Bret McCabe

Bret McCabe

Contributing Editor, Writer

Bret McCabe first moved to Baltimore in 1988 to study biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins University. He left six (ahem) years later with a degree in anthropology. The college loan tally for his undergraduate career made the prospect of borrowing more money for grad school terrifying, so he decided to embark upon a highly lucrative and prestigious career as a writer. That's right: he worked as a temporary freelance medical transcriptionist and medical science research grant writer. Extremely patient editors let him start writing for an alternative weekly in Dallas in 1996. Since he has stumbled upward—or at least sideways—writing about music, film, and performing and visual arts for a variety of different web sites, journals, and print publications, some of which are still in operation today. In 2001 he returned to Baltimore to write for the Baltimore City Paper, and in 2011 he joined Johns Hopkins Magazine. He is still paying off his college loans.

Stories by Bret McCabe
Five-artist show at Mono Practice invites reconsiderations of abstraction 

The intimate group show, Order and Uncertainty: Five Abstract Painters, features painters who share what curator Timothy App calls a classical impulse to bring order to abstraction: Power Boothe, the late Julie Karabenick; Patsy Krebs, WC Richardson, and Linling Lu.

An artist forcing us to ask not only “What is this?” but the much more unnervingly delicious, “When is this?”

Sohn uses commercial ceramics techniques overwhelmingly used to create uniform multiple objects, and experiments with the process at various stages to create unique objects that can’t be mass reproduced

The range of works in Copeland’s collection highlights her discerning interests and tastes

Copeland's collection is a reflection of the depth and width of her 30-year career in museums: contemporary art, functional works traditionally sidelined as craft, and objects of historical importance for what they remind us about where we come from.

How Baltimore’s storied experimental and improvisational music festival is solving problems in interesting ways

High Zero shows aren't just musically intense, they're also quite frequently outlandishly entertaining.