Take a drive through Baltimore City’s Waverly neighborhood and you will see various colorful murals, but if you are able to scratch the surface just a little, deeper layers of creativity are also revealed. Waverly is now home to an increasing number of artists— many working out of their homes.

Recently, I had the honor of being invited to an evening open studio tour in Waverly at the home of Jonathon Poliszuk and Ursula Minervini, owners and operators of Pellinore Press. Using a vintage 1950’s letterpress—a Vandercook 15-21—Poliszuk and Minervini create a wide array of work based on detailed woodcuts, from fine art to posters, novelties, wedding invitations and even business cards. They are one of the many high quality craftsmen making a name for themselves in the City’s thriving craft scene through festivals and shows like Artscape and Pile of Craft. Buy local: pellinorepress.com

The music featured in this short was also created by a local musician; find more of his work on soundcloud or facebook, by searching for Cool DJ Willie aka Shock Trauma.

Pellinore Press from Roving Media Productions on Vimeo.

pellinorepress.com

Young Blood

Anther challenge I encountered with Young Blood is that no account is offered as to why and how the advisory committee chose these artists. Touring through the gallery I soon started to wonder why were these specific artists selected out of all the recent MFA graduates in Maryland. I have a hard time fighting back my inner cynic, and without a confident curatorial hand to help guide my thinking I was left to wonder if maybe these works weren’t selected simply because they looked the slickest, the most sellable of all the works reviewed. Or perhaps whoever did the choosing just wanted to get a nice variety: throw in some feminism, throw in some video art, some performance, show an apt concern with racism, etc.

I have been ruminating on this show for the past week, however, and it seems like some tenuous themes can be discerned. For example, several of the works demonstrate a pretension to architecture (Maggie Gourlay’s, Timothy Horjus’, Benjamin Kelley’s, and Ailsa Staub’s), with Kelley taking it furthest– his sculptures make as though they were actually buttressing the gallery walls.

One work stood out to me as not-so sellable, slightly less polished and more open-ended. It is these attributes that slowed me down and demanded I invest time in John Farrell’s “In The Name of the Voice Shines the Light”. Farrell works with portions of Robert Bresson’s 1962 Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc, and in a dual projection installation, he restricts the communicative powers of cinema to text in the first instance and to sign language in the second instance. It is a spare and scientific handling of material, and while the effects are not entirely clear to me, I understand that the artist has approached a film that deals principally with signs (the movie’s dialog includes references to signs from God, signs of loyalty to the French king, signs of Joan’s gender, and linguistic signs), and then feeds it through two systems of signs– English script and American Sign Language.

I’m not convinced Farrell has fully considered the installation of his work, because it looks so shoddy. The two videos are projected on to opposite sides of a thin white sheet that hangs from monofilament. They then play back to back, one on each side of what is basically a piece of drawing paper hanging alone in the middle of a darkened room. We see how both images sit only on the surface and how there’s nothing behind, that the depth of the picture plane is illusory. The effect is to augment the insubstantiality of the image and, by virtue of analogy, the insubstantiality of the sign itself. In this way, the poverty of the installation strategy contributes to the work’s content.

I still have a lot of questions about this work, though. Why these two specific sign systems? Why project them back to back rather than side by side? What sense does it make to interpret the movie with sign language when subtitles would work just as well for the deaf? Farrell studied philosophy before he studied art, and I could tell from his statement that he thinks in a complex way. As it stands now, however, it was a little too complex for me to read.

Young Blood
Maryland Art Place
Aug 3 – Sept 3

http://www.mdartplace.org/

“The Guerrilla Bike Lane arose from a desire to express ourselves and our passion for an escalating need to reduce the use of fossil fuels. We seek to promote and establish fair and safe riding conditions for cyclists in Baltimore. The intention of our guerrilla artwork is to educate the public using environmentally friendly and creative means in a non-aggressive way. We hope this will serve as a catalyst for people to see and build the community within the city, to consciously take action instead of settling for an inactive way of life.”

Where will the GBL gang strike next? Only time will tell.

Guerrilla Bike Lane from Roving Media Productions on Vimeo.

This short features the music of Shock Trauma (aka Cool DJ Willie, look for him on soundcloud and facebook), and the photography of Rebecca Wolf and Ashley Kidner. Learn more about biking in Baltimore through Nate Evan’s blog.

