BmoreArt

This Week: Penn Eastburn at BSC Cocktail Gallery, Brent Crothers closing at Chesapeake Gallery, SPARK: New Light artist reception at The Peale, Telling Our Story opening at the Driskell Center, Kei Ito opening reception at Gallery in the Sky, EX-tend EX-cess: Metamorphosis in Clay opening reception at TU Center for the Arts Gallery, Sisters Freehold presents “Us/Them” by Carly Wijs at Graffiti Warehouse, opening event for TU MFA Exhibition at Rhizome DC, Junk in the Trunk + Somewhere Between Chaos and Silence opening receptions at Baltimore Clayworks, and an opening reception for Mina Cheon with Kim Il Soon at Katzen Gallery — PLUS Call for Solo Exhibition at the Torpedo Factory and more featured opportunities.

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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< Events >

 

MICA LAB Award Winner, Penn Eastburn
ongoing through October
@ Baltimore Spirits Co. Cocktail Gallery

Without a doubt one of the core things that makes Baltimore a beautiful city is it’s arts and culture community. From The Baltimore School of The Arts to MICA to its often gritty community theater scene, this creative group of people define a large part of what makes Baltimore so unique. As Baltimore Spirits Co. partner, Max Lents puts it, “It’s always been apparent to us that Baltimore’s soul and spirit is inextricable from its artistic youth; so what better way to invest in our city’s future than to empower young artists within our community?”

For this reason, Baltimore Spirits Co. created the first every Baltimore Spirits Co. LAB Award, a $10,000 cash grant to support a bourgeoning artist, as a part of MICA’s Graduate Competitive Awards and Fellowships. Lents explains, “Without a shadow of doubt, Baltimore Spirits Company was born from the vibrant creative community of Baltimore. We consider ourselves artists as much as anything else, and we’ve been lucky to find some success in following our creative passions…and we’re excited to support a special artist that’s invested in the local community.”

Earlier this Summer, the grant was awarded to MICA graduate student, Penn Eastburn, who will be using the money to open a framing shop with an emphasis on supporting local artists’ access to custom framing for their work. Eleven Eleven, his future frame shop, will be “ an artist-run space offering community workshops, exhibition and event space, and ultimately, a residency program.”

As part of the award, Penn will be hanging a curated art show in the BSC Cocktail Gallery through August and September. The show will open Friday, August 26th and will feature a special cocktail menu for the evening. Lents continues, “For Penn, the pinnacle of this whole thing was probably winning the prize, but for us, it’s hanging his show. We’re so excited to showcase the first winner of the BSC LAB Award at home in our tasting room. It’s a remarkable intersection of so many things that make BSC and Baltimore unique. We’re very much looking forward to seeing what he accomplishes from here.”

 

 

Brent Crothers: Searching for a History | Closing Reception
Tuesday, September 6 • 4-6:30pm | Ongoing through September 7
@ Chesapeake Gallery

The Chesapeake Gallery is excited to host a wonderful exhibition of sculptures titled, “Brent Crothers: Searching for a History”. While guests are on campus to view the exhibit it the Chesapeake Gallery, we would like to make everyone aware of a few other locations at HCC where Crothers’ work can be viewed. These include two outdoor locations and one indoor. Please see the map below for details on where to discover all the fantastic artworks across campus. Exhibition runs through September 7, 2022.

 

 

Spark: New Light exhibition | Artists Reception
Wednesday, September 7 • 5-8pm | Ongoing through September 25
@ The Peale

Explore the creative vision of 24 artists at SPARK: New Light, presented by Towson University, UMBC, and PNC Bank, August 13 through September 25 at The Peale.

SPARK: New Light will ignite your imagination. Discover photographic time capsules and microscopic organisms that glow in the dark, investigate delicate bamboo paper sculptures and a post-apocalyptic future, learn about a Chinese-American who fought in the Civil War and the disappearance of Holland Island, and enjoy room after room of additional artworks.

