BmoreArt

While you can learn about the first installation—”Third Watch,” by Zoë Charlton—and related events via the website, and I’ll do a deeper dive on Charlton’s installation in my next regular Public Art Chronicles column for BmoreArt (as I will for each of the other four installations following their unveilings), I want to bullhorn the big event coming up this Friday, March 28, 6-10pm.

Currency Studio, located in the North Avenue Market building on the corner of West North Avenue and Maryland Avenue—specifically, at 18 West North Avenue—will host a reception from 7-8pm with remarks by Charlton, Derrick Adams (curator of Inviting Light’s installations), José Ruiz (curator of the activations), and others, starting at 7pm and the “unveiling” of light scheduled for 7:50pm.  But even earlier, at 6pm, a four-hour performance organized by Ada Pinkston begins at 1915 Maryland Avenue and an exhibition of the results of workshops led by Dreamseeds opens at Baltimore Youth Arts, also inside North Avenue Market, at 20 West North Avenue. 

Charlton’s contribution to Inviting Light comprises three statues, based on a found wooden sculpture reminiscent of west African traditions, that are being installed (as we go to press) atop North Avenue Market. Two of the statues (each nine feet tall) will be installed on the West North Avenue side of the building, one in each of the Market’s two bell towers, plus one more statue (seven feet tall) on the balcony around the corner of the building, over the entrance to 1915 Maryland Avenue.

Those of you who saw (or read Fanni Samogyi’s BmoreArt review of) Charlton’s 2023 exhibition at Maryland Art Place will recognize the figural form, though at MAP, the sculptures were more life-sized and cast in polyurethane. For Inviting Light, they’ll be cast in resin in collaboration with Adam Nelson at Paradise Labs.

The title of the installation immediately captured my attention, as it has meanings tied to the fields of theology and law enforcement, creating an unlikely but compelling interface. “Third watch” is the late-night-into-early-morning time period thought to warrant increased vigilance in both fields. In Christianity, third watch is  “the final segment before dawn” when “ongoing trials [are] faced by the disciples, suggesting prolonged vigilance and endurance in the face of darkness,” and in Buddhism, “a critical moment before dawn, representing a monk’s choice to confront moral dilemmas and the potential for spiritual awakening as night transitions to day” (“third watches,” with similar meanings, also appear in Judaism and Hinduism).

Then there’s the pop connection to the TV series “Third Watch,” 1999-2005, which followed fictional New York City police actions during their late-night, “third watch” shifts, which are not fictional, with law enforcement considering them to be the time periods most prone to crime (I’d cite specific timeframes here, but they differ across religions and police jurisdictions). 

Peering out of the towers high above West North Avenue at the corner of Maryland Avenue, and from the balcony on Maryland Avenue, the three “Third Watch” figures will illuminate the surrounding areas with blue light pulsating from each figure’s belly. The light’s hue, value, and intensity will simulate Baltimore’s infamous, controversial, flashing blue lights installed in numerous neighborhoods to signal the presence of surveillance cameras, allegedly deterring potential criminals but often deterring everyone else.

Charlton flips that script. “The importance of her [the figure, which Charlton refers to as “Sib”] being in the bell tower is something that can’t be understated,” Charlton states in the video on the Inviting Light website. “She’s at the top. She says ‘I’m blinking, and you can find me, and you can find care and protection here.’” The pulsations will align with the beating of a heart—in this case, since the figure is pregnant, not only her own heart’s pulse, but her baby’s. This suggestion of spiritualizing police infrastructure is radical and potent.

The potency of care and protection will no doubt be experienced by participants in the programs on March 28. Ada Pinkston’s activation—“bridg[ing] durational performance, storytelling, and experimental sound”—will take place over the entire four hours of the opening event, starting at the former Stillpoint Theatre at 1915 Maryland Avenue, the entrance to which is just below the “Third Watch” figure on the balcony, and ending at The Club Car at 12 West North Avenue.

Participants in More than Four Women for Four Hours will also include widely known artists Noelle Tolbert, Amorous Ebony, Sheila Gaskins, and Tracey Beale as part of a “group of Black women performers [who] will embody acts of confinement, kinship, and healing throughout the historic location that once excluded Black people.” (Both quotes from the Inviting Light “Opening Night” webpage.)

In addition to this performance, the results of workshops conducted by Hannah Brancato and Sanahara Ama Chandra, co-founders of Dreamseeds, carried out with residents of the J. Van Story Branch Apartments, will be on display in the window of a vacant storefront at 10 West North Avenue. (Note that Dreamseeds conducted a previous workshop with J. Van Story residents three years ago, so this was an opportunity to reunite.)

