Spiral Cinema at Open Space

Spiral Cinema: Presented by Max Guy and Neil Sanzgiri August 13th - September 24, 2011 (screenings begin at 8PM)

Scheduled Screenings
August 13th - F For Fake (Directed by Orson Welles, 1974)
August 27th - Double Take (Directed by Johan Grimonprez, 2009)
September 10th - Condo Painting (Directed by John McNaughton, 2000)
September 24 - Gates of Heaven (Directed by Errol Morris, 1978)

What happens when a document spirals out of control and becomes the mere vapor trails of the comet it creates? The breaking down of the narrative structure in films such as F For Fake, Double Take, Condo Painting, and Gates of Heaven is a consequence of the rapid flux of subject matter. The documentaries screened in Spiral Cinema celebrate the divergence of the plot format in order to develop a new way of organizing memory and the viewers’ experience of consciousness. The directors of the documentaries we have chosen focus their attention on details in the films that are at once discrete and integral to the life of the film as a whole. In this series, the spiral’s hypnotic tropes are maintained as the director and audience be- come lost in the minute details of the reality presented. Hypnosis, not as a psychological practice but rather an artistic technique, is a method of captivating a subject to become utterly disoriented within a familiar set- ting; to remove the ground on which the viewer stands.

Open Space Gallery
2720 Sisson St. Baltimore, MD
21211

Lucian Freud, Figurative Painter Who Redefined Portraiture, Is Dead at 88

From the NY Times: Lucian Freud, Figurative Painter Who Redefined Portraiture, Is Dead at 88
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: July 21, 2011

Lucian Freud, whose stark and revealing paintings of friends and intimates, splayed nude in his studio, recast the art of portraiture and offered a new approach to figurative art, died on Wednesday night at his home in London. He was 88.

Mr. Freud, a grandson of Sigmund Freud and a brother of the British television personality Clement Freud, was already an important figure in the small London art world when, in the immediate postwar years, he embarked on a series of portraits that established him as a potent new voice in figurative art.

In paintings like “Girl With Roses” (1947-48) and “Girl With a White Dog” (1951-52), he put the pictorial language of traditional European painting in the service of an anti-romantic, confrontational style of portraiture that stripped bare the sitter’s social facade. Ordinary people — many of them his friends — stared wide-eyed from the canvas, vulnerable to the artist’s ruthless inspection.

From the late 1950s, when he began using a stiffer brush and moving paint in great swaths around the canvas, Mr. Freud’s nudes took on a new fleshiness and mass. His subjects, pushed to the limit in exhausting extended sessions, day after day, dropped their defenses and opened up. The faces showed fatigue, distress, torpor.

The flesh was mottled, lumpy and, in the case of his 1990s portraits of the performance artist Leigh Bowery and the phenomenally obese civil servant Sue Tilley, shockingly abundant.

The relationship between sitter and painter, in his work, overturned traditional portraiture. It was “nearer to the classic relationship of the 20th century: that between interrogator and interrogated,” the art critic John Russell wrote in “Private View,” his survey of the London art scene in the 1960s.

William Feaver, a British critic who organized a Freud retrospective at Tate Britain in 2002, said: “Freud has generated a life’s worth of genuinely new painting that sits obstinately across the path of those lesser painters who get by on less. He always pressed to extremes, carrying on further than one would think necessary and rarely letting anything go before it became disconcerting.”

Lucian Michael Freud was born in Berlin on Dec. 8, 1922, and grew up in a wealthy neighborhood near the Tiergarten. His father, Ernst L. Freud, an architect who was Sigmund Freud’s youngest son, married Lucie Brasch, the heiress to a timber fortune, and the family enjoyed summers on the North Sea and visits to a family estate near Cottbus, in Germany.

In 1933, after Hitler came to power, the Freuds moved to London, where Lucian attended progressive schools but showed little academic promise. He was more interested in horses than in his studies, and entertained thoughts of becoming a jockey.

