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BmoreArt’s Picks: January 28 – February 3

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This Week: Single Carrot Theatre presents Safe Space at Clifton Park Mansion House, Migrations and Meaning(s) in Art reception at MICA Meyerhoff Gallery, Cindy Cheng at MICA Pinkard Gallery, Amy Ritter: Built-In at Loyola’s Julio Gallery, Catch Release Activate at Waller Gallery, ICA Baltimore Flat File opening reception, A Ribbon, A Pearl, A Sedimentary Rock at Gormley Gallery,  Incidental Monuments at Goucher, and Ornamenta at the Baltimore Jewelry Center.

<p>Group dancing!</p>

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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Safe Space
Pay What You Can Previews : Wednesday, January 29 + Thursday, January 30
Ongoing January 31 – February 23
@ Clifton Park Mansion House

By R. Eric Thomas

Directed by Ben Kleymeyer

The past comes back to haunt in more ways than one, in this Clue!-inspired farce from award-winning playwright and internet juggernaut R. Eric Thomas (Elle, New York Times). When white non-profit executive Helen discovers a locked door in the definitely-not-a-former-plantation she’s inherited, black locksmith Courtney comes to her rescue, and that’s where the trouble begins. Add to the mix Charlotte, the ghost of a formerly enslaved person, and Ryan, Helen’s MAGA-loving brother, and contention in the house is about to boil over. When the door is opened spilling forth dangerous secrets, who you gonna call?

Get your tickets today: http://bit.ly/31FPTEs

#SCTSafeSpace

 

 

Amy Ritter: Built-In | Opening Reception
Thursday, January 30 • 6-9pm
@ Julio Fine Arts, Loyola University Maryland

Brooklyn-based artist Amy Ritter will discuss her life and work. Ritter’s work is an exploration of her relationship to her physical self vis-à-vis mobile homes and their interior and exterior landscapes. It stages her memories of growing up in a mobile home community–a place she’s left but still feels rooted to. Ritter will discuss her work, including the work in her latest exhibition, “Built-in,” currently in the Julio Fine Arts Gallery through February 7, 2020. A reception will follow immediately after the talk in the Julio Fine Arts Gallery. All our events are free and open to all.

 

 

Migrations and Meaning(s) in Art | Reception
Thursday, January 30 • 5-7pm

@ MICA Meyerhoff Gallery, Fox Building

The reception kicks off the exhibition curated by scholar and artist Deborah Willis, PhD, the inaugural Stuart B. Cooper Endowed Chair in Photography, which begins Jan. 30 and runs through March 15.

In addition to the exhibition and reception, Willis will host an exhibition panel from 6-8 p.m. on Monday, March 9 in the Lazarus Center Auditorium, 131 W. North Ave., Baltimore.

Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is pleased to present “Migrations and Meaning(s) in Art,” an exhibition curated by scholar and artist Deborah Willis, PhD. Featuring a diverse range of local, national and international visual artists, the exhibition explores debates on the topic of migration from historical references such as slavery and emancipation; the Great Migration; and virtual communities from the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Willis selected artwork that considers “how identities are realized, rejected, performed and desired,” as well as the urgency of our present moment, following Nina Simone’s famous statement that artists’ duty is to reflect the times. The exhibition will include photographs, prints, video, animation, and sculpture.

“This exhibition foregrounds varied experiences on migration from concepts of dislocation, border crossings and storytelling,” Willis said. “The artwork embraces and challenges various narratives on identity through migration practices and looks at the impact and reception both empowering and subjective often explored through gentrification, longing and trauma — as well as drawing attention to race, class, gender and religion.”

For more information, visit: https://www.mica.edu/art-articles/details/migrations-and-meanings-in-art-an-exhibition-curated-by-dr-deborah-willis/

 

 

Catch Release Activate | Opening Reception
Friday, January 31 • 5-9pm
@ Waller Gallery

Catch, Release, Activate is an exhibition that highlights the artists’ work both in the moment and dialogue. Catch and Release is a turn of phrase that the curator, Joy Davis, applies to the process of creating and exhibiting art. What makes this exhibition different than the typical “catch and release” style of exhibition is that the artists Jamie Grace Alexander, Walter Cruz, and Bobbi Rush want their art to live and move beyond the creative process and as art objects.

