BmoreArt

This Week: Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann at Morton Fine Art, Kei Ito at UMBC, Fields & Formations at the Delaware Contemporary, Ginevra Shay at Pentimenti, Bill Schmidt at MONO Practice, Margaret Rorison and Monique Crabb at Current, Somethin’ to Say at Galerie Myrtis, a call for proposals for the 2021 Gutierrez Legacy Grant, and more.

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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Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann: Water Ribbon
Wednesday, September 8 | Ongoing through October 6
@ Morton Fine Art

Morton Fine Art is pleased to present Water Ribbon, a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Washington, D.C.-based artist Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, on view from September 8th – October 6th, 2021. Featuring a collection of recent pieces by the artist, the exhibition offers an evocative perspective on contemporary ecologies during a time at which environmental destruction and the consequences of climate change loom ever larger.

Utilizing acrylic, sumi ink, and collage, Mann draws from traditions of Chinese landscape painting to create mesmerizing, vibrant depictions of organic matter. Mann begins her process by pouring liquid pigments onto paper, allowing them to dry and yielding a stain of color from which the work is then based. Through an embrace of the indeterminate qualities of her materials—the ink or paint takes its own course, without the artist dictating its shapes or forms—Mann demonstrates a symbiotic relationship to her materials that serves as an apt metaphor for coexistence with the natural world. What results from Mann’s subsequent additions to the paper are rich, layered tableaus imbued with an affective interplay of ideas.

Of the challenges posed by her recent work, Mann describes her rumination upon “the
resuscitation of landscape painting in a world where ‘landscape’ is represented and defined through an ever-widening field of digital, graphic, and visual forms.” At times almost dizzying, the pieces shown in Water Ribbon eschew Western conventions of spatial perspective and inert figuration, instead embracing qualities of movement and monumentality central to Chinese landscape painting traditions.

Bright hues and a multiplicity of patterns are nestled among Mann’s illustrations of flora and fauna, with streams of ink evoking vines and riverbeds. Lying in the tension between the artificial and the organic, Mann’s renderings suggest an intertwining of systems rather than a constant grappling for control or domination. Splashes of ink seep across each image, traversing various shapes and forms. Elsewhere, translucent swathes of paint filter views of plant life, appearing like stained-glass windows through which to gaze.

“In my most recent work, I hope to live in the tradition of landscape painting, experiencing it for what it has always been: an occasion for radical experimentation and confrontation with the world, in the broadest sense of the term that sustains us,” said Mann. Amongst all the chaos and beauty, Water Ribbon proposes a mode of coexistence attuned to change, reciprocity, and an honoring of diverse forms of life.

 

 

Kei Ito | Artist Talk
Thursday, September 9 • 6pm
@ UMD Stamp Gallery

Screening in the Univesity of Maryland Stamp Nanticoke Room

In conjunction with this exhibition, join the Stamp Gallery for an artist talk by artist Kei Ito, artist of acquisition Under My Skin #1.

Kei Ito is a visual artist working primarily with camera-less photography and installation art who is currently teaching at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in NYC. Ito received his BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology followed by the MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016.  Ito’s work addresses issues of deep intergenerational loss and connections as he explores the materiality and experimental processes of photography.

Ito’s work addresses issues of deep intergenerational loss and connections as he explores the materiality and experimental processes of photography, specifically the idea around visualizing the invisible such as radiation, memory and life/death. His work, rooted in the trauma and legacy passed down from his late grandfather –  a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, meditates on the complexity of his identity and heritage through examining the past and current threats of nuclear disaster and his present status as an US-immigrant. Most of Ito’s prints are made with exposing light sensitive material to sunlight, often timing the exposures with his breath, influenced by his grandfather’s words describing the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima “…was like hundreds of suns lighting up the sky.” These X-ray like prints are usually installed in a way that provokes a monument.

He was the recipient of the 2020 Marva and John Warnock Biennial Artist in Resident Award and participated in other artist residencies such as: MASS MoCA, the Center for Fine Art Photography, CPW, and Creative Alliance. Ito’s works are collected by major institutions including: the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Norton Museum of Art, En Foco, the Candela Collection and California Institute of Integral Studies. His internationally recognized solo and group shows can be read in reviews and articles published by Washington Post, Hyperallergic, BmoreArt, Chicago Magazine, Studio Magazine, ArtMaze Magazine, and BBC Culture/Art.

