March/April 2004 Issue by Urbanite LLC

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The G raffit i Dan auda ce: cious and a non

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Publisher and Editor Tracy Ward Durkin

“Creativity isnʼt the monopoly of artists”

— Joseph Bueys

n John Waterʼs 1998 movie, Pecker, there is a striking scene where the filmʼs hero, a young Hampden photographer, is “discovered” by the art world. A busload of New York art types drives into Baltimore to view the incredible neighborhoods and people captured by Pecker in his images. As they drive through town, they crane their necks and “ooh” and “aah” at formstone houses, marble steps, and the usual Baltimore kitsch. Pecker, his art, and his Baltimore contrast strongly with their sophisticated, New York art world — as blue polyester does with black leather. Baltimore, a blue-collar town, has been comfortable in its own skin, remaining firmly rooted to its tradition of rowhouse neighborhoods, crabs, beer, and baseball. Thankfully, it has embraced change slowly, electing to hold onto its eccentricities and spirit. End result: a city that is authentically refreshing in a world which increasingly succumbs to the pressures of corporate branding and suburban homogeneity. Or, that is how I like to think of it. I am very comfortable with the image of Baltimore provoked by the Pecker scene. It captures Baltimoreʼs “stubborn sense of place”. And for each of us, it celebrates the essential truth that staying true to oneself is a springboard for great art. It implies that sophistication is not necessary to art or to an appreciation of art. Average people like myself can access and be informed by the world of creative expression. When I was 10-years old, my best-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world, declared herself an artist. Not wanting to compete, I was left with one fewer careers to choose from, and I felt painfully jealous of her cornering the market on creativity. After all, the prospect of painting and drawing for the rest of one’s life sounded like a lot of fun. The other options I was familiar with — nursing, law, or teaching — simply did not have the same appeal. In many respects, thatʼs when I began a lifelong quest for finding my creative self. It is strange how small, seemingly insignificant events, like your best friendʼs beating you to an identity (it never occurred to me that we could both be artists), can shape the choices you make in life, choices that, strung together over time, lead you to find yourself, at the beginning of middle-age, wondering how the heck you came to be that lawyer, doctor, nurse, or teacher anyway. I digress. Joan Jacobson, in her editorʼs note to this issue, talks about censorship and the arts. As I read her words and reflected on censorship, I at first felt compelled to look outside myself for those bogeymen that censor the world. But upon deeper reflection, I have come to realize that the greatest censor of all might come from within ourselves in the form of self-censorship. What choices might I have made had I realized that I, too, could have been an artist? How many people, like myself, stay away from the arts simply because they donʼt consider themselves “artistic”? How many avoid attending art exhibits, buying art, going to the theater, to see dance, or developing strong opinions on art because they feel intimidated by their sense of distance from the “art world”. Baltimoreʼs cultural resources have become rich and internationally acclaimed. However, this issue of Urbanite does not explore that high-profile aspect. Instead, we explore Baltimoreʼs more basic creative expression. If the arts and, indeed, ourselves are going to continue to thrive in Baltimore, we should reconnect in the most basic ways and on the most basic levels. As you will see, Baltimore offers us abundant opportunities. So, go for it! Once you jump in, who knows, you might, before long, find yourself on a bus to New York or…

Co-Editors Joan Jacobson Melody Simmons Copy Editor Ann Ward Art Direction Castro/Arts, LLC Art Manager Ann Wiker Circulation Manager Billy Tom Hogg Administrative Assistant Bellee Gossett Founder Laurel Harris Durenberger

Urbanite Issue 2, March/April 2004 Contact Information: P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD, 21211 410-243-2050 www.urbanitebaltimore.com advertising@urbanitebaltimore.com tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright © 2004, by Urbanite, LLC. All rights reserved. This publication is FREE and is distributed widely throughout Baltimore City. If you know of a location that Urbanites frequent and would recommend placing Urbanite there for distribution, please let us know by contacting us at 410.243.2050 or by email at tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com

CONTRIBUTORS

CONTENTS

publisher’s note

Emily Pohl-Weary When she’s not exploring Toronto, Emily Pohl-Weary usually is at home in that city, sipping tea and wearing pajamas in front of her computer. Her anthology, Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutants, Slayers and Freaks (www.girlswhobiteback.com), due this spring, explores the seductiveness and the limitations of female action heroes in comics, the movies and on television. In 2002, she co-wrote the Hugo Awardwinning book about her grandmother’s life, Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril. Pohl-Weary also edits Kiss Machine (www.kissmachine.org), is Broken Pencil’s fiction editor and is writing a silly novel.

about our contributors

David Morley A native of Baltimore, David Morley works as a writer/editor and in film/video in the area. He recently launched The Mark Productions, a digital video company whose productions range from weddings to life story documentaries to feature films. He is promoting his feature, South Side Survivor, a documentary about South Baltimore poet Butchie Garfield (www.southsidesurvivor. com). David lives in Fells Point with his wife and daughter.

10-11

editor’s note: art of surprise

mondo balto: the baltimore aesthetic

from here to eternity

painters make the city their subject

neighborhoods: station north

10-11 12

Joan Jacobson For those that have been around Baltimore for a long time, Joan is a familiar figure. She gained notoriety for her coverage of Baltimore for most of her 28-year career at The Evening Sun and The Sun. She is co-author of the memoir Wised Up, to be released in November, about a guilt-ridden organized crime figure who becomes an FBI informant to redeem himself. It is the first book about organized crime in Baltimore. Joan is a self-described diehard city dweller who lives in Lauraville.

Melody Simmons Melody has been a Baltimore journalist for 25 years, starting as a general assignment reporter for The Evening Sun. She later moved to the metropolitan staff of The Sun, where she covered education, politics, suburban life and wrote a weekly column, “Intrepid Commuter,” about the frustrations of Baltimore driving. Today, in addition to free-lance writing, she is a reporter for WYPR.

14-16

t/k 18-19

Tom Chalkley

Kelly Parisi

Tom Chalkley

David Morely

encounter: outlaw art Joan Jacobson

crack down! Joan Jacobson

state of the arts: the creative alliance Melody Simmons and Tracy Durkin

marian house: towering strength for women in need Melody Simmons

18-19

sankofa dance theater reaches back to move forward Anne Haddad

20-21

growing talent from TWIGS

22-23

polemic on posters

Joan Jacobson

Emily Pohl-Weary

the robin hood of illegal signs

urbanite café

authentic experience: what lies beneath?

Joan Jacobson

Melody Simmons Ann Wiker It is great to have Ann working on the Urbanite team. If you frequent cafes around town and note the local art hanging on the wall, chances are that Ann had something to do with it. Ann began Art Exposure Inc. four years ago to give local artists more exhibit opportunities and to bring art into the daily lives of Baltimoreans. An oil painter, Ann likes to squeeze time in each week at her studio painting sunlit outdoor scenes.

slamicide at xando Kelly Parisi

Cover photo by Helen Sampson, with embellishment by Adam Stab.

The Art of Surprise My favorite story about art censorship in Baltimore begins at the U.S. District Courthouse on Lombard Street. No, it’s not a censorship case heard by a federal judge. It’s a story about the judges who believed in censorship, who tried to send a federally commissioned sculpture to the scrap yard before it was installed outside the courthouse in 1977. I love this story, of course, for its irony. The judges who tried to banish the sculpture by New York artist George Sugarman are the very people we depend on to uphold free expression in the United States of America. Imagine the same judges being asked to decide the case of government employees seeking to censor a commissioned artwork from the tax-financed building where they worked. How would the judges rule — if they only looked in the mirror? The Sugarman sculpture is called “Baltimore Federal,” but I call it the “Art of Surprise” because the whimsical, abstract and colorful design is not what you would expect outside a federal courthouse where accused murderers and drug dealers are tried and defended. Each time I walk by the courthouse, I am pleasantly surprised to see Sugarman’s sculpture still standing after the fuss and outrage of 28 years ago. If it were removed, I would miss it more than any other public work of art in this city — not because it’s the work of a major American sculptor — but because of what it symbolizes: the freedom of expression we should enjoy in this country. “Baltimore Federal” also says more to me about the people who tried to censor it than what the artist intended. In 1976, the judges’ crusade caused an embarrassing national controversy. Incredulous artists from across the country rose to Sugarman’s defense while Baltimore’s chief federal judge, Edward S. Northrop, called the work “three pieces of garbage with a worm crawling through it” in The Evening Sun. He rallied the FBI, the Secret Service and the Baltimore Police Department to deem the sculpture unsafe — a place where terrorists could hide bombs and muggers could lurk. For years in my naïve youth I walked around the airy sculpture trying to figure out where an attacker could hide. In 1976, Sugarman told The Sun, “I tried to make a sort of peaceable kingdom and they (the judges) are making it into a battleground.” The only politician to stand up for the artist and publicly accuse the judges of censorship was Democratic Rep. Parren J. Mitchell, a civil rights activist who knew all too well about white men who use their power to stifle free expression.

