BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.
To submit your calendar event, email us at [email protected]!
GET BMOREART’S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
We’ll send you our top stories of the week, selected event listings, and our favorite calls for entry — right to your inbox every Tuesday.
<><><><><><><><>
Summer in the Squares
Wednesday, August 23rd : 7-8:30pm
Mount Vernon Place
699 Washington Place : 21201
Ambient August continues with a SPECIAL PERFORMANCE by Mount Vernon’s very own contemporary classical group Symphony Number One!
Symphony Number One is Baltimore’s newest chamber orchestra, dedicated to performing and promoting substantial works by emerging composers. Symphony Number One will play a medley of contemporary classical pieces including an original composition dedicated to Mount Vernon Place!!
Bring a blanket or folding chair to sit on the grass or sidewalk in Mount Vernon Place’s West Square.
We thank the Mount Vernon-Belvedere Association for additional support to provide this free concert.
<><><><><><><><>
ART/SOUND/NOW: Jimmy Joe Roche and Raw Silk with Jonna McKone
Thursday, August 24th : 7-8:30pm
The Walters Art Museum
600 North Charles Street : 21201
Experience the museum’s collections in new ways as artists provide unique soundscapes in the galleries for one-night only. In the third and final installment of this year’s series electronic artist Jimmy Joe Roche will highlight the connections between mysticism, religion, and music, focusing on humans as imperfect resonate chambers, in the museum’s Baroque galleries. The violin and sitar of Raw Silk will team up with Jonna McKone to investigate the fraught nature of museum displays by attempting to bridge space and time with a combination of analog and digital sounds in the Walters’ Ancient Greek galleries.
Presented in partnership with the Red Room, a project of the High Zero Foundation.
<><><><><><><><>
Conditional Light //// in/outside room/f | Closing Reception + Artist Talk
Thursday, August 24th : 7-9pm
Terrault
218 West Saratoga Street, Third Floor : 21201
‘Conditional Lights’ consists of paintings with light boxes and wood sculptures housing lights by Se Jong Cho and Dave Zimmerman. Both artists create an experience to translate their conscious minds through the exhibited works, which become a lexicon of the audience’s conscious mind. Because experiencing is inherently more abstract than viewing, the content they can share through the created experience can be greater than through visual perceptions alone. Through these objects, the artists intervene the light, the source of one’s vision. The audience becomes part of the exhibit as the lights are triggered by their presence when passing the work. The illuminated works remain lit for three minutes and then turn off when no further movement is registered.
‘in/outside room/f’ consists of paintings by Se Jong Cho that depict various rooms or roofs along with artifacts that mimic the paintings in the space that are presented. She painted the rooms and roofs as a context to explore her intuition. The placement of the objects inside of a room or outside on a roof is arbitrary with no symbolic gesture. The result is a certain style: a precise depiction of objects using controlled color selection. Cho refers to Cocteau who writes: “Style is the soul, and unfortunately with us the soul assumes the form of the body” in refuting the decorative encumbrance any work of art with style may face. These paintings are things depicted through a certain style that should be experienced, because there is no content in these paintings, but aim to captivate the audience.
<><><><><><><><>
A Beautiful Ghetto: A Photo-Illustrated Talk by Devin Allen
Saturday, August 26th : 12pm
Enoch Pratt Pennsylvania Avenue Branch
1521 West North Avenue : 21217
On April 18th, 2015, Baltimore erupted in mass protests in response to the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. The eyes of the world turned to Baltimore, and the photographs by Devin Allen, a West Baltimore native, went viral.
In stunning black and white photos, Allen documents the uprising, his city, and the people who live there, revealing a world of love, courage, struggle and hope. Each photo reveals the personality, beauty and spirit of Baltimore, as his camera complicates the stereotype of a “ghetto”. We find smiles where one might least expect them, hope in the battle against a system that sows desperation and fear, and above all, resistance, to the unrelenting pressures of racism in twenty-first-century America.
Devin Allen is one of the first amateur photographers to have his work featured on the cover of Time magazine. His photographs have also appeared in New York Magazine, the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, BBC, NBC News, Aperture Magazine, and Yahoo!
The afternoon will be introduced by D. Watkins, the Editor At Large for Salon. His work has been published in The New York Times, Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. Watkins has been the recipient of numerous awards including Ford’s Men of Courage and a BME Fellowship. Watkins is from and lives in East Baltimore. He is the author of The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir and The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America.
The Ivy Bookshop will have copies of Devin Allen’s book for sale at a book signing following the program.
<><><><><><><><>
Our Right To Smile: Jerrell Gibbs | Opening Reception
Saturday, August 26th : 6-9pm
Dovecote Café
2501 Madison Avenue : 21217
They say; “you don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been”.
Artist Jerrell Gibbs is a firm believer in that manifesto. Naturally, his second body of work is inspired by an artist whose work has preceded his time. Ernie Barnes, NFL player turned artist, made a lasting impression on Gibbs’ latest creations. The late Barnes was an African American painter, whose work was defined by critics as neo-mannerist. Barnes was most notable for elongating the human figure, his extraordinary color palettes, serpentine lines and the closing of the eyes of his subjects. With Ernie Barnes as an influence, Gibbs produced his most recent paintings.
“Our right to smile” which opens August 26, 2017 at Dovecote Café provides a glimpse into Gibbs’ world through recreations of childhood photographs and memories. Gibbs bestows viewers a lens into the everyday life of the community he’s familiar with. He gives the audience a sense of the traditional Baltimorean family functions. His use of elongated figures, inspired by Ernie Barnes, and expressive gestures allows him to convey a feelingof liveliness in the form of two-dimensional paintings.
Dovecote Café will host the opening reception on Saturday, August 26th from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at 2501 Madison Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217. Come experience a classic Baltimore style BBQ, which will include food, drinks, a DJ, fine art and a good time.
<><><><><><><><>
COME AS YOU ARE: The Spectrum of Vulnerability
Saturday, August 26th : 6-8pm
The Creative Alliance
3134 Eastern Avenue : 21224
Featuring: Christy Bergland, Shana R. Goetsch, Brandon Gray, MJ Kehne, Michelle Labonte, Sharon Strouse, Liz Swanson, and Ana Temple Rodney
Trauma, grief, loss, depression, behavioral health, and healing are all meaningful parts of the full spectrum of human experience. The eight artists in Come As You Are: The Spectrum of Vulnerability offer their individual vignettes and artwork as evidence of their personal struggles and the power of resiliency.
