This week: MICA celebrates Dorothy Gillespie ’41, Baltimore Clayworks Seconds Sale + Preview Party, The Monument Quilt at the National Mall, the Lewis Museum hosts “Black Men + Fashion” Roundtable Discussion, Chukwuemeka Anthony Chukwu.: Gold + Greyscale#2 at MICA, and ‘Magnia Naturalis’ by Pete Cullen at Terrault.
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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Dorothy Gillespie ’41 Exhibition | Opening Reception
Thursday, May 30th • 6-8:30pm
MICA Lazarus Gallery
131 West North Avenue : 21201
Join us as MICA celebrates the legacy of artist and activist Dorothy Gillespie ’41!
The MICA Alumni Association and the Alumni Cornerstone Society are proud to present a retrospective exhibition celebrating the legacy of alumna Dorothy Gillespie. The show, featuring 29 works from Dorothy’s trailblazing seven-decade career, will be on exhibit in the Riggs and Leidy Galleries of the Fred Lazarus IV Center from Friday, May 31 to Friday, June 14, 2019.
We hope you can join us for our opening reception on Thursday, May 30 from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m., featuring a panel discussion with Cara Ober, Kristen Hileman, Dr. Leslie King Hammond, and Sherri Parks (6:45 to 7:30) on the barriers women artists like Dorothy had faced in the past and are continuing to face today. Complimentary hors d’ourves and sparkling wine will be served.
Limited valet parking is available in the adjacent lots; to reserve one of our spaces, please add that option to your RSVP using the registration button at the top of this page. Additional paid parking lots can be found one block away at 1900 N. Howard Street and 1915 N. Howard Street.
Baltimore Clayworks Seconds Sale
Friday, May 31st – Sunday, June 2
Baltimore Clayworks
5707 Smith Avenue : 21209
Cultural Capital: The Monument Quilt | Opening Ceremony
Thursday, May 30th • 6-8:30pm
National Mall
12th and 14th Streets NW : Washington DC
Join us on the National Mall for the opening ceremony of the Monument Quilt display.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts partners with FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture for the opening night of the Monument Quilt project on the National Mall. The project presents more than 3,000 stories of survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence and their allies. Written, painted, and stitched onto red fabric, the stories blanket highly public, outdoor places to create and demand a space to heal and to resist a singular narrative about sexual violence. After five years of organizing, and 49 displays in 33 cities across the U.S. and Mexico, the culminating quilt will be displayed on the Mall from May 31 to June 2, 2019. This will be the only time that the quilt will be viewed in its entirety.
The opening night event will feature the presentations “Honoring the Land,” “Libations to Honor Ancestors,” and “Reflecting on the Founding of the Monument Quilt,” and culminate in a collective reading of excerpts from Jadelynn Stahl’s Choreographies of Disclosure: What the Mind Forgets. Led by members of the LGBTQIA+ community, including Baltimore-based queer artists filmmaker Kalima Young and playwright Kate Bishop, this reading will imagine a world without sexual assault.
Free. Reservations not required.
Amy Boone-McCreesh: More or Less | Opening Reception
Friday, May 31st • 6-8pm
Creative Alliance
3134 Eastern Avenue : 21224
On View: MAY 31 – JUN 22
Reception: MAY 31 | 6-8PM | FREE
Amalie Rothschild Gallery
More or Less is a solo exhibition by Baltimore-based artist Amy Boone-McCreesh. Through the lens of a maximal aesthetic Boone-McCreesh pokes at domesticity, consumerism, and taste. Traditional markers of class and success are upended in this mixed-media exhibition through material and color choice. Large abstract drawings camouflage chandeliers, decorated windows, and florals. The custom wall-hanging and patterned vinyl borrow from the inherent narcissism of fashion and design while the sculptural forms reference furniture or jeweled pillars. For Boone-McCreesh the objects in our homes, our color preferences, and our inherent sense of “good taste” are often dictated by cultural trends and heritage. This body of work and installation strive to consider these ideas while providing a decorative and superficial experience for the viewer.
FRI MAY 31 | 6-8PM | FREE!
Roundtable Conversation: Black Men & Fashion
Saturday, June 1st • 1pm
Reginald F. Lewis Museum
830 West Pratt Street : 21202
In honor of Black Music Month, join Henry Edwards II, Creator & Founder of II Magazine, and noted fashion influencers in a provocative roundtable discussion about black men and their influence in pop culture. Presenters include:
- Celebrity Menswear Stylist Rachel Johnson responsible for the stylings of Cam Newton and Colin Kaepernick
- Luxury Brand Strategist Elaine Mensah also a marketing professor at American University
Included with Museum Admission.
Chukwuemeka Anthony Chukwu.: Gold + Greyscale#2 | Opening
Saturday, June 1st • 2-9pm
MICA Dolphin Design Center
100 Dolphin Street : 21217
Magia Naturalis by Pete Cullen | Opening Reception
Saturday, June 1st • 7-10pm
Terrault
218 West Saratoga Street : 21201
The title of this show, ‘Magia Naturalis’ or Natural Magic in English, is taken from a book published in Naples in 1558 by the scholar Giambattista della Porta. Magia Naturalis was an encyclopedia of early science that contains what is probably the first written description of a camera obscura, the great-great-grand parent of the small digital camera in your phone. The camera obscura is a simple device that may have been known to Neolithic people and the Ancient Greeks. For years, scholars and artists have speculated that early modern painters such as Vermeer and Caravaggio used it to create paintings in a manner similar to the way some contemporary photorealist painters use digital projectors. Inside a darkened room, a small hole can create a projection of the exterior, essentially a living photograph moving in real time. Baltimore artist Pete Cullen has created such a device in his studio and used to make paintings as a way to test art historians’ theories through a form of experimental archaeology. Using the device to make art also allows for insights into abstract psychological concepts such as projection, flattening, and the gaze. The camera obscura becomes a physical metaphor for the ego and its mediation of perception.
There will be a full size camera obscura built by the artist in the gallery.
Pete Cullen was born in Washington, DC and is a graduate of the Mt. Royal School of Art at MICA. He was a Baker Artist Awards Finalist in 2016. Cullen is a Baltimore-based artist who maintains a painting-centered studio practice. Fascinated by ideas about the camera obscura presented in David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge and the film Tim’s Vermeer, Cullen has developed an optics-based painting practice. Drawing on concepts from the field of experimental archaeology, Cullen makes paintings with a camera obscura of his own design and build using only natural light.
Closing Reception: Thursday, July 18 7-9PM