In 1938, he was expelled from Bryanston, in Dorset, after dropping his trousers on a dare on a street in Bournemouth. But his sandstone sculpture of a horse earned him entry into the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. He left there after a year to enroll in the East Anglian School of Drawing and Painting in Dedham, where he studied with the painter Cedric Morris. While it is true that the school burned to the ground while he was there, the often repeated story that Mr. Freud accidentally started the fire with a discarded cigarette seems unlikely.

In 1941, hoping to make his way to New York, Mr. Freud enlisted in the Merchant Navy, where he served on a convoy ship crossing the Atlantic. He got no nearer to New York than Halifax, Nova Scotia, and after returning to Liverpool developed tonsillitis and was given a medical discharge from the service.

Mr. Freud was a bohemian of the old school. He set up his studios in squalid neighborhoods, developed a Byronic reputation as a rake and gambled recklessly (“Debt stimulates me,” he once said). In 1948, he married Kitty Garman, the daughter of the sculptor Jacob Epstein, whom he depicted in several portraits, notably “Girl With Roses,” “Girl With a Kitten” (1947) and “Girl With a White Dog” (1950-51). That marriage ended in divorce, as did his second marriage, to Lady Caroline Blackwood. He is survived by many children from his first marriage and from a series of romantic relationships.

His early work, often with an implied narrative, was strongly influenced by the German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) painters like Georg Grosz and Otto Dix, although his influences reached back to Albrecht Dürer and the Flemish masters like Hans Memling.

On occasion he ventured into Surrealist territory. In “The Painter’s Room” (1943), a zebra with red and yellow stripes pokes its head through the window of a studio furnished with a palm tree and sofa. A top hat sits on the floor.

Mr. Freud later rejected Surrealism with something like contempt. “I could never put anything into a picture that wasn’t actually there in front of me,” he told the art critic Robert Hughes. “That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.”

Read the whole NYTimes article here.

Artscape Art Car Show and Parade

Ordinary vehicles are transformed into outlandish, eye-popping works of art at the Art Car Exhibit. Intricate detailing and interactive features make for true conversation starters. Don't miss the Art Cars and the Charm City Roller Girls parade down Mt. Royal Avenue to Charles Street at noon on Saturday, July 16.

Location: Charles Street and E. Lanvale Street
Curator: Daniel Stuelpnagel, art car artist
Programming: Holly Klemm, art car artist

Art Car Exhibitors: Cindy Albano, Baltimore Rock Opera Society, Dan Everett, Joan Freedman, Bob Heronimous, Chris Hubbard, Holly Klemm, Robert Luczun, Jeffrey Polanowski, Karl Schlatter, Laura Straehla, Daniel Stuelpnagel, Dan Van Allen, Matt Muirhead, Michelle Kaiser, Charles and Grace Laster, Stillpoint Theatre Initiative, Vehicles For Change and many more.

Schedule
Friday, July 15 - Sunday, July 17 All Day 18th Annual Art Car and Other Wheeled Vehicle Show. The art cars return to Artscape once again with a mix of new cars, old favorites and participation cars.

Saturday, July 16 11:30 am Art Car Parade The Caravan travels from the American Visionary Art Museum to Artscape. At noon, the car parade enters Artscape at North Avenue and Mt. Royal Street and begins traveling through the festival to Station North.

Also, have a seat at the Art Car Lounge on Charles and Lanvale!

Free Performances during Artscape on North Avenue

For close to a decade, Run of the Mill Theater has brought fresh, challenging, and entertaining performances to Baltimore's stages. It is with deep pride and deep sorrow that we announce the closing of the Company, at the end of this month.

This Friday at the LOF/t and Saturday at Theatre Project, please join us for our final productions -- two last chances to experience great local theater from RotM!

The North Avenue Plays

We're back on the bus in 2011! Last year, RotM debuted a new concept 24-hour play festival, The North Avenue Plays. It's back this year, with ONE PERFORMANCE ONLY, at the LOF/t, 120 W. North Avenue (map) on Friday, July 15th at 8pm. Tickets will be $15 at the door, cash only please.

