This Week: We are featuring online events that you can participate in from the comfort of your own couch plus a few ways to get involved locally and nationally. Stay home, stay healthy, stay engaged in the arts.
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2020 Howie Award Nomination Forms Now Available
deadline October 30
sponsored by Howard County Arts Council
The Howard County Arts Council (HCAC) is seeking nominations for the 2020 Howie Awards honoring individuals and businesses that have made significant contributions to the arts in Howard County. The awards will be presented at the 24th Annual Celebration of the Arts in Howard County, to be held in 2021. Nomination forms are available at hocoarts.org/celebration. Nominations must arrive at the HCAC office via mail, fax, email or hand-delivery no later than 5pm on October 30, 2020.
The Howie Awards are presented annually by the Arts Council to an outstanding: Artist who has contributed a high level of talent and vision to the artistic life of the community; Arts Educator who has made an exceptional contribution to the arts in education in Howard County; and Business or Community Supporter of the Arts in recognition of their long-term contributions or significant impact on the arts in Howard County. The 2020 Howie Awards Committee is comprised of Barbara Lawson (Chair), Jeffrey Agnor, Sandra French, Kristi Simon, Dami T. Soh, Coleen West, and Beverly White-Seals.
Please note: Previous winners, current Howard County Arts Council Board of Directors and Howie Committee members are NOT eligible for 2020 awards. Winners will be notified in writing no later than January 15, 2021.
For a nomination form or more information, visit the Arts Council website: www.hocoarts.org, call 410-313-ARTS (2787), or visit the Howard County Center for the Arts at 8510 High Ridge Road, Ellicott City, MD 21043.
The SE Center Open | Call for Entry
deadline November 1
sponsored by SE Center for Photography
The SE Center Open is just that, an open theme – all subjects, The SE Center is looking for images of any theme, media, digital, analog, or antique processes that show your best work.
Our Juror for Open Call is Robert Klein. Robert Klein Gallery was established in 1980 and ranks among the world’s most prestigious showrooms of fine art photography. Robert Klein opened his Newbury Street space with early exhibitions of Diane Arbus, Annie Leibovitz, Sally Mann, and Hiroshi Sugimoto.
Robert Klein Gallery maintains an extensive and ever-changing inventory of 19th century, 20th century, and contemporary photographs. With over 40 years of experience and a profound knowledge base, the gallery staff is committed to serving as a resource for both novice and seasoned collectors.
35-40 Selected images will hang in the SE Center’s main gallery space for approximately one month with the opportunity to be invited for a solo show at a later date. In addition, selected images are featured in the SE Center social media accounts (FB, IG, Twitter) and an archived, online slideshow. A video walkthrough of each exhibition is also featured and archived.
Poetry Out Loud | Registration Open & Call for Judges and Coaches
deadline November 2
sponsored by Maryland State Arts Council
For the 2020-2021 year, the Maryland State Poetry Out Loud competition will be held virtually! Students (who want to independently participate), educators, and community organizers are encouraged to register indicating their intent to submit student poetry recitation videos for competition consideration. Poetry Out Loud is a great opportunity for a remote and hybrid student learning project. You can showcase your students’ creativity in a new, fun, digitally engaging way! To view the full Poetry Out Loud schedule and more details, see here.
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MSAC relies on a diverse array of experts from across the state of Maryland to do the important work of supporting students, parents, and educators through the Poetry Out Loud competition. MSAC selects judges and coaches for the three competition phases – pre-regional, regional, and state. Judges and coaches are selected with a focus on diversity of experiences, diversity of location, and expertise in supporting students throughout all levels of the competition. In particular, MSAC seeks theater artists, educators, professors, arts journalists, writers, actors, librarians, slam poets, and general poetry lovers as Poetry Out Loud judges and coaches. Judges and coaches must be Maryland residents.
Selected judges and coaches serve a one-year term.
Judges and coaches receive modest compensation for their service.
Submit your application via MSAC’s online grants management system, SmartSimple.
*Read the 2019-2020 POL Judges Guide here.
Connected Diaspora: Central American Visuality in the Age of Social Media | Virtual Opening Reception
Tuesday, September 22 • 5-6pm | Ongoing through October 17
presented by UMCP Stamp Gallery
Connected Diaspora: Central American Visuality in the Age of Social Media casts light on a new generation of artists who visually reflect on U.S Central American lives and experiences in the era of social media. These new voices from the Central American diaspora have built a creative community that transcends state lines and borders.
Their practices range from delicate ceramic sculptures to large scale paintings to digital art—exploring images of displacement, war, and trauma. Contemplations on everyday life, nature, and architecture, coupled with insights on invisibility and empowerment, are all manifested in this visual assembly. Central Americans make up the third largest U.S Latinx group—a statistic that is not equally reflected when referencing Latinx art. Beyond news articles, Central Americans in the diaspora are a creative force leading the way to a more expansive discourse on Latinx Art.