Photo: Rebecca Wolf

I feel most equipped to respond to the works of Letha Wilson since they employ tactics familiar to me from the contemporary discourse of sculpture in order to make a departure from the perimeters of photography. Illusionism is pitted against the candid presentation of raw materials so that our attention is drawn to the artifice of the image. “Right Back At You” features a photo of a sunset mounted on the wall, while a Maglite flashlight propped up on a pedestal and a couple stones kicks the illusion of brilliance up to actual brilliance. “Double Dip” presents two tear-shaped structures of ply wood, mounted on the wall, their inside surface lined with photographs of lush plant life. “Partially Buried” is a beautiful photo of a winter forest mounted on wood, but a plug of that wood has been removed from behind and brought to the front to rudely obscure the photo.

Willa Nasatir could also be on to something interesting. She uses snapshots of cassette tapes (presumably from her own reliquary, old standbys like Leonard Cohen, Madonna, The Band, Springsteen and the Cars) as design elements in the photo collages “Tape Flair 1” and “Tape Flair 2”. Before the digital revolution, music albums were the artifact through which the individual participated in a larger culture. These allusions might limit her audience to those who share the same cultural capital, but perhaps the work goes further to talk about such allusion itself and the way any work relies on a shared cultural history for its appeal.

The closing reception for Day Glow is on September 3th. I encourage you to attend and perhaps make some sense of Sam Falls’ landscape photos. Some technique has been employed but I don’t know what and am not sure what it’s doing.

Nudashank
Day Glow
Opened August 7th
Closing Reception September 3, 2010
H&H Arts Building, 3rd Floor
405 W. Franklin Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

The 2^nd installment of EAT boasts even more color, as the start of summer means the abundance of tomatoes, berries, zucchini, peaches, and a diverse assortment of greens at the Farmers Market.  After a long winter and spring of eating root vegetables like potatoes, turnips, parsnips, and radishes, it has been nice to incorporate more color and lighter textures into meals.  Swapping out the spicy crunch of a radish with the cooling crunch of a cucumber has made braving the heat more bearable.  Replacing roasted turnips and parsnips with less-dense roasted zucchinis makes mimicking light Mediterranean dining more believable.

Once again, homemade stir-fries are a reoccurring meal.  Take note of the color-field explosion that features fennel, blue potatoes, and striped beets.  The beets almost look artificial since they resemble mini candy canes.  Also take note of new things we have tried making this week: hand-made buckwheat pasta, beet and cucumber stir-fried with coconut oil and roasted peanuts, and pesto with basil, garlic scrapes, and beet greens.  Of course there were just as many salads consumed as there were desserts—maybe even more desserts were consumed than salads, come to think of it.  I base this on a very loosely reciprocal eating technique: no bread with a salad means going out for dessert later; salad for lunch and dinner means a mid-day dessert snack and one at night, etc.  We also threw a raw dessert into the mix via the chocolate raspberry ganache cake, made with walnuts, dates, and raw cocoa powder in our trusty food processor.  There was a point when I was obsessed with sticking to a raw foods diet and used the food processor 3+ times a day to make nut pates and raw energy bars, but that phase has passed because it was creating a crater in our weekly food bill.

Shooting images for EAT, has gotten me thinking more about the relationship between art and life and the Allan Kaprow model of when “art become[s] life.”[1] What better place for art and life to intersect, interweave, and co-mingle than in food?  In the making, consumption, and presentation of food?  Everyone needs to eat, and there are so many politics in this necessity.  I am convinced that Fluxus artists were onto this, but that there is just not enough literature to highlight it.  Perhaps because it is much more effortless to actually participate in the “life” part of consuming food than it is to sit around thinking about why and how it can be “art.”  The pondering discourse has always come later.  What if Allison Knowles just made a salad and left it at that?

For now, I’ll just stick to eating and let the photographs speak for themselves.  Much less effort this way.

A note on viewing the photo essay: please maximize on your screen so you can click on “more info” to view the detailed descriptions.

Ding Ren is an artist and writer.  She creates simple, paired-down work using everyday observations.  In the fall she plans to relocate from Washington, DC to Amsterdam where she will continue eating and observing.

Of course the art world in general does have a legitimate bone to pick with segments of the Christian community.  Meaning the Christian right— those who have used progressive art as a punching bag scare tactic for many decades. Seriously deranged power mad homophobic groups like The Family or from the recent past famed arch NEA nemesis, the little North Carolina fat bastard that thankfully we can now refer to as the late Senator Jesse Helms (the same stinking polecat who filibustered the senate for 16 days in an attempt to stop the federal holiday for Martin Luther King) have engaged the art world in years of so called “culture war” that has indeed had the effect of cutting funding to what is considered progressive (read homosexual here) programming and altering the the general public’s perception of its own artists and arts organizations. But realistically the vast majority of Christians (and people) in this country are live and let live folks. And also, truth is, nothing gets artists working harder and better then a hint of fetid oppression, no matter how insignificant it really is (when compared to what many artists in the world face and we, dear Americans are pampered little poodles.)

