Around Town: Open Studio Tour

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School 33 Art Center’s Open Studio Tour is an annual city-wide event that for over 25 years has brought together professional artists and the general public, giving collectors and art lovers the opportunity to visit the studios of visual artists.

On Saturday, October 11 and Sunday, October 12, 2014, between the hours of 10am and 6pm, meet the artist, see their work and get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their working processes. Use our interactive mapping tool to plan your itinerary. Don’t miss out on this exciting event!

Put the spotlight on your neighborhood and help kick-off Baltimore’s 26th Annual Open Studio Tour Weekend!  

Open Studio Tour, which will take place October 10th and 11th 2014, will feature “Community Spotlight” Friday, highlighting the great arts in Baltimore City’s neighborhoods. Events must place on the Friday before Open Studio Tour weekend (October 9th).

In the past we’ve spotlighted one neighborhood, each year. This year we want to give a “shout-out” to what’s happening all around town! Up to five communities will be selected as part of the program. Past community spotlight events have included, gallery walks that involved local restaurants, live outdoor music, and neighborhood festivals with arts exhibitors and a food vendors.

The chosen communities will receive $1000 from the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts to put towards their event.

This is a great opportunity for your neighborhood to be part of this fantastic annual arts event!

Free Fall starts October 1st!

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FREE FALL BALTIMORE IS BACK FOR 2014!

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Free Fall Baltimore celebrates its ninth year by bringing wonderful free cultural activities to your doorstep. With more than 250 unique events anticipated, you’ll be able to find an exciting activity on almost every day in October.

Free Fall Baltimore is a program of the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA), the city’s non-profit special event agency, arts council and film office. BOPA champions the important role of creativity in building a vibrant, exciting and livable city, energizing not just the arts scene, but Baltimore as a whole. Inspiring and nurturing artists and showcasing the literary, performing and visual arts, BOPA presents a wide range of activities, from popular festivals such as Artscape, the annual July 4th and New Year’s Eve fireworks display over the harbor, and Baltimore Farmers’ Market & Bazaar to public art, murals, studio space for artists, exhibitions and art classes at School 33 Art Center.

The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts developed the Free Fall Baltimore program to increase access, interest and attendance in the city’s many cultural organizations, especially for families and young adults, who are the creative community’s future patrons.

Free Fall Baltimore is made possible by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, an independent 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and the generous contributions of BGE, The Abell Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, American Trading & Production Corporation (Atapco), The Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation, and the Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Charitable Funds.

Visit www.promotionandarts.org to learn more about our programs, events and activities or call 410-752-8632.

Mayor’s Cultural Town Meeting: October 15th

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Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance invite all to attend the Mayor’s Cultural Town Meeting.  The bi-annual event will take place on Wednesday, October 15 from 6pm to 8pm at the Maryland Historical Society, located at 201 W Monument Street.  Mayor Rawlings-Blake, city officials, arts community leaders and residents will join together to discuss the importance of the arts to the quality of life in Baltimore City.

Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions and participate in this critical dialogue.

The Mayor’s Cultural Town Meeting is produced by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts in partnership with the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.  

Baltimore Theatre Community Annual Auditions

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This year’s Baltimore Theatre Community Annual Auditions are back, and we hope better than ever. 

We have selected the dates of Saturday, August 23, and Monday August 25.

Center Stage – The Head Theater 700 N. Calvert Street Baltimore, MD 21202

AEA Members – FREE / Non-Members $10 Auditors – $20 per theater**

Auditions will be held from 10 am-5 pm on Saturday, August 23, and from 6 pm to 9 pm on Monday, August 25, in The Head Theater (4th floor) at Center Stage. On Saturday, there will be a musical accompanist from 12pm-1pm and 2pm-3pm for anyone wishing to sing as part of their audition.

As you know, these auditions have always been an important opportunity for both the theaters and the artists involved.  With so many artistic leaders and actors participating, it’s always a wonderful time for new talent to be discovered, and to discover new opportunities.

We are seeking actors of all ages, both non-AEA and AEA, from around the state to audition. And we hope to have over 40 Auditors from local and regional theatres.

You can register online now at http://baltimoreauditions2014.eventbrite.com.

Also, if you would be interested in volunteering to support the auditions, do let us know! There will be a call for help sorting headshots, timing auditions, setting up food, etc.

Please help us promote! We have less turnaround time this year than in the past, so we need your help to get the word out, and make these auditions a huge success.  We encourage you to share the event on social media, email it to your members, and help us spread the word!

Have questions? Email us: balttheatre@gmail.com

Thanks from the BTCA Team

Sondheim Interviews: John Zimmerman

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This is the thirty-first in a series of interviews with each of the Sondheim Award Semifinalists. Finalists have been announced, and will be on exhibit at the Walters Art Museum June 21 to August 17; those not selected as finalists with be exhibited at the Decker, Meyerhoff and Pinkard Galleries at MICA  July 17 to August 3, 2014.

Name: John Zimmerman
Age: 27
Website: www.johnzimmerman.com
Current Location: Waverly- Baltimore, MD
Hometown: Waldorf, MD
School: University of MD, Baltimore County

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What is your day job? How do you manage balancing work with studio time with your life?
I am currently a dog walker as well as a bartender. I try to string together both jobs and work as many hours as a can for a few days, and then have off for a couple days afterwards to decompress and think about my art. On a good day dog walking can serve as both work and time to contemplate life, as well as allow me to take photographs.