Curated by Veronica Melendez
Featuring artwork by: Eddy Leonel Aldana, Galileo Gonzalez, Kim LaVonne, Glenda Lissette, Dennissé Carlota Nieto Zelaya, Jessy DeSantis, Xiomara Garay, Celea Guevara, Kimberly Benavides, Veronica Melendez, Elizabeth Fernanda Rodriguez, Kiara Machado, Julia Mata, Juan Madrid, Isidra Sabio, Paulino Celestino Mejia, Keith L Torres, Johanna Toruño
Close Read: Artist Talk with Savannah Wood, Akea Brown, SHAN Wallace, and Angela N. Carroll
Wednesday, September 23 • 5 pm
RSVP for Zoom Link Here!
Close Read is a group exhibition featuring newly commissioned work by Akea Brionne Brown, SHAN Wallace, and Savannah Wood.
This exhibition marks the first time that artists have been explicitly invited to work within the AFRO American Newspapers’ archives. Following their individual interests, these artists have produced new work inspired by their research.
Join the three artists from Close Read for a discussion of their ideas and process, the importance of archives, and how this functioned as a muse for a collective exhibition with moderator Angela N. Carroll.
Brown dissects a pamphlet on urban renewal, redacting the language used to promote its cause to reveal its underlying negative effects. Wallace’s animated photo collages combine her own images with photos from the AFRO archives to celebrate nearly a century of Black women and girls’ play and labor. Wood follows a genealogical trail, connecting the AFRO’s roots back to a former plantation (now a state park) in Montgomery County. The work produced for this show highlights different artistic approaches to archival inquiry, with Baltimore’s Black communities as a common thread.
Close Read is produced by Savannah Wood and the AFRO American Newspapers. This project is supported by a grant from the Grit Fund. Additional funding was provided by the Awesome Foundation and Afro Charities.
Examining Photographic Archives: Photographic Portraiture as an Event | Online Event
Wednesday, September 23 • 7-8pm
presented by SODA, AIGA Baltimore, and Stevenson University
Join the Society of Design Arts, AIGA Baltimore and Stevenson University for a discussion with SHAN Wallace and Elena Volkova. The Blacks and Blues archive and the curation process for the exhibition Reflections: a brief history of looking at ourselves (2019) will be presented.
Wallace’s Blacks and Blues archive demonstrates the “Archive as Artwork” medium. This archive and search engine innovates and challenges how modern archives can be curated. It also shows us through photography the experiences, identities, inequalities and injustices of Black life, as well as, how to ethically accumulate primary source documents.
What drives people to sit for a portrait? was a primary question that guided co-curators Elena Volkova and Joe Tropea as they researched the Maryland Historical Society archives for the exhibition Reflections: a brief history of looking at ourselves. In addition to the exhibition, a secondary project was launched, photographing Baltimore residents using Tintypes, a 19th century photographic process. Tintype processes and photoshoots will also be featured in Volkova’s remarks for how they demonstrate the many ways of how the taking of a portrait is an event.
HOW TO ATTEND THE EVENT
1) This event will be online using Zoom. Click here to register for free.
2) Please ensure you download the app for your computer or mobile device prior to the event here on Zoom.
3) Registered attendees will receive a link and password when they complete their registration. The link and password will also be sent 24 hours and 1 hour before the event. Make sure to check your spam folder for the email.
SEEN: 20 Years of Baltimore Music Photography 2000-2020 | Opening Reception, RSVP required
Thursday, September 24 • 5:30-8pm | Ongoing through November 14
presented by Maryland Art Place and WTMD
On View | Thursday, September 24 – Saturday, November 14
Opening Reception | Thursday, September 24 | 5 pm – 8:30 pm
Film Screening | TBA
WTMD Radio | Tuesday, September 15 @ 9pm & Sunday September 20 @ 4pm
Maryland Art Place (MAP) is pleased to open its first exhibition to the public since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Long in the making, SEEN, curated by Josh Sisk, Joe Giordano with support from Audrey Gatewood, represents a comprehensive and inclusive overview of music with a heavy emphasis on Baltimore Indie, Rap and Hip-Hop genres and the photographers that captured this important time.
Baltimore’s music scene has been on the rise during the last 20 years. SEEN includes images of artists such as KSwift whose untimely death led to the 92Q KSwift Memorial Scholarship Contest and Internship Program in 2009, to indie all stars such as Beach House who have achieved international fame since releasing their first album making Pitchfork’s Best Album list in 2008.
The exhibition’s inception came to MAP from local photographer and former Board Trustee, Joe Giordano and was produced in partnership with WTMD radio who is creating a documentary segment on the last 20 years of Baltimore music. The documentary will be screened at MAP in November (details to come.) In the interim, hear more by tuning into WTMD Towson Radio Tuesday, September 15 at 9pm and Sunday, September 20 at 4pm. Collectively MAP & WTMD Radio thank the PNC Foundation for their support of this important exhibition.