Website: Kei-ito.com
Instagram: Kei.ito.art

Viewers who wish to join the lecture virtually on Zoom may do so at https://go.umd.edu/keiitotalk

 

 

Squee! | Lecture + Opening Reception
Thursday, September 9 • 6pm | Ongoing through October 9
@ Towson University Center for the Arts

This exhibition celebrates the miniature, from the fantastical to the absurd. The artists employ tiny forms to examine everything from our relationship with nature to grocery shopping, cooking, personal hobbies, crafting, gardening and nature. At a time when the world is a heavy place, we celebrate the moments of real-life light-heartedness, the small instances of overwhelming feelings that come from the pure joy of an object, rendered in perfect miniature, over which we cannot help but Squee!

Gallery Hours: Tues./Wed./Fri./Sat. 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. and Thurs. 11 a.m. – 8 p.m. or by appointment, contact [email protected]

Exhibition Reception, September 9, 7:30 p.m. following 6:30 p.m. lecture

 

 

Fields and Formations | Opening Event
Friday, September 10 • 5-9pm | Ongoing through January 7
@ The Delaware Contemporary

Organized by The Delaware Contemporary’s inaugural Curator-in-Residence Kristen Hileman, Fields and Formations brings together approximately 70 works by 12 distinguished women and non-binary artists from the Mid-Atlantic region who infuse abstract paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture with emotional and metaphorical content. The artists, who span five decades in age, share interests in luminous color, repeated forms, the power of materials, and the meditative aspects of making labor-intensive works. The exhibition celebrates artists who have developed a significant part of their careers in a region bounded by Philadelphia to the north and Washington, DC to the south. Many of these artists acknowledge the influence of Alma Thomas (1891-1978) and Anne Truitt (1921-2004), important but under-recognized women artists who were based in Washington and have too often been placed at the margins of the mid-20th-century Washington Color School of abstract field painters. At the same time, Fields and Formations demonstrates that the broader Mid-Atlantic area’s diverse contributions to the story of American abstraction continue to be vibrant and profound during the beginning decades of the 21st century.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, designed by Glenn Dellon and with essays by Hileman and Philadelphia-based art historian and curator Jennie Hirsh. Fields and Formations travels to the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in spring 2022.

FEATURED ARTISTS:
Natessa Amin, Arden Bendler Browning, Carol Brown Goldberg, Alex Ebstein, Alexis Granwell, Jesse Harrod, Maren Hassinger, Jae Ko, Linling Lu, linn meyers, Maggie Michael and Jo Smail

Carole Bieber & Marc Ham Gallery and DuPont I & II Galleries

 

 

GINEVRA SHAY: Meadow’s Blistering Berry | Meet the Artist
Friday, September 10 • 6-8pm | Ongoing through October 16
@ Pentimenti Gallery

“If a chromosomal network undergirds all life to its phasing, what is genetic feeling? Everything is synthetic. Or everything is mapped by the inversion of flesh. Or object begets object. One may be followed by a sense that the skin of Life can only be touched and not felt. The assemblage of color and form into space brings forth the reverberant qualities of material. This is the painterly task. The florist works in the medium of arrangement, in the material field of fluorescence, in the system of meaning nearest to Life. And so we receive a meadow’s blistering berry.

Let us evade establishing empiric distinction in favor of disclosing the marvel of heterogeneity through light. Difference is a particle. Let us not think so closely to our shape that we would reveal anything in particular. There being no world behind the blur. Let us shift between bodies in some hotel room, away from the blinking penalty of the city. Let us follow the bee, sensing our flowers by a subcurrent. Likenesses and divergence, numerousness, the length to which one could possibly unfold oneself, hue, light, and the way we respond to all these waves that fill our time. All such possibilities, let us actualize a light beam of becoming where each petal not need be specific.”

Text by Nora Treatbaby

Pentimenti Gallery welcomes the fall with a solo exhibition of the photographs of Ginevra Shay. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at Pentimenti Gallery.
In Meadow’s Blistering Berry, Shay presents a series of unique chromogenic and silver gelatin photographs. The work is layered and luminous, often comprised of multiple colorcast overlays, and is hand-printed by the artist in color and black and white darkrooms.

Shay’s abstract photography defies easy entry or interpretation as it seeks to deconstruct the medium’s tendency toward structure and lucidity. Motifs of interiors and natural environments are present in the work, but they are obscured and voided of context, placed instead into fields of glowing color, or decontextualized in monochrome. Process and narrative are entangled in the work, as time and space bend to form a high-contrast vision of a reality intrinsic to dreams and film.