How would you describe your work, and your studio practice? I mainly work in photography. For me, the power of photography lies in its ability to flatten real world objects. The viewer interprets the image as a three dimensional space, but the composition is intrinsically rooted in the flat dimension. I try to compose my images, whether they are portraits or landscapes, as a minimal spatial study. Lately I have been working on sculptures and paintings that similarly explore these flattened dimensions.

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What part of artmaking to you like or enjoy the most? The least? Editing photographs can be tedious, but at this point I embrace the meditative qualities of it.

What research do you do for your art practice? Reading a lot helps, as well as taking in and processing the mass of imagery that bombards us everyday.

Do you ever get in creative dry spells, and if so, how do you get out of them? Of course. Whenever I do I find its best to let it run its natural course. I go exercise, and enjoy my life for a few days, or a week, or a month. Eventually a good idea will come my way, and it won’t have the appearance of being forced.

How do you challenge yourself in your work? I think the poster in the office of our guidance counselor’s was on to something when it read “push yourself” or “give it your all” or whatever. I have post-its around that egg me on. Again, like I said before, you don’t want to force yourself to be creative. That said we all need motivation, and post-its criticizing me seem to work. I also find it is good practice to be as meticulous and overly critical of a final product.

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Media Preview for Sondheim Artscape Prize: 2014 Finalist Exhibition

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The Walters Art Museum and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts previewed the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize: 2014 Finalists Exhibition this past Friday, June 20th.

The Sondheim Artscape Prize is a $25,000 fellowship awarded each year to visual artists living and working in the Greater Baltimore region. M&T Bank has partnered with BOPA to establish the M&T Bank Sondheim Finalists’ Awards, which provide a $2,500 honorarium for each of the remaining finalists not selected for the fellowship.

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Organized by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts in conjunction with Artscape, America’s largest free arts festival, the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize: 2014 Finalists Exhibition will be on view at the Walters Art Museum  June 21 – August 17, 2014. Now in its ninth year, the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize recognizes the achievements of a visual artist living or working in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia and Southeastern Pennsylvania. The winner of the $25,000 Sondheim Prize will be announced at a special ceremony and reception at the Walters Art Museum, Saturday, July 12, 2014 at 7 p.m.

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2014 FINALISTS:       

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 Lauren Adams (Baltimore, MD)                               Kyle Bauer (Baltimore, MD)

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     Stewart Watson (Baltimore, MD)                        Marley Dawson (Washington, DC)

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      Neil Feather (Baltimore, MD)                              Kyle Tata (Baltimore, MD)

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   Shannon Collis (Baltimore, MD) 

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The Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize is made possible through the generous support of the Abell Foundation, Alex. Brown & Sons Charitable Foundation, Baltimore Festival of the Arts, Charlesmead Foundation, Ellen Sondheim Dankert, France-Merrick Foundation, Hecht-Levi Foundation, Legg Mason, M&T Charitable Foundation, Henry & Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation, John Sondheim and The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.

The exhibition and opening event at the Walters Art Museum have been generously supported by the Talkin Fund of the Columbia Foundation, Time Group Investments, Rachel and Joseph Rabinowitz, The Zamoiski, Barber, Segal Family Foundation, and the Greif Family Fund.

Public Art Field Trip: Firebird

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Firebird, 2005 by Rodney Carroll

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Illustration by Precious Blake

Firebird is a 50-foot-tall metal sculpture by Baltimore artist Rodney Carroll that is installed on a plaza at the southeast corner of Howard Street and Park Avenue, opposite the entrance to the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

It was inspired, Carroll says, by The Firebird, a 1910 ballet by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky that is based on a Russian folk tale featuring a handsome prince, a lovely princess, and the magical intervention of the firebird.

The $275,000 sculpture was commissioned by David S. Brown Enterprises, one of the developers of the Symphony Center office and apartment complex next to the hall, and the Maryland Mass Transit Administration, which operates the light-rail line that runs through the area.

Carroll, a  graduate of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, was chosen in a 2000 competition. He said he was striving to create a work that will be a gateway to the cultural district and a symbol for the symphony, whose home turns 32 later this year.

“I wanted to play off the architecture of the symphony hall, the curvilinear aspect,” he said. “I wanted to reach out from that and imply music spilling out of the symphony hall to the populace.”

One of Stravinsky’s best known compositions, The Firebird, was first performed by the Ballets Russes at the Paris Opera. It is characterized by outbursts of great force and propulsion, followed by lighter, more shimmering passages.

Carroll used stainless steel, bronze and copper to create a composition that echoes Stravinsky’s music, with powerful, buttresslike elements and more delicate pieces. Elements of the artistic composition also suggest parts of musical instruments, such as the pipes of an organ or the strings of a harp.

Noting that Stravinsky collaborated at one point with Russian painter Wassily Kadinsky, Carroll said he considers the Baltimore sculpture another sort of collaboration, this time in three dimensions.

“Since the sculpture stands alone in a large plaza, I felt the need for the work to be architectural in scale and elements,” he said. “The main element is structured with twisting buttresses, and pedestrians may walk into and through the sculpture. … It’s different from each side, and it’s meant to be that way.”

To see more of Carroll’s work, visit his website at www.rodneycarroll.com

Want to know more about Baltimore Public Art? Pick up the book Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City by Cindy Kelly.

Parts of this post referenced  The Baltimore Sun’s 2004 article “Giving form to ‘Firebird'” by Edward Gunts. The original piece can be viewed here.