SEEN includes the following photographers (in no order): Mike Jon, Valerie Paulsgrove, Jefferson Jackson Steele, Andrew Mangum, Frank Hamilton, Josh Sisk, Brandon Fieldhouse, Perri Fae, Natasha Tylea, Kate Frese, Sydney Allen, Ted Henn, Kelley Connelly, Farrah Skeiky, Shane Gardner, Megan Elyse Lloyd, Stewart Mostofsky, J.M. Giordano, Dubscience, Pink Lloyd Wright, Micah E. Wood and Theresa Keil. Stage Design Support by Chris Attenborough and Jenna Dutton.
SEEN will be on view Thursday, September 24 – Saturday, November, 14. The exhibition will open Thursday, September 24 with a reception held from 5:00 pm to 8:30 pm. We have designated two hour and a half slots: Reception A with a timeslot from 5 pm to 6:30 pm and Reception B with at timeslot of 7 pm to 8:30 pm. YOU MUST RSVP TO ATTEND. SEE our website for more details.
We are allowing Up to 20 guests per slot to view the show at one time. Masks are required at all times unless you’re drinking a beverage in which case we ask that you distance yourself a minimum of 6 feet from other guests while you drink per CDC recommendations.
BCO in the Open Air
Thursday, September 24th • 6pm
Immaculate Conception Church :: Towson, MD
Baltimore Concert Opera will present its first live concert since having to shut the theater doors in March due to COVID-19. The open-air, bring-your-own-chair concert, titled ‘BCO in the Open Air,’ will be held outdoors on September 24th at 6pm (rain date – September 25th) on the campus of the Immaculate Conception Church in Towson, MD and will star soprano Colleen Daly, mezzo-soprano Chrystal E. Williams, and bass-baritone Kevin Short, accompanied by pianist Aurelien Eulert. The concert will run 45-50 minutes and will feature an array of operatic favorites. Information on the artists and the program can be found here.
Artistic and General Director Julia Cooke shares, “I am truly overjoyed to have the opportunity to employ artists and to present live music after these many months. We know that these chances may be few and far between for now, and we are feeling very lucky to be able to make this happen. We are deeply thankful to the leadership at Immaculate Conception Church for hosting us on their campus for this very special concert.”
If you would like to join us for this concert, please let me know by replying in this e-mail with your organization and the number of people you would like to have attend. BCO hopes to be able to mount additional outdoor performances this fall, as weather and government guidelines permit. Social distancing and other safety measures will be in full effect for artists, audiences and staff for all live BCO concerts this season.
Close Read: Closing Reception
Friday, September 24 • 7-9 pm
BmoreArt Connect + Collect Space
2519 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
Join us for an outdoor, socially distant reception for Close Read. Please wear a mask.
Close Read is a group exhibition featuring newly commissioned work by Akea Brionne Brown, SHAN Wallace, and Savannah Wood.
This exhibition marks the first time that artists have been explicitly invited to work within the AFRO American Newspapers’ archives. Following their individual interests, these artists have produced new work inspired by their research. Brown dissects a pamphlet on urban renewal, redacting the language used to promote its cause to reveal its underlying negative effects. Wallace’s animated photo collages combine her own images with photos from the AFRO archives to celebrate nearly a century of Black women and girls’ play and labor. Wood follows a genealogical trail, connecting the AFRO’s roots back to a former plantation (now a state park) in Montgomery County. The work produced for this show highlights different artistic approaches to archival inquiry, with Baltimore’s Black communities as a common thread.
Close Read is produced by Savannah Wood and the AFRO American Newspapers. This project is supported by a grant from the Grit Fund. Additional funding was provided by the Awesome Foundation and Afro Charities.
The Peale Online Gala and Fundraiser
Friday, September 25 • 7-8:30pm
hosted by The Peale
We’re having a party, and you don’t need a mask!
Despite the many challenges of 2020, there is still plenty to celebrate and a lot going on at the Peale. Join us September 25 for a special online event to catch up on the Peale’s progress this year, see old friends and make new ones, all while supporting the preservation of our National Landmark building – an anchor institution in Baltimore for more than 200 years!
VisArts Virtual Gallery Reception
Friday, September 25 • 5-7pm
presented by VisArts
Join us for our next virtual gallery reception with artists Monroe Isenberg, Blazo Kovacevic, Sue Johnson, Mia Eve Rollow, Cory Oberndorfer, and the artists included in Frame & Frequency VI.
This is an online event via Zoom, RSVP to receive the meeting link.