But by then, it was too late for Baltimore’s reputation in the art world. Charm City was branded a creative backwater, a not-ready-for-prime-time art town. The judges’ lame attempt at art censorship reminds me of a second blow for free expression in Baltimore. This, not as well known, occurred in the 1980s, when Sun Publisher Reg Murphy shredded several thousand copies of the Preakness section because he didn’t like the cover cartoon — a brilliantly irreverent drawing by artist Mike Ricigliano. It showed a Preakness celebration run amok, complete with a look-alike contest of Pimlico owner Frank DeFrancis (all contestants wore black shirts and white ties, only slightly resembling mafia hit men) and a Preakness balloon carrying an unlikely duo — archrivals Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and Gov. William Donald Schaefer. But of course, Reg “the sledge,” as some of his employees called him, controlled the “free press” that allowed him to censor what offended him. So no one outside The Sun and The Evening Sun saw the cartoon. At least my Art of Surprise remains standing today, a war monument to a battle won for artistic freedom. I hope Baltimore has become a more sophisticated art town during the past quarter century — for how art is admired and how it is tolerated. In this issue of Urbanite, we explore and celebrate Baltimore art today, the sacrifices and risks our artists take, and the inspiration they get from our great and struggling city. You will read about painters moved by Baltimore architecture and the graffiti “taggers” who deface it in the name of free expression. You will read about young poets eagerly competing in a poetry SLAM. You will meet families taking drumming and dance lessons with babies in their arms. You will find a public school arts program thriving amid a debilitating city school deficit. And you will see how art, in the form of four 7-foot-tall statues, gives spiritual nourishment to women whose lives have been broken. With the help of Creative Alliance at the Patterson Theater, Urbanite also spoke with incredibly talented local artists — some who moved to Baltimore for the arts scene — and heard what stimulates them about this blue-collar town. We were inspired by what we heard. We hope you will be, too. — Joan Jacobson, co-editor

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. — Albert Einstein

From here to eternity . . . time, and time again by Kelly Parisi

Art hath an enemy called ignorance. — Ben Jonson, Every Man Out of his Humour

Perfect is boring. — George Balanchine, Choreographer, to dancer Suzanne Farrell

There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere. — Bertrand Russell, philosopher

What filth really was, was a code word for a humor that was part hillbilly, part hippie, and part gay . . . which was really punk 10 years before it happened. — John Waters, Baltimore filmmaker

Are there a lot of punk hillbillies, really? — Jay Leno, TV talk-show host

In Baltimore, yes, and many of them are my dear friends. —Waters

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. — Michelangelo

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist. — Beethoven

I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists. — Marcel Duchamp

For several days, I have been pondering what to do with an unexpected windfall. Had it been money, I would have hauled it off to the bank and worried about the particulars later. But this sudden loot arrived from my cell phone provider in the form of “rollover minutes.” Apparently, I haven’t been chatting enough. Now, all those unspoken words have accumulated into sizeable time-booty. We procrastinators and idle time wasters have long hoped for such a reprieve. Not only can we now fritter away our minutes as usual, but at the end of the month, we can bank our unused minutes for future non-use. Just think, once upon a time money couldn’t buy time. Back in his day, Benjamin Franklin said: Time is money. Today, we say: Money is minutes. Get with the right plan and turn your wasted talk time into hours, weeks, decades! Good deals abound. The Procrastinator’s Plan offers an off-peak pack of rolloverable minutes, which means you can prolong calling X until sometime next summer, and then, assuming X will still take your call, you and X can talk nonstop for a week (10,080 minutes). On the Multi-Tasker’s Plan, the maximum monthly rollover is equivalent to the inclusive monthly minutes, the beauty being that you don’t have to accumulate endless amounts of talk time (10080. x = ∞.) Today, you can earn, waste, and save your anytime minutes simultaneously. The Give Me Something for Nothing Plan offers promotional bonus minutes (haggle for more), and the singular opportunity to buy your free phone on sale. Keep in mind, on all the above plans, if your phone is lost, stolen, damaged, or you have to swap your SIM card, your minutes will be downgraded to nanoseconds. The ramifications are staggering. Mute minutes are the new frequent flyer miles. When the cell phone industry takes over the airlines (which they will as soon as they figure out how to make phones fly), we’ll be trading our time for trips and other perks. I can hear it now. “Because I haven’t talked for a year, I’m flying free to India!” “Really? I upgraded my minutes to Mute Class, added a year to my life, and got eight-day weeks.” “Impressive. My mother’s on the Senior Silence Plan; she’s saving for immortality.” “What a deal! Who’s her provider?” Where does the time go? Now we know. Still, it’s hard to believe that so many of us are collecting unused minutes when it seems, in public at least, that the modern head has morphed into having one ear and one cell phone. But don’t confuse my bewilderment with ungratefulness. This conversation slacker is not complaining— saving time has never been so painless. As for planning for the future, my minutes manager called yesterday to talk it over. Go ahead, I said, I’m all ears.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. — Pablo Picasso

“Stand up,” said Martha Graham to a pupil (John Butler), hitting him on the back. “Keep your shoulders straight. Never forget — this is where the wings grow.” — Agnes deMille, choreographer

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful. — Alice Walker, poet

Painters Make the City Their Subject By Tom Chalkley

Baltimore is acrawl with artists — from traditional painters to avant-garde videographers — and has been for many years. Why? Consider the city’s low cost of living, its major art schools, cultural amenities, and access to major East Coast cities — plus the growing attraction of Baltimore’s existing art community. For some artists, Baltimore itself is a powerful attraction. For many of the painters and other visual artists who live here, inspiration surfaces in the city’s native architecture, social environment and natural setting (think rowhouses, backyard cookouts and Druid Hill Park). So many, that this article is little more than a glorified and incomplete list of them. We can divide the roster into two broad categories: artists who generally are naturalistic or realistic and others who make a point of stylizing their material – simplifying shapes, exaggerating colors, etc. This division is, of course, crude: Every artist imposes style on what they see, and many artists work in a range of styles. The godfather of the more-or-less realists is Raoul Middleman (see cartoon, p. 6), who has taught for many years at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Hugely productive, Middleman paints city and countryside alike, but his signature work depicts the city’s aging buildings and industrial structures, rendered in spontaneous brushwork. The work of Bill Tamburrino, a veteran federal housing employee, as well as an established painter, hews closer to optical facts of form and color, while subordinating detail to authentic light. Others in this painterly tradition include Katie Rickman (who does landscapes on metal chairs as well as canvas), Barbara Gruber, Greg Fletcher and Patricia Bennett. In their hands, Baltimore takes on the timeless qualities of French Impressionism. One of the city’s best-known painters is Crystal Moll, whose brightly colored canvases tend to focus on Baltimore’s most conventionally picturesque streetscapes. Moll’s work appeals to tourists and the public as well as her artistic peers, who admire her skill and sense of design. With more somber palettes, Michael Bereznoff and Mike Kronner look at street scenes far from the historic harbor. They share a taste for boiling down the details of a scene to essential forms without sacrificing a naturalistic feeling. Mark Karnes, by contrast, takes great interest in the minutiae of daily life. His interiors

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and street scenes — centered in his Rodgers Forge neighborhood — are intimate and atmospheric. A smaller number of Baltimore artists specialize more in human activity than in cityscape. Tony Shore, who grew up in Pigtown and Morrell Park, built his reputation on portraits and tableaus of people he knows. His style has evolved from caricature to sober realism — all rendered on black velvet. A number of “genre painters,” such as Bruce Norris and Charlie Newton, have specialized in street corner and bar scenes. For our second broad group of artists, the urban environment serves as a jumping-off point for graphic invention. Best known is Greg Otto, whose work has been heavily marketed in posters and postcards. Otto renders accurate perspectives of landmark buildings, then fills them in with high-key colors, often set off by black. While Otto’s approach is appealingly decorative, it is also intelligently conceived. Like Otto — but more so — David Thompson and Malia Furukawa radically simplify and flatten architectural forms and colors, but they prefer anonymous, commonplace scenes. The results verge on pure abstraction. Leslie Schwing, a very versatile artist, takes an almost expressionistic approach in recent cityscapes. Her buildings and city lights dissolve into broken geometric forms and lively patterns. Going still further

into the realm of abstraction, Tom Miller (best known for his book, Can a Coal Scuttle Fly?) applied vivid color and flat form to street scenes such as the recently restored mural on the east side of Harford Road and North Avenue. I could go on — and maybe I should. If I left your favorite artist out, let me know: www.urbanitebaltimore.com A number of the painters listed here have Web sites, including: Raoul Middleman (raoulmiddleman.com) Katie Rickman (kg.rickman.com) Leslie Schwing (amberlady.com/gallery) Greg Fletcher (amberlady.com/gallery) Crystal Moll (CrystalMoll.com). Others are represented by private art galleries, notably Craig Flinner (505 N. Charles St.); C. Grimaldis (523 N. Charles); Gomez (Meadow Mill, 3600 Clipper Mill Road) and Galerie Francoise ESF (2360 W. Joppa Road, Lutherville), and the Canton Gallery (2935 O’Donnell St.). Gallery exhibits rotate from month to month, but some locations (such as Flinner and Canton) have large stocks of artwork available for browsing. Tom Chalkley is a Baltimore cartoonist and illustrator.

NEIGHBORHOODS S

T A T

By David Morley On a Saturday night, the lobby of the Charles Theatre

— after it reopened in 1993 under the ownership of

looks like a scene from one of the art films that play

Buzz Cusack.

on its five screens.

“I didn’t see (buying the theater) as a lot of risk.

Stage lights give a soft glow to the exposed brick

If we could expand business, it would become more

walls and stone floor. Teen-agers with dyed green

profitable for all,” he said.

hair flit by, waiting for their parents to pick them up.