On Thursday afternoon, six playwrights and six directors will ride the North Avenue Bus line, writing brand new ten-minute plays from scratch. We'll rehearse throughout the night and all day Friday, and present The North Avenue Plays on Friday night!

1-ACT performance at Artscape - a BMORE encore

This Saturday at Theatre Project, in conjunction with Artscape, we'll present a special encore performance of SPHERE: The Thelonious Monk Story by Max Garner. This play is a uniquely theatrical portrait of one of America's most enigmatic artists, a true revolutionary in jazz history.

Curtain time is 8pm and admission is free! But you'll need a ticket. Please visit Missiontix to order. Theatre Project is located at 45 W. Preston Street, Baltimore. Did we mention that it's free?

ArtScape Party Art Exhibit and Music Performance by Freedom Enterprise at Load of Fun

In 2007 Sherwin Mark opened the Load of Fun Gallery and Studios to the Public for an Historic ArtScape Party! Well 4 Years Later here we go Again!

Friday at 8:00pm - Saturday at 4:00am @ Studio One Twenty West

120 West North Ave / Baltimore, MD

8PM ROTHM Preforming "North Ave Plays"

https://www.facebook.com/R​unoftheMillTheater?ref=ts

10PM Freedom Enterprise

https://www.facebook.com/p​ages/Freedom-Enterprise/21​0911112811

Midnight Screening of "Act Naturally"

www.actnaturallymovie.com

GUEST DJ'S, FIRE BLOWERS, AND MORE.....

Sponsors:

Load of Fun Arts Building https://www.facebook.com/p​ages/Load-of-Fun-Arts/1523​80124822975

Station North Arts District

https://www.facebook.com/p​rofile.php?id=100000898392​501

Studio One Twenty West

https://www.facebook.com/p​ages/Studio-One-Twenty-Wes​t/179360648780308

Rashid Belt Photography

https://www.facebook.com/p​ages/Rashid-Belt-Photograp​hy/112688385441993

Breck Jones

https://www.facebook.com/p​rofile.php?id=1024304254

Studio Kafi

https://www.facebook.com/p​ages/studioKAFI-Photograph​y/113702665313972?sk=info

Run of the Mill Theater

https://www.facebook.com/R​unoftheMillTheater?ref=ts

Music by: Freedom Enterprise

https://www.facebook.com/p​ages/Freedom-Enterprise/21​0911112811

NO COVER:: 21 and UP

Urbanite Ezine Feature: Interview with Matisyahu, Musical Headliner for Artscape

photo by Jared Polin

Mensh Reggae: Urbanite’s interview with Matisyahu, the international reggae sensation and 

headlining act at this year’s Artscape. by Cara Ober

If you're trying to stay high, then you're bound to stay low

You want God but you can't deflate your ego

If you're already there, then there's nowhere to go

If your cup's already full, then it's bound to overflow

If you are familiar with these lyrics, then you already know that King Without a Crown, by Matisyahu, was a Top 40 hit in the United States. In the studio version, an elastic beat moves the tune along at a mellow clip, and you can't help but sway to the dense, colorful reggae sound. Like the best-loved reggae, most notably Bob Marley, the songs of Matisyahu are about deep and serious issues. As a young man, Matisyahu—born Matthew Paul Miller—discovered Orthodox Judaism, and his religious convictions have fueled his career as a singer, songwriter, and performer. Often compared to Sublime and Kanye West, Matisyahu's Dub Reggae sound has evolved along with his religion over the past ten years. He has become an international sensation for deftly mixing reggae, rap, and hip-hop with traditional Jewish themes, and layering jazz and beatboxing techniques in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish. Baltimore listeners will have the opportunity to sample Matisyahu's unique sounds live at the Wells Fargo Main Stage at Artscape on Sunday, July 17, at 6:30 p.m.

Despite his busy touring schedule, Matisyahu took some time to discuss his tour with me, as well as his sound, his family, and his upcoming visit to Baltimore. Below is a segment from our phone interview on Tuesday, June 28, 2011.