The recent workshops involved participants using handmade paper to create lanterns outfitted with LED lights. A down-to-earth, functional, material outcome of this project, the residents’ lanterns will ultimately go home with their makers. Though the entrance to their 20-story, 350-unit building for senior and non-elderly residents with disabilities is on 11 West 20th Street, less than a 5-minute walk to any of the opening event’s locations, it would be understandable for residents not to feel comfortable visiting the festivities at night, if only to see their own lanterns on display.

Hopefully, Charlton’s own hope for her installation to offer “care and protection,” along with measures taken by organizers, perhaps escorting residents to the events, will allow them to participate, expanding on the “inviting” part of the project’s title. Also on display, at Baltimore Youth Arts, 20 West North Avenue, will be the creative results of other Dreamseeds workshops held in the weeks preceding the March 28 event, at which participants responded to what they’d heard and learned in those workshops about “Third Watch.”

Taking another step back, with regard to what we can expect, I’d say: FUN! Fun infused by light, by visual prompts to think and feel about light’s multiple meanings in different ways, by the desire to meet up with friends, to help others get to North Avenue Market and its surroundings, to sample the ever-increasing number of businesses and cultural organizations in the area, and to spread the word about this and forthcoming Inviting Light events throughout the rest of the year. But is there more to this project than FUN (not that there’s anything wrong with that)?

The answer is a firm yes, but to prove that point, let’s continue back through the string of questions laid out at the beginning of this article, specifically to: How did Inviting Light come about? There’s a hefty and impressive narrative here, with at least three major interlocking moments: the 2019 release of the Public Space: Station North Arts District report; the 2021 culmination of the Signal Station North project; and the 2023 award of $1M from Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Public Art Challenge program.

That’s not to say there aren’t parenthetical moments of importance both preceding and following the three just listed. Not the least of the preceding parentheticals is the fact that Baltimore was the first city in the United States to establish a public gas utility entity, in 1816, with Rembrandt Peale heading up the Baltimore Gas Company and installing the first public gaslight a few months later in 1817, following years of experimentation with light at what is now known as the Peale Museum.

Another moment came 200 years later, when the Light City project launched in 2016 and ran annually until 2019. Following the three interlocking moments is the 2024 release of the “Station North Economic Development Implementation Roadmap,” which nicely tees up Inviting Light to serve as leverage for infrastructural attention to public lighting (see page 66 of the plan).

A few (not really) words about the three major interlocking moments, as they comprise the key to understanding Inviting Light’s roots in and commitment to community engagement. The 82-page “Public Space: Station North Arts District” report was released in July 2019 after many months of meetings and interviews with Station North residents, business owners, transit users, maintenance crew members, community association members, and other stakeholders.

The project, funded by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation and carried out by the Neighborhood Design Center, brought lessons learned from 20th Century urban planning legends like Jane Jacobs and William Whyte into the here and now, using contemporary Danish architect and urban design consultant Jan Gehl’s “Public Space Public Life” framework, at the base of which is his assertion that urban residents want “protection, comfort, and enjoyment.”

The NDC-led team reviewed challenges and previous plans (e.g., an Urban Renewal Plan from 1982 and the Charles North Vision Plan from 2008), developed an “assets map” and “data maps” for 16 categories affecting everyday life in Station North (e.g., zoning, public transit, noise levels, parking, and more, including lighting and public art), and used a Gehl-inspired rubric to conduct a “block audit” of Station North “to rate and observe [those] values.”

NDC then “collated and interpreted the audits,” making “recommendations for small and large-scale interventions … [to] … improve access, quality, and value” of the Station North area. The research and analysis were clearly thorough, and the resulting recommendations not too ambitious to realize (but too numerous to cite here; see pages 44-76).

Two recommendations, though, are especially relevant to Inviting Light: “public space improvement” of North Avenue Market and the “challenge” of lighting. The former has already been addressed in part by the sale of the building last year to North Avenue Market Development LLC with the aim of creating “an ‘art-centric’ development plan for the longtime market.”

Indeed, one of the LLC’s partners is Michael Haskins Jr., artist and co-founder of Currency Studio, which, as mentioned earlier, is hosting the opening remarks for the March 28 launch. The latter (the “challenge” of lighting) is a work in progress, but the first installation and programming for Inviting Light certainly addresses the observation in the report that “lighting is focused on the street and does not create a welcoming environment.” 

The 2019 report laid fertile ground for the second major interlocking moment—the October 2021 release of the report on the “Signal Station North” project. “A district lighting plan and public space engagement initiative for Central Baltimore,” the project, begun in 2019, was again led by the Neighborhood Design Center and supported in part by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, but also had major support from the National Endowment for the Arts and additional support from Central Baltimore Partnership, BOPA, France-Merrick Foundation, and the Goldseker Foundation.