In September, VisArts Galleries welcomes new exhibitions that speak to objects of desire, privacy and migration issues, and the human connection to the earth by Sue Johnson, Blazo Kovacevic and Monroe Isenberg. Our Virtual Reception, taking place Friday, September 25 from 5:00-7:00 PM, includes artist talks by new exhibiting artists as well as by Mia Eva Rollow and Cory Oberndorfer, whose works are currently on view. In addition, Frame & Frequency VI, an ongoing International Film & Video Art Screening Series, launches September 11.
VisArts galleries are currently open to the public by appointment Monday through Friday 12:00 – 4:00 PM. Visitors can sign up by clicking here.
Imposing Limitations Workshop, in conjunction with Elongated Shadows Exhibition | RSVP
Saturday, September 26 • 4pm
presented by Apex Art
In this workshop Kei Ito and Andrew Paul Keiper will lecture on the notion of conceptual, material and site-imposed limitations as creative generators of form and idea, drawing from their body of work to suggest approaches that can benefit participants during this time of universally experienced limitation. On the second day of the workshop, participants will propose projects that incorporate these principles, and receive feedback from Ito and Keiper, as well as the other workshop participants.
Kei Ito is a conceptual photographer working primarily with camera-less image making and installation art. Ito earned his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016, following his BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2014. Ito’s work addresses issues of deep loss and intergenerational connection as he explores the materiality and experimental processes of photography. His work deals with the trauma and legacy passed down from his late grandfather, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and a later anti-nuclear activist, in relation to current threats of nuclear disaster. Ito’s artworks lead the audience on a journey from grief and remembrance to hope. Through his ritualistic image-making, the audience sees how he grapples with his family’s historical connection to nuclear weapons and power.
Andrew Paul Keiper is a sound artist based in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is faculty in the Animation and Film programs at the Maryland Institute College of Art. His work addresses the legacy of nuclear weaponry, race and white supremacy in Baltimore, and the frontier between sound art and experimental music. Andrew’s art has spanned the gamut from painting and woodworking to video and performance, but currently he primarily produces sound-based art, installation, sound design and scores. His work very often portrays reverberant acoustic spaces and the ways sounds erode when transmitted or recorded. Andrew’s work asks the audience to listen deeply into and through imagined worlds that both resist and open up to our hearing. Andrew received his BFA in painting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2002 and his MFA from MICA’s Photographic and Electronic Media program in 2016.
Orchestrations | Ticketed Opening Reception
Saturday, September 26 • 5-7:45pm
presented by Full Circle Photo
Full Circle is pleased to present Orchestrations, a debut solo exhibition featuring the luminous and surreal photographic portraits by Geoff Robertson.
Orchestrations earns its title through Robertson’s process of combining and choreographing different, oftentimes complex, elements into single exposure photographs. Here, such elements include custom, self-built props and installations, light painting, stroboscopic flashes, and UV lighting on the edge of the visible spectrum. In orchestrating these images, the aspects of control and timing marry with that of chance, culminating in works that evoke movement and illusion along with clarity and precision.
The exhibition will extend from the main gallery to the 3rd floor gallery space, displaying photography from multiple phases of Robertson’s work. The main floor gallery will feature a survey of transcendent images that were created using various flavors of light painting—most notably, those incorporating stroboscopic photo techniques—and have, as a collection, sculpted the artist’s unique aesthetic into something bold and instantly recognizable. In the 3rd floor gallery, Orchestrations focuses on Robertson’s current and ongoing project, The Halo Machine. For this project, Robertson designed and built a motorized light painting machine that controls the spin, state, and position of LED lights surrounding a subject, creating single exposure photographs that push the boundaries of what a photograph without digital alteration should be able to portray. The Halo Machine series is the pinnacle of Robertson’s intricately orchestrated style of photography, rooted firmly in the concept of challenging the viewer to ask “How is this image even possible?”
This week: Evan Woodward's museum, Blaze Star, John Waters turns 78, Juius Wilson at AVAM, Megan Lewis, Joyce J. Scott, MICA UP/Start Venture Winner Announced, and RuPaul winners to race at Baltimore Pride, and more!
In Conjunction with BmoreArt’s C+C Exhibit featuring Fostel’s charcoal drawings of women’s bedrooms, a conversation with the Co-Director of the Baltimore Abortion Fund
This Week: MICA Community Art & Service Program exhibition, In the Stacks performance at Peabody Library, City of Artists I closing reception at Connect + Collect, Mari Black at Manor Mill, Open Works yard sale, screening of Black Printmakers of Washington DC at Smithsonian Anacostia, and more!
This week's news includes: Baynard Woods on Larry Hogan's "error-laden" memoir, BMI's new Labor Activism Exhibit, Blacksauce Kitchen, Joyce J. Scott, Glenstone Outdoors this Summer, Rob Lee profiles Anthony Gittens, BSO's Summerfest at the Meyerhoff–and more!
