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]!
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Standing Together | Opening Reception
Thursday, January 4th : 4:30-7:30pm
BALTIMORE SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS
712 Cathedral Street
A newly restored and energized Baltimore Clayworks will present an exhibition of works in clay from the spectrum of its membership. As the community faced and grew stronger through a recent season of challenge, it has emerged with new vitality and a deeper commitment to its mission — to connect ceramic artists and communities.
Essential to this renewal were the core values of unity in common purpose, mutual respect and sacrifice for the common good. An Irish proverb declares that “In the shelter of one another the people live.” It may be testified as well that in the shelter of one another Baltimore Clayworks’ community stood and stands together anew.
In celebration of its rededication to its mission, and in the spirit of its core value of joy, Baltimore Clayworks will present the exhibition “Standing Together” at the Baltimore School for the Arts Gallery, from January 4 through January 27, 2018.
Artists include:
- Patrick Timothy Caughy,
- Trisha Kyner,
- Matthew Hyleck,
- Ryan Wilson,
- Brad Blair,
- Sonya Meeker,
- Aisha Harrison,
- Pam Worthington,
- Volker Schoenfliess,
- Nicole Fall,
- Sara Morales-Morgan,
- Ronni Aronin,
- Deborah Bedwell,
- Jessica Broad
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Join us on Thursday, January 4th at 7pm for a screening of the film ‘WILDNESS’ by Wu Tsang! This screening will be presented by Elliot Doughtie, who’s installation titled Lost Earring is currently on view in our Project Space, and will be followed by a discussion of the film.
Rooted in the tropical underground of Los Angeles nightlife, WILDNESS is a documentary portrait of the Silver Platter, a historic bar in the MacArthur Park area that has been home for Latin/LBGT immigrant communities since 1963. With a magical-realist flourish, the bar itself becomes a character, narrating what happens when a group of young artists create a weekly performance art/dance party (organized by director Wu Tsang and DJs NGUZUNGUZU & Total Freedom) called Wildness, which explodes into creativity and conflict. What does “safe space” mean, and who needs it? And how does it differ among us? At the Silver Platter, the search for answers to these questions creates coalitions across generations?
Wu Tsang is a filmmaker, visual artist, and performer who incorporates strategies of activism, art making, and stage production across a range of multi-disciplinary projects. While Tsang’s work has a rich visual style, her attention to shifting identities, transitional spaces, and communities emphasizes contingent identifiers such as language, voice, and persona, prompting inquiries into how individuals and communities resist ingrained social prejudices. Using the frameworks of popular media forums such as cinema, television, theater and dance clubs, her work considers prescient debates about social gathering as a form of insurgency and the political capacity of contemporary art.
In his multi-media installation, Lost Earring, Elliot Doughtie ponders how our cultural touchstones shift over time while considering the evolution of his own queer sexuality and transgender body. Found materials and cast plaster sculptures of familiar plumbing implements surround a projection of an isolated clip from the 1996 movie Bound by the filmmaking duo the Wachowski siblings — pruriently discovered by Doughtie as a teenager in search of his own identity. As two disembodied hands endlessly tighten and untighten the hidden plumbing of a bathroom sink, this charged and repeated gesture explores a non-heteronormative narrative of function and aspiration. Through the use of light, objects, and moving imagery, Lost Earring reimagines the commonplace setting of a bathroom in a queer and trans context — where bodies and minds are often flooded with emotions from terror to desire.
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Katie Pumphrey: Rearranging Rooms| Closing Reception + Artist Talk
Thursday, January 4th : 6-8pm
Project 1628
1628 Bolton Street :: 21217
Join us at Project 1628 on Thursday, Jan 4th, 6-8pm for the closing reception of Katie Pumphrey’s solo exhibition, Rearranging Rooms. The artist will also give a short artist talk @ 7pm.
In this new body of work, Rearranging Rooms, Pumphrey explores the repeated process of settling into a space or moment, making it your own, and finding comfort — only to have the situation change. You lose control, the lights go out, a wave comes — the moment forces the meter to reset, and yet again, you have to start from the beginning. You find yourself in a dark room or an overwhelming space, and you scramble to find your footing and move forward. These moments shift over and over again. You rearrange the room, ease the tension, and harness the chaos.
Katie Pumphrey is an artist living and working in Baltimore, MD. Katie has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has participated in artist residencies at the Studios of Key West, Vermont Studio Center, and the Creative Alliance in Baltimore. Katie is also a long distance, open water swimmer — who swam the English Channel in 2015. This aspect of her life often influences and drives her work.
katiepumphrey.com/rearranging-
@katiepumphreyart
#RearrangingRooms
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2018 Baltimore Crankie Fest
Friday, January 5th – Saturday, January 6th
Creative Alliance
3134 Eastern Avenue :: 21224
ALL SHOWS SOLD OUT.
Baltimore’s beloved festival of scrolled panoramas, known as crankies, return for a 5th year of true fireside magic and puppetry wonder. As in previous years, new crankie’s are created for their festival debut and we line up musical surprises throughout the night.
