This Week: We are featuring online events that you can participate in from the comfort of your own couch plus a few calls for entry to get involved locally and nationally. Stay home, stay healthy, stay engaged in the arts.
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Ozone Atmosphere: Monsieur Zohore & Sandy Williams IV
Closing February 27
@ Springsteen
What does it mean to watch something live and die in the same moment? What does it mean to be Black in America right now? In their first two-person collaboration titled Ozone Atmosphere, Monsieur Zohore and Sandy Williams IV explore disparate ideas about the inevitability of the world ending and the transitory nature of Black life. During the artists’ lifetime, concerns about depletions in the ozone layer and climate change have permeated our social consciousness, nationally and globally. In recent years the words climate, weather, and atmosphere have also been used to describe the totalizing ways that anti-Blackness circumscribes race relations within and beyond the U.S. Zohore employs humor and domestic labor to critique cultural expectations that arise from consumer-driven capitalism and his Ivory Coast parentage. In pursuit of threads that connect Black diasporic origin stories to official records and colloquial histories, Williams confronts memory, the body, and practices of resistance. By linking ozone depletion with anti-Blackness, the artists investigate how oppressive forces affect everyday gestures such as breathing and simply existing at the level of the environment and Black identity.
Thematically, contemporary culture and current events such as living through a pandemic and a new era of racial reckoning infuse the works in Ozone Atmosphere with a fleeting urgency that finds kindred expression in immateriality and impermanence. Zohore’s dragon balls live in Plexiglas boxes amid grass that will wither and die during the course of the exhibition. A reference to the Japanese animated series of the same name where the characters journey to resurrect lost loved ones, each set of Zohore’s dragon balls memorializes either one of the artist’s kin or a significant historical figure. Nearby, Williams’s wax candle sculptures and family portraits, both of which mimic the form of equestrian monuments, slowly melt and fade as his alluringly transparent backpacks mark time and memory. Within these works, bleach, fabric dye, resin, and paper towels comingle with wax and time-based media just as fact mixes with fiction in an increasingly uncertain world.
Conceptually and formally, the works pivot on perspective, duplicity, and the body as surface. The objects all change depending on the viewer’s position and presence, and all of the objects engage viewers in one obvious sense but then perform something different. Meanwhile, the artists’ manipulations of material surfaces sidestep stereotypical imaginings of the Black male body. In a gigabyte video comprised of one long shot, Williams lies in his bed naked—a revised take on the art historical tradition of the reclining nude. His miniscule, mundane movements suggest repose as well as stagnancy. Zohore’s paper towel “paintings,” on the other hand, transform the surface—the body—of the work. Canvas substrates covered in layers of paper towels imprinted with images culled from popular culture approximate paintings but they are in fact sculptures. Zohore’s half-real, half-fake birds of paradise rooted in Windex function similarly. Rather than a vibrant flowering plant in fertile soil, his birds of paradise start to bloom then die before realizing their full potential.
By focusing on the atmospheric overlaps between their work and their own Black (male) experiences, the artists compose a compelling visual dance—a duet—that extends Black conceptual art traditions to new forms of abstraction and surrealism. Looking to the stars and lucid dreaming are key to these new forms, both of which are realized in Zohore’s telescope sculpture. Engraved with a line from Langston Hughes’s 1921 poem, “Stars,” the telescope acts as a portal to the sky while the accompanying stars that Zohore purchases for victims of racial and sexual violence act as memorials. Here the sky, much like the ozone layer and Blackness, becomes a sort of skin for the artists. It is porous, able to absorb and reflect, and it is an abstraction. In Williams’s words, it occupies the “space between the Earth of our present and the projected Space-futurisms that we envision and extend beyond our bodies far into parallel universes. This exhibition is an attempt to understand our air quality, not as simple or thin-skinned, but as the complicated environment where we both breathe and ‘cannot breathe.’” Ultimately, Ozone Atmosphere constructs a new vision of identity-based art. Across media and genre, the works ebb and flow with the challenges of our time.
Cohesion
Ongoing through April 1
@ Y:ART
Visible, thick, expressive brush strokes fill the walls of the gallery. Perhaps a palette knife was used to apply the paint directly on to the canvas. One moment a figure is clearly visible, but as you observe further you find that the figure has disappeared into a collage of color and texture. This exhibition is a cohesive combination of works from some of our favorite artists that have been with Y:ART from the very start. Some works you may even recognize from previous shows. These fantastic paintings deserved a second chance to be displayed in a dynamic and cohesive curation!
