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BmoreArt’s Picks: September 12-18

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This Week:  Artist talk + opening reception for Sookkyung Park at TU Asian Arts + Culture Center, “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” opens at Center Stage, Jackie Milad, Fred Wilson, and Nekisha Durrett in conversation at the BMA, Salome Sykes and Lendl Tellington artist talk at Creative Alliance, Augusto Corvalan, Christina Delgado, Jessy DeSantis, Jaz Erenberg, Nadia Rea Morales, and Edgar Reyes artist talk at Creative Alliance, 25 years of High Zero at Current Space, The Guardians opening reception at The Peale, and Shifting Time: African American Artists 2020 – 2021 book signing at Galerie Myrtis — PLUS UFS Arts Residency Program Baltimore 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 >

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Sookkyung Park: Connected as One | Opening Reception + Artist Talk
Wednesday, September 13 :: 7:30pm | Ongoing through December 16
@ Towson University Asian Arts + Culture Center

Sookkyung Park’s immersive installation of large-scale sculptures and smaller works includes a merging and expansion of her two seminal pieces, “Blooming” and “Rise Up,” to simultaneously underscore the interconnectedness of life and bring people together. This airy and colorful dreamscape—saturated with symbols of hope, strength and harmony—inspires awe and optimism.

Celebrate the opening of Connected as One with an opening reception and introduction to the exhibition by artist, Sookkyung Park. Gain deeper insights into how Park—who was born and raised in a divided Korea—expresses her ideals for a peaceful society in her artwork.

 

 

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grille
Thursday, September 14 | Ongoing through October 8
@ Baltimore Center Stage

In March 1959, four months before her passing, Billie Holiday gives an unforgettable performance at Emerson’s Bar & Grill in South Philadelphia. However, her songs are just one part of the show. In between renditions of some of her greatest hits, like “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless the Child,” Billie shares the triumphs and heartbreaks of a life and career like no other in this immersive cabaret experience that marks the directorial debut of Pulitzer nominated artist, Nikkole Salter.

 

 

Panel Discussion: When Histories Collide
Thursday, September 14 :: 6:30-8:30pm
@ Baltimore Museum of Art

Join us for an evening of connection and conversation with artists Jackie Milad, Fred Wilson, and Nekisha Durrett prompted by Histories Collide, an exhibition that features new work by Durrett and Milad created in dialogue with Fred Wilson’s sculpture Artemis/Bast (1992) following an open call to artists.

The conversation will be moderated by Lisa Graziose Corrin, Ellen Philips Katz Director of The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. In 1992, as founding curator and educator at Baltimore’s nomadic art museum The Contemporary, Graziose Corrin collaborated with George Ciscle to organize Fred Wilson’s pathbreaking installation Mining the Museum at the Maryland Center for History and Culture (formerly known as the Maryland Historical Society).

Meet the artists after the discussion during a reception in Fox Court.

This program is produced in partnership with the Winston Tabb Special Collections Research Center at Johns Hopkins University.

 

 

God Couldn’t Be Everywhere …that’s Why He Made Momma: Lendl Tellington & Salome Sykes Exhibition | Artist Talk
Thursday, September 14 :: 7pm
@ Creative Alliance

As they realize they could lose their matriarch’s home, Salome Sykes and Lendl Tellington turn the camera on their great-grandmother and her nine descendants in order to preserve their family’s legacy. As the brother and sister interview kinfolk, sift through albums, and wade through a century of family furniture, they reimagine these elements as a collection of sensory-driven installations, photography, and cinematic vignettes inspired by generational memories and revelations.

Artists’ Statement
Nannie, our raspy-voiced great-grandmother, grew up in Virginia and moved north to Sparrow’s Point, Maryland, during the Great Migration. Over the course of the next 50 years, her life as a single mother and grandmother would shape the path to her lifelong goal of returning to central Virginia to own a home. When she did, Nannie’s six-acre property became a beacon for our family. It’s where we discovered our deep connection to nature, Southern cooking, and the zeal of black home interiors.

In 2014, we interviewed Nannie while facing the reality that we could lose her home. We felt the urge to honor the three decades of memories shared at her property as well as the social and familial milieu that inspired her to move back to the region where she was born. We wanted to find a way to capture the intersection between Black domesticity, motherhood, and spirituality.

During the Great Recession, white households had a median net worth of about $135,000 while the median black household net worth stood under $6,000. This exhibition aims to express the spiritual experience behind this statistic for the black family. In America owning a home is the entry point for attaining a legacy but what does that legacy become after you lose your home?

If you’re Black, born and bred in America, like us, your connection to legacy is shaped by the reality of an inequitable history with and as property. Therefore your neighborhood, its cultural centers, individual memories, and familial experiences become your “home”—a consciousness that’s built to anchor a sense of foundation and ownership. In this exhibition, we imagine how our family’s collective consciousness could look, feel, sound, and smell if it were a tangible place.