Shay’s work generates a visual poetry that observes and remarks on both the social and cultural conditions from which it was wrought, as well as its own process of generation. Shay operates on the edges of ability and possibility, and from this space develops both an intense depth and a wry sense of self-reflexive humor. The imagery deconstructs and reconstructs itself, simultaneously engendering the chaos of lived experience, and attempting to decipher it. The deeply compelling images carry worlds of association while maintaining an airiness and a levity that elevate them from the material world, into a conceptual space of light and ether.

The exhibition has been selected to be a part of the 20/20 Photo Festival, taking place throughout the city of Philadelphia during the month of September.

 

 

Somethin’ to Say
Saturday, September 11 | Ongoing through October 16
@ Galerie Myrtis

Featured artists: Noel A. Anderson, Alfred Conteh, Larry Cook, Meka Jean, Yashua Klos, Michi Meko, Lester Julian Merriweather, Vitus Shell,  Felandus Thames, and Cullen Washington.

September 11 – October 16, 2021

Co-curated by artist, Felandus Thames, and art historian and curator, Key Jo Lee, Somethin’ to Say discloses the formal, conceptual, intellectual, and visceral links to “The South” in the work of ten Black artists. While each artist is deeply connected by birth or residence to particular southern states – Chicago to Georgia – “The South” is more than a geographical location. Rather it is a repository for memory, hallowed ground for Black people, and a cornerstone for cultural transmission in the West.

In this exhibition, “The South” isn’t relegated to the past. Instead of relics, each artist, deploying divergent aesthetic strategies, has produced works that mark intersections of materiality, ritual, memory, music, and spirituality, then muddle them to produce experimental forms. They simultaneously cater to and defy expected notions of Southern blackness by providing vistas redolent with what Elizabeth Alexander describes as “black interiority” or that which envisions  “…complex black selves, real and enactable black power, rampant and unfetishized black beauty” (Alexander, x).

Somethin’ to Say epitomizes creativity produced in “the breaks,” or in and among the purposeful and incidental gaps in American historical narratives. But the poetic irony of this gathering of artists is that they aren’t making work specific to Hip Hop culture. Instead, as the artists mined southern Black cultural production as means to broaden the understanding and the geography of the “New South”, Hip Hop and its longue durée, revealed itself as a cardinal point for the resultant artworks. Hip Hop emerged as Nixon’s “War on Drugs,” broad patterns of urban deindustrialization and the rampant defunding of public schools stifled black social, political, and economic mobility. With its roots in call-and-response and indebtedness to traditions of Black oratory virtuosity, Hip Hop provided a new formal expression of the beauty that effervesces in forced subsistence.

 

 

Spatial Fabrications | Opening Reception
Saturday, September 11 • 2-4pm | Ongoing through October 23
@ MONO Practice

Jan Razauskas | Bill Schmidt

MONO PRACTICE is excited to present Spatial Fabrications, a two-person exhibition featuring the work of Jan Razauskas and Bill Schmidt. Spatial Fabrications examines abstract topographical elements and geometric renderings as it relates to artists’ painterly processes. Abstraction is unique, as it genuinely reveals itself to the viewer as a literal representation of space and form. However, the work in Spatial Fabrications are multilayered and materially situated in their creation, creating tension between spatial and painterly sensibility.

In the series of work Resonant Line, Jan Razauskas fuses nebulous forms and flexing geometric lines of color in densely layered, abstract paintings. Her technique involves painting many thin veils of color, alternating with precisely painted lines, on sheets of glass-smooth coated aluminum panels. Passages of liquidity, striation, boundary, or flow on the paint surface build materiality unique to each image. Razauskas creates a dialog between the intuitively derived, painted forms and drawn geometric lines through the layering process. The resulting images offer a complex visual field, open to multiple readings of spatial relationships, identities, and dualities. While formal concerns of shape, color, line, and the material aspects of the paint take precedence in the painting’s creation, the finished images invite allusion to visual and metaphorical truths and fictions.

Bill Schmidt

I’ve never been more excited about the possibilities of painting. It is the inherently limited nature of painting that I don’t just accept, but rather, embrace. The challenges and rewards inherent in finding a world within a flat rectangle (which for me is a foot or so square) are significant and keep me coming back for more.

