Good Times on Oliver St.

I have to say, Gallery CA is one of the few place in the world where I have actually felt comfortable at exhibition receptions. Normally, I have no one to speak to, so I stand around weirdly, and then sometimes panic about my own social awkwardness and end up checking out early. Anyway, all of that is to say that I had a good time at the I Like It In The City reception! Plenty of people to talk to and new opportunities to give out my cards. I've been trying to really make an effort to actively socialize and network more, because I have to pull double-duty now with TFAP-B. But the art was diverse and interesting, and wholly Bawlmer.

Here are some photos...

Thanks for the wonderful show, Gallery CA!

Call for Feminist Mid-Atlantic Artists, June 2, 2014 Deadline!

TIMELINE:
Deadline: Deadline for Application is Monday June 2nd
Exhibition Run: July 18th thru August 8th
Notification: Artists will be notified Monday June 16th
Reception: Closing Reception August 8th 6-9 pm
Delivery dates: July 1st and 2nd
Pick up dates: August 9th-10th
_______________________________________________


GUTSY: very tough or brave : showing courage
marked by courage, pluck, or determination
a: expressing or characterized by basic physical senses or passions
b: rough or plain in style : not bland or sophisticated

Feminism, much like art, is about perception. You may consider your participation in this call for entry a radical feminist act against the mainstream misogyny of the art system, you might not. Either way, your participation in this exhibition will help support women in Baltimore. The Feminist Art Project – Baltimore and Gallery CA invite artists to submit artwork to GUTSY: Taking the Fear Factor Out of Feminism, an exhibition which seeks to highlight the work of female artists and artists dealing with feminist issues, themes, and aesthetics.

As part of TFAP-B’s mission to support female artists and local organizations working to support women, 20% of each work of art that is sold will go to Power Inside.* Power Inside is a human rights and harm reduction organization that serves women and girls who are survivors of gender-based violence and oppression. Power Inside serves women impacted by incarceration, street life and abuse. They offer direct services, advocacy, leadership development and public education to help women build self-sufficiency, heal from violence, and avoid future criminal justice contact.

This call for entry is open to artists in the Mid-Atlantic region that recognize the aesthetic, intellectual and political impact of women, regardless of race, class, or creed, on visual arts and culture. *Please note, the artist retains 80% of sale. Neither Gallery CA nor The Feminist Art Project - Baltimore will take commission on the sale of artwork during this exhibition.

JURY
The Feminist Art Project - Baltimore recognizes the aesthetic, intellectual and political impact of women on visual arts and culture. We are a grassroots, non-profit arts organization which aims to be inclusive; supporting local, self-identified female artists, as well as men who recognize and promote Baltimore area women in the arts.

TO APPLY
Artists should attach their statement and/or CV, no more than 3 images in JPEG formation (sound and video artists may submit links), a 2-5 sentence description of the work and why you want to participate in GUTSY: Taking the Fear Factor out of Feminism. Please submit materials in an email sent to tfap.bmore@gmail.com with subject heading GUTSY_Lastnameofartist. Artists are solely responsible for delivery and pick up of accepted work. Two dimensional pieces should not exceed 60” x 60” and must be ready to hang/display. Three dimensional works should not be taller than 72” and wider than 48”, unless previously approved by TFAP-B and Gallery CA. Sound and video artists are responsible for supplying their own technology for exhibition. Artworks considered unsuitable for hanging/presentation will be refused. TFAP-B and Gallery CA reserve the right to refuse any artwork that is misrepresented through documentation or is not the piece selected by the jurors. FREE.

_____________________________________________
[i] "Gutsy." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gutsy>.

Images - HCC Student Invitational

The three students I invited this semester...

My Dean's Award-winning student, Ingrid Nuttle

Two great dragons from Antonia Fleming-Miguel and Ingrid Nuttle

And this interesting piece about "Time" from Charles Kendall

Awesome! They rocked it as always.

I Like It In The City TOO!

What a coincidence! Recently I was accepted into this very fine exhibition coming up at Gallery CA at City Arts, I Like It In The City.

"Gallery CA is pleased to present I LIKE IT IN THE CITY on view Monday, May 12, 2014 – Friday, June 6, 2014. A reception will take place on the evening of Friday, May 16, 2014 starting at 6 p.m. I LIKE IT IN THE CITY celebrates 16 artists whose work is directly influenced by Baltimore’s landscape and its’ citizens."

