BmoreArt

Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture (RFLM): Black Woman Genius Elizabeth Talford Scott—Tapestries of Generations, February 1 – September 30, 2024, 830 East Pratt Street Baltimore, MD 21202 (ticketed exhibit)

Genius is not a word we use lightly, but it’s apt here: This year, the creative exceptionality of Elizabeth Talford Scott is being recognized in eight concurrent exhibitions throughout Baltimore, including at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Morgan State’s JELMA Museum, and the Walters. Scott was perceived primarily as a quilter and craftsperson, and she left behind a wealth of fiber art objects that are finally being appreciated as brilliant works of art. One exhibit in particular, hosted at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, emphasizes Scott’s work as the inspiration for a giant network of powerful contemporary Black women artists across the Chesapeake region. 

Created in partnership with the Elizabeth Talford Scott Community Initiative, this exhibition highlights her ingenuity and craftsmanship, but also the importance of community and leadership so one can see the impact of this singular artist on so many others. Featured artists include Kibibi Ajanku, Aliana Grace Bailey, Aliyah Bonnette, Mahari Chabwera, Murjoni Merriweather, Glenda Richardson, Katherine Stewart Wilson, Nastassja Swift, and Joyce J. Scott, the artist’s daughter and a certified genius – at least, according to the MacArthur Foundation.

Critical Path Method (CPM): Lior Modan, Peer Capital, Jan 27 – March 16, 1512 Bolton Street, Baltimore, MD 21217, Email the gallery for hours or to schedule a visit.

Located in a Bolton Hill rowhouse, CPM is a contemporary art gallery nested within the private residence of Vlad Smolkin, a Ukrainian immigrant and Baltimore native with a decade of New York gallery experience. Smolkin decided to move back to Baltimore to open the space in 2020 and has kept a regular schedule of exhibits that are experimental, technically impressive, and conceptually ambitious. The shows intentionally build bridges between Baltimore and New York, which benefits both artists and audiences based here. 

The newest exhibit, Peer Capital, features 12 medium-sized “wall works” by New York-based Lior Modan that blur the line between painting, decoration, collage, and relief sculpture by encasing common household objects in hand-dyed velvet. The pieces resemble otherworldly holograms and ask us to determine: trash or treasure? The artist presents these sentimental monuments to the stuff that defines us as “peers” that collectively deliver a mysterious story of memories frozen in time.

Baltimore Museum of Art: Histories Collide: Jackie Milad, Fred Wilson, and Nekisha Durrett, up through March 17, 2024, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218

Fred Wilson’s sculpture, “Artemis/Bast” (1992), sits at the center of this unusual exhibit, calmly making an overlooked secret obvious: that sophisticated African art predated and influenced the Neoclassical sculpture of ancient Greece, considered the pinnacle of Western civilization. The sculpture combines the ebony head of Egyptian cat goddess Bast with the Neoclassical white body Greek goddess Artemis, both mythological protectors of fertility, women, and the hunt. 

Based on “Artemis/Bast,” the museum issued a call for regional artists to create work that reacts to the sculpture and addresses what happens when myths and histories collide. 

Placed in the John Waters Rotunda at the BMA, at the cusp of its historic collection and modern and contemporary wing, Baltimore-based Jackie Milad and Washington, D.C.-based Nekisha Durrett offer proof that the intersection of history and myth continue to offer potent subjects for contemporary art, telling visual stories that are both personal and universal.

On the sculpture’s left, Milad explores her own Egyptian-Honduran heritage through a personal lens, where objects of antiquity are blended into wild, mixed media tapestries full of riotous color, line drawings, and snippets of different languages. On her right, Durret’s mysterious glowing circle addresses the vital history of Harriet Tubman that the artist was not taught as a child in Maryland public school, but discovered as an adult in visits to the abolitionist’s ancestral home in Dorchester County where she was enslaved.