Shorty’s BBQ will be offering scrumptious eats for $10 5-8PM
DJ Black Planet will create vibes 7-9PM

Artist Bios

Jamie Grace Alexander is known through her work as Proxy. Proxy is defined as “the authority to represent someone else” & her work considers the distance between the artist herself & the many communities she belongs to. She found graffiti as a medium to oppose trans exclusive messages in women’s bathrooms across Baltimore city in 2018. Her tag allows her to be present through the curled lips, noses, & hair of her proxies. In this series, she brings her practice indoors, turning mirrors into altars & marking both as sites of self-reflection. Her work on these mirrors can shield, tuck, & adjust light, asking questions about lineage, futurity, & belonging. She sees internal discovery as a key strength of her identities & encourages viewers to look for themselves in her work.

Hailing from Washington Heights and The Bronx, Walter Cruz is a creative collaborator exploring the intersections of art, design and architecture to better understand how Black and brown bodies activate and take up space. Cruz has completed residencies and fellowships with The Laundromat Project, NurtureArt Gallery(Brooklyn,NY) amongst others. As well shown work in galleries and museums including The Museum of the City of New York, the Center for Political Graphics in Los Angeles, Syracuse University and Longwood Gallery in The Bronx. Most of all, Walter is dedicated to learning from and being with the people. Cruz serves as the graphic designer for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration(BAJI), he is currently part of the creative collective Axel NYC, which creates interactive art installations nationally and the creative director and co-founder for Zeal; a Black worker-owned company that focuses on creating spaces for Black multidisciplinary artists to thrive. Walter is an MFA candidate at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Mount Royal School of Art. Ultimately, in a world that is constantly telling Black and brown folks not to be themselves, Cruz’s goal is to create work that inspires and informs those very people.

Bobbi Rush is a multidisciplinary artist from Baltimore, Maryland. She began her work at the age of six. Growing, she traveled with various performing artists as a background vocalist. Moving forward in her solo space, she’s shared her voice and worked with many touring acts. Bobbi has self-published two books. Her first, “Words (Feeling…Feelings)” which shares the thought of loss, encouragement, and growth. Her second, “PUSSY”, which is a more vocal, understood sense of self through writing. Bobbi is creator and lead of TheBlueFaceProject, a home base for her expanding forms of art expression. Through voice, jewelry design, film, song, and writing, Bobbi’s mission is to simply keep creating.

 

 

Cindy Cheng: The Pretenders | Reception
Friday, January 31 • 5-7pm
@ MICA Pinkard Gallery

Ongoing through March 15

Maryland Institute College of Art is pleased to present the Solo Faculty Exhibition, The Pretenders by Drawing Faculty, Cindy Cheng ’08 ’11 (Fine Arts Post-Baccalaureate, Mount Royal School of Art M.F.A.). The work in this exhibition is a collection of sketches resulting from Cheng’s experiments with constructing such objects and spaces of insidious “leisure”.

These spaces and objects aspire to attract and repulse. They are tools of joy and conspiracy. They cajole just as they whisper fringe theories that have muddied the world of facts and have become an agent in our present and, ultimately, our history.

The Pretenders presents an array of sets from which objects of leisure are empowered to disseminate their programmed narratives. The hope is to create experiences that fluctuate between enchantment and an awakening unease.

 

 

ICA Flat File | Opening Reception
Saturday, February 1 • 12-4pm
@ ICA Baltimore

ICA Baltimore is excited to announce the artists participating in the 2020 ICA Flat File Program! Artworks were chosen from over four hundred entries, and include work in a variety of media, from drawing and painting to photography, cloth and plastic; from artists from the Baltimore, DC, Maryland and Virginia as well as artists from recent ICA exhibitions.

We will kick off the program with an exhibition with a brunch opening on February 1st, 12-4pm at the ICA gallery, and the show will remain up until February 23. Artworks will then move into the flat files in the back of the gallery and will be available for viewing and purchase until the end of the year. All items in the flat file are priced under $500, and will be available on our website, for purchase and shipping.