Whoop!

Midnight Charms




ETA: Looks like my piece, Firestarter made it onto this particular webpage for Columbia Festival of the Arts...check it!

http://columbiafestival.org/scare-me/

Upcoming from TFAP-B

Greetings! It's finally feeling a bit like Spring around here, and to celebrate, The Feminist Art Project - Baltimore has several opportunities for art and fun, coming up...

We'll hold our next monthly planning meeting Tuesday, April 29th from 6-8 pm at City Arts, as we're preparing for the May 2nd event...

 

Walpurgisnacht!

 
Historically, Walpurgisnacht takes place on the eve of May Day. On this night witches are said to ride to Blocksberg mountain in northern Germany, to celebrate the arrival of spring. Today the witch is often thought of as a symbol for an independent and strong woman. With this in mind, we invite you to experience a contemporary, feminist Walpurgisnacht-style celebration on Friday, May 2nd, 5:30-9:00 pm at City Arts Apartments. Come and dance off the winter blues, cast your ill-wishes into the ‘fire’, jump over a broomstick and make a seed bomb or two. BYOBroomstick and potluck dish, come in costume or make one there, but get ready for music, dancing and a touch of sorcery. City Arts is located at 440 East Oliver Street in Baltimore across from Greenmount Cemetery. This magical evening is brought to you by Cait Byrnes and The Feminist Art Project - Baltimore.

And, be sure to take a gander at our free, call for artists for the upcoming exhibition, Gutsy: Taking the Fear Factor Out of Feminism, curated by our Exhibitions Coordinator, Allison Gulick. The show will be up during Artscape at GALLERY CA, so make sure you submit!

Hope to see you soon!

QuestFest!

Last weekend our 6-10 year old class had the opportunity to participate in QuestFest. QuestFest is visual theatre showcase for hearing impaired, deaf and ESL audiences. Earlier, the Open Minds Art Club facilitators (including me) had a great training session with them which was 90% wordless. We played games, but had to figure out the rules to the game through pantomime. Exceedingly challenging! How to tell a story through visuals, movement...body language! It was pretty darn awesome and we took that information and created a Human-powered Carousel for the performance. They all had fun, we got oodles of compliments and I feel pretty accomplished!

The first image is from my camera, which I strapped to my jelly bracelets in the hopes of getting the 'inside experience' of the carousel. In the second image, you can see that I am actually playing the part of the middle mechanism.

And it was good.

Firestarter II

Firestarter: Angry + More is finished!
(Please note that uploading to blogger significantly screws with the brightness and color. This isn't really what it looks like, color-wise)

I really enjoy the way it turned out, imagery-wise, however I am still working on flattening this bitch. As a piece of paper, it is certainly behaving as such. I have tried everything in my arsenal and a few others', and still, this thing won't behave. It's time for some creative thinking about how these will be displayed. Normally I would mount the paper on canvas or a board, but since it's not flattening appropriately, that assuredly will not work in this situation.

I have issues with all paper pieces (90% of the work I make) when I display them. I hate the idea of them being behind glass, I always want to give them more physical weight (I think it helps with metaphorical weight) and they are never archival-y sound; they are never pure watercolor pieces. I use polyurethane to yellow and age them prematurely. My own aesthetic and process inherently make this difficult, but I want it the way I want it. But this flattening issue may be the worst I have ever dealt with. As a perfectionist, this stupid poster paper may be my undoing. I am seriously irked.

HOWEVER, to put it into perspective, I have seen some hella crinkly paper work clipped up on gallery walls, all blowin' in the wind, so I think I can at least do better than that. This will be my submission to the Things That Scare Me invitational at HCC for the Columbia Festival of the Arts, so something awesome must be done! Stay tuned...


ETA: I like this song...it oddly reminds me of the past and the present simultaneously. I have been listening to this song fairly heavily lately.

Empathy

My students at Howard Community College this semester were lucky enough to participate in The Empathy Project at MICA. As per the parameters, they each wrote 500 words about an experience with empathy and they also created new art from old art pieces and recyclables. They were to buy nothing new.