So while we consider ourselves a very liberal lot, I personally know of only a handful of openly Christian artists —most of are in the Southern U.S. and of those the majority are associated with outsider art. I have known a number of Christian artists who keep their faith to themselves for fear of being judged. And when exhibiting work that overtly references their Christian faith, the work often is misunderstood or worse—simply rejected for exhibition. Chris Mona is an openly Christian artist, who like most individuals defies the annoying stereotypes of a statement like I just imposed on him. In my experience this has been the case with almost every Christian I have known, artist or not.

In a recent exhibition titled Millennial Dreams and Drama shown at the intimate upstairs Amalie Rothschild Gallery at the Fells Point Creative Alliance, Mona showed work that is strongly informed by his Christian faith and is a fascinating exploration into the holistic meaning of life, death, and the struggles of being.

Mona, a Maryland native was raised Catholic then when he married he converted to protestantism the faith of his wife.. He is a big big music fan and came of age during eighties the golden age of the D.C. punk scene, attending shows by the seminal band Minor Threat and the like. He was involved in the straight edge scene, which fit his personal values well. (His interest in music and album covers is apparent in the show.) From there he went on to attend Pratt earning a degree in art— returning to Maryland to live, raise a family and work. He currently teaches art history at Ann Arundel Community College, curates exhibitions and is making a name for himself with his most recent visual work—work inspired by a trip to Italy. There he saw Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-1260 – c. 1318-1319)  multi-paneled masterpiece The Maestà.

Upon his return to the states he set about creating a contemporary work of equal complexity that would deal in similar themes—but updated. This work is nearly completed, and Mona is seeking a location to present it. The work in the Creative Alliance exhibition was a cross section of the larger work, dealing with many of the same themes

We met up with him at the Creative Alliance at the end of his exhibition upstairs in the intimate upstairs gallery and recorded a lively 30-minute interview, touching on the themes of his work, his faith, the music connection and much more. Click here to listen to Chris Mona discuss his work in detail.

We look forward to the future unveiling of his nearly completed multi-paneled masterwork. That is, if he can find an arts organization unprejudiced and brave enough to exhibit it.

Millennial Dreams and Drama
Works by Chris Mona
Fells Point Creative Alliance
exhibition over

This year’s festival was a beautiful if arduous event. Arduous not just because of the extreme heat (Saturday was a heat index of 110 degrees) but also because of the sheer volume of work to be consumed over those four days. Several times during the day I had to leave to refresh myself with a coffee or a whiskey, and not once did I make it over to the H&H to watch the evening gigs.

In addition to showcasing over 100 artists, Whartscape ZOIO was intelligible as a work in itself. At this point I am feeling the want of some solid research into the history of the area around Howard and Franklin. The buildings are grand and abandoned– gaping holes where there were once windows, vegetation– sometimes entire trees!– growing out sideways from between the mortar. The Current gallery recently reopened in this area, at 405 N. Howard Street, and Wham City erected two stages in the parking lot behind it so that one band set up while another played its set.

It’s hard to imagine Whartscape successfully co-opted so long as the program remains as radical as it is. In many cases the acts didn’t seem like bands with a list of singles. They were more like labs for noise. Bands like Child Bite and Arab on Radar played loud, frenzied, paroxysmal sets where the songs were not so much discrete numbers as successive compositions dealing with the same concept, like the way some painters work, producing scores of canvases of water lilies, say, each time in slightly different hues, in slightly varying compositions. In this venue–Downtown Baltimore–some of the acts took on the poignancy of site-specific work.

We understand our city as post-industrial, and we use this diagnosis to explain its economic and social problems. Whartscape ZOIO was held amidst the desiccated residue of the prosperity that industry brought our town. In this setting, the music became a something like a satire on the inevitable ramifications of how industrialism, in a relatively short time,  consumed this land’s resources, both natural and human, as well as the optimism for the future that industry brought with it. Watching the lead singer of Child Bite Shawn Knight scream until he turned red, jugular and eyes bulging, I thought about a chemical reaction that burns brighter the faster the reagent is consumed, I thought about crack cocaine and its vertiginous high.