More films meant more moviegoers, and a seed

Twenty-somethings in polos and khakis escort high-

was planted for a boom in arts-friendly businesses.

heeled women in fur coats. Eight women sip cocktails,

The Everyman Theatre moved next door in 1996 and

waiting to dine at Tapas Teatro, a Spanish appetizer

Tapas Teatro joined the neighborhood in 2001.

bar next door. Young art students hock popcorn from

Across the street, Club Charles owner Joy Martin

a concession stand devoid of corporate logos. It’s a

watched the Charles North neighborhood decline for

scene from New York or San Francisco.

many years until it finally blossomed around her.

But we’re in Baltimore, hon.

Photo: Michael Kresko

“When the Charles Theatre closed, we thought

The theater is in the heart of the Station North

it was the death knell for the neighborhood,” said

Arts and Entertainment District, a 100-acre area

Martin, whose family has owned the lounge since

“I need some wrought-iron street lamps so people

in Baltimore’s midtown that includes the struggling

1950. Her club is a staple in the neighborhood, a

will feel safe coming to our businesses,” she said.

Greenmount West community, where artists have

favorite watering hole for visiting Hollywood actors

taken over abandoned buildings for studios.

and film celebrity John Waters.

In both neighborhoods, artists get tax breaks

If Cusack’s business investment saved the Charles

While she’s fighting to improve the neighborhood, Martin also is concerned that it could become so financially attractive it might lose its organic quirkiness

on art sales and property owners get tax discounts

North area, then Martin’s passion for her business

on renovated properties. In August, a Station North

ventures might be a stabilizing anchor. She already

report found 385 artists living and working in the

owns the Zodiac Restaurant, has recently bought

district. The Maryland Institute College of Art is

the hotel at Charles Street and North Avenue, and

converting the Jos. A. Bank building in the 100 block

is interested in purchasing other properties in the

the city make the arts district a reality, believes the

of E. North Ave. into studio space for its graduate

district.

neighborhood will maintain its eccentric character.

school.

Despite her efforts to safeguard the

The Charles Theatre was pivotal to the area’s success — and subsequent arts district designation

S E ’ O R M I L T B A

T A R

C E TH NOR 1711

H TH C

“We don’t want the Outback Steakhouse in our neighborhood,” she said. But Kirby Fowler, a land-use lawyer who helped

“This area has history to it. The artists were

neighborhood, she’s fighting a war on many fronts —

already here,” he said. “I think it will always operate a

especially crime. And she’s battling the city for help.

little under the radar.”

M A N E C I

S E L HAR 410-

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that Baltimoreans love.

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IT’S NO EASY TRIP TO ADAM STAB’S GRAFFITI HIDEAWAY

ENCOUNTER: A D A M S T A

at the city’s eastern edge. Adam slips on two sets of gloves: one latex to protect his skin and a heavy pair, with the fingers cut out, to keep his hands warm. Follow him through the woods along a stream to a railroad track, then look for oncoming trains. Tread quickly along the railroad ties to the underside of the immense spans of Interstate 95. In the morning shadows of the interstate, the sight is startling: tremendous paintings in brilliant colors cover every concrete surface where graffiti writers from Baltimore and beyond have commandeered the abutments. This museum of outlaw art runs the length of a city block — on both sides of the track. Adam leads the way through mud, a junked carburetor and a rusted jeep skeleton. This place, he says, is known as “jeep country” for the all-terrain vehicles that etch the nearby hills. This glorious wasteland is Adam’s home away from home. Gingerly stepping over frozen mud and broken bottles, he fondly identifies every tag writer’s work, like a proud docent at the Walters. One writer, he says, traveled from Los Angeles. Another, a local daredevil known as APES, used a 30-foot roller to paint his red tag larger than anyone else’s. Adam stops at one of his unfinished paintings. Pulling the top from a can of green paint, he shakes it and gets to work. He is as meticulous with his paint can as a calligrapher with a tiny brush. Throwing his body into each spray, he’s in absolute control of every clean line and angle, outlining his tag in 3D. In the shadows under the rumbling interstate, he paints anonymously to his heart’s content.

By Joan Jacobson photography by Helen Sampson

AT 34, ADAM “STAB” IS A MASTER OF AN ART FORM for the young and defiant. This veteran Baltimore graffiti “writer” knows what it takes to be baptized in his intrepid art world: True graffiti writers must work in the anonymous night. They must be stoic when their paintings are expunged in broad daylight. They must risk arrest. But only the most faithful graffiti artists will rise up with their paint cans to write again and again and again. Adam “Stab,” outlaw artist, has done it all. His tag, “Stab” (not his real last name), has spray-painted all over Baltimore for the past 20 years. The letters of his tag name give Stab his artistic freedom. Sometimes the letters are three-dimensional, as if he carved them from red and silver blocks and set them down, slouching against each other like bored teen-agers. Other times, they look like angular letters of a Hebrew alphabet, resting like brave illegal aliens on a wall of an abandoned Baltimore warehouse. And sometimes the letters undulate from rapturous arches and lunges that almost dance off the freight car he has just spray-painted. Stab is as fascinated by his chosen art as he is by its history. “Tagging,” he says, started in Philadelphia and the New York City subway to empower city kids too young to drink, drive or vote. Graffiti writing was handed down to Baltimore writers through a New York City subway painting crew called “Rolling Thunder Writers” when one of its leaders, a man named Revolt, came to the Maryland Institute College of Art in the 1980s. For Stab, his graffiti name is historic. He inherited it from a graffiti pioneer when he was a teen-ager. And for the past two decades, he has plastered this “tag” on public benches, giant walls under expressways, old industrial warehouses and freight cars. Train cars are the latest illegal canvases of graffiti writers and are a virtual traveling art exhibit. Writers in other cities can see Adam Stab’s tags in their local freight yards when the cars roll in from Baltimore. Lately, Stab has moved to smaller — and more legal — canvases. He paints on old rowhouse windows — after they have been removed from rowhouses — and circular saw blades. He also has painted a few cars for Toyota and Nissan. (Yes, he says, corporate America has embraced graffiti in the new century.) But when Adam Stab gets the itch, he goes home to graffiti writing. “Urbanite” recently interviewed him: about this form of

expression and the risks he takes for t

OU T L AW A RT T R A G RESTIN

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that gave them “no recognition for their art,” he said. For years, he stored photographs of their work in a barn behind his house. He knew it was tough and risky work. They spray-painted at night and had accomplices hold flashlights so they could see and ladders so they could climb to reach their broad canvases that easily spanned 20 feet under a bridge. “It was an expression of art that caught your eye. It was very creative, what they did. Until you knew their culture, you didn’t understand what they were doing,” he said. In the 1980s, Kincaid was part of the first citywide effort to crack down on vandalism, including graffiti, from public property. The Baltimore City Council banned the sale of spray paint to minors in 1984. Police saw the street writers as hoodlums, not artists. A 1986 Police Department memo described graffiti tagging as a “crime which some misguided individuals would argue is an art form or an expression of one self.”

Jack Kincaid, retired Baltimore City Police Sergeant

crack down! By Joan Jacobson

WHEN JACK KINCAID WAS A YOUNG POLICE OFFICER,

he went undercover, slipping on a pair of jeans and a wild T-shirt and heading to the Marble Bar under the old Congress Hotel off Howard Street. There he found it easy to track the culprits by eavesdropping on young men with loose tongues who mingled at the bar. Kincaid was delighted to discover criminal evidence painted on the bar’s walls, like fingerprints in today’s criminal data bases. Those walls in the 1980s were covered with the “tags” of graffiti artists, boldly painted letters that didn’t form identifiable words to Kincaid, but led him to the vandals who spray-painted identical tags on public property under the Jones Falls Expressway and inside buildings at the Johns Hopkins University. While Kincaid was out to arrest the men for vandalism — most got probation and did community service — he also was fascinated by the risks they took. “It amazed me how people would take that great length and spend that kind of money to put a tag on and not be seen,” said Kincaid, now retired from the Police Department. And because their actions were illegal, they were anonymous outside their small group. Far left: Baltimore City’s chief graffiti Today, still marvels those young men chose a form of painting fighter, Kincaid Edith Dotson, otherwisehow known

Kincaid remembers the lengths the city took to remove it. City workers used a chemical cleaner called “GP-66,” which got its name from its inventor, a man from Greek Town. “GP” stood for “Greek Power,” said Kincaid. The “66” was the number of times the inventor mixed chemicals before he got the right formula for removing spray paint. Today, the city’s fight against graffiti continues with sandblasters and paint. Baltimore’s Department of Public Works reported last summer that it removed 1.7 million square feet of graffiti in the fiscal year that ended June 30. The city’s most notable graffiti fighter is 10-year veteran Edith Dotson, known to graffiti artists as “the buff lady.” Dotson and her graffiti removal team work full time to erase the “tags” of writers on residential and commercial buildings and on public property. On one particularly cold morning their sandblaster froze, so they opened a can of white paint and rolled over a tag on a wall overlooking Martin Luther King Boulevard. It was a wall all too familiar to Dotson and her crew. “We did this wall maybe a month ago,” she said. A tag writer’s persistence left Dotson unfazed. She figured she has erased graffiti from “thousands and thousands of walls” and undoubtedly will clean many thousand more. “I love it,” she says. “It’s exciting and it’s a good public service.”

as “the buff lady”, image by Jefferson Jackson Steele Right: Member of Department of Public Work’s Graffiti Removal Team, image by Jefferson Jackson Steele

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URBANITE CANVASES THE CREATIVE ALLIANCE

