Arts Writer
Kathy O’Dell is Associate Professor of Visual Arts Emerita, UMBC; on the team implementing the Catonsville Arts District Public Art Vision; and former Chair of the Maryland Public Art Commission. An art historian and critic, she is author of the book Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s and a founding editor of Link: A Critical Journal on the Arts in Baltimore and the World, published 1996-2005.
Bloomberg Philanthropies’ $1M Public Art Challenge “encourages mayors to partner with artists, elevating the creative sector when developing solutions to significant urban issues”
Inviting Light is transforming the Station North Arts District with five site-specific public art installations and a series of dynamic community events this year.
Her New Book Proves It with Science, Art is Vital to Our Health
Creative production is good for us. Those of us engaged in the arts have intuitively known this fact for ages, but the scientific studies and resulting evidence synthesized in the book Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us drive the point home with hardcore data.
A Subway Mosaic that Moves Viewers, and Two Public Art Tragedies from a Baltimore Treasure
This month, Kathy O'Dell takes readers on a ride through, above, below, and behind Pat Alexander's beloved "Geometro" mosaic in the Lexington Market Metro station. Plus, the sad stories of two Alexander works that Baltimoreans can no longer enjoy.
On Touching COR-TEN, One Percent for the Arts, and the Effort to Label and Preserve its Legacy
Here, before us at the school, are stripped-down, geometricized versions of four individual caterpillars, poised at different moments in their movements—stretching upward toward the sky, looking ahead, or reaching toward the ground, as if scouting for fallen leaves on the brick foundation...
Two Community Organizers Were Immortalized in a Mural that Ended up on the Front Page of the New York Times as an Illustration for Baltimore's Clap-Back to Donald Trump
It takes a minute to wrench myself out of the cosmic nerve center of this 40-foot wide, 20-foot-tall mural, which Santos created in 2011, and move on to clues and cues that will help piece together the narratives that figurative murals promise to offer up... So, who are these women?
The Saga of José Martí and the Anti-Communist Plastic Surgeon who Brought Him to Baltimore, along with Spanish-Language Facebook Drama and International Dirt
In her new column, Maryland Public Art Commission Chair Kathy O'Dell deep-dives into the little-known histories behind Baltimore's oft-overlooked public art treasures. First up is Cuban sculptor Teodoro Ramos Blanco's bust of rebel and intellectual José Martí.
