Dolphin Press at The Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints & New Editions
This year the BMA’s Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints & New Editions (March 27th and 28th), organized biennially by the Museum’s Print, Drawing, and Photograph Society, had deep roots in Baltimore’s artistic community. Dolphin Press and Goya Contemporary and Goya-Girl Press made particularly strong showings as did the booth offering amazing works by MICA students, led by Trudi Ludwig Johnson, MICA faculty member and President of the BMA’s PDPS. Many young MICA talents were on the scene to talk about their work.
I bought two multiples by Ingrid Burrington, who has created a ruler that measures not inches but passive-aggressive behavior.
I’ve bought several dozen of these over the past two years. This charming tool allows you to measure the immeasurable—how long your patience can last, or how far you are from being as together as everyone else seems to be, or how far you can carry out a charade. I always knew it was the emotional that really counted—it’s so more satisfying than quantifying mere inches!
I also snapped up Ingrid’s elegant broadside chronicling language around the economic downturn. It’s a must-have gift for the financial adviser who failed you. It begins:
DIY Marketplace
At the Fair’s new DIY Marketplace, held in the magnificent lobby of the BMA’s original 1929 building, vendors from Baltimore and beyond offered books and prints that were both affordable and fascinating. You could even select a book online at Holster and then print your copy right there on demand.
Gary Kachadourian manned a table, which offered his own digital prints and examples by other artists in the community. I found a book by Jordan Jeffries, let’s just be friends; its cover sports a child in a bunny costume, two bloody knives stuck in his back. This should give you a hint of the dark humor inside—the fabulous drawings will console you.
Somewhere in the Marketplace, at some point when I was hard-pressed to carry all the treasures I had amassed, no less remember who sold them to me, I bought a print that proclaimed: “Tell Michelle [Obama] to cover up from time to time.” The print is a feminist statement by Laura Shoner, an artist decrying the shallow chatter of journalists. You have to have this—or if you are a Hillary Clinton fan, there’s one about her, too.
I was thrilled to meet Ben Claassen III, a designer/illustrator who creates the hilarious weekly comic strip Dirtfarm, which takes up subjects from supermoms to disastrous job interviews to the long shadow the I.R.S. casts over spring break. Ben has pretty much every worst case scenario covered. You must know someone who needs one of his illustrations. I apparently know at least a dozen!
The Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints & New Editions happens every other year, but here in Baltimore you can find artists’ books and prints at any number of art markets, during the holidays, and several times a year at MICA. For great buys in between, go over to Hampden and try Squidfire at 1100 West 36th Street or Atomic Books at 3620 Falls Road.
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. 