STATE OF THE ARTS

By Melody Simmons and Tracy Durkin photographs by Harold E. McCray

Creative Alliance Conversationalists in order of appearance: Cornel Rubino is a 25-year painter, educator, curator, lecturer and illustrator whose clients include The New Yorker, The Washington Post and the Walters Art Museum. A native New Yorker, he recently moved to Baltimore from Atlanta because he and his wife, Linda Ridings, thought it a great place to live and make art. Megan Hamilton co-founded the Creative Alliance and is program director. Megan also co-founded Link: A Critical Journal on the Arts in Baltimore and the World. Zoe Charlton is a professor of art at American University in Washington and a resident artist at the Patterson Residency for Creative Alliance. Gnomes, swimming pools and the middle class are topics she explores in her artwork. Jed Dodds has been artistic director at the Creative Alliance since 1999. He is responsible for exhibitions, artist programs and the recently developed residency program. Janeann Dill is an artist, filmmaker and scholar in experimental film/animation theory. She describes her films as “painting in time.” Kristen Anchor is director of Creative Alliance MovieMaker, founding member of the Charm City Kitty Club and curator of an outdoor silent film series at Elk Run Vineyards. She gives tours of her home, the Museum of Faux Finishes, in the best unknown neighborhood in Southeast Baltimore, Orangeville. Mark Stansberry runs a small 2D animation studio in Highlandtown, where he produces television commercials and a children’s animated television show. He is working on animated “shorts” that will be shown at the Hillendale Cinemaplex in Towson. Susan Gould is director of the Baltimoregallery, a nonprofit gallery in Greektown that is devoted to photography. Christy Bergland is a visual artist and art therapist in private practice. Christy says her work in both areas can be conceptualized as “visual energy toward the rapprochement of opposites.” Claes Gabriel is a painter whose sculptures are displayed at galleries locally. He has a studio in Highlandtown.

If Baltimore were a canvas, how would it be painted? That curiosity recently drew Urbanite to Highlandtown to meet with an eclectic group of artists at Creative Alliance, the fabulous new arts palace that's taken root in the former Patterson Theater and transformed Southeast Baltimore into an arts district. To the artists, the city's blue-collar base, the daily grind of life on the waterfront and in miles of rowhouses, and even the tension of persistent crime and grime, all provide inspiration and a motivation to create. "It’s a working artist city," explains painter Zoe Charlton. Such energy has revved up the local contemporary arts scene to the point where, they say, it's ready for prime time. Much is centered at the Creative Alliance, a 9-year-old arts nonprofit that started in a Fells Point rowhouse as a selfdescribed "innovative hybrid of gallery, performance space and artist guild." As the alliance grew, it forged partnerships with community groups and local businesses and, in 2001, moved into the Patterson, refurbished with artist studios, galleries and a theater. With movies, programs and exhibits that change daily, it's a valuable addition to the local arts scene. Let's face it, where else could 100 Elvises, painted screens, a quirky Halloween lantern parade and local documentaries about duckpin bowling and Formstone combine and reach genius? Read … and get inspired.

Urbanite: WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT BALTIMORE’S ART SCENE? Cornel: I’ve just come from Atlanta, where there’s a vibrant art community and where there are literally dozens of healthy galleries that support many artists in Atlanta and only one nonprofit space for contemporary art. In Baltimore, there are three or four nonprofit galleries and just a small grouping of galleries. Right off the bat, that was unique about it, but not necessarily healthy. Urbanite: WHAT IS THE RELATION BETWEEN THAT AND THE COMMUNITY? Cornel: The next step would be a retail gallery where people can come and see works. It legitimizes young artists and gives places like the (Baltimore Museum of Art) an opportunity to see that you have taken that step — that there’s more serious interest in your work other than nonprofits. Zoe: I think part of what Cornel’s touched upon grows out of the history of Baltimore’s contemporary arts community, where over the past 25 years, the artists have banded together to create institutions they have needed. And because Baltimore has a history of being a predominantly blue-collar town, (it is) perceived (as a) cultural backwater (where) the caliber of work produced wasn’t on par with other cities — which, of course, was just flat-out wrong. Really wrong. There’s been writing done that theorized that because there’s not a gallery scene here that was a liberating context because artists were not competing for gallery space. That liberated them. Of course you have economic issues, but (it) liberated them to create very political, very straight-faced work. Urbanite: IS THERE A SPECIAL ENERGY IN THIS TOWN? HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE IT?

Zoe: Before my husband and I moved here, I thought, Baltimore? Why are we moving to Baltimore? What’s there? Then when we started researching and we knew we were coming to the Creative Alliance, we saw that what people were telling me was it’s the best place to make work, and because of that workingclass background, it’s a working artist city. And that’s what makes me feel really comfortable here. There’s a lot of urban excitement about Baltimore. A lot of things are accessible and that energizes me. Jed: I think it’s important that this is a town where people get things done. Part of it is the affordability, and part of it has to do with the scale of the city. This is enough of a city that it has urban issues that it deals with, but it’s also a small enough city where the solutions are within grasp for any individual who is

Creative Alliance conversationalists from left to right: Kristen Anchor, Christy Bergland, Claes Gabriel, Mark Stansberry, Megan Hamilton, Jed Dodds.

willing to put the time in. The fact that a group of committed individuals can come together and found an organization that a couple of short years later would open a building like the Patterson is really remarkable. I don’t think (that) would be possible in a lot of other cities. Megan: I think the other advantage is that Baltimore has access to other major centers. You could live here and know what’s going on in New York, Richmond and Washington. And there are a lot of either nonprofit or underground spaces, whether it’s University Galleries, Gallery 4, there’s a whole, substantial kind of under-the-radar, performance hours/gallery/salon scene that is out there. So if you wanted to graduate from the (Maryland Institute College of Art) and hang out here for a while, you could certainly have a pretty energetic time being involved with those spaces and spaces like ours for a time. Urbanite: TALK ABOUT THE BLUE-COLLAR ISSUE. HOW IS THAT INSPIRING? Janeann: People work. And there’s that energy here that everybody is working. I have had an artist residency in the past in the most luxurious city in the world, Paris, and people were working every day and you can feel it — it makes you want to get up and work. And being here in particular, there’s a place where your work’s going to be seen. And for a person who has been in and out of the gallery scene in lots of places, I prefer this. Urbanite: HOW CAN A PLACE LIKE THE CREATIVE ALLIANCE BEST TAP INTO

Christy Bergland: We’re pulling on all of these communities to come here and perform and let other people see and experience. This is the connection to bring these groups together. CA is one of the ways to do this.

THE ENERGY OF A COMMUNITY AND DEVELOP THAT?

Kristen Anchor: We have a huge experimental film community and a very strong narrative commercial film community and we also have a lot of Hollywood and HBO filming here so a lot of people get work that way and we also have at (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) a department of experimental filmmakers. So what we’re trying to do here is to gather the energy from all that and use it to make it a huge nexus of the community. Cornel: It seems like film is the most successful art form here in Baltimore. There’s an audience, a really healthy audience for it. The audience is interesting. Here, the CA, you have to stand to see things. Sometimes, there’s obscure films, but a lot of things going on in film. Mark Stansberry: Before the CA, there was no real place to focus and show work. I’ve never shown work in this city, maybe once at the BMA, until I came here. It gave everybody a new center to show. Before the alliance, I didn’t have an outlet, but I have a foothold now here. Baltimore initially to me was not an active, noticeable scene — but now I see that it is because it’s like it was all hidden. But when you come here, it’s like it’s all there. It’s been underlined. The alliance has made it where people get together and there is a community of filmmakers and artists who want to come out and show stuff and find there is a community. Megan: One of the founding precepts of the CA is that instead of being geography neutral from our founding, we’ve had a commitment to a geographical place. And that commitment was initially Fells Point, but now that we’re at the Patterson, it’s been broadened to Southeast Baltimore … so what we’ve been talking about is developing communities of artists, but also part of the work we’re doing here is trying to reach out to neighborhood people. We have been able to pull into this facility the Congolese population, the Balkan population, and we’ve hosted a Baltimore mandolin orchestra concert that was an Italian holiday. What we’ve also found is that artists really dig that and ... when we have the Eastern European egg-painting workshop, artists form the backbone of the volunteers that make that happen. So what I think part of what’s really been working, part of the artists who come to Baltimore, are drawn to that accessibility with the community. It’s grass-rootsy. Susan Gould: That’s been the strength of Baltimore and that’s what has set Baltimore apart from so many other cities is the incredible diversity of neighborhoods. It’s also what has worked against them because these neighborhoods for the last 100 to 150 years have been what made it so strong.