For a long time I didn’t like music festivals. I felt too old to get wasted and stand out in the sun all day. Approaching a band’s set like a novel, or like a theatrical piece, with the same kind of patience and fortitude, music shows have once again become an awesome, if arduous, experience.

Wham City
Whartz2010

(recordings available through Wham City and are highly recommended—ED)

In Mexico art has been an expression of power and domination since at least the Olmecs period. Monumentally scaled art was used to intimidate the enemy and the subjugated peoples of various Mesoamerican empires, and the fiercer the gods the better.  Reproductions have difficulty communicating the massive impact of Olmec heads and Toltec warriors towering 20 feet over the viewer.  The Teotihuacan empire intimidated its lower classes as well as its enemies through fierce, blood-thirsty gods; one example is the mother goddess, Coatlicue, who is immense and square and has a skirt of snakes and a necklace of severed human hearts and hands.  The Chac Mool, an effigy depicted in a supine stance holding a bowl to collect the beating heart of a sacrificial victim, appears all over mexico – even in ex convents and monasteries.   Teotihuacan, city of the gods, was dedicated to ritual sacrifice and bloodletting, and at ____ square miles is only estimated one percent excavated.

Before the conquest, emperors, priests and others of elevated status were celebrated by their immortalization in the plastic arts. Feathers from hummingbirds, quetzals, and other birds were meticulously sorted and used to construct detailed portraits of wealthy and important individuals.   Under Spanish rule, the portraits shifted to sculptures and oil paintings; endless religious images as well as portraits of prominent monks and nuns, all to accord status.  The precious materials of gold and silver used in ornate baroque frames can be directly linked to work that caused the deaths of thousands of Indians brutally enslaved in the mining industry.  Sculpturally, eagle warriors were prominently featured in a  broad range of temple decorations, and carvings also to celebrate  individual rulers.  The Monumento de Tizoc, an Mexica bas relief on an enormous tondo, depicts for all who passed it, Tizoc’s many conquests  

When a regime changed  the art was vandalized, built on top of, or appropriated by each new ruler. Even after independence, new art was created depicting the new powers as even more powerful— these bear similarities to the socialist realism that included the glorified portraits of Communist revolutionary leaders such as China’s Mao and the Soviet Union’s Lenin.  Porfirio Diaz, an oppressive president who ruled for over 30 years while modernizing Mexico, celebrated his rule by erecting enormous statues and paintings of Charles IV and ornate governmental buildings with images of anglicized Mexicans posing in the classical style.  A contemporary radical artist could consider a “Status Project” elevating the status of a group or individual by choosing to depict them in a monumental fashion, appropriating local or newly developing global visual signifiers of superiority, strength, or divine sanction.

The Mexican revolution of 1910 was a proletarian revolt which still looms in the public imagination. The people’s revolution and the ongoing struggles of the Zapatista are immortalized in living arts such as the Ballet Folklorico as well as the murals of the 1920s-1950s.  In the dance “Revolucion” female dancers in the classical full skirts and white embroidered tops swirl and kick, while wearing a shoulder strap with cartridges and flourishing a rifle. This is the only dance in which the dancers don’t smile and celebrates the solderas, female soldiers who fought in the revolution of 1910.  The revolution is celebrated popularly and is a part of the visual landscape of most Mexican art of the past century. The charming countryside shot of a campesino in a white shirt and large sombrero may pass as kitsch to the naïve but Mexicans recognize the image immediately as a revolutionary.  These dancers are decorative but dangerous.

The struggle for power was certainly not over with the revolution, though as many dangerous topics it is most often addressed through satire.  Pageantry and humor mark the heroism depicted in the wildly popular Lucha Libre wrestling ring.  Similar to the American WWE in some manners, the lucha libre tradition is also uniquely Mexican. Masks are formally related to images of Tlaloc and other gods from Mexica temples; the image of a cotton candy vendor with an eagle mask resting on his forehead is strangely familiar to the ancient terra cotta figure in the museum of anthropology, if one removes the sweets.  In the wrestling ring, the dark side fights the light side in a battle reminiscent of an ancient battle for man’s control of the universe.  During each eclipse, the Aztec/Mexica people feared the sun would be destroyed by lunar powers, and performed special sacrifices of eagle warriors to ensure the sun would not be eaten entirely and life as we know it would continue. While we can’t verify the history of acrobatic stunts like backflips off the side of the wresting ring, we can see the visual continuum in exaggerated eyes, flame and skull motifs, and fringes or plumage. Is this simply a commodification of history? The enthusiasm of the crowd and the richness and liveliness of the creative performances are undeniable.  This tradition of the warrior is not dead, but celebrated, in vinyl and spandex glory.  Perhaps other messages could be inferred – always land on your feet. Watch your brother’s back and your enemy’s back more closely.