This was a very difficult, ephemeral concept for them to contemplate, especially within the first few challenges I gave them of the semester. I told them that they should concentrate on the materials they were using, and that the act of touching someone else's art with your hands was a form of knowing them, and could be considered a form of empathy, depending on how sensitively the art was utilized and 'handled'.

I was really pleased with the results, considering I personally tacked on a few more challenges for them within the project. I requested they work collaboratively, and create life-sized, in-the-round figurative sculptures. No small task. However, working together and speaking to one another while building was really the best thing for them. They were able to learn from each other, they were able to flex their thinking/problem-solving muscles.

We ran into a snow day, so a few sculptures are smaller than others...and the first 2 of these are from my Sculpture I students, Ingrid Nuttle and Charles Kendall, whom I had collaborate in a different way; they switched pieces at the end of their first day of working! I also required their participation in the exhibition at MICA.

Here are some of the students' pieces and a few long shots of the rest of the gallery. Please keep in mind that they had between three and seven hours to complete this work! I say "bravo" my 3D peeps!


The Empathy Project is created by Paul Rucker, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Artist-in-Residence and Research Fellow in MICA's Center for Race and Culture, and curated by faculty member Marcus Civin of MICA's Curatorial Practice program. The project is supported by the Center for Race and Culture, M.F.A. in Curatorial Practice, M.F.A. in Community Arts, and the offices of Diversity, Graduate Studies and International Affairs.

Firestarter

I have started the first piece in my series, Spitfire! Actually I'd say this is almost done...for the time being. I had some physical and psychological difficulties with this...actually with the text application. Partially it was my nerves, I started having visceral reactions every time I tried to place the tiny slips of paper, cold sweats, shaking and a mini-crying fit before I got it together....so I know it's important.

The printmaking did not take the way I would have liked and got smeary in areas, despite my earlier tests. I switched it and ended up just collaging the words. I do like the effect. I was going for symmetrical enough to trick the eye, but not absolute, and still retaining the feel of my hand in the piece. I think the marriage worked on this one, but I'm not sure what I'll do for the rest.

Tentatively titled, Firestarter: Angry + More; here are some WIP shots...

Incidentally, I was recently invited to submit a piece for an exhibition this summer, Things That Scare Me at Howard Community College. The exhibition will be up during the month of June as part of the Columbia Festival of the Arts. This might just be the one!

Upcoming TFAP Meeting + Volunteer Time

Nick Cave(s)

Two of my favorite artist/people in life are both named Nick Cave. I personally find that odd.

I saw one of them yesterday at The Contemporary's Speaker Series at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Nick Cave was requested by Pinebox Art Center and their chosen moderator was Maiza Hixson from the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts. Really great talk, really good company!

I was able to attend the talk with my mentor and past professor, Fahimeh Vahdat. We did about a half an hour's worth of full-on spooky haunting of Nick Cave to get this photo. He was totally awesome in person, fyi. He spoke to us for a few minutes, he asked about MY practice, which blew me away. And then I got all dorky and super flustered up in there. But he was gracious and kind and the talk was great. We got a good photo with the help of one of our fellow HCC professors, Amy Boone-McCreesh who was there as well. Actually I saw a ton of people there that I knew. It was a really good night!

The spoils...

Gifs

I'm actually gonna just drop these here for now...

Of Women and Time

I am revisiting a series. It's mostly about my mother and my grandmothers. I started this series several times already and stopped...then I created two lesson plans out of it in the last month (one for college students and one for little bits). Today I woke up and realized that the concept of time and memory was really important to me...duh. I wrote this shortly thereafter, everything finally made sense, and the words flowed like fine wine.

Of Essence and Time

We construct our own time, we color memory and nostalgia as we see fit. But how do we express the measured, yet ethereal? Is time linear? What does it look and feel like? How do we visually express a full life, or a portion of a life; a period of time, maybe last week, or today, this past hour? If you had to represent time and memory through touch, what would the experience be like?

Of Essence and Time is a series which deals with issues of time and memory through texture, line and mapping. Originally based on past low relief pieces, then developed as a lesson plan for students, I return to the concept to further my own understanding of "time", and in part, to have a solid record of my own remembering. 

