BmoreArt

‘Soil to Skin’
Through March 28
Silber Art Gallery in the Goucher College Athenaeum
1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Towson

Pellis /\ Terra is a newish artist collective in Baltimore whose goal is to foster a synthesis of art, science and community dialogue centered around environmental issues. Founded by Se Jong Cho, Elena DeBold and Jonna McKone, the co-op is collaborating with Goucher College Art Galleries in a new exhibit called “Soil to Skin.” The show features 12 artists whose works address the legacies of land use, pollution, climate change and environmental justice in intriguingly beautiful ways. 

Cho’s vivid paintings feature bold colorshapes and delicate brushwork, but reveal themselves to be abstract depictions of landscapes ravaged by mineral extraction. Ara Koh’s army of square clay boxes, each human-sized and empty in the center, feature color striations within natural clay that resembles the lines in rock sediment caused by millions of years of erosion. Artemis Herber’s roiling 3D painting reinterprets common assumptions about mythology and the ocean, as well as the evolution of assigned gender roles.

In sculpture, video, photography, collage and paintings throughout the gallery, the exhibit expands our understanding of modern environmental issues by encouraging us to value what we have and make changes towards a more sustainable future. 

Artists: Lynn Cazabon, Se Jong Cho, Melissa Penley Cormier, Elena DeBold, Brooks Dierdroff, Rachel Gaurdiola, Artemis Herber, Sky Hopinka, Ara Koh, Jonna McKone, Nicole Salimbene, and Raymond Thompson Jr.

‘Reverie & Alchemy: A Cabinet of Curiosity’
Through April 19
Towson University, Center for the Arts Gallery 
8000 York Road, Towson

A cabinet of curiosity, or wunderkammer, is a collection of rare, natural and manmade  objects, assembled to teach lessons about the world. They were popular in Europe during the Renaissance – a way to show off wealth and status – and a precursor to the modern museum and botanical garden. At Towson University’s Center for the Arts Gallery, this concept is reimagined in “Reverie & Alchemy” by a diverse group of Baltimore-based artists. 

Like the historical curio, the show abounds with what appears to be natural specimens, depictions of plants and animals both living and dead, relying on the vocabulary of the wunderkammer: glass jars, cabinets, and vitrines to convey a sense of nature preserved for future study.

There are more traditional works of art on display as well, with exquisite animal sculptures by Stephanie Garmey, a time machine by David London, and Quentin Mosely’s three-dimensional paintings featuring neolithic and paleolithic human symbols. Viewed altogether, these works do the opposite of a traditional curio: rather than establishing human domination over nature, it emphasizes reverence and stewardship.

Artists: Brad Blair, Stephanie Garmey, Alex Garove, Caitlin Gill, Luci Jocke, David London, Jennifer McBrien, Quentin Moseley, Mary Opasik, and David Smith, includes also: Collections of Karl Fugelso (TU Professor) and James Taylor (Baltimore Dime Museum) and many TU Collaborators. including the Department of Theatre, Asian Arts & Culture Center, Department of Biologic Sciences, Department of Chemistry, the Lieberman Collection of the Honors College, Cook Library, and the Baltimore Community Archeology Lab.

‘The Future of Here: A Glimpse of a River Culture to Come’
Through March 30 
The Peale Center
225 Holliday Street, Baltimore

What will future anthropologists say about us? Our garbage, collected from Baltimore parks and wild spaces along the Jones Falls River and Chesapeake Bay, tells the true story. A unique exhibit based on a semester-long class at Johns Hopkins University imagines our landscape and culture from a distant future in order to assess the choices we are making right now. Co-taught by visual artist Jordan Tierney and environmental anthropologist Anand Pandian, the mix of undergraduate students, masters and doctoral candidates spent their Fridays taking long group walks through the city’s polluted watershed. There, they collected “artifacts” in order to make creative use of these derelict treasures in a collective art studio.

On display at The Peale, “The Future of Here” features dozens of works combining discarded soda cans, rusty machine parts, plastic toys and broken glass. Viewed in glass cases and on historic museum walls, accompanied by thoughtful text and audio, the show imagines the artifacts of the future and presents them as evidence of a more sustainable and hopeful time, both for the Baltimore watershed and the planet. 

Artists: Arnab Chatterjee, Prabuddha Ghosh Dastidar, Brian Duan, Joelie Garcia, Vivian Guo, Jillian Liu, Clelia Megwa, Michelle Nazareth, Skye Neulight, Anand Pandian, Jocelyn Salgado, Lindi Shepard, Hannah Simon, Amienne Spencer-Blume, Jordan Tierney, and Kelsey Zhang.

Abigail Lucien: “Under Other Skies,” part of the BMA’s “Turn Again to the Earth” initiative and series of 10 exhibitions (Proximal to “Crosscurrents: Works from the Contemporary Collection”)
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive
Through Dec. 28, 2025

At a time when belonging has become a toxic political rallying cry, certain artists are able to capture the vulnerability and brutality of this particular moment and distill it into achingly beautiful objects. 

As part of the overarching “Turn Again to the Earth” initiative at the BMA featuring an entire year of environmentally focused work, a new commission from sculptor Abigail Lucien features ten metal sculptures that combine architectural barriers like bars, grates and cages with decorative flora and fauna. Rendered in iron and powder-coated steel, pigmented urethane, enamel, rayon on steel, and beeswax, this exhibit is all about the strategies we use to protect ourselves from “the other.”

Whether used to keep certain people out and others in, the result is the same: a sanctuary is a prison, just known by another name. Lucien’s delicate decorative details, featuring butterflies and bunnies, flowers and stars, remind us of the ways we beautify private and public spaces with nature in order to romanticize our ability to feel safe, but from what and whom? If you find yourself lovingly admiring a cage, is it for yourself or others?

At a press event at the museum, the Haitian-American artist (a former MICA professor and 2023 Sondheim Prize winner) explained that they chose to work with metals because all life on earth is contingent upon these substances, that they came to us from stars, primarily through iron and copper-rich meteorites. Realizing this cosmic connection, the strength of the metal cages and railings in Lucien’s work feels somehow closer to home, more living and dynamic, less rigid.

The artist’s ability to create neutral “third spaces,” where truth and myth and pride and prejudice exist together equally creates an opportunity to reconsider the boundaries we have chosen for ourselves, especially in relation to global diasporic movements.