COHESION is on display by appointment only from February 1 – April 1. Please contact our curator Juli Yensho to make an appointment via phone (443-928-2272) or via email ([email protected]).
Identity
Ongoing through April 6
presented by Maryland State Arts Council
A person’s identity is constantly evolving and can include their cultural identity, social identity, gender identity, racial identity, and the intersection of multiple identities to form one’s whole self. The Maryland State Arts Council is reflecting self-reflective art that expresses and explores how the artist perceives themself through this online exhibition.
David C. Driskell Papers Project
Thursday, February 25 • 12pm
presented by Maryland Institute Black Archives
David C. Driskell was an American artist, scholar, and curator; recognized for his work in establishing African-American Art as a distinct field of study. On April 1, 2020, Mr. Driskell passed away from complications of COVID-19. This month the Center, named in his honor, launched the David C. Driskell Papers Project. Listen to Angela Koukoui Outreach Coordinator at the University of Baltimore, RLB Library, Special Collections and Archives reflect on the life of the renowned curator and highlight the crowdsourcing transcription initiative aimed at making David C. Driskell’s words more accessible to the public.
This event will be recorded, archived, and uploaded to our Instagram Page.
LIVE The Art of Reading Book Club
Thursday, February 25 • 5:30-6pm
presented by The Walters + Enoch Pratt Free Library
Join Baltimore author Barbara Bourland and Joaneath Spicer, The James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art at the Walters Art Museum, as they discuss Barbara’s book Fake Like Me, art history, and the Walters collection. Following the talk, participants can join a breakout group to discuss themes in the book; reading the book is not a prerequisite for participation.
This program is a collaboration between the Walters Art Museum and the Enoch Pratt Free Library.
Read BmoreArt’s Book Review of Fake Like Me.
Barbara Bourland is the author of Fake Like Me, a finalist for the 2020 Edgar Best Novel Award. Fake Like Me was published by Grand Central in North America, and riverrun abroad. A translation is forthcoming in Japan from Hayakawa. Her debut novel, I’ll Eat When I’m Dead, was a Refinery29 Best Book of 2017 and Irish Independent Book of the Year. It was published in North America by Grand Central Publishing; in Ireland, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa by riverrun; and in Hebrew by Matar Press in Israel. Her third novel is forthcoming from Dutton.
Lecture | Blue Like Me: The Art of Siona Benjamin
Thursday, February 25 • 6:30pm
presented by The Department of Art + Design, Art History, Art Education + Baltimore Hebrew Institute of Towson University
The Department of Art + Design, Art History, Art Education and Baltimore Hebrew Institute of Towson University present a lecture by artist Siona Benjamin. Benjamin is a painter originally from Bombay, now living in the US. Her work reflects her background of being brought up a Bene Israel Jew in a predominantly Hindu and Muslim India. In her paintings she combines the imagery of her past with the role she plays in America today, making a mosaic inspired by both Indian miniature paintings, transcultural myth and iconography. She has her first MFA in painting and a second MFA in theater set design. She has exhibited in the US, Europe, and Asia. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2011 for an art project titled: “Faces: Weaving Indian Jewish Narratives” and a second Fulbright in 2016-17 for an art project titled: “From Motherland to Fatherland: Transcultural Indian Jews in Israel.”
Facebook Live with Daisy Brown
Thursday, February 25 • 7pm
presented by The Peale
Facebook Live with Jeffrey Kent and Kim Rice; hosted by Daisy Brown
Watch live on the Peale’s Facebook Page!
Don’t use Facebook? Watch the broadcast here.
Join Peale staff photographer and storytelling ambassador, Daisy Brown on Thursday night for a Facebook LIVE chat. This month she talks with the Peale’s artistic director Jeffrey Kent and the talented Baltimore-based artist Kim Rice, whose recent exhibition “Kim Rice: Inheritance” garnered attention from multiple media outlets. In this live chat, you’ll get a more in-depth look at both Jeffrey and Kim’s work, plus some casual conversation about art, community, and culture.
Daisy’s monthly chats can be watched LIVE on Facebook, or on our website.
