BmoreArt

This Week:  The Peale Center honored by The Maryland Historical Trust, Into Utopia Gala at the Lewis Museum, MICA ArtWalk Gala and Exhibition, public wake for Single Carrot at Union Craft Brewing, opening receptions for Seung Jun Lee and MJ Neuberger at Creative Alliance, sketching at the Walters, Matsumi Kanemitsu exhibition opens at the BMA, and the Leroy E. Hoffberger School of Painting Grad Show opening at The Peale — PLUS The David C. and Thelma G. Driskell Award for Creative Excellence call for submissions 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 >

 

2023 Maryland Historical Trust Preservation Award
Wednesday, May 10 :: 2:30pm
@ The Peale

The Maryland Historical Trust will honor The Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture with an Excellence in Institutional Rehabilitation award.

The Peale is a 501©3 tax-exempt, non-profit corporation established to restore the historic Peale Museum building as a center to celebrate the unique history of Baltimore, its people and their buildings. The Peale began as “Friends of the Peale” in 2008. In June 2012, the Friends of the Peale and the Baltimore History Center at the Peale, a Maryland non-profit corporation formed by Judge John Carroll Byrnes, joined forces as The Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture.

Today, we are simply “The Peale,” and because of your support and the support of people going back to 2008, the effort to save the Peale building has been realized. Our organization is thriving as we prepare to reopen the 1814 Peale Museum building. In the first purpose-built museum in the nation, Baltimore’s storytellers at last have a showcase that honors the importance of their contributions to the heritage and cultural fabric of our city! We are building the largest digital archive of Baltimore stories in the world, and the Peale is now dedicated to preserving Baltimore’s intangible cultural heritage: its stories, in the form of exhibitions, performances, talks, immersive experiences, and other creative media, and the community voices that share them.

ASL interpretation will be offered.

This event will be broadcast live on Facebook by the Maryland Historical Trust and on Instagram by The Peale, Baltimore’s Community Museum.

 

 

Into Utopia | The 2023 Reginald F. Lewis Museum Gala
Thursday, May 11 :: 6-11pm
@ the Reginald F. Lewis Museum Gala

Escape to a world where fantasy and futurism reign supreme as The Lewis Museum transports you to a place filled with limitless possibilities … Into Utopia properly starts the Spring Gala season and recognizes luminaries who boldly imagined the seemingly impossible and made it reality.

When: Thursday, May 11, 2023
Where: The North Club at M&T Bank Stadium
1101 Russell Street
Time:
Cocktail Hour – 6 PM
Dinner & Awards – 7 PM
Attire is Fashion Forward, Futuristic & Celebratory Chic
Tickets: $350

As The Lewis Museum celebrates Black Futures/Black Imaginings and the landmark exhibit Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined during the Spring and Summer seasons, we found it only fitting to take our gala patrons Into Utopia for our annual fundraising event.

 

 

MICA ArtWalk Gala
Friday, May 12 :: 5:30-8:30pm

This May, The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) will once again welcome the Baltimore community and beyond to campus for a chance to see the incredible work of students for the one of biggest displays of visual art in the city.

The ArtWalk Gala 2023 — which takes place from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Friday, May 12 in multiple buildings on MICA’s campus — will have over 2,000 one-of-a-kind artworks by nearly 360 of the nation’s most talented emerging artists on view. The ArtWalk Gala is the kick-off event for the annual ArtWalk Commencement Exhibition and celebration of MICA’s undergraduate class of 2023. First launched 15 years ago, this is the first ArtWalk fully open to the public since 2019.

‘We’re thrilled to invite the public back to our campus for ArtWalk, Baltimore’s premier showcase for next gen artists and designers. You can wind through galleries and teaching studios transformed into gallery spaces, and delight in our graduates, on the cusp of their careers, as they launch new thought, beauty and ideas into the world beyond,” Zvezdana Stojmirovic, associate dean of Undergraduate Studies, said.

Those in attendance at the ArtWalk Gala, which is a free event, will have the opportunity to meet and talk with many of the artists, as well as the chance to be first in line to purchase their artwork.

During the gala, several food trucks will be on site for food purchases, including Bmore Greek Grill, Kooper’s Chowhound and Breaking the Borders Down in the Bunting Center and Wafflelicious at Mount Royal Station. Cafe Doris, located in MICA’s Fox Building, will offer a limited-service menu. Three cash bars will be provided by Dooby’s in Cohen Plaza. They will sell beer, wine and soda.

The public can also visit the ArtWalk Commencement Exhibition from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 13, Sunday, May 14 and Monday, May 15.

