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BMOREART’S PICKS: BALTIMORE ART OPENINGS, GALLERIES, AND EVENTS AUGUST 20-26

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This week: Adam Stab Storytelling Event at the Peale, ART/SOUND/NOW at the Walters, Fred Scharmen: Space Settlements book signing at Co_Lab Books, Honeyland Screening and Tasting at SNF Parkway, Watch Out For The Big Girls at Waller Gallery, Art of the Collectors VII Art Salon at Galerie Myrtis, and Chris Batten: No Play Fighting reception at the Creative Alliance.

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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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.



Adam Stab: Street Life Art | Storytelling Event

Wednesday, August 21st • 6-8pm

The Peale
225 North Holliday Street : 21202

Tickets: $15 in advance; $20 at the door

Adam Stab is Baltimore’s longest-active graffiti writer. He has been both participant and formative to the culture of Style Writing since 1984. Since the mid-eighties the movement of style writing (or graffiti writing) has become the largest, fastest growing art form – or rather culture – on the planet.

Please join us in discussing Adam Stab’s process and lifestyle as a world renowned graffiti artist. Adam would like to converse with you, to discuss the trials and tribulations of some parts of the Baltimore city, and how his art is promoting the “Street Life” in a creative and positive direction.


ART/SOUND/NOW
Thursday, August 22nd • 7-8:30pm

The Walters Art Museum
600 North Charles Street : 21201

Experience the museum’s collections in new ways as musicians provide intriguing soundscapes in the galleries for one night only. Baltimore-based artist Timothy Nohe, Director of the Center for Innovative Research in the Creative Arts, will use both traditional and electronic media to create a work highlighting the museum as a public place. Carver Audain, a New York artist, will present an immersive work comprised of slowly shifting sound fields that merge and transform with the physical space of the museum.


Fred Scharmen: Space Settlements | Book Signing
Friday, August 23rd • 6-8pm

Co_Lab Books
2209 Maryland Avenue : 21218

Join us Friday, August 23rd, for a detailed look into the speculative architecture of human habitats in space with local author Fred Scharmen! Copies of Fred’s new book, Space Settlements, will be available for purchase at a special, event-only discount.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the summer of 1975, NASA brought together a team of physicists, engineers, and space scientists—along with architects, urban planners, and artists—to design large-scale space habitats for millions of people. This Summer Study was led by Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill, whose work on this topic had previously been funded by countercultural icon Stewart Brand’s Point Foundation. Two painters, the artist and architect Rick Guidice and the planetary science illustrator Don Davis, created renderings for the project that would be widely circulated over the next years and decades and even included in testimony before a Congressional subcommittee. A product of its time, this work is nevertheless relevant to contemporary modes of thinking about architecture. Space Settlements examines these plans for life in space as serious architectural and spatial proposals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fred Scharmen teaches architecture and urban design at Morgan State University’s School of Architecture and Planning. His work as a designer and researcher focuses on how architects imagine new spaces for speculative future worlds and who is invited into those worlds. Recent projects, with the Working Group on Adaptive Systems, include a mile-and-a-half long scale model of the solar system in downtown Baltimore (in collaboration with nine artists), and a pillow fort for the Baltimore Museum of Art based on Gottfried Semper’s Four Elements of Architecture.


Honeyland Screening and Tasting
Friday, August 23rd • 6-8pm

SNF Parkway Theatre
3 West North Avenue : 21201

Join the SNF Parkway Theatre for a special premiere of HONEYLAND, a new environmental documentary following the last female wild beekeeper in Europe.

Specialty honey-based Charm City Meadworks and Baltimore Spirits Company cocktails will be available at the Parkway bar throughout the evening.

Local Made In Baltimore business Hon’s Honey will be in the Parkway lobby prior to the 7pm screening with samples of their signature honey. Hon’s Honey is a purpose-driven business dedicated to giving dignity and purpose to women survivors of addiction, sex trafficking, generational poverty, and trauma.

