Monday, November 17, 2008

Framed Reality @ MAP


Framed Reality
December 2-January 31, 2009
Gallery Talk: 6 pm, Friday, December 12 / Reception, 7 pm

Framed Reality, an exhibition featuring the work of four figurative painters who draw inspiration from various sources, including childhood memories, folklore, and narrative. Although distinctly different in their approach and painting styles, each artist’s work will evoke a unique and highly personal response from viewers. Participating artists include: Daniel Finch, Brian Martin, Becky Slemmons, and Nora Sturges.

Daniel Finch appropriates popular imagery from his formative teenage years growing up in the 1970’s to create paintings that reflect on past memories as observed from a current perspective. His large scale works represent modern archetypal characters and events with historic or mythical relevance created by joining pixilated painting segments to reveal such familiar icons as King Kong, Evel Knievel and Bruce Lee. Finch comments, “my paintings are, in great part, a search for the remnants of masculine identity transmitted to me through the media icons of my generation.”

Brian Martin’s paintings are based on memories of growing up in several suburban neighborhoods throughout America. The artist’s perception of these communities as cold and isolated is sharply contrasted to the safe and supportive paradigm intended by these planned neighborhoods. This sentiment is conveyed in the striking paintings he constructs of empty playgrounds and vacant hallways. Martin remarks, “the disparity between this ideal and the actual experience of life in these communities is the focus of my art.”

Becky Slemmons is a narrative painter whose outlet for storytelling is realized through creating art. She says, “the stories we tell, our mythologies, are metaphors for what matters to us, distilled from our experience of being human.” Her most recent work was inspired by folklore and lesser-known customs in which the artist searches for truths throughout multiple cultures. This work draws from a seventeenth century Welsh courting ritual of spoon-giving, which the artist has adapted to incorporate tales of her own invention based on this custom. In order to bring her characters to life in her paintings, Slemmons must fully understand them, often writing down stories, making their costumes and shooting video for reference. This highly personal experience allows the artist to see how each of her fictitious characters might feel in the situations with which they are confronted. Working from video stills, Slemmons captures key cinematic moments to depict in her paintings and in her storytelling.

Nora Sturges’ detailed paintings place contemporary figures in historical period settings. Her rich, small paintings are often inspired by narrative, and are filled with details that exemplify the artist’s whimsical humor, bringing an interesting perspective to imaginary events and situations. In Marco Polo’s Travels, Sturges creates a series of paintings of imaginary adventures which was originally inspired by the narrative and subject matter of Italo Calvino’s novel, Invisible Cities. “The paintings have since grown to encompass personal experience of travel and displacement, as well as ideas taken from the actual Travels of Marco Polo, a book with many contemporary parallels.” Also included in the exhibition is the series, A View from the Road, paintings that represent travel snapshots depicting the memorable and less than memorable things tourists see and choose to document while traveling. Quiet Cities is the third series that will be exhibited, inspired partly by the artist living in Baltimore, it “explores the human inhabitation of the environment and the process of urban growth and decline.”

WHEN ABSENCE BECOMES PRESENCE @ WPA



WHEN ABSENCE BECOMES PRESENCE
Washington Project for the Arts Presents:
Experimental Media Series
curated by Sonja Simonyi + Niels Van Tomme
November 20 – December 23, 2008
Washington Project for the Arts
2023 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036
Gallery Hours: Tues-Fri 11-4pm (closed Thanksgiving weekend)

Opening Reception: Thursday November 20th, 7-9pm @ WPA
Screening & Curator’s Talk: Thursday, December 11, 6pm @ The Phillips Collection

The fourth annual Experimental Media Series "When Absence Becomes Presence,"
is an exhibition that explores the play between two separate, but linked conditions of absence and presence, and which reflects upon the very nature of time based media. Curators Sonja Simonyi + Niels Van Tomme have selected a staggering variety of experimental artworks that include sound art, music, literary readings, video art, as well as a mysterious sound recording.