Cornel: The CA is like a neighborhood. When my wife came to town, we came to CA to see some movies and we just kept coming back. Megan: They watched 42 out of 46 movies at the Maryland Documentary Festival. (laughter) Cornel: This was home. Urbanite: HOW DO YOU RELATE TO THE OTHER ART SCENES IN THE AREA? Megan: That’s one of the cool things about Baltimore is “welcome to the village.” You know, everybody knows everybody. And there’s a great sense of collaboration and support among the different art institutions. Doreen Bolger, when she was appointed the new director of the BMA, had lunch with the CA staff the third week she was here. The mayor has a town hall meeting with the artist community once a year. And there’s a climate now that’s never existed before with the development of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance led by Nancy Haragan, where there’s an avenue for those institutions to try to lobby for the recognition that we deserve. Urbanite: WHERE DO YOU SEE THIS PARTNERSHIP GOING? Megan: What needs to happen is we need to work on increased funding for the arts in Baltimore and we need to, hopefully with some leadership from the mayor, have some advocacy efforts so that the broader community realizes what we’ve been contributing to the city. The CA has a whole list of people who have moved here in part because of advocacy. There’s been some discussion about how do we break the Baltimore arts scene? What do we do? Seattle had grunge. What do we have? There’s been some informal discussion of that. Cornel: I’m excited about someone like Chris Gilbert, the new contemporary curator at the BMA, coming here to the CA and ”jurying” a show. I don’t know if that kind of thing has happened before here but one of the things that is encouraging is that it happens in a lot of cities, especially smaller cities, where you have museums giving up a little bit on the locals. And so where you have people like Doreen and Chris come and give their stamp of approval, it to me is very exciting. Urbanite: WHAT IS THE POLITICAL CLIMATE WITH CITY HALL? IS THAT A GOOD BRIDGE? DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE GOOD SUPPORT?

Megan: I think to speak to the climate, that there has been a little bit of a turning point — 20 years ago, Artscape booked

all people from out of state and people assumed Baltimore’s art sucked. And that is no longer the working assumption. And I think with projects like the Patterson help. Since we formulated the concept for this building, real estate values have stabilized and then increased, so I think that, yes, there has been a change in terms of people being more open to recognizing the value of the arts. Jed: There has been a buy-in. The mayor certainly has listened to these ideas (from the) arts community and that is an incredibly valuable thing. To a certain extent, his hands have been tied by the amount of money he has to play with and the certain fact that the city has been in a crisis situation by the crime and drug problems. Susan: For me, running a nonprofit, we do a lot of art education. At my art photography gallery, it’s underwritten by a lot of grants. Megan: In terms of activism, for the last 25 years, artists in Baltimore have gone into the streets and worked with kids. It’s very inspiring. Long ago, the birth of the SoWeBo festival was actually a benefit for something called the Street School — where Jack Tripper and Monica Brewer got in the streets and started working with kids and that was their fund-raiser. Even somebody like Rebecca Yenawine looked down her alley and said, Man, these kids don’t have anything to do, and brought the kids into her house ... and she’s trained as a painter and has started a mentoring program in the city for art and kids. So Baltimore has really been blessed. There are plenty of kids out there that have been touched by artists who have taken a grassroots role. Urbanite: TELL US MORE ABOUT THE OPEN MINDS CLASS. Jed: Open Minds has been CA’s main kids education program. It began as a summer program, a program with the Enoch Pratt (Free Library) and the idea was to teach reading and art at the same time. Since that time, we’ve expanded on the program and it’s year-round. We had 300 kids last year. It’s a high-quality arts program, the kind that you’d get in a private school. It started in a church basement with six kids and we had 12 programs last semester for 300 students. It’s been really important. Private art education efforts are important in the city. These kids have a tough life. Christy: I’m an artist first and an art therapist second. What is critical here about working with kids in the arts is to have people who are committed to their own creative process actively doing it, working with kids. There are some very good art educators out there. I’m talking about fundamental people who experience art as a survival with that passion and soul working with children. This is critical. This is what we want to do, is provide jobs for working artists to work with kids.

Christy Bergland

Mark: I only know what I’ve seen. I think in regard to kids what would make a big difference is to know that you have an outlet. I have seven children. Three often hang out at my studio. And they feed off of what I do and what my friends do. It has made them more complete individuals, happier and more in touch with themselves. It can change people. I have some friends who are thuggish … and they came and saw what I was doing and they liked it. Saw they could do something else other than what they were doing. It can do a whole lot.

Urbanite: BECAUSE THE CITY HAS PROBLEMS WITH CRIME AND DRUGS, HOW CAN ART HELP KIDS WHO LIVE IN NEIGHBORHOODS THAT ARE STRUGGLING?

Megan: If you go to those neighborhoods, there’s not a lot going on. One of the main issues of the drug problem is it’s the only way you can make money in the ’hood. That’s kind of a huge problem and we don’t have a solution to that. We do have a solution in that we create an alternative thing to do. Susan: My gallery is in a neighborhood. I have anywhere from three to 10 kids, every opening they are there. They come in every afternoon on their way home from school. I don’t have enough for them to do. But they are there. They are sponges. These are boys between the ages of 9 and 13. The older boys wander in if it’s cold and we sit and talk. We had an exhibit of their work and one parent out of 15 kids came to see their work. Megan: The kids know — they light up and think they are the “baddest” thing when you show their stuff. Part of what the CA does is to give them an exhibition at the end. Jed: Working with kids and a lot of talk about parents, aside from Open Minds, we do a lot of community art activities that serve as a bridge between children and their parents. Halloween lantern parade, there’s a community building this incredible event. Takes place every year in the park. Kids and parents, everybody works together. Often find the parents find they are just going to watch their kids make a lantern, but soon they are into it. Art is about building community and connecting different kinds of people and different ages of people. Urbanite: WHAT WERE YOUR FIRST ART EXPOSURES WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP?

Claes Gabriel: My father was a painter and when he passed we moved to the U.S. to start over. The passion you’re talking about … I went to MICA for painting and got (a) master’s in art education and took time off to travel. When I got back to Baltimore (I) thought it would be a good idea to mix art and education. I know for a fact, I have a wife and a kid, I’m not going to make a living as an artist. I like Baltimore because it gets me to focus on my art. I really appreciate Baltimore, it gets you to focus. An artist is someone who is trying to learn about himself. Urbanite: WHAT ROLE WILL ART PLAY IN BUILDING A BETTER BALTIMORE? Christy: I got into art therapy because I saw how kids were using art to talk about themselves in the classroom. If you don’t have that, you’re going to have violence. I’m not saying the arts are going to turn Baltimore completely around, but it is essential in helping kids learn how to manage who they are, how they feel and how they express who they are in a very fundamental way. Kristen: I think the cultural art scene is essential to helping people in a city. It’s about the greater good, but about having positive and visual experiences in life.

Megan: What I’d encourage people is if they really want to think about the contributions artists have made over the last 20 years, they can envision the skyline of the city and pull out all the institutions that arts made in Baltimore. They can pull out School 33 (Art Center), they can take out the Contemporary (Museum), they can take out (Maryland Art Place) MAP, the (Baltimore) Theatre Project, the Patterson. The list would go on and you’d end up with a very empty place. You’d have the Water Taxi and the Cheesecake Factory. So I think people need to think about that. And the other thing — I’ve heard all people say we’re going to turn Baltimore into the digital harbor, we’re going to get a football team and it’s going to turn the city around. You know Richard Florida (author of The Creative Class: And How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure Community and Everyday Life) has done a lot of studies on that sort of thinking and (found) that people don’t really move to cities because of a football team. I think (in) Baltimore, we have a kicking contemporary arts community ... that is really funny, accessible and has a great infrastructure and we should really run with that. That thing with St. Petersburg was really great, but we’re not St. Petersburg. I think maybe we should come up with something that’s ... more specific to what we’re all about. And I think the city can take that and just run with it. Take something that really showcases arts and the community and go with it. I think we should market the city for what it really is: “This is a killer town with an amazing arts community.” Urbanite: IS THERE ONE THING THAT COULD TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL SPECIFICALLY?

Megan: For a city our size, our cultural resources are extraordinary. But to me what’s really more interesting are the kind of contemporary offbeat things that happen here: I think if you can come together around something like the lantern parade or the water ballet it would be great, things like that would showcase the Baltimore contemporary arts community that would be multi-institutional and embraced by the broader community from the mayor to the business community, etc. Cornel: Elvis did that in December. In December, I went to Night of 100 Elvises, which was ... very unique. I ran into (Walters Art Museum Director) Gary Vikan and every Hamden hon I can think of and every class, every type, all having fun. All celebrating music in an environment that was funky, wild and perfect. Megan: And I think those are the things we should be promoting on a national level. Things like that are very Baltimore and unique. Like Rick Shelley’s Theatre Serenissima — a 12-seat miniature puppet theater in a brownstone in Reservoir Hill. I mean, I challenge you to find anything else like that on this planet. I don’t think you’ll do it. Jed: I think Baltimore is poised to make a change … the world is ready for it. The arts community in Baltimore is healthy. The consciousness of Baltimore has begun to rise nationally within the artists’ community. I think that what Baltimore has always had — which has been its blessing and its curse — has been its firm sense of its uniqueness. That breeds a certain kind of aesthetic that is different from the generic aesthetic of the art world of postmodern art that can be from anywhere and that is what Baltimore has. Part of what will be interesting to see if that involves Baltimore joining the rest of the world. The unique effect of Baltimore is played out in the kitsch factor. It has to do with a stubborn sense of place. Real things happen in real places and they don’ t happen in a vacuum. Artists working here in Baltimore are grounded in a real sense of place. And I think that gives them a strength that is different and enviable from what artists have in other places. Cornel: I think that getting back to the kids and the whole thing of connecting art to the community is that ultimately, we all just want to engage. And that’s a basic need we have as individuals. Children, especially, they want to engage. And so I think the