Urbanite: Looking at your tour dates this summer, it looks like you're going to be really busy for a few months. Do you prefer to have your music experienced live? Do you think that's is the best way for your music to be heard?
Matisyahu: I wouldn't say I have a preference, like I would prefer someone to see it live than to listen to my record. But I would definitely think it is great live and I think it’s different than the record. I try to make it an experience for people, so when they come they're not just hearing the songs as they are on the record, but that they're actually more dynamic at the show—there's a lot of interaction and exchange and improvisation.

Urbanite: I know that you have a wife and three young boys at home. How do you balance your family life with so much touring? How does that work?
Matisyahu: When I started out I took them everywhere pretty much...my wife and the first kid, and then, my wife and the second kid. And then I started to try to do it without taking them everywhere. Now we do a balance. For example, now the kids are at camp for three weeks, but they'll come out and join me for the rest of the tour. I try to bring them along even though it is difficult. There is a certain joy, as you know...there is a stress, but there is a certain joy you get from being with your children and that's important to me.

To read the entire interview on the Urbanite website, click here.

Artscape turns 30! An article from Baltimore Magazine by Geoffrey Himes

From Baltimore Magazine:

Artscape Turns 30: The venerable festival enters its fourth decade brimming with populism and newfound energy, thanks to its expansion into Station North.

By Geoffrey Himes

It's too hot, too crowded, the parking is awful, but still we go every year. Because each time we're tempted to skip Artscape, we remember something special that happened at the last one, and we find ourselves heading down to Mount Royal Avenue once again.

Maybe it was that time we were standing in the middle of the street by the Fox Building, so transfixed by a young rock-and-roll band that we forgot all about leaving early to beat the traffic. Maybe we wandered into the Mount Royal Station Building just to get out of the heat and into the air conditioning, but we were so taken by the paintings that we started attending gallery openings in the fall. Maybe we were so tickled by the Art Car Parade that we went out and bought a glue gun and started attaching toys to that old car we were going to trade in for $100. Maybe we bumped into an old Baltimore friend in the crowd, someone we hadn't seen in years, and, after an exchange of phone numbers, a friendship was rekindled. Maybe we were walking from the Main Stage to the Food Court and saw, out of the corner of our eye, a hand-carved wooden bowl in a woodworker's booth, a bowl that now sits on our living room table, urging us to go back to Artscape one more time to see what else we might discover.

This year, July 15-17, is the 30th annual Artscape, and despite complaints and controversies, economic downturns and budget cuts, the festival is bigger and more popular than ever. It's a demonstration to the rest of the state that downtown Baltimore can be safe as well as fun. And it's one of the few events in Maryland where people of all races, all ages, and all lifestyles assemble in the same place and get a good look at one another.

To read the article in its entirety at Baltimore Magazine, click here.

More from Geoffrey Himes: As a freelance music critic, I attend a lot of festivals around the country. I'm a big fan of Artscape, but there are some things that other festivals do that Artscape would be smart to adopt. Here are five suggestions:

CROSS-POLLINATION ACROSS MEDIA: The South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, and the Folk Alliance Conference in Memphis, Tennessee, are both music gatherings, but both make an effort to supplement live performances with other media. Both screen documentary films about musicians who are attending. SXSW always has an exhibit of concert posters, and the Folk Alliance always has an exhibit of photographs about its musicians. This visual supplement to the live music (or the musical supplement to the screenings and exhibits, depending on how you look at it) deepen the experience in a way that makes the musician's appearance something special—and not just another stop on the tour.

WORKSHOPS AND PANELS: The Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in Louisiana both encourage their performing artists to do workshops and/or interview sessions in addition to their regular performances. They may talk about the techniques of clawhammer banjo or the history of the Mardi Gras Indians or the influence of gospel on modern R&B. These side sessions add a serious, educational aspect that you're not going to find when the same performers appear at the Rams Head Tavern or the Merriweather Post Pavilion, and that makes their festival appearance more special.

