, Michael Stevenson, Wes Stitt, Sarah Tilton, Kelly Walker, Tanya Ziniewicz, and Lindsey Zuskin.
Guests can expect to mingle with other artists, collectors, patrons, and general art enthusiasts at the event with an open wine and beer bar, along with light tastings with a holiday twist.
MAP will also be collecting new toys and books to support Philanthropik’s toy drive the evening of Under $500. These toys will be donated to the Ronald McDonald House this holiday season. *Note, only new toys will be accepted.
Free parking will be provided by Arrow Parking at 229 W Saratoga Street.
As, Not For: Indexed | Opening Reception
Friday, December 14th • 9pm
The Menial Collection
243 West Read Street : 21201
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As, Not For is an incomplete historical survey of work created by African-American graphic designers over the last century. The selected designers utilize modernist and Bauhausian methods or more intuitive techniques to create work that ranges from commercially accessible design to avant-garde graphic experimentation. These practitioners are absent in too many classroom lectures, and their methods go mostly invisible or uncredited in the field. This exhibition aims to promote the inclusion of neglected Black practitioners and their developed methodologies and to challenge the ubiquity of White and anti-Black aesthetics in our designed world.
This exhibition takes cues from two sources. The first is an obscure multidisciplinary exhibition titled Ritual: Baptismal in Black, The Ritual of The Black Aesthetic, held in Ann Arbor Michigan at the Academy of Creative Thought in 1977. Ritual confronted patrons with the questions, “Can your faculty/staff/students each name five nationally or internationally active Black artists?” and “Do your major art books include the work of major Black artists?” The second source is The New Negro by Alain Locke, which argued that the responsibility of African-American artists was to speak from their point of view in order to reveal personal truths; to speak as Black individuals and not for Black people. Locke envisions a new Black artistic consciousness, one that does not seek to represent or translate their race for the masses, but instead strives for a deeper expression of unique Black subjectivities, in which race “is but an idiom of experience.”
Inspired by these two perspectives on Black artistic production, As, Not For interrogates the institutional exclusion and historical omission of Black graphic design and the implications of that excluded status on Black expressive practice in graphic design and on graphic design and the industry as a whole. The exhibited works are to-scale reproductions of printed ephemera, all of which are authentic representations of Black culture in the time that they were created. Curated in collaboration with The Menial Collection and assistant curator Joshua Gamma, As, Not For: Indexed assumes a condensed, archival shape, which activates the material through interaction and research. The exhibition seeks to question, inspire, activate, and challenge the design community and beyond with the objective of promoting the deep history, design theory and aesthetics of African-Americans.
Jerome Harris is an independent graphic designer and teaching fellow at Maryland Institute College of Art. He holds and MFA in graphic design from Yale University, and a BA from Temple University. His practice focuses on work in arts and culture, with an emphasis on socially responsible and impactful organizations, institutions, businesses, and artists.
As, Not For is Harris’ debut as a curator. A frustration enduced by the lack of visibility of people of color in graphic design history, as well as a lack of representation in the industry lead him on this journey. The research is ongoing, thus the show is evergrowing, as more designers active between 1865 and 1999 are discovered.
DJ set by DJ Glen Coco!
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Holiday Heap
Saturday, December 15th • 10am-5pm
2640 Space
2640 Saint Paul Street : 21218
Come Join 50+ amazing artists/makers for the 12th annual HOLIDAY HEAP Craft Fair presented by the Charm City Craft Mafia! Shop handmade and local for all your holiday needs on Saturday, December 15th from 10am-5pm. Free and family friendly!
Join the Holiday Heap 2018 Facebook Event for more details to follow as we get closer to the event or visit http://charmcitycraftmafia.com
Old Goucher Design Open House + Post Typography
Saturday, December 15th • 11am-4pm
Post Typography
2219 Saint Paul Street : 21218
Old Goucher Design District Open House + Holiday Crawl: Featuring Post Typography’s annual print sale, specials from Co_Lab Books, drinks and bites from Sophomore Coffee, Fadensonnen, and Larder
Post Typography and neighbors Co_Lab Books, Sophomore Coffee, and Larder are organizing a holiday shopping crawl on Saturday, December 15 from 11 am – 4 pm. Each Old Goucher business will feature special holiday offerings, including art prints, design books, ceramics, seasonal gifts, and food and drinks.
Post Typography is opening our studio for our 7th annual print and ephemera sale. The one-day-only event features limited edition prints, posters, books, music, and apparel, including screenprinted tour prints for Future Islands and Dan Deacon, collectible Maryland Film Festival posters, and our classic Bill Murray Groundhog Day movie poster. Other goods for sale include vinyl records, T-shirts, signed copies of Lettering & Type, and other Post Typography publications. Post Typography is located at 2219 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21218.
Around the corner, Co_Lab Books will offer special discounts and seasonal gifts, along with their regular selection of architecture and design books and gifts. Sophomore Coffee will be setting up a pop-up coffee bar inside of Co_Lab serving coffee, tea, and drinking shrubs along with snacks from Larder. Sophomore will also have a small selection of retail items for sale, including coffee and handmade ceramics. Both will be located at Co_Lab at 2209 Maryland Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21218.
At the new Socle complex, Fadensonnen will offer Glow Wine (hot mulled wine), as well as natural wine, beer, and cider. Larder will offer galettes, warm spiced cider, and herb and pepper salts at their café. Both are located at 3 West 23rd Street, Baltimore, MD 21218.
6th Annual Art Market
Saturday, December 15th • 12-6pm
Current
421 North Howard Street : 21201
Current’s 6th Annual Art Market in support of local artists and friends. No gallery commission, no table fees, no bullsh!t.
Come buy art directly from the artists, meet the person behind the work, and support them by buying art for yourself or someone special.
*Picture from 2017 Art Market.
Objects of Desire: Amy Boone-McCreesh and Jess Hammer | Opening
Saturday, December 15th • 7-10pm
Terrault
218 West Saratoga Street : 21201
Exhibition Runs: December 15 – January 24, 2019
“Objects of Desire” is a site-specific installation featuring new works by Baltimore based artist Amy Boone-McCreesh. The work in this exhibition considers the commodification of beauty; often operating as a signifier of culture and taste while widening social and economic gaps. Visual markers of taste in architecture, design, and history are utilized to poke at conceptions of luxury in Western culture.
The collection of sculptural mixed media works on paper draw from domesticity and maximalist color palettes, operating somewhere between textiles, drawing, and collage. Boone-McCreesh also partnered with designer and stylist Jess Hammer to collaboratively create a series of pendant lights and to transform the gallery space.
The exhibition features an adaptation of a prior installation, The View. This piece creates a space meant to be reminiscent of looking into or out of an idyllic view. Views, in our neighborhoods and our surroundings are the thing we pay a premium for, yet the scene being viewed is ultimately free. Our surroundings, domestic and geographic are also an indication of access and economic structure. Naturally-inspired garlands and man-made surfaces clash in this piece to create a space that is both immersive and contained. All of the work in the show is multi-media, employing accessible materials as well as technology to further the conversation around consumption and craft.
https://www.amyboonemccreesh.com/
Gallery hours: Saturdays 1-5PM
Closing Reception: Thursday, January 24th 7-9PM