 

 

A Public Wake to Remember the Theatre We Made Before the Death of Single Carrot
Friday, May 10 :: 6pm
@ Union Craft Brewing

As the ancient playwright Aeschylus once said, “there is no pain so great as the memory of joy in the present grief.” After 15 seasons, we must say goodbye to Single Carrot Theatre at the tender age of 16. While they were so young, “the Dean of Baltimore’s alternative theatre scene” lived a successful and impactful life. We will never forget, but now it is time to celebrate–with respect to the mourning, of course. Well, some respect. It’s mostly a celebration. Respect and revelry? We’re saying, there will be beer.

Join us on May 12th for A Public Wake to Remember the Theatre We Made Before the Death of Single Carrot at Union Craft Brewing, where we will be sharing our fondest memories of Single Carrot, the joy it brought us, and the way it has shaped our lives.

Your ticket entitles you a free drink and some souvenirs. Additional drinks and food will be available to purchase from Union Craft. 

 

 

Cyber Strays: Seung Jun Lee | Opening Reception featuring performance Duet for One by Bao Nguyen
Friday, May 13 :: 7:30pm
@ Creative Alliance

Curatorial Statement
Concerning our digitally polluted lifestyle in contemporary society, Seung Jun Lee’s Cyber Strays features hovering large-scale graphite drawings and scattered ceramic sculptures that portray a series of metamorphic life forms. The urge for convenience has filled every nook and cranny of human history. From barter to shells, gold to paper bills, and credit cards to bitcoins, this collective pursuit slowly comes to fruition. In 2020, driven by a storm named COVID-19, the ship of NFT rammed high on the shore of the metaverse. Massive capital flowed into virtual platforms, and people began to claim ownership of this undiscovered land. Henceforward, we become residents of the intersecting area between the virtual and the real. We no longer look at the sun for time or at stars for direction because they exist as numbers and Google Maps on our cell phones. Wandering between two worlds, individuals turn into stray forms that lose “a clear place to inhabit” and a “clear objective in evolving.” Driven by a fascination with mystical animals in Korean tradition, Lee crafts supernatural creatures as the symbol of “cyber strays.” Representing the digitalization of capitalism in his works, golden toads are common gifts in Korea’s traditional bribery culture. This mystical creature appears only during the full moon, near businesses and houses that will soon receive the good news that is wealth-related. Lee also utilizes industrialized silkworm moths as an analogy to ponder the future evolvement of humans—as they were bred to lose the ability to fly.

About the Artist
Seung Jun Lee (b. 1999, South Korea) seeks naturality in the digitally polluted lifestyle, translating experiences that intertwine reality and media culture into metamorphic forms. Derived from his experience living in South Korea and the US, his works also concern the conflicting feelings of wanderers who try to find an adequate balance between two worlds. With his main focus being drawings made from graphite, his images portray the raw expression in intertwining both nature and media culture. Jun has recently exhibited his first solo show in Seoul (Euljiro), Korea, and is currently situated in Baltimore, Maryland, studying General Fine Arts (BFA) at Maryland Institute College of Art.

About the Guest Curator
Joyce Liang (b. 1997, China) is an independent curator specializing in uncollectible art mediums in galleries and cyberspace. Completed her B.F.A. in Art History and Curatorial Studies at Maryland Institute College of Art, she focuses her practice on immersive performances and digital art research. Her curated production, Collective Dreaming, has exhibited in the U.S. and China, including shows at BBOX in Baltimore, Tree Art Museum in Beijing, and the First CSSA-Goldsmiths International Youth Art & Design Exhibition online.

 

 

The Protection of Lowly Gods: MJ Neuberger | Opening Reception
Friday, May 12 :: 6-9pm
@ Creative Alliance

A body cast aside in cultures of abuse returns to its ground and remembers its spirit.

Bodies challenged to find safe spaces need access to ground. Restoration from the ravages inflicted requires connection with an ever resourceful earth mother. A practice of returning to itself.

Earth is always beneath our feet. The sky is always above us. If we can find our way to our ground, there is only belonging. With practice, we sense the wisdom of indigenous ways and honor the spirits deemed lowly by those unable to imagine ways of being beyond their own.

About the Artist
MJ Neuberger’s work arises from ritual attempts to return to a body abandoned in trauma that she traces in part to colonial history in her mother’s native Philippines. Referencing indigenous ceremonies and elemental processes and incorporating found and organic materials, including her hair, Neuberger’s interactive and light-based installations and sculptural and image-based works acknowledge shared vulnerability and suggest reconnection with an indigenous, nature-based self as a path toward integrating trauma stemming from race and gender-based violence and broader cultural aggression.