real connect will be engagement between the art community and the rest of the community. It’s happening. Certainly there’s a reason why poetry and hip-hop (are) is so popular in poor communities, because they are talking to each other. There’s a voice, they’re engaging back. This is a very important thing. How can that make a better city? “Oh, gosh, because we would all be talking. Talking is a good thing. We would be eating cake as opposed to potato chips. “ Janeann: I was reading this morning and came across this ... proverb. It goes like this: “Birds of unhappiness will always fly over your head, but you can keep them from nesting.” I think that’s where the arts come. The thing that’s so interesting about our American culture is that we talk about the arts as if they are not part of the culture. And the thing about European or Indian or any other culture than this self-consciousness we hold as Americans, is that art is an essential part of the culture. And to believe otherwise is just foolish and there’s history to show. Susan: I think art and artists are very important because the artist is really engaged with the world around them and then reflects that in a variety of ways. And when someone views that art, they are then engaged and their perspective is broadened. When someone is better educated and informed and has a broader experience in someone else’s eyes, they are more aware and a better citizen. They are more informed. I think broadening the perspective of old and young, rich and poor, that’s the job of art and makes for a better city. That works with kids and corporations, and that’s where we need to engage. Corporations need to be buying our art for their headquarters here and not getting some designer to go to New York or somewhere else. And City Hall should have art for their offices. We should have shows there. There are ways to engage the community in the arts. It’s very important for the arts. Megan: In a city where there’s racism and fear — for people to gather in a space and share their culture is really important. Susan: When I first started the gallery, the kids used to hang out (on) the corner and I noticed the graffiti. I thought, What am I going to do now? So I went and bought a bunch of ... markers and the next time I heard them out there, I opened the door and said, “You know, this looks really bad and this is what I want you to do: I want you to do my whole door and the doorway, too. Write whatever you think.” They were ... literally blown away. And so I stood out there and they started drawing on the door. And the neighbors were stunned. And I explained it to them. That this was an art gallery and I wanted them to do this all over my door. It was great. They never graffitied my door again. It really worked. But that’s a job of an art gallery. The face of art opens you to think of it in a completely different way — they weren’t doing something against me, they were doing it for me and that’s exactly the same thing. It’s all perspective. It’s all context. So it made them think in a different way.

Mark Stansberry

B Y

M E L O D Y

S I M M O N S

MARIAN

HOUSE

MARIAN HOUSE TOWERING STRENGTH FOR WOMEN IN NEED There’s irony on this side street in Waverly, a place tucked neatly behind old Eastern High School, slightly off the beaten path of 33rd Street. Amid the typical grit of Baltimore row-houses, you’ll see a small opening. Then a courtyard. Look closer — a path leads to a peaceful place where park benches, a water fountain and flowering trees invite introspection. Looking up, you’ll see why: Four powerful women stand guard, sculpted from black and white marble chiseled in a workshop a world away, their faces strong and steadfast. Silently, powerfully, they echo sentiment so relevant, yet often elusive, to everyday life: Trust. Patience. Integrity. Honesty. This is Marian House, a Baltimore nonprofit dedicated to helping troubled women re-establish their lives. They come here after serving a prison sentence or from a stint in drug or alcohol rehab. Once enrolled in the program, they take on a schedule that includes job training, life skills classes, employment and a routine designed to boost self-esteem, the seeds of a normal life. All under the watchful eye of the regal marble models. A diary in the courtyard tells of the healing. “God, Thank U 4 the strength to live N learn again …” “I just want to say thank you to Marian House for giving my mother the strength to stay strong, clean and a place to stay.” “The water alone is a soul soother…the sound of the water gentles me … the water glistening in the sunlight is hypnotic as it rises and falls.” Kathy Lyon, a Marian House employee, said most of the residents had never experienced art and its power to provoke before taking up residence at 949 Gorsuch Ave. In the program that typically lasts eight months, though, they have become involved and inspired — by each other, by their action and by the strength of the statues. It’s not uncommon to hear the women singing while visiting

the courtyard. Others are inspired to dance, swirling to celebrate a newfound freedom and a life transfused with hope. “The one thing I have noticed is poetry and song writing as a result,” Lyon said of the impact of the art. “What’s happening here is something valuable and beautiful. This is spiritual food. This is to nurture their souls.” The statues, called caryatids, were designed by artist Claire McArdle as part of an expansion of Marian House that added a building and the courtyard to the nonprofit that was opened in 1982 by nuns from the School Sisters of Notre Dame and the Mercy Sisters orders. McArdle, inspired by the mission of the program, met with residents and Marian House board members to gain a sense of the potential power the program offers. She created models of the caryatids and presented them to the board, which at first debated whether to fund the $100,000 project. “It was expensive and some said we could be using this money for other services,” Lyon recalled. “I was doubtful at first, too.” But the commitment was made and McArdle traveled to her studio in Carrara, Italy, to begin chiseling what would soon become four new landmarks. Each caryatid was formed from a thick slab of marble that weighed 6 tons. When they were shipped and mounted in the foundation of the expansion center in June 2001, it was almost like the final pieces of a puzzle on the complex process of recovery had been found and locked in. “These statues come out of the rough marble and walk forward,” Lyon said. “They have been uplifting. They have helped foster positive self-esteem. This is a beautiful place and it’s well-kept. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Marian House resident Donna Jackson agrees. At 38, she’s the mother of three, ages 4, 9, 11, and a recovering alcoholic. “I look at the statues’ faces and I feel a sense of spirituality,” she said. “I don’t know a whole lot about art, but to me they represent something you can live by every day. It represents that, regardless to what people say about

women, we are strong human beings and we are able to overcome any of our obstacles.” In the larger Waverly community, that message has reverberated. Myles B. Hoenig, president of the Waverly Improvement Association, says the Marian House statues have stunned many a passer-by — by their beauty and their strength. Not all who live in the 2,000-plus Waverly residences know that the caryatids exist, Hoenig, acknowledged. Their art form and impact is not a guarded community secret, but rather a neighborhood’s new, subtle signature. “It’s different from what you’d normally expect in an urban community,” Hoenig said. “But they almost seem like they give off a calming effect as you drive by. They overlook Waverly like a spirit guiding a community. They are matriarchal … four women looking out and protecting it.” The sculpture garden is open to the public each day from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. daily. Many non residents who have stopped at the site — some curious, others in need of answers — have said that one visit proves there’s strength on this back street in a well-worn city neighborhood and that yes, these caryatids can inspire and help mend a broken soul, Lyon said. Trust. Patience. Integrity. Honesty. “Just for today, I am grateful for being alive. I am blessed to be able to think clear without the use of a drug regulating my mind. Thank you God for your many blessing and for your strength to make it through this day.”

by Melody Simmons

SANKOFA D A NCE T HE AT E R RE A CHE S B A CK T O MO V E F OR WA RD

BY ANNE HADDAD

Kibibi Ajanku, who co-founded Sankofa with Kauna, her husband. This dance and drumming company further interprets Sankofa as “reaching back to move forward,” she says, reaching back not just

he maestro stands before his company of drummers and dancers on the stage, his right hand waving a baton to lead the African

groove of percussion, his left arm cradling his 6-month-old son. In the rehearsal hall of Sankofa Dance Theater of Baltimore, plenty of

arms can care for this baby while his mama dances on the stage and his baba leads the rehearsal. A playroom offers a broad old sofa where he could kick and stretch under loving eyes while the company practices a West African drum call – an irresistible rhythm that beckons members of a village – or an audience, clearing their heads and spirits for the dance and music. Dancer Mya Ajanku went into labor with this child at a Sankofa performance in Harrisburg, Pa. She was not on stage that night, but her husband, Jumoke Ajanku, was drumming. They finished the show and, without lingering, drove back to Baltimore, where Chikuyu was born hours later. This beat he listens to now goes to the beginning of his consciousness. He is one of the many “company children” of Sankofa, which is first a professional dance troupe, but one that weaves family, art, culture, community and heritage into a seamless fabric — on stage and off. The dance and music tell the story of life. After the drum call, codirector Kauna Mujamal and Yusuf Yahya perform a frekoba, a traditional West African dance that evokes the spirit of childhood play. They leap like boys, knees springing up to their chests, arms propelling them across the floor. This frekoba is part of a large concert piece – “Life Forces” – and it leads into a second dance, a sunu, in which the village shares the excitement of an impending wedding. In the sunu, a sisterhood moves across the stage photographs: Harold E. McCray

in a fluid and flirty shimmy, a feminine counterpoint to the boyish power

jumps executed by Kauna and Yusuf. The drummers stay with them, on the djimbe (a larger drum played with the hands) and djunjun (a system of drums played with sticks). Each drum has a distinct voice – not just a beat, but music. In this fertile milieu, art and music and children all thrive. Most of the company members are young parents in their middle to late 20s. Sankofa, in the Akan language of Ghana, means, “going back to fetch it,” says

to ancestors, but to the community’s children as the vehicle that moves them forward. “You can only grow as far as your children will take you,” says Kibibi, whose children grew up amid this rhythm and then chose to join the professional company as adults. Sons Jumoke and Salim drum, daughters Jamila and Shukura dance. “This is the environment they want for their children,” says Kibibi, who founded Sankofa in 1989 with Kauna. Everyone calls them “Mama Kibibi” and “Baba Kauna.” In African culture, “mama” and “baba” are terms of respect for elders — even for the young adults. It’s similar to saying “Miss Kibibi” or “Mr. Salim,” but these parental terms are a reminder that every adult is a guardian of every young person in the village, Kibibi says.

