BmoreArt

Each meeting typically starts with some moseying—an hour or so of the audience gathering, viewing, and enjoying the aforementioned refreshments. Typically, Ralston, or a guest curator, will get the conversation started with whichever artist is first on the schedule. The artist gives a short description of their work, then takes questions from the audience. Sometimes the artist will ask for specific feedback, but more often than not, the feeling in the room is an open-ended Q&A style—one that allows all present to engage in a way that is both intimate and analytical.

Crit Club is among a number of burgeoning arts spaces in Baltimore, including Atrium Art Space, Art Hall, and Area 405 that have popped up in the last few years following the pandemic. But the Crit Club is unique in its implicit engagement with critical dialogue. While recent shows like those of MICA curatorial MFA candidates Rui Jiang and Maggie Wei at Area 405 and Gallery CA respectively have included programming like workshops and performances, Crit Club stakes its own unique position by giving gallery goers the opportunity to interact directly with the artists. More than that, this interaction is the primary goal. It offers something many other spaces do not: the time to think with the work and the artists, rather than simply around them. 

This kind of critical dialogue and community-building feels particularly significant in Baltimore, where rent is still (relatively) affordable and the barrier to entry remains low. It’s a city where a group of artists can find a space, hang some lights, and get a conversation going. That is not to say it’s easy. Making the space is only half the work, if that. The real labor takes place in the ideas, the listening, and the feedback that make it a creative force in Baltimore.

Crit Club began, in part, as a response to the stagnation Ralston and Sweeney saw in Baltimore’s post-pandemic art scene. As Ralston puts it “Crit Club grew out of the realization that thoughtful, sustained conversations with other artists could be transformative, and that we could build a structure to make those conversations more public and consistent.” In the years following the pandemic it has certainly built that structure—they are the only space in Baltimore that provides the type of service they do. This is of course not service in the transactional sense, but in the sense that they serve the larger creative community. 

Ralston and Sweeney, who have been friends and neighbors since their time in graduate school at MICA, had been having these conversations about their own practices as many artists do and made the impactful leap to expand those to a larger and more public arena. The very first meeting grew from an email list amassed from Baltimore’s own Baker Artist Portfolios, an online collection open to anyone in the greater Baltimore region. Ralston selected a group of artists that he thought may be interested in Crit Club’s mission and invited them to a meeting in October of 2024 where he talked about “what I hoped this could become—and from there, we started building.” The result, of course, was the meeting that laid the foundation for what Crit Club is today.

According to an early Instagram post from the club’s launch, the goal was to “bring people back into the same room, talking about the work like it matters.” In other words, not just showing, but sharing—through conversation that was neither too academic nor too casual.

Each show has been arguably stronger than the last. Danni O’Brien, Thiang Uk, and Patrick David wrapped up their show last month with a critique that lasted nearly three hours. This meeting, like others I have attended, matched strong, compelling art with similarly engaging discussion. Danni O’Brien’s works use diagrams from self-help and automotive texts to recontextualize information about bodily autonomy. Thiang Uk’s work captures the artist’s unconscious and cultural currents into works that dance between subtly representational and Rothko-esque color fields. Patrick David’s drawings—or “doodles” as he described them—collected many, sometimes disparate thoughts onto sheets of paper that feel reminiscent of a sketchbook, but in ways more akin to a sort of mental projection from the artist.

The previous show featured the white-hot collective Goxxip Girl, which selected four of their members to participate: founder Caitlin Gill, Jaqueline Tull, Carlotta Cerrato, and Heather Ossandon. Gill’s work was a grouping of her anthropomorphized birds; in the critique, she brought up Laura Mulvey’s ideas of the gaze. In her work, Gill talks about evoking “discomfort and repulsion [and] encourages viewers to engage in the inherent violence exercised in the construct of the feminine.” These female forms—idealized in the Greco-Roman sense—have animal heads that feel sort of gross or related to commodification, doing justice to the idea of the modern “construct of the feminine” as something inherently deplorable.

Tull showed prints and a few found-object sculptures, some encased in a nylon-like material that the artist uses as a stand-in for the trappings of memory. These sculptural works suggest an archive—one softened, strained, or filtered through the textile material that binds them. There’s a push-pull between nostalgia and critique, memory and artifice.

Carlotta Cerrato talked about her love of color—how she is driven to paint more and more by this obsession. Her works on cardboard resonated with the audience, and she somewhat nonchalantly explained that cardboard is much less a conceptual material choice than a practical one: she can paint on cardboard for much less money than she can on stretched canvas or panel.

Ossandon works in ceramics and is the department coordinator at Prince George’s Community College. Her works stack and pile botanical and aquatic forms, among others, using an unglazed terra cotta that feels referential to brick. Perhaps she was so struck by her time at the Tileworks at Bucks County that the surface has driven her work—or maybe she is simply pushing toward a more monochromatic assemblage. At any rate, the work was both striking and quiet. The works certainly contain a sense of patience and precision in their creation—the way forms wrap, interlock, and accrue mass feels deeply personal, but without ever veering toward obvious narrative.

Everyone and anyone is encouraged to speak in the Crit Club’s programming. In typical critique fashion, commentary that asks a question or sparks further dialogue holds a premium in this space, though observations and less pointed opinions certainly pepper their way into discussion. Ralston and Sweeney work hard to bring a consistent and quickly rotating cast of artists into their space. Rather than echoing the sometimes combative tone of MFA crits, the conversations are shaped by curiosity and care. 

“Outside of school, critique becomes a collaborative tool rather than a didactic one,” says Ralston. “It’s not about correcting people. It’s about listening, about surfacing points of tension and difference.” Ralston has emphasized that even quiet attendance is valuable—there’s space for people who just want to listen and absorb, and that kind of openness sets the tone for Crit Club’s inviting programs.

The conversations that come out of each event are always singular, due to the work and thoughts of the specific artists participating, as well as the makeup of the group that attends.

As the Club enters its second year, the question exists: what’s next? Will it remain in its current format—a handful of Saturday critiques per season—or will it expand into residencies, publications, or a traveling model? Will shows live longer in the space and continue to grow their audience locally and beyond? Ralston and Sweeney have hinted at bringing in more guest curators or even hosting out-of-town artists. 

There’s talk of integrating more collaborative formats—maybe critiques that include writing workshops, or panels that intersect with performance and theory. Ralston has also mentioned the possibility of more structured, peer-to-peer feedback exchanges and deeper connections with Baltimore’s established arts institutions, such as MICA or Station North. Though the organization may not be fully integrated with those spaces yet, they hope to build that relationship over time.

Crit Club is not just a space, but an activity. In an art world dominated by metrics—followers, sales, features—this project brings the process of making art into focus, within an immediate and tangible space. It reminds us that to speak about art is itself a significant endeavor. 

Crit Club is currently featuring the figurative work of Kyle Hackett and Taha Heydari. The conversation commenced on Saturday, June 14th. There will be a closing reception this Friday, June 27th at 7pm. Find more information about the Baltimore City Crit Club and upcoming events here.