I use traditional, water-soluble gouache on wooden panels primed with an absorbent ground. Gouache is what I would call a recalcitrant medium: it does what it wants to do, probably more so than other kinds of paint. Much of the character of my work is the result of either damage control or acceptance of what the paint has “decided” to do. Making one of my paintings is like crossing a stream, one rock at a time. I know I want to get to the far bank but I don’t know exactly where I’ll land. I begin each painting not with a blueprint but a starting point – a loose plan that gets me going. Color choices, patterns, surfaces, and spatial relationships grow out of the process and in collaboration with paint that is often uncooperative. The water-soluble nature of the gouache allows me to make drastic revisions as the image develops. My paintings come into existence by virtue of an accumulation of choices, missteps, adjustments, accidents, rethinkings, and sometimes just pain luck – not unlike life, itself. While making these paintings, as in life, I often don’t know what’s around the next corner.

The paintings are all about my visual world. I engage in a process of indirect observation. In my daily travels I’m constantly observing patterns, structures, shapes, and relationships which are internalized and emerge organically in the paintings, often in unexpected and surprising ways. There is a real feed- back loop between my studio and my visual world. I tend to notice things that look like something I’ve painted and I often paint things that look like those things I notice.

I am primarily driven by formal considerations and matters of process. While the paintings do not have a fixed narrative, I know that meaning will find the work. It is my hope that the situations I paint call up multiple associations and thereby allow the viewer to arrive at his or her own understanding what is being seen. And, hopefully, an engagement with this work will heighten the viewer’s awareness and appreciation of their personal visual world.

 

 

Hypogean | Opening Reception
Saturday, September 11 • 7pm | Ongoing through October 2
@ Current Space

Current Space is proud to present ‘Hypogean,’ an exhibition of works by Margaret Rorison and Monique Crabb. Please join us for the opening reception.

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 11th, 7-10pm
Closing Reception & Artist Talk: October 1st
Exhibition Duration: September 11th – October 2nd
Gallery Hours: Fridays & Saturdays, 1-5pm

Masks required indoors with refreshments served outdoors in our back courtyard. Thank you ❤️

This program is made possible by supporting members like you; the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization; and the generous contributions of The Maryland State Arts Counsel.

 

 

 

Calls for Entry // Opportunities

 

 

Emergency Grants
rolling deadline
sponsored by Foundation for Contemporary Arts

Created in 1993 to further FCA’s mission to encourage, sponsor, and promote work of a contemporary, experimental nature, Emergency Grants provide urgent funding for visual and performing artists who:

Have sudden, unanticipated opportunities to present their work to the public when there is insufficient time to seek other sources of funding

Incur unexpected or unbudgeted expenses for projects close to completion with committed exhibition or performance dates

Emergency Grants is the only active, multi-disciplinary program that offers immediate assistance of this kind to artists living and working anywhere in the United States, for projects occurring in the U.S. and abroad.

Each month FCA receives an average of 95 Emergency Grant applications and makes approximately 12-15 grants. Grants range in amount from $500 to $3,000, and the average grant is now $1,700.

We recommend that artists review all of our eligibility guidelines and FAQsbefore applying. You may also complete our Eligibility Questionnaire, but please note that the questionnaire is not a substitute for a thorough review of program guidelines.

For information on current Emergency Grantees please follow FCA on Instagram and Facebook.

 

 

Autumn 2021 Online Exhibition | Open Call
deadline September 12
sponsored by Young Space

Young Space invites submissions of contemporary visual art for an online exhibition in Autumn 2021! This is an opportunity to submit your work for consideration for a curated virtual show via Young Space Views. Presenting exhibitions online since 2018 and growing and evolving through 2021, Young Space has established itself a go-to platform for discovering early career and emerging contemporary artists around the world.

How it works

Please read carefully! It’s good idea to print or bookmark this page for future reference to keep track of dates and guidelines.

Young Space online shows aim to be internationally accessible, 24/7, curated presentations of exciting contemporary work from a diverse range of emerging voices around the world. Each show typically comprises several works each, by about 12-16 artists, and is presented in an autonomous presentation on Young Space Views. It is also promoted via social media, large email list, and additional network/press contacts. There is no predetermined theme; the concept of the show is determined by the work submitted and how a group of artists and their work build a cohesive and curated presentation, inviting more in-depth discussion and participation from viewers and prospective collectors. In this way, each open call produces a unique show based on artists’ strongest work. You can view the latest exhibition, material remains, at views.yngspc.com from August 20 – September 19, 2021.

