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BMOREART’S PICKS: BALTIMORE ART OPENINGS, GALLERIES, AND EVENTS FEBRUARY 19 – 25

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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.

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To submit your calendar event, email us at [email protected]!

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Save the Date !! Save the Date !! Save the DateBuilding Your Collection: Connect + Collect Panel 2
Thursday, February 28th • 7pm

Motor House
120 West North Avenue : 21201

Connect + Collect is a new initiative brought to you by BmoreArt’s Cara Ober and Jeffrey Kent, an artist and curator based in Baltimore, designed to create awareness and momentum among new and experienced collectors, and to promote a culture of collecting in Baltimore.

Our second panel is with DC-based collector Darryl Atwell, founder of Kinetic:Conversations in Contemporary Art at American University and NY-based Independent Curator Dexter Wimberly, Founder and CEO of the upcoming Art World Conference to be hosted in NY in April 2019. Topics to be discussed include differences between collecting art directly from artists or purchasing through galleries, how to form collecting communities and groups, and best practices for building ethical, respectful, productive relationships between artists and patrons.

We welcome artists to this conversation who want to strengthen relationships with collectors, as well as those who want to build private and public collections, including curators, collectors, gallerists, and art professionals.

Our panel will be followed by a reception in The Showroom and each ticket includes an adult beverage at the bar.


Temporal Embodiments | Opening Reception + Artist’s Remarks
Thursday, February 21st • 6-8pm

Julio Fine Arts Gallery
Loyola University : 21210

From February 21 – March 30, 2019 the Julio Fine Arts Gallery at Loyola University Maryland presents Temporal Embodiments. At the core of this exhibition is a lingering and disquieting question about how we relate to our daily experiences of the world. In today’s climate of technology-soaked mediations of daily life, how can we understand time, and how do we slow down time so that we can pinpoint it, or take from our perceptual life a moment or concept of significance? These are questions that artists Sharon Servilio and Sylvie van Helden address in Temporal Embodiments.

The experience of time has become increasingly fragmented, leaving us ungrounded; and unbound to a sense of a greater cosmic timeline. Through their work, these two artists see the idea of time as a linear series of unrelated moments as a construct that can be broken, slowed down, and pulled into a greater, unmediated notion of eternal time, released from the pressures of endless scrolling and constant sensationalism. Servilio and van Helden work to ground or embody the cosmic and unfathomable within the earthly, fleeting fragments of individual moments.

About the artists:
Sharon Servilio grew up in Washington, NJ and now lives and works in Queens, NY.  In addition to a solo exhibition at Salena Gallery at Long Island University in Brooklyn, she has shown in group exhibitions at Field Projects and Printed Matter in New York, Trestle Gallery and Paradice Palase in Brooklyn, and Passenger in Detroit. She participates in the program at Flat File in Montclair, NJ, which connects collectors with works on paper.  She has been a visiting artist at Montgomery College, Washington Studio School, and College of Creative Studies. She received an MFA from American University in Washington, D.C. and a BA from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.

Sylvie van Helden was born in Montreal, Canada in 1974. After a brief stint in Biology, she moved to Baltimore in 2000 to attend the Mount Royal Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Upon graduating with her MFA in 2002, she taught at the college and high school levels for 13 years. Her works have been shown in local, regional, and national shows at venues such as Maryland Art Place, Hillyer Art Space, The Autry Museum of The American West, and the Painting Center. van Helden was the recipient of two Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artists Grants (2004 and 2016) and was selected as a finalist for the Baker Artist Awards in 2017. Sylvie maintains a studio at School 33 Art Center in Baltimore, MD.

Please see the gallery’s website for more information.


Friday, February 22nd • 6-9pm

Goya Contemporary
3000 Chestnut Avenue, Mill Centre #214 : 21211

Goya Contemporary Gallery is thrilled to invite the public to attend a (free) conversation about art, history, economics, social justice, race, culture, and hair on February 22, 2019 from 6:00-9:00 pm.

Internationally acclaimed fiber artist, Sonya Clark [born 1967], and great-great-granddaughter and Madam C.J. Walker biographer, A’Lelia Bundles, will be in dialogue with hairstylists Kamala Bhagat and Jamilah Graham from Clark’s celebrate work The Hair Craft Project. Witness the space between hair salon and art gallery collapse, as hairstyles come to life on the heads of Clark and Bundles, while they bring forward the legacy of one of the first self-made female millionaires in the context of the exhibition, Hair/Goods : An Homage to Madam C. J. Walker.

A native of Washington D.C. and the daughter of a Jamaican mother and a Trinidadian father of Yoruba decent, Clark’s socially engaged practices address the complexity of American culture and history, including its evolution through colonization, slavery, inequitable narration, and phases of immigration.   Clark’s wide-ranging body of work has crossed styles and media, utilizing humble materials from daily life such as combs, thread, wigs, coins, seed beads, found objects, flags, and human hair, to craft exquisite objects that transpose craft into a potent stage for social commentary, activism, truth telling, and change, while simultaneously honoring craftspeople and notable African American figures such as  former President Barack Obama or in this case, the entrepreneur Madam CJ Walker.

Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919) was America’s first self-made, female, African American millionaire whose amassed wealth was generated by her own tenacity, business acumen, and intellect.  She produced generational wealth that had a major impact on her descendants, if not the African-American community at large.  The exhibition’s Curator, Amy Raehse, says: “Walker is a historically relevant subject for study inside myriad disciplines including American History, Business Practices, Feminism, Economics, and even the principles of Socially Responsible Investing… yet, Walker is often absent from much of the white-centric history still being taught in today’s curriculum.  It’s exasperating that this remarkable woman is not a household name in all communities, and Sonya Clark celebrates her legacy in such a compelling and beautiful way.”

We thank Sonya Clark andA’Lelia Bundles, and of course the still inspiring tenacity of Madam CJ Walker, whose commitment to education, social justice, equality, and beauty is reflected in the brilliance of these women’s intellectual output  and prove yet another way Madam CJ Walker had remained a motivating life-force. We further honor Madam CJ Walker’s significant legacy by donating a portion of any sales from this exhibition to the NAACP.


Friday, February 22nd • 7pm

The Peale Center
225 North Holliday Street : 21202

A visual analysis of architecture and its impact on people of impoverished communities
February 7, 2019 – March 22, 2019
Curator: Jeffrey Kent

“Stay dangerous,” a motto coined by D. Watkins, describes Devin Allen’s approach to artistic life and philosophy, and the impetus of his work in Spaces of the Un-Entitled. “Stay dangerous” is a challenge and a promise. It means that if you have the strength and daring to be honest in your experience of and interaction with the world, you can count on two things- Your strength will demand respect, and Your honesty will be a danger to those who live and profit by refusing it- and consequently, a danger to you. As you refuse to yield, you prove you have the strength to back up the danger of honesty. The more you stay dangerous, the more dangerous you become to the status quo.

Allen invites the audience to “Stay dangerous” as they reexamine their perceptions, experiences, and truths of the Spaces of the Un-Entitled, and our shared experience. ‘Spaces’ considers the immersive and connective qualities of photography, installation, and performance. The day after opening night, Devin Allen will speak with ghosts from his Un-Entitled past, the ghosts who reside in what was left behind, who are lost as Gentrification erases the history of neighborhoods.

“Stay dangerous” is about respect, as Spaces of the Un-Entitled respects the architectural history of the homes and lives left behind. And it’s about truth, as Devin Allen refuses to allow these spaces and lives to disappear under spackle and paint.

Who is Devin Allen?
Devin Allen is a self taught artist, born and raised in West Baltimore. He gained national attention when his photograph of the Baltimore Uprising was published on the cover of Time in May 2015 – only the third time the work of an amateur photographer had been featured. His photographs have also appeared in New York Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Aperture, and in the permanent collections of the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Now, known as a professional photographer, he is the founder of Through Their Eyes, a youth photography educational program and the winner of the 2017 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship.


The Image Book | Opening Night
Friday, February 22nd

SNF Parkway
5 West North Avenue : 21201

The legendary Jean-Luc Godard adds to his influential, iconoclastic legacy with this provocative collage film essay, a vast ontological inquiry into the history of the moving image and a commentary on the contemporary world. Winner of the first Special Palme d’Or to be awarded in the history of the Cannes Film Festival, The Image Book is another extraordinary addition to the French master’s vast filmography.

Displaying an encyclopedic grasp of cinema and its history, Godard pieces together fragments and clips them from some of the greatest films of the past, then digitally alters, bleaches, and washes them, all in the service of reflecting on what he sees in front of him and what he makes of the dissonance that surrounds him. He uses his own voice, reminiscent of those of Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan in the twilights of their careers, to guide us through the fascinating labyrinth of his mind. In some cases, it is to reflect on the metaphysical properties of the world — time, and space, and where meaning is found — but more importantly it is the image, the thing that has obsessed Godard for his entire career, that anchors this film. His ontological enquiry into the image continues to be one of the most moving in history.

But, as always with Godard, the key issues he raises have to do with the legacy of the last century and its horrors: the incomprehension of Hiroshima and Auschwitz, events that coincided with cinema but which have somehow eluded its gaze. And, movingly, The Image Book also reflects on orientalism and the Arab world, grounding the new film very much in the present. — Piers Handling, CEO/Director Toronto International Film Festival


Saturday, February 23rd • 1-3pm

MONO Practice
212 McAllister Street : 21202

MONO Practice Baltimore is delighted to present Transom, works by Magnolia Laurie (Baltimore) and Alex Paik (New York City). Transom is the inception of Mono Practice’s new program where the focus is to bridge studio practices that move beyond geographical and studio constructs.

The exhibition will run through February 23. The gallery hours are Thursday 3-7pm, Saturday 1-4pm, and by appointment.