The outcomes of this project were—and are—tangible. In the past tense (though for anyone who witnessed these works, the memories are no doubt still bright): the Baltimore design studio Public Mechanics, led by Bruce Willen, curated “Signal Light Gallery,” where artists showed outdoor projections in Station North; Flux Studio mounted “Modular Light Fixtures,” projections onto “non-historic facades”; PI.KL Studio created an “interactive intervention” titled “Field of Dreams” that allowed Wonderground in Greenmount West to be accessible at night; Signal associates and volunteers organized “Flash!” in which dozens of participants used light to activate the median strip on West North Avenue, the Seventh Baptist Church, and other sites; and the Signal team mounted “Community Light Walks,” during which participants and bystanders could respond to questions about “how urban lighting makes them feel: safe, alert, welcomed, surveilled, cautious” and learn from tour leaders about “key concepts” of lighting, like “contrast, glare, and color rendering.” 

In the present tense, two invaluable documents resulting from the above and other research are available for free on the Signal Station North website. One—the “Lighting Plan” (139 pages)— goes beyond documenting the projects just described, to providing NDC’s model for designing community listening sessions, designing a data collection tool, identifying community values, and analyzing urban spaces and lighting.

The plan also provides recommendations both conceptual (like those demonstrated above, plus other options like ghost stoops, illumination of murals, and site-specific light art, many of these options informing the curation of Inviting Light) and practical (like the City and utility companies completing streetlight conversions to more efficient LED lighting, updating standards, reducing streetlight levels, revisiting CitiWatch surveillance protocols, conducting more resident engagement, and much more). The other—“Lighting Guidebook” (80 pages)—offers down-to-earth tips on “How to Get Creative Neighborhood Lighting Done,” “How to Report a Streetlight Outage,” “How to Request Lighting Improvements,” and “Lighting Grants & Funding Resources.”

The Guidebook also includes documentation of previous light projects and information on how light works, plus case studies and readings, including a “Light & Equity Reading List” and “A History of Urban Inequality and Street Lighting in Baltimore.” This abundance of information, pedagogy, and models for action certainly fulfills the goals of the Signal Station North two-year project of “community, planning, and prototyping … that sought to understand light’s impact on the nighttime environment and our sense of comfort and place, illuminate the city’s lighting history and infrastructure, and bring transparency and access to everyday citizens.”

The third major interlocking moment leading to Inviting Light was, of course, the receipt of $1M from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the application for which relied heavily on the two projects just reviewed above and expanded the partnering applicants beyond CPB and NDC to include the Mayor’s Office. Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Public Art Challenge “encourages mayors to partner with artists, elevating the creative sector when developing solutions to significant urban issues”— more specifically, to create “temporary public art projects that address an urgent civic issue.”

Civic issues that were paired with the 8 cities (out of 54 applicants) awarded grants in this third round of Public Art Challenge grants since 2015 include public health, equity, homelessness, food insecurity, gun violence, climate change, and revitalization. Baltimore’s application was paired with revitalization. And this brings us to the second question in the list at the top of this article: What are the intentions for Inviting Light and anticipated outcomes? 

The application’s short-term goal list began with the five installations we’ll experience over the coming months. Following Charlton’s installations, Phaan Howng will mount “Big Ass Snake (Plant)s On a Plane” on the front of the Charles Street Garage, across from the Charles Theatre, and Tony Shore will display “Aurora” on the façade of the former Gatsby’s on Charles Street, with a joint opening and related activations in June.

Ekene Ijeoma’s “Peacemaker” will be installed in the Barclay neighborhood, with an opening in September, and Wickerham & Lomax “Soft Gym” will open at the new YNOT Lot in October. (Again, details and updates will appear on the Inviting Light website.) But there will be light-related events throughout this time period, culminating in an Inviting Light closing event on December 12 as part of the regularly scheduled Second Friday Station North Art Walk.

Derrick Adams, who was included in the Bloomberg proposal, was a perfect choice of curator to select these four artists and one artist group, all of whom are Maryland-based, except Ijeoma, who is also the only artist who has frequently used light in their work. An internationally exhibiting artist based in Brooklyn, New York, Adams grew up in Baltimore, and in his rise to fame (he’s represented by the renowned Gagosian Gallery in New York and Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago), he never severed ties to Baltimore.

Quite the opposite, he founded the nonprofit Charm City Cultural Cultivation, supporting various organizations with and for artists: The Last Resort Artist Retreat, a building renovated in Waverly to serve as a four-week residency site for artists, based on “the concept of leisure as therapy for the Black creative” (profiled in BmoreArt Issue 14) ; the Black Baltimore Digital Database, aiming at “preserving Baltimore’s cultural history”; Zora’s Den, a community of Black women writers; and most recently, an expansion of the beloved live-work Compound micro-neighborhood into The Sock Factory, which “will host fabrication studios, a robust apprenticeship program, and unlikely encounters between local and international art makers” (you can also read more about that project in BmoreArt Issue 14). José Ruiz, also included in the proposal, is also a perfect choice.