Family Day While weeknight rehearsals are more businesslike, Saturday is the family day at the studio at 2901 Druid Park Drive. The space, once a school auditorium, is part of the Business Center at Park Circle. Some families arrive at 9:30 a.m., when the children’s drumming and dancing classes start. Many are still there at 5 p.m. when the company rehearses for two more hours. Their children stay on. It’s a long day, but no one whines about going home. This is home. Between rehearsal numbers, three mothers nurse their babies before returning to the stage. One of the infants sleeps on a blanket in a milk-induced stupor, despite the line of three djimbe drummers pounding a thunderous rhythm. For these young adults, Sankofa is a force that doesn’t consume them, as much as turn them out, more distinctly formed, into the larger world. “You can’t be in this kind of environment and slack off,” says Crystal Shackelford, 21, a company member who started dancing here when she was 16. She’s a customer service representative for a finance company by day. But her dream is to open a holistic center for meditation, yoga and natural living. “My whole goal in life, now, is to build a community. In Sankofa, it allows me to begin that process, to take steps toward contributing to that community. Sankofa is the groundwork for that right now. The dancing sort of grounds me. If I don’t dance, I don’t feel right,” she says. She taps her sternum. “You feel it in here.”

drumming.” With song, they form a trilogy. This is why, during drum call, the dancers play instruments, the drummers move to a beat. Everyone sings. “Every dancer must know the rhythm, and every drummer must know the dance,” Kibibi explains. Somebody Needed to Give Back When Kibibi and Kauna founded Sankofa Dance Theater, they were professional dancers in a Washington troupe, spending much of their time away from their Baltimore home and traveling around the country to perform. “We decided to dedicate ourselves to do one class per week (for a year) in Baltimore,” Kibibi said. ”Somebody needed to teach. Somebody needed to give back.” Sankofa grew to include classes several nights a week and a children’s after-school program. Kibibi’s children grew up amid this culture and art, while also pursuing high school sports, ballet, marching band, viola, trumpet and flute. “But at the end of the day, when it was all said and done, I missed the drumming,” Salim says. “I missed the music. It’s a part of me that I tapped into. Once the door is open, you can’t close it. I love to make people feel good.”

The Trilogy of Drum, Dance and Song That feeling stems from the mutuality of rhythm and movement, called ngoma in Swahili, a word that means dancing and drumming, says Salim Ajanku, 25, elder son of Kibibi and Kauna. “If you want to play for dancing, you have to anticipate what they’re going to do,” he says. “There is no real separation between dance and

Growing Talent from TWIGS BY JOAN JACOBSON

If a refuge exists from the city schools’ calamitous deficit, it is here on a Saturday morning at the Baltimore School for the Arts. As this high school’s students sleep in, the empty Cathedral Street building in Mount Vernon fills with the boundless expectations expressed only by the very young. The morning warms with the rich tones of alto saxophones, the thunder of a timpani, the earnest sawing of violins, the uninhibited prancing of little feet, the chalky scent of fresh paint that holds infinite possibilities for a 10-year-old. The school fills with a new generation of artists — elementary and middle school pupils who take their much-coveted places in the after-school arts program known as TWIGS, or To Work in Gaining Skills. Created in 1983, TWIGS is available to all city children in private or public school. But it was founded with the realization that disadvantaged city children have little arts education in their public schools — and no money for private lessons. “TWIGS was created to put all city schoolchildren on a level playing field” by the time they are ready to audition for the high school, says Leslie Shepard, the high school’s director.

Today, TWIGS has a budget of $450,000, with 50 teachers and 600 students from 92 city public schools and 55 private schools. Half the money is from the high school’s operating budget and half from its private foundation. “I don’t know of any school that takes part of its operating budget for kids from other schools,” says Shepard. TWIGS coordinator Georgia King has watched the program almost triple since its beginning and hopes to increase enrollment to 800 when the school and an adjacent brownstone are renovated. One of the lucky students is Shayfon Killett, a sixth-grader at Dunbar Middle School who takes violin lessons. A few years ago, her mother, Luciana Killett, didn’t know her daughter was learning violin at her elementary school because she was never allowed to take the instrument home. After eight months in TWIGS, “She changed her whole outlook as far as what she wanted to do with her life. Before she wanted to be a doctor and now she wants to be a musician,” her mother says. As the young students begin their lessons, the first heady blushes of creativity, jittery self-doubts and exhilaration of self-discovery converge. In the music room, a string ensemble ekes out a sour rendition of a LennonMcCartney song. In the art room, print teacher Sally Hopkins warns fifth-graders not to “over do” the paint they’re slathering on their glass plates. In a third room, the smallest ballet dancers, romping as falling leaves, are blissfully unaware that their flowered panties peak out of their baby blue leotards. The school’s possibilities weigh especially on the eighth-graders who pray they will be here on weekdays next year as part of the latest “Fame” generation of high school musicians, artists, dancers and actors. On a cold morning in January, the jittery eighth-graders prepare for auditions to attend Baltimore School for the Arts next year. For many of them, so much is at stake. Whether they are accepted could determine not only where they go to high school (in a city of many undesirable high schools), but their futures. Their teachers coax them gingerly, with only the most “positive” criticism, taking care not to crush fragile creative spirits.

Donna DiStefano works with Darius Ashford for his percussion audition. The tall eighth-grader at Holy Spirit Middle School is practicing “Lone Wolf” on the timpani as DiStefano hovers next to him, urging him to get the rhythm right. “Cool, cool, one more time. You got it,” she says in a deep, jazzy voice. When he makes a mistake, she only says “oops” as if he has dropped a pencil. He plays on, drawing self-assured tones from the handsome copper drum. “Now there you have it,” she says. In the basement, behind a door that says “Rathskeller,” voice students take turns performing in a low-ceilinged room with old leather chairs. Near a coat rack jammed with the mice and soldier costumes from December’s Nutcracker ballet, the instructor teaches her students as much about positive feedback as she does about singing. Voice teacher Heather Flower Rogers tells her singers when they miss a note, “Never let them know you made a mistake.” It is Tyrone Simon’s turn. He’s still wearing his oversized parka as his intro music begins. An eighth-grader at the Stadium School, he has not expected an Urbanite photographer and reporter to walk into the room as he is about to sing “Angels Through the Night.” Their appearance unnerves him. But he proceeds after one false start, tentatively singing, “All night, all day, Angels watching over me, my Lord.” He knows it’s not his strongest performance. Still, the teacher praises him. “You kept singing a song in front of people you don’t know,” she says. Upstairs in the Cab Calloway room, eighth-grade drama students work with their teacher Tony Tsendeas. Repeating after him, they belt out their tongue twisters, “Bodega, Topeka, Bodega, Topeka.” They take their seats, ready to take turns on their monologues. Tsendeas advises them: “An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words.” Tracy Johnson is the first to take the stage. A Park School student, she’s playing the role of a suicidal teen-ager. Her pants cover her sneakers, dragging along the floor. Her blond bangs cover her eyes.

“Last year, I tried to commit suicide .… I didn’t leave a note. I swallowed a bottle of pills,” she says. “I’m not proud of what I did. It happened. I learned who I am. I’m a girl with a problem.” When she’s finished, her teacher’s critique starts with her bangs. “Believe me, I know all about hair in the eyes,” he says, comically throwing his long black hair off his face. Johnson shyly pushes her bangs up, revealing a pretty face. She repeats her monologue, this time with more confidence and conviction, but her hair falls back over her eyes. In the ballet studio, no one is anxious over the future. Twelve little girls and one boy from second and third grade are living — and dancing — for the moment. Their teacher is Gina Bates Brown. She graduated from high school here, rehearsed the Nutcracker and “Rhapsody in Blue” in this very studio with its titanic crystal chandelier above what once was the Blue Room of the Alcazar Hotel — before it became this citadel for the arts. Now Brown is preparing another generation. She has a novel way of putting small children through the rigors of ballet exercises without letting them know they are working. She uses games, songs and props. The rest is their imagination. They dance with imaginary bird wings and balloons. They shape their feet into the letter “V.” They sing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” to crawl their hands down their outstretched legs. They bark like dogs to a yoga pose. Brown opens a container and hands out chiffon scarves. “Your leaf blows off the tree,” she tells them. Away they go with their ethereal scarves, tiny Isadora Duncans inventing beautiful shapes, twisting their sapling bodies and rolling on the old gray Marley dance floor that has seen better days — and hundreds of heartened dancers before them. “You are so good at that.” She has exclamation points in her voice. “It’s great.” At their age,

this is all they need to hear.

photographs: Jefferson Jackson Steele

POLEMIC ON POSTERS B Y E M I LY P O H L - W E A R Y

You can learn a lot about a city from the art plastered on its walls, utility

poles and construction sites. It’s a speedy introduction to the political issues and cultural activities that litter the urban core, and a great way to learn about concerts, movie nights, political actions and discussions. I deliberately take alleys rather than main streets and stop to examine crusty wads of paper peeling off telephone poles. If you’re exploring a new city and want to know about a neighborhood, use street art as your barometer. It’s free. Nothing interferes between you and the artist — there’s no curator or editor to mediate with the aim of maximizing market. In our sales-driven society, where billboards and advertisements overwhelm us and encroach on our private space, public art plays an important function. Poster art provides a haven for consumption-weary minds, a reminder that not every source of public expression has to involve buying and selling. Some free posters might contain an overt message but the motivation behind plastering images, poems, stories and manifestos on telephone poles around a city is never as simple as selling the latest fragrance. Photographs: Helen Sampson