Salu-Salo: A Filipino American Cultural Feast
Friday, February 26 • 7-9pm
presented by Towson University Asian Arts + Culture Center
“Salu-salo” is a Filipino word for gathering and eating together. Prepare yourself a Filipino meal and join the AA&CC for a virtual salu-salo featuring a cook-off with Sony Florendo, Chef Mike Ledesma (Perch RVA, InstaBowl RVA), Chef Rey Eugenio (Heritage Kitchen), and their takes on favorite Filipino recipes; music by Kulintronica and Diwa de Leon who have creatively electrified traditional Filipino instruments; a virtual tour at ANTHILL Fabric Gallery in the Philippines, with ANTHILL Co-Founder and Managing Director Anya Lim; and an Asian Arts & Culture Center 50th Anniversary cocktail.
COVID Monologues | Virtual Premiere of the Filmed Monologues
Friday, February 26 • 7pm
presented by Single Carrot Theatre
Covid Monologues is excited to announce the public virtual premiere of the filmed monologues set for February 26, 2021 at 7pm.
This date marks the one-year anniversary of the first case of community spread of COVID-19 detected in the U.S. Additional performances will be held on March 4, 2021 for stakeholders and public health professionals and on March 11, 2021 for high school and college students.
Covid Monologues is a series of fictionalized stories responding to peer-reviewed research about the social and societal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in America.
“The Covid Monologues project is a great way to bring public health research to new audiences through character-based storytelling,” says playwright Lane Stanley. Erin Riley, Artistic Director of Strand Theater Company says, “Covid Monologues have offered a wonderful opportunity to connect playwrights, directors, and actors all over the United States and do what we know best – creating art as an anchor in times of need. By teaming up with the medical community and using research conducted during the global pandemic, we’ve been able to explore the day to day effects the coronavirus has had on our communities.”
Marjuan Canady, actor in Black Pain by Christin Eve Cato, produced by Two Strikes Collective says, “This project changed my view of COVID-19 through my understanding of the government’s role in protecting some citizens over others and how black and brown communities continue to struggle to be visible in the healthcare system. I believe this project will wake the community up and those that are able will take active steps to fight for better healthcare systems and representation for communities of color.”
Losing Winter Participatory Workshop
Friday, February 26 • 12-1:30pm
presented by Maryland Center For History And Culture
Participate in the MCHC’s upcoming exhibition Losing Winter by sharing your memories connected to the season of winter. Join us for this virtual workshop to learn more about this participatory art project and to record your memory with featured artist Lynn Cazabon. Space is limited.
This virtual workshop is free and open to all audiences. Registration is required. After registering, attendees will receive an automated confirmation email with connection instructions.
Calls for Entry // Opportunities
Creativity Grant | Call for Submission
rolling deadline
sponsored by Maryland State Arts Council
The Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) encourages and invests in the advancement of the arts for all Marylanders. Its grants and programs support artists and arts organizations in their pursuit of artistic excellence, ensure the accessibility of the arts to all citizens, and promote statewide awareness of arts resources and opportunities. Programs are aimed at all Maryland residents regardless of political or religious opinion or affiliation, marital status, race, color, creed, age, national origin, sex or sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, or geographic location within the State.
The Council comprises an appointed body of 17 citizens from across the state, 13 of whom are named by the Governor to three-year terms that may be renewed once. Two private citizens and two legislators are appointed by the President of the Senate and by the Speaker of the House. All councilors serve without salary.
To carry out its mission, MSAC awards grants to not-for-profit, tax-exempt organizations for ongoing arts programming and projects. The MSAC also awards grants to individual artists, and provides technical and advisory assistance to individuals and groups. The Council reserves the right to prioritize grants awards.
MSAC receives its funds in an annual appropriation from the State of Maryland and from grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. The Council may also receive contributions from private, non-governmental sources.
Digital Artist Portfolio Development (DAP) Program | Call for Submission
deadline February 26
sponsored by Motor House
Motor House is proud to announce its Digital Artist Portfolio Development (DAP) Program, a professional development accelerator that will provide four artists of any disciplines (visual and performing artists) time, space, and resources to produce a digital/virtual portfolio during the COVID-19 Global Pandemic.