Artworks from: Herman Asselberghs, The Conet Project, Paul Chan, Martin Creed, Andrea Geyer, Ibro Hasanovic, Miranda July, Damir Niksic, and Douglas Ross


To be announced: screening of selected works and a discussion with the curators at The Phillips Collection on Friday, December 11, at 6pm. During the screening, the Kraft Prize for New Media and the WPA Experimental Art Prize will be presented to two winning artists from the When Absence Become Presence Call for Entries competition.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

AGENDA: QUEERING POPULAR MEDIA


AGENDA: QUEERING POPULAR MEDIA
Current Gallery

30 South Calvert Street
Baltimore Md 21202

Opening Reception: Friday, November 14, 7 pm

Exhibition Dates: November 14 - December 5, 2008


Baltimore, MD ~ Current Gallery is pleased to present Agenda: Queering Popular Media curated by Jamillah James for Frontier Projects. The exhibition examines how queer (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans) subjectivity informs, and is mediated by, evolving technology, the media, and popular culture. Through mining the formal and narrative conventions of film and television, revisiting printed matter as a traditional means of communication, and addressing symptoms of immediacy precipitated by the digital age, the participating artists in Agenda create autonomous spaces for play, discourse, and protest in which identities and histories are fluid.

Agenda also considers the traditional definition of "queer"—to make strange. The experimental opportunities afforded by new media (installation, performance, video, and internet-based art) provides the critical apparatus to question matters of representation and agency, the influence to radicalize other art making practices, and the platform to subvert and eschew aesthetic conventions.

Agenda documents the present state of collective (un)consciousness, with its interest attuned to the quandary of visibility and a cultural obsession with "others" outside of the self. The collapse of public and private is expected, and surveillance spells opportunity. By refitting the lens through which popular culture and the media are viewed and rabidly consumed, and re-calibrating the gaze, the artists featured in Agenda affirm that the personal is indeed political.

Participating artists include: Rahne Alexander, Davey Ball & Levi Barringer, Owen Brightman, Alan Calpe, Dynasty Handbag, Edie Fake, Michael Farley, Kristen Galvin, K8 Hardy & Wynne Greenwood, Gabriel Held, Michael Lent, LTTR (K8 Hardy, Emily Roysdon, Ulrike Müller, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Lanka Tattersal), Sarah McKiel, Dylan Mira & Latham Zearfoss, Rebecca Nagle, PILOT TV, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Liz Rosenfeld, Mariadele Arcuri Rossoni, Christopher Schulz, Xavier Schipani, Emily Shinada, Hayley Silverman, Jeffrey Augustine Songco, Ryan Trecartin, Victor Van Bramer, Lex Young, and Latham Zearfoss.

The Opening Reception 7 pm, Friday, November 14, with performances by participants Owen Brightman, Rebecca Nagle, and Michael Farley with Dazzlestorm.


Supplemental Screenings:
11/22, 7 pm PILOT TV, a 2004 Chicago (trans-)feminist experimental media conference
11/23, 7 pm Paris is Burning, the 1987 Jenny Livingstone documentary about drag balls held by African-American and Latino-American men in New York City
11/29, 7 pm Sexy, Wiggy, Desserty (1982-1992), an anthology of works by seminal underground queer video artist Tom Rubnitz
11/30, 7 pm I-BE AREA¬ (2007), the critically acclaimed 100-minute video by artist Ryan Trecartin

Charm City Craft Mafia presents the second annual Holiday Heap!


Saturday (November 15th) to St. John's Church
2640 St. Paul Street
10am - 5pm for Holiday Heap.

Holiday Heap is an indie craft fair featuring a jury-selected group of more than 50 of the country's most renegade crafters, selling their own handmade jewelry, screenprinted apparel, stuffed toys, cermaics, knitwear, paper goods and so much more!