ABOUT THE FILM:

Nestled in an isolated mountain region deep within the Balkans, Hatidze Muratova lives with her ailing mother in a village without roads, electricity or running water. She’s the last in a long line of wild beekeepers, eking out a living farming honey in small batches to be sold in the closest city — a mere four hours’ walk away.

Hatidze’s peaceful existence is thrown into upheaval by the arrival of an itinerant family, with their roaring engines, seven rambunctious children and herd of cattle. Hatidze optimistically meets the promise of change with an open heart, it doesn’t take long however, before a conflict evolves that exposes the fundamental tension between nature and humanity, harmony and discord, exploitation and sustainability.


Watch Out For The Big Girls
Saturday, August 24th • 5-9pm

Waller Gallery
2420 Calvert Street : 21218

Saida Agostini will be performing and hosting a space of celebration. Come together for a night to celebrate big Black women, the space we take and the power we hold. Artists from across Baltimore will share visions of a future where big black women are free and honored.

Light refreshments are provided.


Art of the Collectors VII | Art Salon
Saturday, August 24th • 5-7pm

Galerie Myrtis
2224 North Charles Street : 21218

Art Salon: Saturday, August 24th, 5:00-7:00 pm.
The Preservation of Art, Culture, and Legacy – Panelists: Amath Gomis, Gregory Morton, and Robinson. Moderator: Myrtis Bedolla

Art of the Collectors VII features works of art created by 20th and 21st century African and African American artists previously held in institution and private collections.  Artists: John Biggers, Lois Mailou Jones, Valerie Maynard, Frank Smith, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Stephanie Pogue, Faith Ringgold, Purvis Young, and more…

Faith Ringgold, Grooving High, Color Silkscreen 48/425, 35” x 49” Framed, 1996
Provenance: Johnetta B. Cole Collection

Chris Batten: No Play Fighting | Reception
Saturday, August 24th • 5-7pm

Creative Alliance
3134 Eastern Avenue : 21224

On view: AUG 24 – SEP 28

Reception: AUG 24 | 6-8PM | FREE

The intersection of Creative Alliance resident artist Christopher Batten’s passions – fine arts and martial arts are on display through the portraits and abstract work in No Play Fighting. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Battan demonstrated a profound interest in the visual arts from the age of four. At 8, he began his journey as a martial artist. This exhibition exposes Batten’s dual interests in both fine arts and martial arts, while at the same time calling attention to how that fights led both inside and out of the ring are both equally visceral.

He has witnessed family members, colleagues, and close friends, both win and lose the fight against cancer. He’s also keenly aware homelessness throughout Baltimore, particularly when he commutes to work in the morning and observes the infamous “lean” as a personal battle with addiction. As a teacher, he has witnessed some of his students fight losing battles outside the classroom that become conflicts inside the classroom. In his portraits, Batten addresses the emotions of Baltimoreans who experience daily combat and are under siege.

Contrary to painting, physical fighting enabled Batten to compartmentalize and even suppress his emotions. In the heat of battle, fighters are forced to think their way out of predicaments; therefore, emotions must be controlled. When Joan Waltemath, Director of the LeRoy E Hoffberger School of Painting, suggested he tap into his martial arts training as a means of expanding his repertoire of gestures in his painting, he was completely opposed. At the time, he reserved painting for his feelings and fighting for rational thinking – merging the two seemed to be a betrayal. However, when he tapped into his martial arts training, it took him on a subconscious journey into abstraction. Subsequently, he worked on each piece in timed intervals like rounds of a fight. By expanding his viewpoint of fighting, he was able to combine the physical, rational, and emotional facets of himself in his paintings and nurture his abstract and portrait work simultaneously.

Batten writes, “Throughout my time as a fighter, all of my greatest lessons came from the one thing fighters dread – getting hit. It isn’t until one accepts getting hit that they acquire the fearlessness needed to be a successful fighter. All of us like to be the victor, but the true fighter in an individual can only emerge the moment their opponent catches him or her with a good shot.”

Batten acknowledges that we are all combatants fighting for and/or against something. The most critical of these battles is the one that takes place inside us on a daily basis when we reflect on how our experiences have affected us throughout our lives. No Play Fighting compels viewers to ask themselves: what am I fighting for?

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