Alex Paik

Alex’s works explore a single geometric form as its subject and the ways that these forms relate to each other through repetition and tessellation. The layering of units to form other compound shapes mimic the way a fugue’s subject dissolves, recombines, and forms new harmonic relationships as it is transposed, inverted, and folded into itself. He uses repetition not so much as a compositional device, but more as a way to explore and develop the possibilities of each unit. Or, to borrow Glenn Gould’s description of Bach’s late fugues, to “give the impression of an infinitely expanding universe.”

The geometry in his work not only relates to the architecture of contrapuntal music, but is also a way to give structure to the reflected color from my painted strips of paper – a way to provide an architectural scaffold from which color harmonies and the work’s final form are generated. The color relationships are the vehicle through which the geometry of each individual unit dissolves and recombines with the surrounding units and the rest of the piece.

Alex Paik is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work has been shown at galleries and art fairs nationally and internationally. From 2015-18, he was Curator of Satellite Art Show, an alternative art fair in Miami. He is the founder and Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, a non-profit network of artist-run spaces and Chief Curator at Trestle Gallery, a non- profit arts organization in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Magnolia Laurie | Again and Again

Magnolia’s work explores ideas of landscape, vantage point, the human instinct to build, and our complex relationship to land. Absent of any actual people, the drawings and paintings depict gestures of the built environment as both literal evidence and metaphor for human impact.

The drawings in Again and Again embrace stratification and accumulation. Rocks stack in cairns and totems, becoming markers of a destination, human activity, or a point in time. They are made with a love for ink and paper and an exploration of how they relate to each other. They are an exercise of fearlessness, an attempt to make and accept each layer with grace.

Magnolia Laurie was born in Massachusetts and raised in Puerto Rico. She received her BA in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College and her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been awarded residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, and the Jentel Foundation in Wyoming. Magnolia’s work has been supported with grants from the Creative Baltimore Fund, the Maryland State Arts Council Grants, the Belle Foundation and a Mid Atlantic Creative Fellowship. Magnolia lives in Baltimore, MD and is an Assistant Professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.


Saturday, February 23rd • 1-4pm

Make Studio
Schwing Art Center, 3326 Keswick Road Front : 21211

Make Studio will celebrate our 9th anniversary, and our ever loftier ambitions, on February 23rd!

Proving that we have far more than 9 lives to live, our organization enters its ninth year on a high note with an exhibition of a special selection of work from our (close to) three dozen program artists.

Stay tuned for details about refreshments and other opening reception happenings, but… prepare yourselves for the big, brass, Klezmer sounds of the Barrage Band Orchestra, who will be graciously providing live music during the event!

Our anniversary exhibition will be on view through early March, dates TBA.


Sunday, February 24th • 2-3:30pm

American Visionary Art Museum
900 Key Highway : 21230

Please join us, dear friends and supporters, as we celebrate the return of the art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz to the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) in a newly designed and expanded 5-year exhibition entitled “Esther and the Dream of One Loving Human Family.” In honor of its return, we invite you to a free panel discussion presented by Art and Remembrance linking Esther’s Holocaust story with present day “othering” and efforts to build stronger, more resilient communities. Speaking to these issues will be:

  • Mark Hetfield, President and CEO of HIAS, the 140-year old global refugee protection and resettlement agency which recently was the target of a social media attack by the Pittsburgh synagogue gunman.
  • Arjun Singh Sethi, human rights lawyer and community activist, and author of American Hate: Survivors Speak Out.
  • Judy Tallwing, a Native American artist active in the Baltimore community, whose work is currently included in the exhibition alongside Esther’s art.
  • Moderator, Cecile Lipworth, a feminist community activist in Santa Fe, radio show host, and Art and Remembrance board member

Introductions by Rebecca Hoffberger, founder and director, AVAM and Bernice Steinhardt, one of Esther’s daughters and the president of Art and Remembrance.


Sunday, February 24th • 2-5pm

Area 405
405 East Oliver Street : 21201

The sixth of eight events of the “Beyond Beautiful: One Thousand Love letters” exhibition at Maryland Art Place and Area 405 January 17 to March 10 (www.onethousandloveletters.com), “Drive All Night” is an event about the distances we travel and the hurdles we overcome to assure love is transcendent: physical and emotional separation may challenge bonds, but we see time and again love still wins. Clarinda Harriss offers intimate poetry on love’s presence despite dementia, and others share testimonials of fortitude and overcoming. The event includes a spotlight on a painting by Exsul Van Helden included in the exhibition on the human cost of war and exile, and a sharing from the International Rescue Committee of Baltimore on their work reuniting loved ones, and keeping love alive despite separation. Singer Simone Speed performs as accompaniment to the stories.

The 2:00-3:30pm reception period for this opening event is graced with jazz keyboardist George Spicka, and light fare provided by The Classic Catering People.

Baltimore magazine serves as the media sponsor for the “Beyond Beautiful: One Thousand Love Letters” exhibition. For more details, visit www.onethousandloveletters.com.

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