Photography by Kaity Delaura

Don’t miss Baltimore: Open City, an interactive exhibition that explores whether Baltimore is—or ever was—a city where residents welcome others to their neighborhoods, regardless of race, class, or other differences. Installed in the Market at 16 West North Avenue and created by MICA students with their professor, architect, and urban planner Dan D’Oca, Open City offers a real opportunity for deep reflection and honest discussion. 

A graphic timeline from 1800 to 2000 displays an array of news clippings, photographs, and documents that chronicle intolerance with examples in housing, transportation, and development.

Photography by Kaity Delaura

As you approach Landscape of Opportunity by Matt Lohry and Chris McCampbell, you might think that you are viewing a topographic map of the region.  Instead, it represents the quality of life experienced by residents in neighborhoods in and around Baltimore. Bundles of old wooden lathes removed from aged plaster walls stand erect, representing economic measures analyzed by the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. You can see the job prospects, student poverty rates, and property values of each neighborhood—the higher the bundle of lathes, the more prosperous a neighborhood. I peer into the center of the piece, finding the location with the fewest opportunities. It’s surrounded by flourishing neighbors with lathes shooting up into the air.

Photography by Kaity Delaura

Nearby, a 10-foot-square map of the city fills the center of the floor.  Two footprints that move from the bare gray floor to the map’s plastic surface invite us to walk on it.  Sixteen slim metal poles hold flags representing different neighborhoods around the city; each one shows the role that place played in Baltimore’s racial history. 

Elle Perez and John Aquila filmed street interviews with Baltimoreans, who shared their experiences and feelings about the city, capturing some up-to-the-moment perspectives on just how open a city we live in.  Every Wednesday, a new set appears. 

Photography by Katie Delaura

Goodbye We Buy Houses is a playhouse built of the illegal signs, printed and handwritten, we all see around the city on light poles and vacant houses. “We pay cash,” they promise.  In reality, they target and exploit those struggling financially.

Legacy documents Andrew Pisacane’s haunting street portraits of figures whose perspective on urban planning and development shaped Baltimore City.  These range from Jim Rouse and Robert Moses to Ashbie Hawkins.  

MR FURA in Memoriam by resident artist Damon Richexamines the creation of the 925-acre Mount Royal-Fremont Urban Renewal Project in the neighborhood where MICA now stands.  His photo collage represents buildings new and old, residential and commercial, private and institutional, an explosion of architecture with disorienting disjunctures of space, scale, and time. Nearby, a model indicates where concentrated public housing was inserted into the historic fabric of the community. 

There is central seating in the exhibition where visitors can think, talk, or just relax.  Structural pillars are papered with words and images that relate to the theme of the show.  ACTION! Hi, Neighbor, Open, and URBAN RENEWAL, CITY call out to us among drawings and logos of houses, all in high contrast black and white. 

Photography by Kaity Delaura

The rich menu of programming at Baltimore: Open City and across Baltimore is listed on the exhibition’s site. 

Saturday, April 23, take part in:

• A bus tour with Antero Pietila, acclaimed author of Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City beginning at noon at North Avenue Market (RSVP, space is limited)
• An open house with Damon Rich, resident artist, from 4 to 6 pm 

Photograph by Tya Anthony

Pick any night and it is likely that you can find something fun—and meaningful—to do in Station North Arts and Entertainment District.  Founded nearly a decade ago, Station North is among the nation’s oldest arts and entertainment districts, the officially designated neighborhoods intended to encourage artists to create and share their work with broader audiences.

In February, the Bohemian Coffee House at 1821 North Charles Street launched its first Saturday monthly open stage with CrE3sol, pronounced cree-soul. This group describes itself as “a great melting pot” and indeed it brought together an animated crowd of diverse backgrounds and talents. Mia Jones, a Baltimore photographer, gathered musicians and spoken word performers and then invited the audience to join in this spirited fundraiser to benefit Haiti. Proceeds went to provide LifeStraws, a portable disease-preventing water filter that is a critical tool for public health in the earthquake-ravaged nation. 

Photograph by Sarah Thrower

Mia was a dynamic hostess and the band, Johnny Graham, provided an eclectic blend of music that adapted with ease to the performers.  Daimen Poole, currently a student at Baltimore City Community College and an up-and-coming hip hop artist, wove words together to create powerful images.  Dressed in a pale orange hoodie and denim, he opined on the incarcerated: “Locked down in the pen, they don’t see the stars, just the bars.” Daimen welcomed our participation, asking us to give him a word or take one of his words and give it back to him.  We all listened silently spellbound.  Later, in conversation, he explained that his poetry unfolds extemporaneously as he performs.  Amazing! 