We are not attempting to remake our great-grandmother’s home. We envision its legacy as an anthology of familial values and memories that incite generational reflection and reconciliation. By incorporating as many textures as possible, whether it is vestiges from Nannie’s living room, sounds and smells from her kitchen, or her collection of photo albums, we are sampling ephemera of a specific era to contextualize life unfolding at the present moment.

Though these inquiries on legacy are a shared experience amongst Black folks—we are contextualizing these insights within the specificity of our familial outlook. Nannie had a litany of tchotchkes that lined her fireplace. One of them was a glass bell with an etching that reads, “God couldn’t be everywhere, that’s why he made mothers.” Our family consists of Black women with estranged relationships with their fathers and partners. We are not interested in looking at this reality from a historically deficit-based perspective. Instead, we see this exhibition as a moment to redress this context by centering these moments as catalysts that provide our family with ingenuity and an unabashed identity.

The construct of this exhibition is influenced by the interconnection between memory and discovery. Our memories are fickle. They aren’t always reliable, yet they are sacred. Stories you’re told as a young person turn out to be more complex upon learning their details as an adult. This project time travels in a similar non-linear fashion. We want folks facing similar housing inequity to see that they too can manifest their own legacy both defined by tradition and reimagined through memory.

 

 

Jessy DeSantis, Companion Spirits

Taking Space Exhibition | Artist Talk
Friday, September 15 :: 6:30pm | Ongoing through October 21
@ Creative Alliance

Your voice is valid, and we need it in this world. Taking Space is an exhibition that celebrates Latino artists based in Baltimore expressing their love of their cultures and elevating the conversation of their cultures. Each artist has a unique perspective of the Latino community, or Latinidad, and their individual stories of hope, happiness, and history. The artists come from different backgrounds and experiences. Each artist will showcase painting, sculpture, and other mediums to dig deeper into the cultural diversity of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Taking Space usually refers to the need to separate, but the theme of this exhibition is coming together and centering multiple identities and experiences. The exhibition features the work of Augusto Corvalan, Christina Delgado, Jessy DeSantis, Jaz Erenberg, Nadia Rea Morales, and Edgar Reyes. Through an onsite artist talk and offsite presentations, the artists will be dialoguing with themselves and the public to bring you their vision.

 

 

HIGH ZERO 25th Anniversary Celebration!
Friday, September 15 :: 7:30pm
@ Current Space

PRE-ZERO!
Celebrate 25 Years of High Zero with special performances of experimental, improvised music by:

Bob Wagner
Liz Meredith
Eric Franklin
Susan Alcorn
Dave Ballou
Dan Breen
Rose Hammer Burt
Dave Moré
Dan Conrad
Carrie Fucile
Bonnie Lander
Lexie Mountain
Khristian Weeks
Peter Redgrave

September 15
7:30pm – 10pm

(Current Space Garden Bar open from 5-11pm, with Happy Hour from 5-7pm)

No cover 🙂

 

 

The Guardians of Baltimore: Preserving our Legacy | Exhibition Opening
Saturday, September 16 :: 3-6pm
@ The Peale

The Guardians is a photo documentary and storytelling project that celebrates the unrecognized community work of Black female leaders from across Baltimore City neighborhoods. By uplifting their stories and experiences through recorded interviews and large-scale photographs, we honor how the union of art and activism can make real, lasting change that can help us see realities and (re)shape culture. The Guardians is a platform for women who spend their lives fighting for better, more equitable communities.

Please join us in celebrating our second cohort of 12 Guardians with new portraits and oral histories, now representing all corners of Baltimore City. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be served. There will be a speaking portion of the event to hear from the Guardians, lead artists, and Mayor Scott.

 

 

“Shifting Time: African American Artists 2020 – 2021” Book Signing
Saturday, September 16 :: 5-7pm
@ Galerie Myrtis

Galerie Myrtis announces it will be hosting a book signing for Shifting Time: African American Artists 2020 – 2021 in partnership with the Petrucci Family Foundation (PFF). The event features co-editors Klare Scarborough and Berrisford Boothe, PFF Director Claudia Volpe, and several artists highlighted in Shifting Time, such as Lavett Ballard, Monica Ikegwu, Latoya Hobbs, and more.

Shifting Time offers a glimpse into the lives of over 70 African American artists during the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice movements, and political upheaval. Among the featured creators are Tawny Chatmon, Morel Doucet, Delita Martin, and Felandus Thames.

The book signing will occur at Galerie Myrtis on Saturday, September 16th, from 5 – 7 pm. Due to limited seating, RSVP is required to attend. 

 

 

< Calls for Entry >

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Internship + Volunteer Opportunties
deadline September 15
posted by Banneker-Douglass Museum

The Banneker-Douglass Museum offers volunteer and internship opportunities to those who want to gain experience at the state of Maryland’s museum for African American history and culture.

Interns and volunteers are able to assist with many facets of the museum, including operations, exhibitions, and programming. The deadline to apply for the Marketing & Communications internship is Friday, September 15th!