ANNUAL THEMES: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., and the Montreal Jazz Festival in Quebec both adopt a theme each year that gives a focus to the event and makes one year different from the next. The Folklife Fest usually adopts three themes—a state, a foreign country and a profession—and then invites musicians, craft artists, historians and cooks to display different aspects of the same theme. The Montreal Jazzfest chooses a particular musician each year and then presents him or her in four or five different contexts to reveal the full breadth of that career. Again, these are experiences one can get nowhere else but at these festivals.

MIX AND MATCH PERFORMERS: Merlefest in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and the International Bluegrass Music Association Fan Fair in Nashville, Tennessee, both take advantage of having so many musicians gathered in one place at one time by having them play in different combinations. A guitarist who might be singing his own songs in one group might be a harmony singer and rhythm guitarist in another group and a duet singer in a third. A fiddler might play with his current band, with the reunion of his old band and as a guest with a band he'd never played with before. These rare and unprecedented line-ups make the festival special for the musicians and the audience alike.

Exposed: An Artscape Network Exhibition at Creative Alliance July 16

Exposed: An Artscape Network Exhibition curated by Michelle Gomez

Jul 14-30, Opens Sat Jul 16 6-8pm

Creative Alliance at the Patterson

What makes us vulnerable? How do people deal with their vulnerabilities? This unique group of interdisciplinary artists reacts to the overwhelming and highly fragile state of their psyche. Their works are autobiographical and explore elements such as distressed body language, chaos, body extensions, veiling and distortion to explore aspects of identity, social relations and hidden desire. Artists include: Trevor Amery, Heather Boaz, Milana Braslavsky, Magnolia Laurie, Sebastian Martorana, Lynn Palewicz and Alessandra Torres.

Sondheim Semi-Finalist Exhibition at MICA opens Thursday, July 14 at 6 pm

Mindy Hirt

Opening Reception: Thursday July 14, from 6-9pm

An exhibition of the Sondheim Semifinalists’ work will be shown in the Decker and Meyerhoff galleries of the MICA, located at 1303 West Mount Royal Avenue, during the Artscape weekend on July 15-17, 2011.

MICA exhibition duration: Friday, July 15 – Sunday, July 31, 2011

The Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Semifinalist Exhibit includes:

Ken Ashton, Washington, DC

Baltimore Annex Theater, Baltimore, MD

Kathryn Bell, Baltimore, MD

Milana Braslavsky, Reisterstown, MD

Abby Donovan, Newark, DE

Eric Dyer, Baltimore, MD

David East, Baltimore, MD

Linda Hesh, Alexandria, VA

Mindy Hirt, Westminster, MD

Brian Kain, Emmitsburg, MD

JK Keller, Baltimore, MD

Dean Kessmann, Washington, DC

J.T. Kirkland, Sterling, VA

Andrew Laumann, Baltimore, MD

Magnolia Laurie, Baltimore, MD

Christopher LaVoie, Baltimore, MD

Joseph Letourneau, Baltimore, MD

Michael Mansfield, Washington, DC

Ben Marcin, Baltimore, MD

Sebastian Martorana, Baltimore, MD

Allyn Massey, Parkton, MD

Michael Benevento + Andrew Liang, Baltimore, MD

Brian Patrick Miller, Baltimore, MD

A. Moon, Baltimore, MD

Christian Parks, Cockeysville, MD

Robby Rackleff, Baltimore, MD

Adam T. Rush, Baltimore, MD

Jo Smail, Baltimore, MD

Dan Steinhilber, Washington, DC

Diane Szczepaniak, Potomac, MD

Alessandro Valente, Lutherville, MD

Elena Volkova, Baltimore, MD

Richard Vosseller, Vienna, VA

Melissa Webb, Baltimore, MD

Adam Weir, Baltimore, MD

Marty Weishaar, Baltimore, MD

Wendy Wu, Baltimore, MD

Jenny Yang, Washington, DC

Matt Porterfield is the 2011 Sondheim Prize Winner!