Neuberger has presented work at multiple national and regional venues, including Swale House on Governor’s Island, New York City, Art Resources Transfer, Gathering of the Tribes and Nuyorican Poets Café in New York, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, the Center for the Arts, Spark at Light City, Pascal and Cade galleries, and VisArts in Maryland, as well as in exhibitions in North Carolina and Indiana. She has received multiple awards, including the Fleur and Charles Bresler residency in sculpture and installation at VisArts in 2019 and fellowships at the University of North Carolina and Taleamor Park. Neuberger curates the Great Wide Open art/performance series in Baltimore, MD, Cambridge, MD, and New York City, and her writing and criticism have appeared in SPIN, The Nation, and the Village Voice.

 

 

Sketching Sessions in the Sculpture Court
Saturday, May 13 :: 2-4pm
@ The Walters Art Museum

Location: Sculpture Court
Registration required.

We invite novices, students, and practicing artists of all ages to come together and draw in the Sculpture Court. Led by Walters’ Carol Bates Fellow Wildège François, participants will learn drawing techniques and expand on skill sets in a multi-sensory environment. All you need to bring is an interest in drawing—we’ll provide you with the materials!

 

 

Matsumi Kanemitsu: Figure and Fantasy
Sunday, May 14 :: Ongoing through October 8
@ the Baltimore Museum of Art

While living and working in Baltimore in the late 1940s, Matsumi Kanemitsu created a remarkable record of his life to date. This exhibition of 60 early works–largely drawings, as well as rare examples of painting and sculpture–offers an intimate glimpse into Kanemitsu’s past experiences and surreal imagination.

The works on view (for the first time in seven decades) show the artist’s evolution before his later established Abstract Expressionist style. Autobiographical subjects include Kanemitsu’s boyhood in Japan and his fascination with the local flora and fauna, his dual experience as both a prisoner of the U.S. military and an enlisted U.S. soldier who completed a tour of duty in Europe, and portraits of those who formed his community in Baltimore while beginning his artistic career. This concise survey demonstrates the artist’s innate talent for capturing life and synthesizing Eastern and Western aesthetics.

Organized by Leslie Cozzi, BMA Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs

 

 

Constellations, MICA Grad Show 2023 | Exhibition Opening
Saturday, May 14 :: 4-6pm
@ The Peale Center

Constellations is the final thesis exhibition of the fourteen 2023 graduates of the Leroy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Each year, MICA’s second-year MFA students present an exhibition showcasing their thesis work. This spring, the 2023 MFA graduating class presents their thesis exhibition at the Peale Museum, the first purpose-built museum in the United States. It was commissioned in 1813 by Rembrandt Peale, a member of the famous family of American artists and museum pioneers, and originally housed his studio and gallery.

The LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art is unique among top MFA programs in the country in its intense focus on painting, as distinct from the cross-disciplinary programs that dominate the field. The Hoffberger School is known for its high level of intellectual discourse, diverse visiting artist roster, and communal yet rigorous critical environment.

The fourteen artists in the graduating class will exhibit paintings produced between spring 2022 and spring 2023. While each artist represents a distinct approach to painting, the title of the exhibition, Constellations, suggests not only the diversity of their practices, but also the collaborative nature of their artistic relationships. Working together in a shared space has resulted in often surprising visual connections and influences.

 

 

< Calls for Entry >

 

Prince George’s Film Festival
early bird deadline May 10 / regular deadline July 27 / last-minute deadline August 16

Are you a filmmaker looking to showcase your work to a wider audience? Look no further than the Prince George’s Film Festival! Our call for films is now open and we invite submissions from filmmakers around the world.

The Prince George’s County Arts and Humanities Council and the Prince George’s Film Office come together again for the second annual Prince George’s Film Festival (PGFF: Take Two). This annual celebration of cinematic arts will take place September 28– October 1, 2023, in the heart of Prince George’s County, Maryland.

As Prince George’s County becomes an attractive shooting destination for blockbuster films, the Prince George’s Film Festival aims to provide independent filmmakers the opportunity to participate in the film magic taking place throughout the county. PGFF: Take Two is a curated space that will feature virtual and onsite film screenings, keynotes, panels, and interactive workshops, culminating at the MGM at National Harbor for the closing event and awards ceremony.

After a successful inaugural year, featuring high-quality programming, high-powered networking, special events, and networking receptions, we are excited to invite filmmakers from around the world to submit their films for consideration for the 2023 festival. Especially looking to highlight local and independent filmmakers, our goal is to showcase a wide range of films that represent the diversity of the Prince George’s County community and tell stories and unique perspectives that are often overlooked in mainstream cinema. New this year, we are introducing the international submission category. This new category will provide a platform for filmmakers from different countries to showcase their work and promote cultural exchange, allowing filmmakers and audiences to gain insights into other cultures and perspectives through the medium of film.