Artists featured in this fifth annual family-friendly SPARK exhibition include Mark Burchick, Lynn Cazabon, Irene Chan, Grace Doyle, Adam Droneberg, Carrie Fucile, Alexandra Garove, Danielle Hawk, Fahmida Hossain, Ahlam Khamis, Jinyoung Koh, Diane Kuthy, Kathy Marmor (with Penny Rheingans), Jenee Mateer, Lisa Moren (with Tsvetan Bachvaroff, Dan Deacon, and Woody Lissauer), Kat Navarro, Timothy Nohe, Sookkyung Park, Corrie Francis Parks, Chris Peregoy, Foster Reynolds-Santiago, Lynn Tomlinson, and J. Yablonsky.

SPARK: New Light is curated by Catherine Borg.

SPARK: New Light is made possible by a generous grant from PNC Bank.

 

 

Telling Our Story: Community Conversation with Our Artists | Opening Reception
Thursday, September 8 • 6pm | Ongoing through December 2
@ David C. Driskell Center

The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park, is proud to present its fall 2022 exhibition, Telling Our Story: Community Conversation with Our Artists; the exhibition is on view at the Driskell Center from September 9 through December 2, 2022. The exhibition is the second in a series focused on telling the story of the David C. Driskell Center. The exhibition is curated by Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, Associate Director of Outreach and Operations at American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, assisted by Tamara Schlossenberg, Collections Manager at the David C. Driskell Center and Professor Curlee R. Holton, Director of the David C. Driskell Center.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: Telling Our Story: Community Conversation with Our Artists is a show focused on the art of dialogue—the dialogue between art, artists, and the viewer. The Center invited a group of guest selectors to view the Center’s collection of art online and select five works for possible inclusion in the exhibition. They were then invited to come view the works in person and select two that resonated with them. In the spirit of David Driskell and his famous letter writing to artists, each selector was asked to write a letter to the artists of their chosen artworks stating why they like the piece, how it captured their interest, and why it is significant to them. They were encouraged to express any historical, personal, or societal significance that led to the selection process. Prof. Curlee Holton remarked:

When an artist creates a work of art, it reflects their constant dialogue, both internal and external, with their identity and the world they inhabit. By encouraging the audience to explore and develop an interpersonal connection to the work they’re viewing, it allows us to have access to a diverse, multifaceted, and multigenerational perspective while broadening and enhancing the appreciation of the creative genius of the visual arts, especially that of the African American artists.

More than forty works were selected for the exhibition representing the art of thirty-one artists from the David C. Driskell Center’s Permanent Collection. The works are on display along with accompanying letters both handwritten and typed.

 

 

Kei Ito: Shaded Remnants | Opening Reception
Thursday, September 8 • 6-8pm
@ Gallery in the Sky

Shaded Remnants is a multimedia solo exhibition of visual artist Kei Ito examining the lingering remnants of memories. Featuring two new bodies of works, the exhibition focuses on differing materials and textures in order to create a contemplative space for reflection and examination of our own relationship with collective memory.

Kei Ito is a visual artist working primarily with installation art, photography and sculpture. Ito received his BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology followed by his MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Ito’s work addresses issues of deep intergenerational loss and connections as he explores materiality and the conceptual elements found in both extraordinarily charged and banal objects. By excavating and uncovering hidden histories connected to his own, Ito utilizes his generational past to use as a case study for contemporary and future events.

 

 

EX-tend EX-cess: Metamorphosis in Clay
Thursday, September 8 • Lecture 6:30pm + Reception 7:30pm | Ongoing through December 10
@ Towson University Center for the Arts Gallery

This exhibition of contemporary abstraction through the medium of clay explores the grasping of transformation through “Action Clay-ing”—additions, growth, combinations, excess, exits and entrances, and endings and beginnings— as extensions of the artists’ bodily gestures and conceptual ideas. The possibility of transformation suggests exiting a space and entering another, exiting the world of functional ceramics, and entering the world of abstraction. The artists in this show are generally diverse: male, female, and non-binary, and of various cultural backgrounds. The exhibition offers dialog around issues of equity in terms of materials and culture. It encourages viewers to think beyond traditional structures, offering the opportunity for personal growth, echoing the theme of the works themselves. These are established artists of national reputation from across the United States including Maryland. The project comprises a catalog, workshops, lectures, and rich web presence.