\

Matthew Porterfield (Baltimore, MD)

Born in Baltimore, MD, Matt Porterfield studied film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and currently teaches screenwriting, film theory and production at Johns Hopkins University. His first feature film, HAMILTON, which he wrote, directed and edited on 16mm film, was released in 2006. METAL GODS, his second feature script, won the Panasonic Digital Filmmaking Grand Prize at IFP’s 30th Annual Independent Film Week in 2008. In 2010, his latest film, PUTTY HILL, premiered at the Berlinale’s International Forum of New Cinema; and in February 2011, it was released by Cinema Guild. His films and videos have been screened in several venues and film festivals including AFI, The Wexner Center, Centre Pompidou, the Swedish Film Institute, the George Eastman House, Viennale, Edinburgh and SXSW. Locally, Porterfield’s photographs have been shown at The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore’s Current Gallery and Gallery 229. He has been awarded a media grant from the Maryland State Arts Council and was a Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize finalist in 2010.

Porterfield's work at the BMA's 2011 Finalists Exhibition

FOREVERMORE / Print Sale & Artist’s Installation July 14

Gaia, The Raven (Forevermore), 2011. Block print on Mulberry paper 66x91 cm

FOREVERMORE: An event & installation celebrating the gift of 100 signed prints by artist, Gaia to benefit Baltimore’s Poe House & Museum

MICA trained artist, Gaia has generously donated a numbered special edition of his print, The Raven (Forevermore) for a sale to benefit Baltimore’s Poe House & Museum so that they may continue to keep their doors open. There will be a Preview & Print Sale gallery event at Urbanite@Case[werks] and hosted by Baltimore Heritage on the eve of Artscape 2011, July 14th from 6 to 8 pm. To attend the Preview, please RSVP. An Artist’s Reception will follow from 8-10 pm to celebrate the gift with an installation by the artist and is open to all.

Only 100 prints will be offered at a cost of $400 each with all proceeds going directly to the Poe House & Museum. Framed prints (per the artist’s specification) will also be available for $600. Sales tax and/or shipping is additional.

Urbanite@Case[werks]
1501 St Paul Street, Suite 116 (Railway Express Building)
Baltimore, MD 21202
urbanite@casewerks.com
410-332-4160

For more information about this very special project, visit www.poeforevermore.com or contact the gallery via email, urbanite@casewerks.com.

http://www.casewerks.com/2011/07/07/forevermore-print-sale-artists-installation/

The 2011 Sondheim Prize will be awarded on Saturday, July 9 at 7 p.m.

The five finalists for the sixth annual Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize are Stephanie Barber, Louie Palu, Mark Parascandola, Matthew Porterfield and Rachel Rotenberg. The competition awards a $25,000 fellowship to a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Greater Baltimore region.

 The 2011 winner will be announced during an award ceremony on Saturday, July 9 at 7pm at The Baltimore Museum of Art, located at 10 Art Museum Drive. The Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize is held in conjunction with the annual Artscape juried exhibition and is produced by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and The Arts.

This year marks a smaller batch of artists than ever before - just five - and a surprising range of media - sculpture, two photographers, and two multi media / filmmakers. Every year I think I have the jurors figured out, and every year they throw a curveball. This year I have NO IDEA who will win and that's okay with me. The exhibit of finalists at the BMA is academic, experimental, pretty, gritty, and interactive. If you come to see the exhibit, make sure you take a moment to sniff Rachel Rotenberg's cedar sculptures, to pose in front of Stephanie Barber's camera, to actually wear the headphones, and to look carefully at Palu and Parascandola's photos - you're not always seeing what you think you are seeing.

The formal review is available at the Urbanite Website: http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/baltimore/visual-arts-cliffhanger/Content?oid=1451071

Rachel Rotenberg

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Louie Palu (right)

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Stephanie Barber

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Matt Porterfield

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Mark Parascandola (with Stephanie Barber)