While the luchadoras can be viewed for 30 pesos, or about $2.50,  The ballet costs $50 a ticket, more than most Mexicans make in a month, and is attended largely by tourists who enjoy the aesthetically rich show.  It is a beautiful celebration of a diverse country.  It is very historic in theme and strongly influenced by classical Spanish dance, except for a few pieces which are more primitivist.    Mexicans at the moment are watching the world cup.  The mayor of Mexico city has many experimental campaigns, including shutting down the Plaza Reforma, a major expressway, each Sunday for bicycle and foot traffic. His most popular current intitiative involves a giant plasma screen TV, over 50 feet high, which has been erected on the Plaza in front of Templo Mayor and the National Cathedral.  Templo Mayor, discovered in 1981, is the most important Aztec temple, originally built on a manmade island, and the legislative center of the Teotihuacana civilization.  The National Cathedral is the most significant monument of New Spain, built intentionally next to the most important temple so that the indigenas could worship in the same outdoor plaza while being converted to Christianity by a few well aimed guns.  The television, sponsored “in 3D vision by Sony” is free and open to the public, so that all Mexicans can come watch the game in the symbolic center of Mexico.  Popular art, free and accessible to all, regardless of income, class, or heritage, and symbolic of modern Mexico.

Outside of the sectioned off area, several gentlemen are seated quietly holding cardboard signs that identify them as electricians. They do not seem to be begging.  There is some stenciling on the sidewalk and a simulated tent city made of political flyers a few blocks down.  Here is where it gets interesting: the electricians of Mexico City have been laid off, over 70 days ago, by a sudden nationalization of the electricity plants.  The electricians are one of the oldest unions in Mexico, but have been replaced by scabs who do not have adequate training and as a result the power goes out, especially during rainstorms, which are frequent. The Supreme Court is concerned and has ruled that even if unemployed, the union cannot be dissolved. Several union members are on hunger strikes, and if they pass away from starvation the population will be even more incensed.  Meanwhile, most citizens of Mexico City and the outlying areas have unreliable electricity, and over 40,000 skilled electricians are out of work.  The populist sentiment that seems to be at work in the giant jumbotron display is not so strong that the government is interested in restoring the union to work.  The large scale public art pacifies the masses and showcases the “modern” government – but profit mongering and political infighting stands in the way of continued modernization.   The art showcases the power of the current government over the colonial and indigenas empires – celebrating the masses, in appearance – while in reality the masses are at the whim of a corrupt bureaucratic system.

-Elisabeth Gambino
Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico, July 2010

Sandi Wilson is an encaustic painter, and a Vancouver native who now calls Baltimore home. Sandi was first a photographer, but as you will see in this video, her work is now evolving through her experimentation and mixing of acrylic paint and encaustic (or bee’s wax). Sandi’s “bio paintings,” like the one featured here, are usually commissioned in honor of individuals on special occasions.   The music featured in this short is a local Baltimore musician, by the name of Darius Scott, playing a piano solo on Lee Morgan’s “Mr. Kenyatta.”

A Portrait Of An Artist – Sandi Wilson from Roving Media Productions on Vimeo.

Sandy Wilson
sandiwilsonphotography.com

There is no better way to kickoff a public art conference than an exuberant outdoor art performance. This weekend, June 25-27, Baltimore is hosting the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network’s (PAN) Half-Century Summit. On Wednesday, June 23rd the event started off with a bang and a boombox. Miami based artist Suan Lee-Chun’s troop of performers- fittingly outfitted in futuristic black and gold spandex paraded from rehearsal in Maryland Art Place’s Market Place gallery to the public sphere – landing at the outside of the National Aquarium. They performed Lee-Chun’s C’mon Baltimore, Everybody Suzercise! in front of a crowd of family,  friends, supporters of public art, and a refreshingly large amount of un-art-affiliated passers by who just couldn’t look away. The Suzercisers performed their routine twice (for good measure) before marching back to the comfort of the gallery space for a reception and Pecha Kucha presentations relating to public art.

Check out our live footage of the presentations Here or  Here.

Below are Wednesday’s performance of  C’mon Baltimore, Everybody Suzercise! :