Artists: Ebitenyefa Baralaye (Detroit); Cassils (LA and NYC); Roxanne Jackson (Brooklyn, NYC); Sara Parent-Ramos (Maryland); Zemer Peled (Maryland); Rotem Reshef (New York); Martha Rieger (New York); Brie Ruais (New York); Anthony Sonnenberg (Arkansas); Gabriela Vainsencher (New Jersey); Michael Ware (Wisconsin); Matt Wedel (Ohio); and Shiyuan Xu (Chicago).

Co-Curated by Sagi Refael and J. Susan Isaacs

This exhibition and related programming are being co-sponsored by Baltimore Hebrew Institute. Supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts.

 

 

Us/Them by Carly Wijs
Saturday, September 10 + Sunday, September 11 • 4pm + 7pm
@ Graffiti Warehouse

Five months into the crisis in Ukraine, Sisters Freehold brings Carly Wijs’ powerful play to Baltimore as a fundraiser for Save the Children’s Children’s Emergency Fund.

In September 2004, a group of terrorists stormed School Number One in Beslan, Russia, taking hundreds of children, their parents and teachers hostage. The ensuing siege lasted three days and left 333 people dead, 186 of whom were children. Us/Them recounts those 3 harrowing days through the eyes of two children: Girl and Boy.

Us/Them is not a straightforward account of this terrible tragedy, but an exploration of the entirely individual way children cope with traumatic situations. Over the course of 60 minutes, Girl and Boy (Anna DeBlasio and Quincy Vicks) introduce us to their town and school, build the world of their experience, and try to make sense of the incomprehensible.

“This story resonates strongly right now on two different levels—one domestic and one global, “ says director Natka Bianchini. “American schoolchildren endure a constant, low-level of trauma every year through the specter of school shootings and gun violence, a horror we all experienced anew in May with the horrific shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas Second, the world has watched the Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022.  We have witnessed  the images of the bombed-out maternity hospitals, the mothers fleeing with their children on crowded trains and buses, the empty strollers left for refugee children crossing the border into Poland.”

Playwright Carly Wijs adds: “It is essential that we don’t stop thinking and reflecting and analyzing.  Only by doing so can we get to the origins of these atrocities—and then, we hope, start to think about preventing them.”

All proceeds go directly to Save the Children’s Children’s Emergency Fund, which responds directly to emergencies like Ukraine, Yemen, Syria and where needs are greatest globally.

Performances run Saturday and Sunday September 10 & 11, 2022 at Graffiti Warehouse: 128 W North Avenue, 21201. Tickets are available now at https://www.sistersfreehold.org/usthem.

 

 

Prayer Closet: The Body, Black Congregation, and Fugitivity | Public Opening
Saturday, September 10 • 12-5pm
@ NoMüNoMü

About Prayer Closet:

Audre Lorde says the erotic is firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. The closet is a place of meditation and suppression. The queer closet considers the things we can not openly express. The prayer closet is the physical or metaphorical private space where we go to pray and seek God. Prayer Closet: The Body, Black Congregation, and Fugitivity considers how these two closets fold into one another. Prayer Closet thinks about the Black sanctified church as the intersections of race, sexuality, pleasure, and constraint.

About the artist:

Lionel Frazier White III (b. Washington, D.C.; lives and works in Washington, D.C.) is a Washington D.C native, arts educator and interdisciplinary conceptual artist who works in painting, drawing, wood sculpture, installation, and mixed media collage. White’s work explores themes of forced and coerced labor and its effect on family pathology, erasure, displacement, reassertion, and gentrification. White holds a Bachelors in Fine Arts from The George Washington University Corcoran school of Art and Design (2018) and is a graduate of The Duke Ellington School of the Arts High School in Washington, D.C. His work has been exhibited at the D.C Commission on Arts and Humanities, Prince George’s African American Art Museum and Cultural Center, Torpedo Factory |Connect The Dots, Rush Arts Galleries, and Area 405. White was a 2019 Halcyon Arts Lab Cohort 3 Fellow in Residence in Washington DC.