Director of the MFA in Curatorial Practice at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), his program is located in the Fred Lazarus IV Center in Station North. Together with the artists, Adams, Tonya Miller Hall (Senior Advisor of Arts and Culture for the Mayor), Catherine Borg (Project Manager for Inviting Light), and others walked the blocks of Station North together last year to identify potential sites for installations and activations. The final selection of sites was based on permissions from owners/managers of those sites.

Moving on through the short-term goals in the Bloomberg application, all events promise to be socially engaged and to foster or deepen a sense of community, with gatherings focused on the artwork but also delving into concepts of light in general, including its “transformative power,” when coupled with art, to “boost positive perceptions of the District overall.” Another near-term goal of the project, cited in the application, is to “initiate new partnerships between everyday Station North stakeholders and City Transportation and Planning officials, facilitating future community-led light and artist-led public space activations.”

This goal will be addressed through workshops based on NDC’s “Lighting Guidebook,” which provides tips on how to create and strengthen such partnerships. For sure, anything with Neighborhood Design Center’s name on it will make good on these promises, as well as a promise to prioritize equity—to wit, check out NDC’s 2024 “Equitable Engagement Toolkit: Prioritizing Equity in the Community Design Process.” Also watch for an upcoming panel in the coming weeks with local experts on light, including historian Mo Speller, whose sumptuous article “A History of Urban Inequality and Street Lighting in Baltimore” is available in the “Lighting Guidebook” (pages 54-78).

Securing partnerships with officials at the City level should, I think (hope), be made easier by having the Mayor’s Office as a partner on this grant, especially since the “urgent civic issue” paired with the grant is revitalization, which, at the end of the day, requires mayoral leadership. Moreover, the grant for Inviting Light is not the Mayor’s first Bloomberg grant.

In fact, Baltimore is the first city ever to receive a second Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Innovation Team (i-team) grant “to bolster dedicated staff capacity to help further Baltimore’s work to lead with data, center community input in problem-solving, and tackle tough challenges to improve resident outcomes.” This second Innovation Team grant, announced in December 2023, was for $4.2M, which, added to the first, totals $7M (the first was attained in 2017, prior to Brandon Scott becoming Mayor). 

This brings us to the long-term goals of Inviting Light, two of which are: to “drive investment and interest in the longer-term infrastructure investments recommended by Signal and the Station North Public Space Master Plan” (the same documents I discussed earlier, with slight titular changes) and “reduce the current commercial vacancy rate of 39% with 375,000 square feet of vacancy space by 20%.”

These revitalization goals mesh logically with those of the Bloomberg Innovation Team grant. Tonya Miller Hall’s serving as the Mayor’s Senior Advisor of Arts and Culture should, I think (again, hope), open the gates for the goals of the two Bloomberg grants to be co-leveraged. Hall is a champion of the Public Art Challenge project, a longtime friend of Adams, and a valuable asset to Inviting Light hitting its goals.

Other long-term goals include “re-establishing Baltimore as a home for excellent, path-breaking public art” (I have to wonder if the use of “re” as a prefix here is, very honestly and thus admirably, nodding to the City’s lack of collection management over the years that has led to 14 public art works having gone missing), and “celebrating Station North as a comfortable, safe place for all, rooted in the arts.”

So, here we are, back at my first question: What exactly is this project? And from here, I find myself backing up to my opening monologue: It’s “complex,” which is to say “inherently multifaceted,” as most dictionaries explain. I’ve attempted to lay out and explore many of those facets in this article. But Inviting Light is complex in a good way, in a way that we need to lean into and find our place, alongside the artists, residents, visitors, and, yes, politicians, if we want to see the project’s long-term goals manifested.

What I think we’ll need to push back on is its potential to get “complicated,” which most dictionaries define as “unnecessarily convoluted,” a description that frequently describes the actions of and interactions with government bodies. To avoid that, I think our jobs as participants and citizens is to stay attuned to the progress on meeting the project’s long-term goals and to be vocal, active, and helpful in keeping that progress on track.

Finally, beyond the expectation of FUN, we should feel INVITED on Friday night and in the months to come when visiting Station North. At least two meanings of the first word in the project’s title are in play here (and here’s the geek-out I promised at the beginning): “Inviting,” used as an adjective, suggests that the myriad uses of light in the installations and activations will be enticing. “Inviting,” used together with “light,” in a phrase where light serves as a direct object, suggests that we as visitors have agency. We have the ability to invite light in—into our thoughts and actions, to help make those long-term goals happen, and even into our spirits, which may just make those actions go more smoothly.

This Friday, March 28, Zoë Charlton’s “Third Watch” Illuminates North Avenue Market, starting with performances at 6 pm.