Motor House is dedicated to the development and support of emerging artists who create bold and experimental work. With this in mind, Motor House will provide the following:
Paid Performance/Visual Art Commission within Motor House ($400)
High Quality Video of Performance
Headshot/Performance Photographs or artwork photographs
Networking Opportunity with industry professionals
3 Professional Development workshops in social media marketing, grant writing, and virtual content creation.
Mentorship Opportunities
Professional Press Kit
Artists have been particularly affected by the COVID-19 Global Pandemic. Motor House seeks to provide both financial opportunities as well as professional development for artists despite physical closures. Performances/art works will be streamed online and featured on the Motor House website.
An information session will be conducted virtually for artists interested in applying on February 22, 2021 at 6pm. Register at https://dap3infosession.eventbrite.com for the info session.
36TH ANNUAL BCS YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL (YPF) | Call for Entry
deadline February 28
sponsored by Baltimore Center Stage
We want to see the work of young playwrights!
Encourage the student in your life to send in their plays for the 36th Annual Young Playwrights Festival, our longest running learning program.
We’re inviting young artists in grades K-12 to send in their new written work. Up to six pieces will be chosen to receive a professional virtual production produced by Baltimore Center Stage! All 6 YPF student artists will be assigned a professional mentor to help them refine and edit their work before being presented.
The deadline for the open call is February 28th.
ITSLIQUID International Contest – 8th Edition 2021 | Call for Submissions
deadline February 28
sponsored by ITSLIQUID
ITSLIQUID Group is proud to announce ITSLIQUID International Contest – 8th Edition 2021, a free theme international contest open to artists, architects and designers from all over the world, divided into ten categories: painting, photography, video-art, sculpture and installation, performing art, architecture, product design, fashion design, computer graphics, illustration and drawing.
The contest is born aiming to promote contemporary art, architecture, design and fashion through all ITSLIQUID Platform sharing tools (press release, mailing list with more than 250,000 subscribers, social media networks, international contemporary art, architecture and design events and exhibitions).
CATEGORIES
PAINTING
PHOTOGRAPHY
VIDEO-ART
SCULPTURE AND INSTALLATION
PERFORMING ART
ARCHITECTURE
PRODUCT DESIGN
FASHION DESIGN
ILLUSTRATION AND DRAWING
COMPUTER GRAPHICS
Merriweather District Artist-in-Residence Program 2021
deadline March 8
sponsored by Howard County Arts Council
It’s that time again– Merriweather District Artist-in-Residence (MD AIR) is calling for artists near and far to participate in its 2021 program!
This year, four selected artists from around the world will be provided a $10,000 stipend, studio space and housing for their six-week residency. We cannot wait to see what will come out of the program. This year’s themes are:
Contemporary Art x Technology (3 artists): Artists will produce work that integrates art, innovation, and technology.
Music x Technology (1 artist): One artist will explore music creation, production, and performance in the art studio. Sponsored by the Soulful Symphony, the music residency position was inspired by Merriweather Post Pavillion’s rich musical history.
Since 2018, the Howard Hughes Corporation (HHC) has worked with the Howard County Arts Council to bring artists across the world to work, live and create in Downtown Columbia, MD, a hub for the arts and home to creators in the DC metropolitan area. HHC is committed to the role that creativity, innovation and the arts play in defining the personality of a community. Selected projects for the 2021 MD AIR program should reflect this idea and should work towards building meaningful engagement with the DC metropolitan community, further defining Merriweather District as a Center of Culture and Commerce.
Applications are open now through Monday, March 8 at 11:59 pm. The new residency will begin on Monday, July 5 and end on Monday, August 31, 2021.
Lexington Market Calls for Artists
deadline March 23
sponsored by BOPA
As part of the development of a new Lexington Market, including a new plaza, two Calls for Artists have been released seeking permanent, site-specific, integrated artworks. Both calls are open to artists living and working in Maryland and its contiguous states: Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Artists living and working in Baltimore and across Maryland are especially encouraged to apply. Artists may apply individually or as a team.
The budget for each of the two (2) artworks is $150,000. Each of the two (2) site-specific, three-dimensional artworks will have a separate budget of $150,000.
The full application with additional information is available here and is due by Tuesday, March 23, 2021.
The Calls for Artists are supported by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City, Lexington Market, and Seawall.
Applications must be submitted online and only complete applications will be shown to the Artist Selection Committee. The full list of requirements for the Request for Qualifications is available here. Please note that no artwork proposals are to be submitted at this stage.
For any questions about the Calls for Artists, please contact Kirk Shannon-Butts [email protected].
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!