 

 

Call for Submissions: David C. and Thelma G. Driskell Award for Creative Excellence
deadline May 15

The David C. and Thelma G. Driskell Award for Creative Excellence provides emerging scholars and artists from around the world the opportunity to work in the Driskell Center’s collections and archives in self-directed research leading to the creation of a new artistic and/or scholarly work. While the Driskell Center will serve as the primary location of research, the University of Maryland’s proximity to Washington, D.C., also opens up other locations for study, including the Smithsonian Museums, the Archives of American Art, the National Gallery of Art and a variety of historical sites and monuments. Awardees will spend two to three weeks in residence at the Driskell Center immersed in its collections.

Award

Residencies will take place between September 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024; exact dates will be coordinated with the director and staff. The awardee will receive a stipend of $5,000 and lodging on or near the University of Maryland’s College Park campus for the duration of their award period (between two and three weeks). A work space inside the Driskell Center library will also be provided. Within two months following the completion of their residency, the awardee will submit an illustrated narrative of their work at the Driskell Center (max 750 words).

Eligibility and Evaluation

We welcome proposals from emerging scholars, including graduate students and those who have completed graduate degrees within the last five years. To apply, please send (1) a project proposal of no more than 1000 words, (2) a resume and (3) one letter of reference to [email protected] by May 15, 2023. The proposal should outline relevant experience and accomplishments, the proposed creative or research topic, an explanation of how the center’s holdings will support that topic and a proposed timeline for the residency of either two or three weeks.

Image “Untitled, n.d.” courtesy of the Driskell Center.

 

 

Bmore Amplified
deadline May 16
posted by Baltimore City Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs Presents

 

 

SNAD Art Walk Summer 2023: Venue Confirmation
deadline May 24 for June 30th Art Walk / July 12 for Aug. 25 Art Walk
posted by Station North Arts District

Please fill out this short form to confirm your participation in 2023 Art Walks. The provided information will be included in marketing materials.

Chalk Art Contest and Community Mural | Call for Artists
deadline May 26
posted by Baltimore Architecture Foundation + Doors Open Baltimore

Calling all chalk artists and enthusiasts: show your art skills and Balt-amour at the first-ever Charles Street Promenade chalk art contest!
Seeking chalk artists of all ages and abilities! Join the Baltimore Architecture Foundation for a vibrant day of chalk art and community at the Charles Street Promenade! Come and create a masterpiece in chalk inspired by Baltimore’s favorite buildings. Chalk art will be judged and prizes will be awarded in each category.

If you wish to have your own artist square and be entered into the Chalk Art Contest, you must register! The registration deadline is May 26. We’ll provide a box of chalk pastels containing seven different colors upon your arrival. You will have up to three hours to complete a 4’ x 4’ square of artwork. Each square can accommodate an individual artist or a team of two. Registered participants will be sent additional information via email.

Artwork will be located in the 1200 block of North Charles Street between Biddle and Preston Streets. North Charles Street will be closed off to vehicles during the Promenade.

 

 

Fall 2023 Artist-in-Residence Program
deadline May 26
posted by McColl Center

McColl Center seeks applications for the Fall 2023 Artist-in-Residence program. Artists may work in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, new media, or interdisciplinary practices. Please read APPLICATION GUIDELINES at https://mccollcenter.org/apply/ Residency Dates: September 12 – December 18, 2023. Application Deadline: May 26, 2023 Application Fee: $35 nonrefundable • Eligibility: Minimum age: 21 • Current students are not eligible • McColl Center alumni artists should wait five years before applying for another residency. Artists are limited to two residencies at McColl Center. Selected artists receive: • $6,000 living, materials, and travel stipend (United States-based artists only; due to the limitations of B-1 visas, international artists are not eligible to receive stipends) • Furnished apartment (for artists from outside the greater Charlotte area) • 24-hour access to a private studio with Wi-Fi and common use areas • Participation in a group exhibition on the second floor of McColl Center • Photo and social media documentation • Professional curatorial guidance • Opportunities to engage with McColl Center audiences via public programs. Notification SlideRoom will confirm receipt of your submitted application. The application review process may take up to fourteen weeks after the application deadline. Notifications to all applicants will be sent via email after the selection panel has made its final decision. ** Due to the uncertainties surrounding COVID-19, applicants must be flexible and willing to adapt to unforeseen changes to the program. By applying to McColl Center, you agree to receive our digital newsletter and emails about future application opportunities.

 

 

Public Art Across Maryland (PAAM) Roster
deadline May 31
posted by Maryland State Arts Council

For all new or renovated state-owned buildings, a percentage of the construction budget is set aside for public art. Independent artists and artist lead teams apply to be included on the Public Artist Roster for a two year cycle, or apply directly to an open Call to Artists when one is issued and are selected by an artist selection committee. MSAC manages the process from artist selection, through design, fabrication, and installation and the work becomes part of the State public art collection. Artists from throughout the nation are eligible to be considered.