With:
Emily Schubert
String Theory Theater
Billy Collins
Matt Muirhead
Katherine Fahey
Liz Howls
Jerry Allen Gilmore & Friends
Erin Fostel & David Native Son Ross
Plus musical special guests
The Crankie Fest is made possible thanks to the generous support of John Cammack & Kimberly Warren.
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Cut, Copy, Paste. It’s Not What You Think | Opening Reception
Saturday, January 6th : 7-10pm
Terrault
218 West Saratoga Street :: 21201
Please join us for the opening reception of ‘Cut, Copy, Paste. It’s Not What You Think’ on Saturday, January 6, 2018 7-10PM for an exhibition of new works by Alex Ebstein (MD) and Leah Guadagnoli (NYC).
Exhibition runs: January 6 – February 17, 2018
For the past three years, Alex Ebstein has been working with PVC yoga mats as her primary medium to create paintings and preliminary installation work. She is attracted to this material for its ability to act as a synthetic proxy for the body, its recognizability and providing a predetermined, readymade color palette. Personal narrative and social critique serve as the underlying motivations for her otherwise bold, abstract compositions. While they can be appreciated on a purely aesthetic level, they also convey a sardonic sense of humor.
Ebstein’s mixed media pieces are inlaid compositions in which the yoga mat is both substrate and pigment. Gestures abbreviated and streamlined from a hybrid of bodily and written communication are suspended in a tactile surface. These pieces are presented within the norms of painting, framed and wall-bound. The utility and familiarity is subverted, the material speaks instead to paint, collage, or fiber work.
These pieces began with a performative series of cut yoga mats, displayed as artifacts of a personal ritual. Yoga, a seemly healthy and helpful practice, was unfortunately making an eye condition of Ebstein’s worse, and she had to cut ties with the lifestyle, and did so as literally as possible. She eventually was able to treat the mats as an art material loaded with associations for the viewer, but was no longer a source of loss or sadness for her and has been able to make her practice a lighthearted approach to the subject of deterioration, imperfection, impermanence, and the commercialized ideals of body image.
Leah Guadagnoli makes three-dimensional wall-based constructions that balance geometry, nostalgia, and architecture into unfamiliar forms. Decades worth of history are distilled into each piece she makes. Pleasingly aligned positions are offset by patterns that she collects or reproduces— recalling interiors from the 80’s, 90’s, and Art Deco period. Visual components of the past, present, and future are combined and act as reminders of what we were, who we are, and who we might become.
Guadagnoli’s work breaks from the typical picture frame through its irregularity, plushness, and depth. It is unique in its close relationship to the methods of furniture-making and encourages interaction. From the carving and wrapping of the polyurethane foam, to the painting of carefully treated surfaces, to the sawing of the back supports made of aluminum panel, Guadagnoli is involved and in control of every step of the process. With the exception of a handful of works that include found fabric, she mostly designs and digitally prints patterns onto the fabric that is used in her works.
http://alexebstein.com/
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Gallery hours: Saturdays 1-5pm (except for opening day)
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Amy Reid Band/ Infinity Knives & Randi/ Hanna & Noelle
Saturday, January 6th : 9pm
Motor House
120 West North Avenue :: 21201
*****ONE TIME ONLY***** Saturday, Jan. 6, 9 PM/ $8 Advance | $10 Day Of
ONE NIGHT ONLY: Amy Reid will be performing her album “Hirsute” in full with an amazing group of musicians. The night is an exploration of voice as an instrument, live instrumentation with electronic music and movement. Special guests Infinity Knives & Randi, and Hanna Olivegren & Noelle Tolbert “Two powerful women who collaborate using dance and voice as their foundation to create the unknown.”
Infinity Knives & Randi
https://soundcloud.com/jon-reed-9/blah-blah-supreme-ft-3lon
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Bryan Robinson: The Genius Under My Bed | Opening Reception
Saturday, January 6th : 7-10pm
Tectonic Space
2000 Greenmount Avenue :: 21218
Tectonic Space Art Gallery is excited to announce their first show of 2018, Bryan Robinson’s The Genius Under My Bed. The solo exhibition opens Saturday January 6, 2018, with an opening reception from 7pm-10pm. This event is free, open to the public, and refreshments will be provided. The show will run from January 6, 2018– January 28, 2017.
The Genius Under My Bed embodies the hiccups of the creative mind. The show reflects not only the genius of expression but also how that genius can be hidden, allowed to expire, and placed under the bed of life. Says Robinson, “Our experiences mold us into who we are today. Often hearing the phrases “I use to do that but…I’ve always wanted to….” , inspired the creation of this show. No matter if you are young or old, we can either live in what we love or live avoiding the boogieman of deferred dreams.” The show will consist of paintings, animation, and installation.
Tectonic Space is an art gallery in Baltimore focused on illustration, graphic style, comic, and sci-fi/fantasy artwork. Tectonic Space holds rotating art shows, special events, and features retail items from regional artists. The gallery is located at 2000 Greenmount Ave, and is open Thursday– Saturday 11-6pm, Sunday 11-4pm. For more information, visit www.tectonicspace.com.
