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BmoreArt Magazine
Swing Sanctuary: Mobtown Ballroom
In the middle of Washington Boulevard in Baltimore’s Pigtown neighborhood, there stands a beautiful 19th century stone church. Look through its stained-glass windows on a Sunday morning and you won’t be met by a congregation; you’ll see no pews, hear no organs. But on a Monday or Friday night, it’s near impossible to miss the sounds of buzzing brass instruments or the vibrations made by dancers’ feet moving in time on a bouncy sprung floor designed as a shock absorber.
BmoreArt’s Picks: January 2-8
This Week: Motor House DAP Showcase featuring The Storage Unit Collective at Keystone Korner, Hyunsuk Erickson, Kini Collins, and Fanni Somogyi exhibition opening at Creative Alliance, Vagabond Player’s “Witness for the Prosecution,” CrankieShop workshop with Katherine Fahey and Dan Van Allen at Creative Alliance, Kim Keller opening reception at Hamilton Gallery, and author Linda Rabben’s Through a Glass Darkly: The Social History of Stained Glass — PLUS the 2024 Sondheim Prize deadline and more featured opportunities!
Top Picks of 2023: Ten BmoreArt Stories Worth Reading
For many of us, 2023 has felt like a decade or longer, and it’s been difficult, although not without hope. As we head into 2024 and the BmoreArt team has dispersed to Miami, Spain, Bolivia, and Brazil for the holidays, we took a moment to sift through our archives and consider the meaning of our work.
The Internet is Exploding: The Year’s Best ‘Best Of’ Lists 🔥
It is that time of year again! It’s time for an annual list of “Best of 2023” lists. This year’s selection includes picks from Wikipedia, Columbia Journalism Review, NPR, Merriam-Webster, Longreads, Time, Rolling Stone, The Verge, and Huff Post, featuring the year’s best podcasts, albums, articles, memes, inventions, TikToks, personal essays, but also – what I found to be missing from these lists.
Confluence: Ethiopia at the Crossroads
Among the first works in the Walters Art Museum’s recently opened Ethiopia at the Crossroads (through March 3) is a delightful 18th-century canvas mural that depicts, among other things, a rapt Virgin Mary. Wide-eyed, she gestures in demure astonishment as she receives a wafer from her precocious child. But her gaze also wanders towards a handsome vessel gently extended by a priest. Agog, Mary is vibrantly alert to the appeal of material objects—and to the broad implications that lie behind them.
BmoreArt News: Oprah’s Portrait, Syrian Fine Dining, Best Baltimore Books of the Year
This week’s news includes: John Waters cancels Christmas (parties at his house), Bruce Willen’s Ghost Rivers, Joyce J. Scott retrospective opens at the BMA in March, Ethiopia at the Crossroads ongoing at the Walters, Aaron Dante interviews Carlos Raba and Emma Childs, best of Baltimore literary news, Syrian fine dining, Baltimore’s best bites, Annapolis public art controversy, and Oprah in the Portrait Gallery — with reporting from ArtNet News, Baltimore Fishbowl, The Baltimore Banner, and other local and independent news sources.
Tugging at the Stitches of Art History: Elizabeth Talford Scott
High above eye level, against a rich field of velvety red, a potent figure hovers beneath a band of sprent stars and tremulous rows of buttons. Is it a mermaid? A jet plane? A cross? Arguably, it’s all of those, and the rest of the quilt—a sizable, reversible affair entitled “Both Sides Now (Turncoat)”—only extends this air of possibility.
Savoring the Season: A Holiday Menu Photo Story
For all those who love to cook, eat, and entertain, the holidays are a time for stepping it up in the kitchen, for elevating traditional holiday menu items and testing out ambitious new recipes. Food and drink are a primary way that we show care for one another and how we welcome friends and family into our home.
Looking Back at Greedy Reads’ Lost Weekend
I had been contemplating the meaning behind the name The Lost Weekend ever since I first heard about the community literary festival organized by Greedy Reads, one of Baltimore’s independent bookstores. But when I asked Julia Fleischaker, the owner of Greedy Reads, about it, she replied, “It’s not too deep! We liked the idea of losing a weekend to a celebration of books. Forget about your errands and the work you have to do and fall into our little celebration.”
BmoreArt News: New BMA Acquisitions, Make Studio, and Heidi Daniel
This week’s news includes: Akea Brionne and Derrick Adams featured in ArtNet News, Carlos Raba’s new restaurant Nana, BMA announces new acquisitions, BOPA news, 2024 festival dates announced, this week in John Waters news, upcoming programing at Make Studio, Eutaw Place Gallery partners with Artsy, Highwire Improv workshop series, and CEO Heidi Daniel leaving the Pratt Library — with reporting from ArtNet News, Baltimore Fishbowl, The Baltimore Banner, and other local and independent news sources.