 

 

Towson MFA Group Exhibition | Opening Event
Saturday, September 11 • 4-6pm | Ongoing through September 24
@ Rhizome DC

Rhizome DC, an artist’s space in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington DC, is presenting an exhibition of selected works by students from the MFA graduate program at Towson University in Maryland. The show features a range of 2D work, video, and installation. The selected artists explore an array of themes, including process and transformation, personal narratives, and cultural commentary.

Featuring work by: Zachary Diaz, Erin Barry-Dutro, Claudia Cappelle, David Calkins, Jim Doran, Brianna Doyle, Grace Doyle, Jodi Hoover, Lolo Gem, Katherine Nonemaker, Aral Olgun,  Andrew Thorpe, You Wu, Jen Yablonsky, and Tara Youngborg

Sept 6—Sept 24

Opening Saturday Sept 10, 4pm -6pm

6950 Maple St NW, Washington DC 20012
Event website:
https://www.rhizomedc.org/new-events/2022/9/towsonmfashow

 

 

“Junk in the Trunk” and “Somewhere Between Chaos and Silence” | Opening Receptions
Saturday, September 10 • 6-8pm
@ Baltimore Clayworks

Junk in the Trunk is a multi-media multi-medium show featuring artists who work with any and all materials. From video, clay, to glitter and everything in-between! Craft often lives on the edges of the fine arts and multi-medium/media artists will even be on the outskirts of the outskirts. This show is a celebration of artists who live in that borderland. The queer, the othered, the funk, and the sub-cultured. These artists love material but will not care to “blasphemously” glue rhinestones to that dance.

Featured Artists: 
Allison Arkush, M’Shinda Abdullah Broaddu, Kayla Cho, Eva Conrad, Alexandra Fabrizio, April D Felipe, Eliza Fernand, Sarah Harlan, Rennie Jones, Ryan Kelly, Cathy Lu, Harry Malesovas, Chris Malone, Molly McDonald, Heidi McKenzie, Kristy Moreno, Rick Nickel, MK Noonan, Anela Oh, Jenny Reed, Jefrey Rubio, Anthony Sonnenberg, Britney Wainwright, Kirstin Willders.

___

Somewhere Between Chaos and Silence reveals the visceral experience of human emotions caught in the flux of conflict, confusion and duality. Constant struggles of the self are physically manifested in an outward surreal and abstracted melding of the body and a soul overcome. We coexist with the haunting growths of our turmoil worn as skin, that which is meant for protection also records our pain. Through my unconventional incorporation of stoneware, porcelain and light, the sculptures evolve as a work in progress, a glimpse into my explorations with clay, the figure and reflections of the self.

 

 

Haunted Koreas: Mina Cheon with Kim Il Soon | Opening Reception
Saturday, September 11 • 6-9pm | Ongoing through December 11
@ American University Museum At The Katzen Center

South Korean new media artist Mina Cheon works for Korean unification with her North Korean alter ego counterpart, Kim Il Soon, through “asynchronous communication.” Crossing borders by sending and receiving art between North and South Korea, the artist brings the remnants of her global activism by sharing the recent works from the Inaugural Asia Society Triennial and The Korea Society in New York, respectively, between 2020 and 2021, as a comprehensive solo show for the Alper Initiative for Washington Art at the American University Museum in Washington, DC. The guiding exhibition text, “The History of a Paradoxical Incorporation,” by critical theorist Avital Ronell contextualizes the haunted Koreas and the artist’s protest for peace.

“Cheon breaks into forbidden territory, a no man’s land—certainly a no-woman’s land—of contested sovereignty. She slips into No. Korean territory, and recedes back to So. Korean haunts in camouflage, be it as a secretive convoy of art historical teaching or in roguish disguise, as one of “them.” Thus her deliberate misappropriations of propagandistic iconography sometimes simulate adherence to an opponent’s claims, switching up cues of politically coded assumptions and the righteous bullet points of human rights advocacy. The work attracts a riot of controversy that secretly targets the heart of a dilemma, an ambivalence shared by many who cannot choose sides, yet must choose sides, living in the tensional structure of division, asymmetrically apportioned.”