2020 ICA Flat File Program artists:

Amanda Agricola
Erin Barach
Marybeth Chew
Julia Clouser
Seth Crawford
Sue Crawford
Sara Dittrich
Elaine Fisher
Skye Gilkerson
Jay Gould
Maggie Gourlay
Heather Harvey
Elli Maria Hernandez
Elliot Earl Keeley
Kyle Kogut
Mehles Lelic
Ilenia Madelaire
Ariana Mygatt
Janet Olney
Nat Raum
Lauren Rice
Eric Rivera Barbieto
Margaret Rogers
Margaret Rorison
Emily Schubert
Ayaka Takao
Dominic Terlizzi
Jessie Unterhalter and Katey Truhn
Julie Wills

Exhibition Dates: February 1-23, 2020

Open Hours: Saturdays and Sundays 12-4pm, or by appointment

Contact: [email protected]

 

 

A Ribbon, A Pearl, A Sedimentary Rock, curated by Allie Linn | Opening Reception
Saturday, February 1 • 4-6pm
@ Gormley Gallery at Notre Dame of Maryland University

Ongoing through March 6

Please join us for the opening reception of a Ribbon, a Pearl, a Sedimentary Rock, curated by Allie Linn and featuring the work of Kira Bell, Anna K. Crooks, Taina Cruz, Coco Klockner, Michelle Luong, Maya Martinez, and Pangelica.

A Ribbon, a Pearl, a Sedimentary Rock gathers together a selection of artists who forage and borrow imagery––from the internet, from the natural world, from cultural content––to deconstruct the multiplicity of femininity and femme. Signifiers of the feminine––bows, pearls, ribbons––are reexamined as potent objects holding history, wrath, whispers, and power, and femme is reimagined as a process of collecting, constructing, borrowing, and building. Situated in the gallery of Notre Dame, a Ribbon, a Pearl, a Sedimentary Rock reflects on the founding and physical construction of the women’s college on an uncultivated 33-acre plot of flora and fauna at the end of the nineteenth century to reimagine a new thriving garden in its midst.

The exhibition remains on view from January 27 through March 6, 2020 at Gormley Gallery on the campus of Notre Dame of Maryland University.

 

 

Ornamenta 2020
Saturday, February 1 • 7-11pm
@ Impact Hub

food by Blacksauce Kitchen | open bar
music by Aran Keating | dancing

Support the Baltimore Jewelry Center by attending Ornamenta, our annual fundraising party! The event features a raffle and silent auction with work from many art jewelers from around the country as well as donations from awesome local businesses and restaurants. All proceeds benefit free programming, scholarships, exhibitions, and residencies at the Baltimore Jewelry Center.

There will also be work on display by Baltimore Jewelry Center community members.

Tickets are $100
Buy a pack of 4 tickets for $310
Buy a pack of 8 tickets for $575

Tickets are nonrefundable
baltimorejewelrycenter.org

 

 

Incidental Monuments
Ongoing February 1 – March 14, 2020
@ Silber Gallery, Goucher College

Opening Reception February 13th, 2020

Incidental Monuments is an exhibition that highlights artists and art practices that consciously repurpose every day, overproduced materials. Beginning from a student-initiated, data visualization project that calls attention to the volume of non-recyclable, plastic utensils that are discarded on campus each semester; the exhibition recognizes the incredible, formal, individual efforts of artists working within a similar set of concerns. Using the student installation as a thesis, the exhibition brings together artworks that question the way we use, dispose of, and often forget about certain materials on a daily basis.

While the show does not advocate individual responsibility as being greater than that of corporations and industries, it asks its viewers to evaluate their relationship to mass-produced material and examines the campus microcosm as a venue to move the meter on behavior and policy.

This exhibition is co-curated by Alex Ebstein and Amy Boone-McCreesh

 

 

Kenneth Martin: Measures and Estimates | Opening Reception
Sunday, February 2 • 2-5pm
@Project 1628

Ongoing through March 14

New sculpture by Kenneth Martin explores familiar themes of gravity, movement, proportion and craft. Grace, too.Please join us this Sunday, February 2, 2-5 PM for the opening, or come to the closing reception on Saturday, March 14, 2-4 PM.

 

 

 

 

featured image: from BJC's Ornamenta 2019, courtesy Baltimore Jewelry Center

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