David James followed him, demanding that we participate by tapping the table and clapping to his rhythm.  He challenged us: “Do you want to hear something original or something by someone else?” Thank goodness, we went with something original!  Next, Eric Johnson offered a series of poignant love poems, the last exploring the old-but-always-true adage, “Never go to sleep angry.”  Trust me, once you hear it from him, you will understand this familiar saying in a deeper way.  

Photograph by Sarah Thrower

If you missed this event, you can see CrE3sol’s next group of performers on Saturday, March 5.  Celebrate Women’s Herstory Month with music by Kriss Mincey and Nyoka Ny D, art by Clare Elliot, and onsite drawing by Erin Robinson. Or just stop by the Bohemian Coffee House anytime for a warm welcome and a strong cup of coffee!

Hundreds of miles from each other, members of the AM/PM Sax Quartet rehearse virtually through jam Link. This past weekend, I saw for myself their in-person connections during the final moments of their performance at Metro Gallery—one of the Station North venues that presents free events during Second Saturdays.   

The four young musicians/Peabody grads that make up AM/PM Sax Quartet fervently played, accompanied by a frightening narrative that sounded like an old fashion radio program. Its storyline revolved around aliens abducting a man. His voice faded away behind a chilling chorus of wind instruments. 

Metro Gallery’s current exhibition, Head Count by Ilya Popenko, confronts visitors with large-scale photographs of men, presented up close without context or a sense of the subject’s setting. The stark portraits provide oversized views of swollen and darkened eyes, imperfections, and stitched wounds. In his artist statement, Ilya says he’s “flirting with the dispassionate objectivity of a mug shot,” but that his portraits are also “intensely subjective … The series is meant to function as a catalogue of masculine attitudes …” The images of these seemingly hardened men sometimes hint at softer human qualities.

At Second Saturday’s festivities, Windup Space hosted three bands and a film. I arrived too late for those, but did catch the lingering cabaret crowd. Five large paintings by Tim Horjus were the backdrop for the evening, glowing yellow and orange against the dark gray walls.

 Four hung together as a suite, only inches apart and at varying heights, with powerful visual connections established among their abstract elements. For me, Tim’s paintings always evoke the metal framing of unfinished skyscrapers or the complicated infrastructure that must lie beneath our City’s streets. Imaginative and subtle, these pictures stick with you.

• Check out Tim’s paintings at the Windup Space on Wednesday, January 12, at 7:30 p.m., when Mobtown Modern, partnering with Marin Alsop and BSO musicians, presents Glassworks by the Baltimore-born Minimalist icon Philip Glass.  Reserved seats are sold out, but standing-room is still available. Get your tickets.
  
• An Artist’s Reception for Tim’s exhibition will be Wednesday, Feb. 9th from 7 to 9 p.m.
  
• Ilya’s Head Count will be on view at Metro Gallery through Jan. 30.
• You can see the AM/PM Sax Quartet in a multi-media performance at the Red Room on March 12 at 9 p.m.  (Listen to live performances from the Quartet here.)

You can pick the art-full sorts out in the crowd.  They get around on bicycles, not in cars.  Consumerism be gone. They take pride in wearing vintage clothing and sitting on used furniture. Given the boundless enthusiasm for the gently used, I fear there may soon be nothing left in our thrift stores. All these kids love the environment—green is the new black—and they recycle with a vengeance. 

The art-full communicate in ways that morph as quickly as technology offers new ways to do it.  They prefer to dwell communally, in post-industrial live/work spaces that double as art galleries, and/or theatres, and/or live music venues. 

As for art-making, the term transdisciplinary was coined for them. They work in multiple modes of expression: visual, auditory, kinetic, or often all … at the same time.

Many of these young people are more interested in creating art than cashing checks. This is probably for the best considering that many of them are looking for their first jobs during the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Members of this generation consciously curate what they experience in life. What they create and wear, and what they’re doing to make a better and more beautiful world make the biggest statements about who they are. It’s not about what they earn or what they possess.

Nothing holds them back; this is a Do-It-Yourself generation. Want an exhibition?  Install it. Wherever! Want to play in a band? Buy some beer and invite people in for $5. Think you’re an actor? Write your own script and start rehearsals now.  Unsatisfied with local arts coverage? Start your own blog. 

The art-full are not waiting for permission or approval. They won’t be quiet and they won’t sit still for long. These kids are redefining the meaning of audience; no longer can you remain a passive viewer or listener. Art requires full participation!

Where do you find these art-full young folk? 

• MICA’s exhibitions and events.

• Station North Arts & Entertainment District. Request their weekly email blast from their homepage to learn about gallery openings, theatre performances, and concerts of all kinds. 

• The Windup Space. This DIY venture on W. North Avenue gives Baltimore a full schedule of homegrown art-full events.