Monday, November 10, 2008

Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower Open Studio Day

Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower Open Studio Day
21 S. Eutaw Street

Saturday, December 6

11am-4pm.

During this holiday show, local and regional artists showcase their unique paintings, photographs, sculptures, and more! Guests can visit studios, meet the artists, purchase artwork great for holiday gifts or take tours of the newly renovated tower. The 97-year-old building has been transformed to house visual and literary artists. This month’s featured artists are Najwa Al-amin (oil & acrylic), Milton Allette (acrylic), W. Scott Broadfoot (oil), Barbara Bryan (playwright), Linda Day-Clark (digital photography), John David Ehlers, Jr. (oil, acrylic, and charcoal), Brian Glazer Gerber (oil & acrylic), Keith Haller (oil, acrylic and watercolor), Kevin Haller (oil, acrylic and watercolor), Meaghan Harrison (mixed media), Cyhthia S. Padgett (oils & pastels), Pearl Regmi (oil, acrylic and watercolor), Sarah Richards (writer print & radio), Yvonne Thomas (photography) and Patricia Truitt (oil & acrylic).


Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Chris & Don: A Love Story

The Johns Hopkins University Film & Media Studies Program Presents A Special Screening of Chris & Don: A Love Story, a film by Guido Santi & Tina Mascara.
Followed by Question & Answer Session with the filmmakers and Don Bachardy
Friday, November 14, 7PM
Room 110, Hodson Hall
Homewood Campus
Johns Hopkins University
3400 North Charles Street

Co-Sponsored by:
Homewood Arts Program
Department of English
Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality
The Writing Seminars

Monday, November 3, 2008

Glitterama!5 @ Creative Alliance


Glitterama!5
Creative Alliance at The Patterson
3134 Eastern Ave. HiTown B'more
410-276-1651 www.creativealliance.org

Nov 22

Greggy Glitterati hosts an evening of wonderment! An eccentric, eyepopping and always unpredictable variety show! Air Heart's Mara Neimanis flies through
aerial artistry! The Dextrous Duo of Liz & Brent-stars of our own Marquee Ball-offer death defying balances and gymnastics! Strange Powers shows off her
Poodle Hoop Troop hula-hooping. Comedic burlesque vamper Shortstaxx, boylesque star Paco Fish, Gilded Lily's Little Luna and chanteuse Ultrasharlat (formerly
with the Swingin Swamis). 2 Shows! 7 & 10pm. $12, $10 mbrs.


Caleb Stine's 'Round the Mountain @ Creative Alliance


Caleb Stine's 'Round the Mountain Creative Alliance at The Patterson 3134 Eastern Ave. HiTown B'more 410-276-1651 www.creativealliance.org  Sat Nov 15  Caleb Stine is rising fast in Baltimore's exploding music scene. Headlining tonight, he digs into America's vital musical roots with pre-eminent hammer dulcimer player Ken Kolodner, traditional Irish fiddle player Jim Eagan & fellow Irish players Dan Isaacson and Danny Noveck, with The Baltimore Shape Note Singers and a few more special Baltimore folk and traditional musicians. From Appalachian ballads to Irish reels, shape note singing to murder ballads, this is a night of American music in the raw: real music made by real people. 8pm. $17, $15 mbrs. Adv tix sug. 
http://www.calebstine.com/

ZOЁ CHARLTON, DAVID LEVINTHAL, GABRIEL de la MORA @ Conner Contemporary Art


ZOЁ CHARLTON, DAVID LEVINTHAL, GABRIEL de la MORA @
Conner Contemporary Art


opening reception:
Friday, November 14th: 6-8pm.
valet parking available.

David Levinthal:
artist talk + champagne reception:
Saturday, November 15th: 11am.
rsvp appreciated.

Zoë Charlton:
artist talk + champagne reception:
Saturday, November 15th: 2pm.
rsvp appreciated.


Conner Contemporary Art
1358-60 Florida Ave, NE
Washington, DC 20002
v: 202-588-8750