— Avital Ronell

The exhibition was made possible with the 2021 AHL – Andrew & Barbara Choi Family Foundation Grant Award. With great thanks to the Ethan Cohen Gallery, Waterfall Mansion and Gallery, The Korea Society, and Asia Society Museum of New York for supporting the artist in the works displayed in the exhibition. And a special thank you to the courageous North Korean defectors around the world and in South Korea.

 

 

< Calls for Entry >

 

“Losing Winter,” a Participatory Art Project with Lynn Cazabon
September 11 • 12–3 pm / September 17 • 12–3 pm / September 23 • 5–7 pm /September 25 • 1–4 pm
@ The Peale

Artist Lynn Cazabon will be in the galleries at the Peale, ready to record your winter memories on various dates in September. Losing Winter is a site-specific, participatory artwork and archive of memories and emotions about winter, revealing the personal and cultural ties we have to the season and providing a window onto what we are collectively losing due to climate change impacts on weather patterns. The project is realized through site-specific exhibitions, collaborations with the public, and an augmented reality mobile application. The Losing Winter mobile application is free and available for download through the Apple App and Google Play stores.

 

 

Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency
deadline September 15

VCCA Fellows are selected by peer review on the basis of professional achievement or promise of achievement in their respective fields. Separate review panels are created for each category (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, playwriting/screenwriting, children’s literature, performance, film/video, book arts, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, music composition, etc.). Panelists undergo periodic review and rotate regularly to ensure VCCA admission decisions are guided by high caliber artists who represent a diversity of styles and tastes.

All VCCA residency and fellowship applications are accepted online via SlideRoom. The standard application fee is $30. If the application fee presents a significant barrier to application, artists should reach out to Artists Services at [email protected] to request an application fee waiver at least five days before the deadline.

A variety of fully-funded fellowship opportunities are available at each application deadline. In addition, significant financial assistance is available throughout the year.

 

 

2023 Target Gallery Solo Exhibition | Call for Entry
deadline September 18
@ Torpedo Factory

Application Due: Sunday, September 18, 2022
Exhibition Dates: April 22 – July 16, 2023

Jury Panel: Hoesy Corona, independent artist; Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, independent curator and Director of Programs at Qatar America Institute of Culture; Claudia Watts, independent curator and writer.

Torpedo Factory Art Center invites artists living in the DC-metropolitan region of the United States (for the purposes of this opportunity: this includes artists living permanently in the District of Columbia, Maryland, or Virginia) to submit a proposal for a solo exhibition in Target Gallery, the Art Center’s contemporary exhibition space.

The artist with the chosen proposal will receive an exhibition in Target Gallery, from April 22 – July 16, 2023. The artist will receive a $3,000 stipend for the opportunity to cover artists expenses. The selected artist will be responsible for the execution of the installation of the exhibition, an exhibition statement between 200 – 500 words, the presentation of an artist talk on Friday, May 12 and taking part in programing on June 9. Artist will be required to visit the gallery and meet with staff prior to installation. Additional opportunities will be made available to participate in public programs.

 

 

William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund
deadline September 30
posted by Baltimore Community Foundation

The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, managed by the Baltimore Community Foundation, was established by Mary S. Baker in memory of her husband. Awarding grants that range from $1,500 to $45,000, the Baker Fund supports organizational effectiveness, promotes local artists and their work, and provides cultural experiences that welcome people of all backgrounds.

The application deadline is September 30, 2022 for the December 15 board meeting.

General Exhibit Applications
deadline October 1
posted 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, 2022.

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.

Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10am- 8pm, Saturday 10am-4pm, and Sunday 12- 4pm. To learn more about HCAC programs and exhibits, call 410-313-ARTS (2787) or visit hocoarts.org.

 

 

Collaborations with Tamarind Student Printers | Call for Proposals
deadline October 1

Tamarind Institute invites applications for artist collaborations with its skilled student printers. Three outlined in the Call for Proposals, with the printers providing guidance on the materials and all technical aspects of the printing process. No previous experience in printmaking is necessary. We welcome proposals from artists working in all media.

Download the full Call for Proposals, which includes costs, 2023 residency dates, and application process.