Galerie Myrtis: Art of the Collectors IX, February 10 – March 16, 2024

Reception Saturday, February 10: 4-6, Programming Saturday, March 2: 2-4, 2224 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218

Galerie Myrtis is located in a grand brownstone in the Old Goucher neighborhood and emphasizes significant works by African and African American artists. They often show living artists from Baltimore, such as Jerrell Gibbs, Megan Lewis, and Monica Ikegwu, who are building a global reputation. They also make museum-quality historic works available in an exhibit series called “Art of the Collectors.” 

In the ninth iteration of this series, the gallery showcases major masterpieces from the 20th and 21st century including paintings, prints, photos, and sculpture — works that were a part of private collections for generations, now released. You will not only have the opportunity to experience world-famous artists like Elizabeth Catlett and Sam Gilliam, who have shaped art history as we understand it, but also the possibility of adding to your own collection as these works are now available for acquisition from Galerie Myrtis. The gallery also hosts “Tea with Myrtis” events in the space, creating further opportunities to sip beverages in an elegant setting and learn more about the artists and building your own collection.

Pinkard Gallery, Maryland Institute College of Art: Climate For Change, up through March 3, 2024, 1401 Mount Royal Avenue, MICA, Baltimore, MD , 21202

For those of us who believe in science, the growing awareness of an impending global ecological crisis is a terrifying prospect, but also rather abstract. It’s difficult to understand the complex factors at play, and concerns about global warming, wildfires, cataclysmic storms, erosion, pollution, floods, microplastics, mining and more can be overwhelming, even to those who strongly support calls for progressive change.

Hosted at MICA’s Pinkard Gallery, artists of the Atlantika Collective – a diverse group of seven artists committed to visualizing our current environmental emergency – share their observations through a variety of media and approach. Rather than telling us about an impending planetary crisis, these artists show us in clear terms that are immediate and compelling. The goal of the collective, which also includes a few MICA professors and graduates, is to raise awareness and catalyze action so that our fears and hope can combine into meaningful change. This exhibit is curated by María Alejandra Sáenz and features Atlantika Collective artists Gabriela Bulisova, Todd R. Forsgren, Billy Friebele, Mark Isaac, Katie Kehoe, Yam Chew Oh, and Sue Wrbican.

Baltimore Jewelry Center: 365 Grams, Rebecca Strzelec, February 16 – March 29, 2024, Reception February 16, 5- 8, 10 E North Ave Suite 130, Baltimore, MD 21202

Did you know Baltimore has a dedicated maker space and gallery just for jewelry artists to create and display their work? The Baltimore Jewelry Center regularly hosts local and international resident artists from all over the world to teach workshops and exhibit. And the best part: the art is wearable and priced affordably.

Their newest exhibit features Rebecca Strzelec, who was given four shoeboxes of her grandmother’s jewelry and then, after her Gram passed away in 2008, inherited her writing desk. The boxes sat unopened for years, but in 2016 Strzelec decided to wear one piece of the jewelry every day for a year “to give the jewels the respect and attention they deserved.” After that, she transformed the antique jewelry into contemporary pieces, now realized in a collection of work titled 365 Grams that memorializes and celebrates the individual who inspired them.

The Walters Art Museum: Ethiopia at the Crossroads, up through March 3, 2024 , 600 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

The Walters is known for offering densely researched and innovative historical exhibitions, and Ethiopia at the Crossroads is no exception. Presenting thousands of years of dynamic paintings, religious manuscripts, housewares, craft, and jewelry against a bold backdrop of red, green, and yellow, this exhibit offers an unexpected twist. Interspersed throughout the entire space are works by living Ethiopian and Ethiopian American artists, serving as a counterpoint to centuries-old artistic experimentation. 