Each artist and at least one artwork is highlighted individually on the @yngspc Instagram (118K+ followers, including gallerists, curators, publications, and collectors), along with process and studio insights, interviews, and other means of facilitating community and connections to art professionals and art lovers around the globe. Additionally, all entries are also retained and revisited regularly in consideration for inclusion in future exhibitions (online or offline) or collaborative curated projects with other galleries and organizations.

 

 

SOLOS 2022 | Call for Proposals
deadline September 30
sponsored by Arlington Arts Center

SOLOS 2022 JURORS

Myrtis Bedolla, Owner and Founding Director, Galerie Myrtis

Amber Esseiva, Associate Curator, Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA VCU)

Al Miner, Founding Director/Chief Curator, Georgetown University Art Galleries and Associate Professor of Art and Museum Studies

Arlington Arts Center is currently accepting proposals for SOLOS 2022, to take place April 9 – June 4, 2022. Contemporary artists living or working in the Mid-Atlantic region are invited to propose solo-style exhibitions or projects to take place in one of AAC’s gallery spaces. Proposals are accepted through an open call and selected by guest jurors, in consultation with AAC staff.

Artists are encouraged to propose new bodies of work, installations, or projects and to consider AAC’s exhibition spaces in their exhibition proposal. Exhibition proposals should include the preferred gallery for the proposed work, especially if the artist feels strongly about exhibiting in a particular gallery. Floor plans of the potential galleries can be found on AAC’s website.

WHO CAN SUBMIT?

Artists who produce contemporary art in any media, and who live or work in the Mid-Atlantic region (defined as Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or Delaware) may submit exhibition proposals. Any existing works must have been completed within the last 3 years in order to be considered.

 

 

General Exhibit | Call for Applications
deadline October 1
sponsored by Howard County Arts Council

Artists wishing to be considered for an exhibit in the Howard County Arts Council (HCAC) galleries are invited to submit a general exhibit application. The HCAC Exhibits Committee meets quarterly to review applications and select artists for the exhibit space. Artists, ages 18 and older, working in all media and styles including time-based and installation artists, are encouraged to apply either individually or as a group. The Committee also welcomes proposals from curators and organizations.

For detailed entry guidelines, visit https://hocoarts.submittable.com/submit or email [email protected]. The next deadline for submissions is October 1, 2021.

HCAC manages two galleries at the Howard County Center for the Arts with over 2,100 square feet of exhibit space. The HCAC gallery program was established to enhance the public’s appreciation of the visual arts, provide a venue to exhibit the work of local, regional, and national artists in a professional space, and provide leadership in the arts by presenting a broad spectrum of arts in all media from both emerging and established artists.

HCAC presents 11-12 exhibits per year of national, regional, and local artists, including two-person, small and large group, juried, curated, and community shows.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, gallery hours are subject to change. For current gallery hours, or to learn more about HCAC programs and exhibits, call 410-313-ARTS (2787) or visit hocoarts.org.

 

 

Portrait | Call for Submissions
deadline October 3
sponsored by SE Center for Photography

We use portraits as objects of remembrance and reverence, of seduction and glorification. From the keepsakes in lockets as tiny remembrances of love, to the likenesses of leaders meant to inspire and seduce with their power. They can stir, and confront, and drive us to action. Just as they can lull in longing for a time since passed.

Our juror for the The Portrait is Michael Foley. Foley was born in Delaware and grew up in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. He opened his gallery in the fall of 2004 after fourteen years of working with notable photography galleries, including Fraenkel, Howard Greenberg, and Yancey Richardson.

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.

 

 

Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship
deadline October 4
sponsored by Center for Craft

The purpose of the Craft Research Fund – Artist Fellowship is to advance, expand, and support the creation of new research and knowledge through craft practice. Awards of $20,000 will be granted to two artists to support research projects relating to the goals of the Craft Research Fund – Artist Fellowship. At the end of the grant period Fellows will present their new body of work in an exhibition at the Center for Craft as well as present their research methodologies and finding in the Center for Craft’s symposium.

 

 

GMF Legacy Grant
deadline October 30
sponsored by The Gutierrez Memorial Fund

The Gutierrez Memorial Fund is pleased to present its 2021 Legacy Grant. The project-based arts grant calls for proposals from arts organizations, individual artists, and educators who are residents of Maryland and whose programs or projects serve Maryland communities. Special consideration is given to projects that build skills, engage the community and permanently transform the built environment.

For more information on eligibility and to download an application please visit our website.  https://gutierrezmemorialfund.com/grant-info/.    

The deadline for submissions is October 30, 2021.