Postcards From Palestine
It has been more than two months since Israel declared war on Hamas, after the bloody attack on Israeli citizens on October 7. I was traveling in Jordan at the time, having arrived just two days earlier. On October 8, at a tea shop with views over Wadi Araba and Israel and the Palestinian Territories, a group of tourists asked the Bedouin owner how close the border was. Seven miles as the crow flies and 75 more to Gaza. “Israel and Palestine will fight until everyone is dead,” he said matter-of-factly. “There will never be peace.”
BmoreArt Picks: December 19-25
This Week: Treat your self! You’re been out there working so hard to find just the right gift for everyone on your list, why not cozy up to a comfortable offering of Calls for Entries and consider making an investment in your career future? You deserve a little something nice too. For last minute shopping and art events happening this week, head to our online calendar.
Unreliable Narrators: An Evening with Ann Patchett and R. Eric Thomas
I had thought parking at the Church of the Redeemer on a Monday night would be easy, but the alarming glare of headlights in the December blackness proved me wrong. Baltimore’s modernist hippie church regularly hosts large cultural events of all kinds and boasts two gigantic parking lots. Tonight it was a scrum of cars circling to no avail, triple parked in alleys Grateful Dead show style. It was an Ann Patchett revival of sorts, our one chance to hear directly from the nationally known author, a congregation of saints and sinners, book fans all.
In Memoriam: Elena Johnston
The past few years have seen a lot of growth and change in my artistic practice and my personal life... Sometimes this experience can be murky and uncomfortable. This process isn’t always pretty but that’s ok. I think the paintings are beautiful, but beauty can be rife with pain and the substance of transformation. I sometimes think they are ugly because I put so much emotion into them. Like looking at my high school diary.
BmoreArt News: BMA’s Kevin Tervala Named Chief Curator, “Gamechanger” Andy Cook, and Artful Pizza
This week’s news includes: BMA appoints Kevin Tervala as Chief Curator and Antoinette Roberts as Assistant Curator for Contemporary Art, Made in Baltimore’s Andy Cook, Ethiopia at the Crossroads at The Walters, Vlado Petrovski and Baltoz Bakery, Kerry James Marshall’s stained glass murals at the National Cathedral in documentary, Common Ground Cafe, Baltimore Center Stage’s Cinderella, John Waters 2023 best movie list, the Monument Lighting, and BOPA’s New Year’s plan — with reporting from Baltimore Magazine, Baltimore Fishbowl, The AFRO, and other local and independent news sources.
Word Play, Bodies, and Song: The Acme Corporation’s New “Found” Opera
Sitting in the darkness of the theater, sound opens the show rather than light. A chorus of mouths suck and blow air as if gearing up for some great exercise. The breaths begin to coordinate, to synchronize their disparate parts like the engine of a train: pumping pistons, spinning gears, and steamy exhale valves. Once it gets going, this play moves with the speed of a locomotive, nonstop to the final destination.
BmoreArt’s Picks: December 12-18
This Week: Victoria Walton artist talk at Clayworks, D. Watkins and Celeste Doaks in conversation with Cara Ober at Bird in Hand, opening reception for Paula Gately Tillman at Arting Gallery, Get On My Level opening reception at Creative Alliance, closing reception for Kim Rice and Paul Rucker at Connect + Collect, Current Space 10th Annual Holiday Market, reception for Madeleine Keesing at Goya, and Waller Gallery holiday party — PLUS Maryland Film Fest call for submissions and more featured opportunities!
Kim Rice and Paul Rucker Critique American History Through Materiality
In our series of intimate gallery exhibitions at Connect+Collect, the idea of conversation remains central. Over the past year we have paired two artists who harvest their art media from Baltimore City (Jordan Tierney and Adam Stab in Post-Consumption Benediction) and two artists who design architecture to envision fantastical worlds (TlaLoC and Alyssa Dennis in Arcadia Futura). What conversations could occur, our team wondered, if we paired the work of Kim Rice and Paul Rucker, two artists who use specific historical events and documents to offer an unflinching view of the reality of race in America. The result has been Liberty and Injustice, a compact but dense exhibit that examines gun violence, lynching, the role of police, inheritance, redlining, and white privilage.
The Miami Report: Highlights from Basel and Beyond
I stand by my earlier statement that gallerists went with safe, decorative choices this year rather than swinging for the fences—to the point that it often took me a minute to figure out if a booth was primary or secondary market fare.
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