What’s most interesting about these contemporary works is the seamless way they integrate deeply held visual traditions into modern forms. In them, Ethiopian heritage is reflected as a source of inspiration and strength. Many of the living artists are affiliated with Baltimore and Washington, D.C., with works by Tsedaye Makonnen, Wosene Worke Kosrof, Aïda Muluneh, Faith Ringgold, and others functioning as modern anchors for the exhibit. Their paintings, collages, videos, and sculpture not only reinforce the complexity and sophistication of historic Ethiopian art, but prove its lasting relevance to current makers.

Creative Alliance Amalie Rothschild Gallery: Come Through, Residents Exhibit, February 2 – March 2, 2024, 3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21224

In addition to a giant art gallery, theater, dance studio, and commercial kitchens, the Creative Alliance has hosted an artist residency program for over 10 years. The residency offers individual live-work spaces where artists reside for one to three years at a time. Past resident artists include Amy Sherald, Jackie Milad, and Murjoni Merriweather, whose established national careers are proof that this program attracts top tier emerging artists. Although each resident artist mounts a solo exhibit in the large main gallery downstairs, it’s wonderful to have the chance to see their work in the more intimate and informal upstairs exhibition space named for artist Amalie Rothschild. 

This winter, resident artists Hoesy Corona, Anna Divinagracia, Melissa Hyatt Foss, Christopher Johnson, Ajee Hassan, Bria Sterling-Wilson, and twins Eleisha Faith and Tonisha Hope McCorkle will showcase their recent experiments, presenting a collective vision of an artistic journey at CA that includes photography, sound, collage, and fiber art. This exhibit is a great opportunity for collectors as well as artists interested in applying for the 2024 cohort.

Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Art Museum at St. Johns College, Polly Apfelbaum: Sampling a Sampler Sampling and Librería Donceles: A Project by Pablo Helguera, through April 14, 60 College Ave, Annapolis, MD 21401

If you happen to be in Annapolis and want to experience two world-class artists in an intimate setting, the pairing of Polly Apfelbaum and Pablo Helguera will be a treat. Apfelbaum is a renowned New York-based artist known for immersive fiber art-based installations. Her latest, a giant floor collage of commercially printed fabric remnants from Manhattan’s Garment District called Sampling a Sampler Sampling, was created on-site for the Mitchell museum. As you look down upon the powerful riot of color and pattern, the artist asks you to reconsider assumptions about the value of craft, interior design, and women’s work within the context of the larger art world.

Helguera’s exhibit, Librería Donceles: A Project by Pablo Helguera, appears to be a used bookstore filled with hundreds of Spanish-language titles. The installation was originally created in Brooklyn a decade ago to serve a growing Hispanic and Latinx population, but has traveled to more than a dozen cities and functions as a hub for cultural events as well as browsing. Books are available on a pay-what-you-wish basis, and the space is filled with artworks and objects, with readings and screenings throughout its stay.

Academy Art Museum: Sebastian Martorana: Public/Private, up through Mar 24, 2024, 106 South St, Easton, MD 21601

In Easton, the Academy Art Museum is a small but mighty regional institution that regularly exhibits some of the best Baltimore-based artists. Its most recent exhibit features sculptor Sebastian Martorana, whose marble carvings reflect ephemeral cultural elements in a timeless medium. Martorana is a master of highly realistic carving, but his subjects — stuffed animals, towels, Kermit the Frog, an old glove, a mattress — are playful and curious, in contrast to the labor intensive process of their creation. 

The tradition of marble is based on ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, and can be found across the world in monuments and grand architecture. It can also be found in the white stone steps of historic Baltimore, from which Martorana has sourced some of the material for his works. The artist often recycles found stone elements into new pieces, referencing ancient and modern history and questioning our hierarchy of value. Perhaps instead of a tombstone, we should be using marble to commemorate our everyday moments and memories. Marble is a physically challenging medium and rarely used by contemporary artists, so this makes Martorana’s works even more special. For this exhibit, he has also created functional sculptures: marble benches on display in the museum’s courtyard with the goal of inspiring visitors to interact with his work.