By Annie Howe
The Food Network at Creative Alliance draws our attention to fresh, healthy foods or rather the lack of access to them. It prompts us to improve school lunches and consider the price and quality of options at our local supermarkets. It also serves as a call for individual and collective action. At the simplest level, it’s asking us to eat better and get others to do the same.
The exhibition itself combines food, information, and installations, all provided by the Baltimore Development Cooperative and their friends. You’ll remember this group—Scott Berzofsky, Dane Nester, and Nick Wisnewski, who won the 2009 Sondheim Prize for their incredible work in Participation Park (an urban community garden in East Baltimore) and a geodesic dome they constructed on the steps of the BMA.
Artists Hannah Brancato, Kitt Repass, Kyle Smith, and Michael Petruzzo joined the BDC in organizing this exceptional exhibition and its engaging programs, gathering a group of educators, activists, urban planners, and chefs.
The Guardener at rest, www.flickr.com/photos/8513807@N05/4329966105/
As often happens in Baltimore, performances animated a few of the works. While performing as Baltimore Rescue Society (The Guardener), MICA professor Valeska Populoh offered one of her miniature yard tools to a group of middle school girls. One screamed before they all fled, surprised that she was a living, breathing person—or perhaps wondering if a “Guardener” was more of a military figure than a horticulturalist or landscaper.
In Emergency Survival Tactic #10, Marian April Glebes displays small vials of brackish water collected from Baltimore’s Harbor. At the exhibition’s opening, Marian asked people to consider drinking a sample—boiled or treated with bleach. Many more put their lips to the boiled option than the bleach-treated. Though ironically, the water we drink daily contains disinfectant agents such as chlorine.
Beyond the installations, The Food Network has many cool items you can buy and stockpile for holiday giving such as Whitney Simpkins’ installation of soap bars, arranged on the floor like miniature skyscrapers in a Minimalist grid. The soap made from coffee grounds, cocoa powder, and orange juice (among other ingredients) sells for $1 an ounce. Another favorite here came from Annie Howe, who has printed three terrific posters derived from her handmade papercuts. Only $10 a piece, with the proceeds supporting the Hamilton Crop Circle, these posters celebrate composting, gardening, and a healthy city.
You don’t have to come to Creative Alliance to get a sense of the exhibition. Several pieces as part of a Mobile Market will travel into the community. Look out for the BDC’s bike-driven shopping cart and a revamped hot dog cart, which will offer healthier alternatives under the BDC’s watch.
The Food Network at the Creative Alliance is on-view though October 30. The Mobile Market takes to the streets October 2 and 17; neighborhoods and routes to be announced.
Doreen Bolger is always on the move because she can’t stop seeing, supporting, and writing about the arts in and around Baltimore City. Her lengthy love affair for the arts began in Long Island when her father, an executive in the textile industry, brought home breathtaking fabrics every night from the heart of the garment district. 