As an artist with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the past can often be evasive. I have lost as many soft and sensitive memories, as I have large, definitive chunks; important periods that I really shouldn't be able to lose, but have. I find myself constantly chasing time, begging it to leave me more residuals, some residue, any kind of physical mark, proof. I feel the loss greatly when there are gaps. I fear it gets worse as I get older. This is little bits of my time and memory, fragments from the missing, collected visually.

 Ode to a Knitted Rainbow Scarf, 2013

 

Lizardy

I am revealing one of the starter images for my next series, Spitfire. I ordered a starter, tester series of matte posters, with the intention of working back into the images with paint and print and text.

This one though...it's so perfect. There is something fairly eerie about it. But at the same time, it's not entirely unsettling, and I'd say, quite striking instead...someone told me it was 'mesmerizing'. I'll see how pixelated they actually are when they get here. If this works I'll have about ten more to order and wait for, and 15 large images should keep me going for the rest of the year. Sometime next week I'll get to play with them!

Speaking of 'play', I bought a Crayola brand children's overhead projector and it's calling my name...

Baltimore 1 Exhibition - Upcoming!

Hey this is coming up! Hey, I helped!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

BALTIMORE 1 Exhibition at Gallery CA

Curated by Marcus Civin

February 17 - May 2, 2014

Opening Reception Thursday, March 20, 2014 6:00 - 9:00 PM

Gallery CA is pleased to announce Baltimore 1, an exhibition of personal objects on loan from City Art residents. Upstairs are artists in affordable housing—people eating or playing guitar, texting, netflixing, painting and reading books. Downstairs in the gallery is some humble evidence of lives lived upstairs; objects wait on practical tables and shelves designed by Jennifer Coster and Marcus Civin. The collection, which is still growing, will be on view in the gallery February 17, 2014, through May 2, 2014. An opening reception will be held at Gallery CA on March 20, 2014, from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM.

Over the course of several Saturdays for the past three months, a team has knocked on doors, reminded neighbors, given out sweets and haunted the building halls and lobby. There are 69 apartments at City Arts; it wasn’t easy, and not everyone is participating, but there are now upwards of 60 objects included in the exhibition. These objects emphasize the diverse interests and experiences of City Arts residents—the whispering of families, the idea of “home”, private inclinations or pride, dazzling.

There are a few jokes, a few nods and smiles. The collection is a portrait of a place at a certain time, a building in a city—an intrinsic Baltimore portrait perhaps, just one Baltimore. Neighbors move in, move out, make a drawing or two, go to work, do laundry, park, bring in the groceries, pet-pet-pet dogs, go out for the fire drill, talk in the elevator, get the mail, pay the rent, take out the trash…How was your day?…Oh, it’s going to snow?

Within the collection are objects including: a fragile dried bat in a shadow frame; an old rusty roller skate (the kind that attaches to the bottom of a shoe): The Flash Brownie, a WWII era camera made in the USA; a circuit-bent child’s keyboard ready to be played; a Marine Band harmonica; panpipes; an antique light table which shows a skull xray; a portrait by a neighbor; a scarred piece of wood; a jubilant twisting red cupcake holder; a biscuit cutter; a purple squishy toy truck; the pet rabbits’ toys.

A team at City Arts has meticulously measured the objects, inventoried, stored and documented them.
Some objects are bent and worn, some have dog hair lingering, strings of hot glue still clinging. People are starting to talk about these objects: These clubs were my Grandfather’s; he used these on the public golf courses around here…This is my favorite record—You know Queen Latifah, remember “Ladies First”?



Workshops will be offered during the exhibition, prompting interaction and inviting response to this
collection of assembled objects. For information on Baltimore 1, including more information about the programming, please visit galleryca.org/baltimore1. If you are interested in leading a workshop in
response to the objects in Baltimore 1, please contact Catherine Akins at Gallery CA by emailing
info@galleryca.org.

Baltimore 1 Team:

Marcus Civin is Faculty in Curatorial Practice at Maryland Institute College of Art. He will be Acting Director of Curatorial Practice in the academic year 2014 2015. This Spring, he is also curating The Empathy Project by Paul Rucker at MICA.

Jennifer Coster is an artist living in Baltimore. In 2012 she received an MFA from MICA and founded the publication project Print/Collect.

Shana Goetsch is an artist and educator in the Baltimore area. She is currently Adjunct Faculty at
Howard Community College and the Regional Coordinator of The Feminist Art Project - Baltimore.