 

 

USArtists International Performing Arts Grants
deadline September 29

USArtists International supports in-person performances by American artists at engagements at international festivals and global presenting arts marketplaces outside of the United States. The program funds individuals and ensembles across all performing arts practices and disciplines. USArtists International is designed to encourage the presence of U.S. performing artists on international stages and in the global arts community; to support engagements that develop and expand both the careers and artistic goals of U.S. performers by providing connections with presenters, curators, and fellow artists; and to promote justice in the arts community by elevating the diverse voices contributing to the vibrant array of creative expression in the United States. USAI provides grants of up to $15,000 toward eligible expenses; please reference the guidelines for further detail.

 

 

Curator/Storyteller of Baltimore History and Heritage | RFQ
deadline September 30
posted by BOPA

BOPA is looking for a professional curator who can curate the bridge between history, culture, and our diverse audience through storytelling at Top of the World. This person will translate historical information into a narrative that will engage visitors with an immersive storytelling experience at Top of the World. Working with a web developer, this person will also curate a final product of interactive displays with digital content to be changed out on a regular basis.

This position is a 10-month contract with flexible hours through July 2024. It can be mostly remote, but may require travel around Baltimore City and occasional meetings at Top of the World. The stipend is $25,000, which includes any stipends paid to institutions or individuals for historical information. The deadline to submit an RFQ is September 30, 2023.

 

 

UFS Arts Residency – Baltimore
deadline October 1

This year, the Baltimore-based residency is aimed at co-producing an artistic exploration of urban forest patches. This might include, but is not limited to, the ways in which urban forest patches and natural areas can yield community and ecological benefits such as social cohesion, physical, mental, and spiritual health, climate resilience, improved environmental justice, biodiversity, youth and family engagement, workforce development and/or jobs, and more. All interested applicants are encouraged to explore the current work underway at the USDA Forest Service Baltimore Field Station and at Baltimore Green Space via the websites and specifically these resources related to forest patches:

● Protect the Forest Patches that Protect Baltimore and Forest Patch First Aid ● Natural Turned National Infrastructure: Urban Forest Patches in the 21st

Century
● Stillmeadow Peace Park and Forest: An Experiment in Rehabilitation of a

Degraded Urban Forest
● Silviculture in the City: Urban and Climate Adapted Management Strategies for

Forested Natural Areas in the Northeastern U.S.

About UFS Arts Residency Program

The Arts Residency Program is a hybrid virtual, community-centered residency program hosted by the USDA Forest Service in partnership with The Nature of Cities. A collaborative transdisciplinary program where artists are paired with natural and or social scientists, land managers, or practitioners to work together, drawing on knowledge from their disciplines respectively to explore urban social-ecological systems. Works of art may result, but the aim of this program is to foster transdisciplinary collaboration, mutual understanding, diverse representation, and enhanced communication, above the production of a final work or project. (See Program Aims for more information)

The science/practice team (“partner team”) includes the USDA Forest Service Baltimore Field Station and Baltimore Green Space.

 

 

Getty Scholars Program
deadline October 2

The Getty Scholars Program supports researchers in advancing knowledge of the arts and humanities and producing cutting-edge scholarship that contributes to the understanding and preservation of cultural heritage. While in residence, scholars have the opportunity to spend significant time at one of the world’s premier art history collections while contributing to an international community committed to intellectual exploration and exchange. Scholars may be in residence at the Getty Center or Getty Villa.

 

 

DC Independent Film Festival
deadline October 2 (early bird)

As of 2022, DCIFF, the oldest independent film festival in Washington DC, is a Film Festival & Forum with a storied history of presenting extraordinary films. We showcase cutting edge features, animation, experimental films, shorts, and documentaries on every subject, from every country, and with every budget and subject imaginable. All films are still selected through review and come via submissions, we do not pre-select and we do not pay screening fees. We curate from selections and have moved from an extensive to intensive (fewer films and much, much more attention to each film and filmmaker) format. We invite ALL selected filmmakers to take part and help you join us. Our aim is to forward films and careers and we are thrilled with the success of our alumni.

PLEASE NOTE: HIGH SCHOOL FILM COMPETITION: February 17-18th, 2024. Please make sure to submit in the High School film category with your student IDs sent to [email protected]

The 2024 festival will screen 50-70 films (including shorts) over 5 days with robust filmmaker-centered programming around each selected film that allows for discussion, learning and celebration with audiences and several screenings. We work closely with selected filmmakers to craft thoughtful, seminar-type programming around their film’s presentation. DCIFF brings together passionate artists, filmmakers, critics, curators, and film enthusiasts for a celebration of independent filmmaking. Like previous festivals, we continue to be an essentially volunteer-run festival. All submissions fees support festival programming.

The 2024 festival is entirely in-person in Washington, DC. Acceptance into DCIFF 2024 assumes your attendance and active involvement in the festival experience.

FYI: Student films are only a submission category: there is no programming section dedicated to student films except high school films.

 

 

header image: Sookkyung Park. Through History, 2020

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