Why do people hit the streets of their hometowns armed with a staple gun and obscure photographs, art posters or short stories? As part of a group called the Science Friction Action Heroes, I and other local radical writers, including Jim Munroe, poster Toronto neighborhoods with fictional visions of the future. Every poster series has a theme, and we each contribute a one-page piece of poster art. Our contributions are photocopied onto brightly colored paper. Each of the Action Heroes wants to make explicit the correlation between science fiction (which is often highly surreal) and its (highly real) political context. According to a flier that Munroe created to accompany the poster series, our actions “bring together radical politics and science fiction to

Gates, was up ... near St. Michael’s Hospital forever. The hospital was

form a new breed of activism.” He continues his description of the group on

renovating its lobby, so they had put up Post No Bills signs everywhere.”

his Web site (nomediakings.org). “The difference between a creative visionary and a political visionary is smaller than you think. For every 1984 that shows

Collective (SAVAC) ran a highly visible and educational poster art series

us the horror of governmental control, there’s a Mad Max that scares the

called “Taking it to the Streets.” SAVAC is a nonprofit organization that

straights off lawlessness.”

promotes the expression of contemporary visual arts by artists of South

The Action Heroes learned quickly that it’s most effective to poster late at night to avoid nasty encounters with shop owners. We always work

Asian descent. The three posters they used confronted cuts to culture, health

in pairs, and carry only the fliers, flour-and-water paste (for flat surfaces) and

care and social services, the Sri Lankan civil war, and gay and lesbian

staple guns (for wooden telephone poles and construction boarding) because

rights. SAVAC plastered downtown with the posters — and the images

anything else gets heavy after postering for a few hours.

remained in our collective memory.

The Action Heroes are not the only poster art group. During fall

Other than poster art, public art has soared, such as Toronto’s

1999, a group of people who are named Bill, William or Will met in Toronto.

alleys filled with hip-hop graffiti and fine art, Halifax’s public art wall,

Organizer Bill Meslin (mez@tao.ca) said of the group’s motivation: “What

Vancouver’s “subvertisements,” graffiti proclaiming “Viva Quebec Libre,”

about the little Bills? What about average Bills like me? We want to be

and flat-paint art murals along Vancouver’s Commercial Drive. In Ottawa,

represented in public space on an equal footing with corporate bills.”

the English Department of Carleton University creates the Graffito Poetry

So they created the Posted Bills series. On behalf of “all repressed Bills in our society,” they selected the top 25 Bills, found images of their faces,

Poster, posters with poems papering the city. In the United States, for the past decade San Diego

photocopied them onto 11-inch-by-17-inch fluorescent color stock and posted

skateboarder/Rhode Island School of Design graduate Shepard Fairey

them where they saw signs that said Post No Bills. Meslin said: “Some of the

has been putting up posters and stickers across the country that say

Bills who made it into the poster series were Bill Clinton, Bill Bixby, Bill the Cat,

“Obey Giant” and show the face of Andre the Giant Fairey said: “At the

Mr. Bill, William Shakespeare, William Penn, William Shatner, Billy Madison,

beginning, it was all just about the repetition of the stickers, so people

Billy Idol, Bill Cosby ... and my roommate Biljana.”

would say, ‘What is this? Why is it everywhere?’ It’s amazing how much it

The Bills decided it was unfair that corporations were allowed to put

just freaks people out that I’m not working for somebody. When the cops

up large billboards to promote their products while postering public space

bust me and want me to give them the name of my employer, they never

was illegal for most people. Meslin said: “Some of our posters were gone very

believe that I’m actually spending my own money.”

quickly but some stayed up for more than a month. One in particular, a Bill

22 22

During summer 1998, Toronto’s South Asian Visual Arts

Artists who display their work for temporary public consumption

reject the idea that fine art and literature are elitist creative forms, separate from our everyday experiences. At the same time, putting up transitional images and texts disassociated from the marketplace, and the sanctity of the gallery, museum, or publishing house, can be seen as purposefully obscure and disconnected — even, as Fairey repeatedly discovered, dangerous. Why are you doing this? Who is it for? Who is paying you? How does one explain that the motivation is to satisfy the postindustrial, egotistical desire to be seen and heard by strangers? In the zinelike artists’ book that SAVAC created to document its “Taking it to the Streets” series, writer Kevin D’Souza comments: “It is such a change to see posters on the street that not only speak of humanity but that shine creatively and beautifully, in a very unique way.” Until our understanding of what public space is shifts, ads — not art — will continue to dominate our social spaces. Advertisements are bright, big, in your face, and invade your mental environment. You can’t walk to the store without dodging them, and often they’re in your most private spaces: bathrooms, paperback novels, even shaved onto the back of people’s heads. The resources of our social structure don’t work to rein in advertising and encourage community discussion. The opposite is true. As a society, we are committed to keeping individuals from countering the ads, and having their say on the streets. Meslin says: “This is a double standard that should not be accepted. We didn’t think it was fair that there were places where people aren’t allowed to post bills. We think there are a lot of bills worth posting. As a Bill, obviously it’s a very important issue for me.” Does public art really compete with the bombardment of marketing materials? As an Action Hero, I feel it’s my duty to put up poster art that provides a respite for people who want to look anywhere but the ads. “We like to think our bills compete with the corporate billboards. Of course, our bills are a lot smaller, and the amount of public space is limited. So much of it is saturated with corporate propaganda,” Meslin said. “It’s a war, and the booty is space. We wouldn’t have to reclaim it if it weren’t already taken from us. I’d hate to think that people see ads as untouchable.” Public postering is an evolving medium of social dissent, community communication and grass-roots promotion. Since the Posted Bills series, Meslin has gone on to other projects, including billboard liberation (altering corporate ads), the Reclaim the Streets theater installations (which use people as an artistic medium), and sunflower installations (anonymously placing potted sunflowers on bus shelters and phone booths). He also turns off billboards by flicking their switches, which doesn’t physically damage them. The Science Friction Action Heroes’ postering campaign seemed the perfect forum for me to disseminate my opinions about local political issues cheaply and effectively. Posters and public art are ways for independent artists to interact directly with people in their neighborhoods. It changes the perception of urban space into something shaped and improved by the people who live there, and turns skyscrapers and concrete into a home that visitors quickly identify as a unique and individual community. Is there a bit of Action Hero in all of us? One time or another, we’ve all dabbled in spectacle, turning the personal and private into the public and anonymous. Perhaps we’re closer than we think — just a staple gun and a stack of posters away — to reinventing Main Street and, in the process, ourselves.

THE ROBIN HOOD OF ILLEGAL SIGNS with Baltimore’s beautiful public spaces. He likes his landscaped median strips just fine without the blemish of campaign signs or advertisements for losing weight and selling your house for fast cash. To him, these are signs that tell him only bad things about a Baltimore neighborhood: That it’s willing to tolerate political candidates who break the law to promote themselves on city property, that it doesn’t mind marginal businesses illegally advertising their false promises on telephone poles.

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this neighborhood doesn’t care,” says Desmarais, president of Communities for Clean Campaigns. For Desmarais, signs such as these never enhance a city or give it character. They only detract from its urban beauty. His crusade might be “a little Lady Bird Johnson-ish,” Desmarais said, referring to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s wife, who was noted for beautifying public spaces. But he thinks it’s a worthy one. “I like public art as long as it’s not vandalism. But I draw the line at vandalism. It’s pure laziness and disrespectful,” said Desmarais, who also is president of the Moravia–Walther Community Association in Northeast Baltimore, where he runs a dry-cleaning business. In 1999, Desmarais found a partner for his crusade against illegal signs in a West Baltimore activist, David Paulson of Dickeyville. Together they founded Communities for Clean Campaigns. When they met, Paulson was working with his neighbors to clean up trash in nearby Gwynns Falls and Leakin Park when he noticed illegal signs. “We are surrounded by areas making a great comeback,” Paulson said. “One thing that can get in the way is the trashing of the streets.” The two crusaders from the east and west sides teamed up and went to town, driving through Baltimore late at night tearing down hundreds of illegal signs. “We were fearless,” said Desmarais.

Urbanite Café, which you enter through our website http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com is a gathering place to take a fresh look at the urban experience with constructive conversation and creative thinking. We ask questions and invite your answers, hoping to generate new ideas to solve our collective problems. Here are a few of our favorite responses from last month’s question:

What role do the arts play in building a better Baltimore?

Art is about self-expression. It doesn’t matter if you are painting, dancing, singing, or filming. Art lets you express yourself. If more students (and adults) did this and were praised for it, they would feel that they could safely let out who they were. When you express yourself and are encouraged to express yourself you feel good about who you really are, then you can be yourself. When more students feel free to be themselves, and more administrators encourage that, then schools become more diverse and diversity helps to break down stereotypes and raise awareness. So, in my opinion, art should be used as an outlet to identify who we really are, and when everyone gets that outlet, everyone will be much happier, more relaxed, and much more comfortable being who they are. I believe we should have lots of forms of art in schools, not just painting or shop, but photography, Photoshop, and sculpture, because people express themselves in all sorts of ways and schools need to provide mediums for everyone. Kyle Halle Erby Friends School Grade 10 A Member of the Mentoring Video Project (MVP), Wide Angle Community Media

Art plays a huge role in building a better Baltimore. In many ways, art is the only area left in which the students of Baltimore can find an escape from a reality filled with broken school systems and unimaginative learning. Being a member of MVP provides an outlet for youth to be able to not only gain the knowledge they need to create art, but also to be able to work on parts of their community that they feel are in need of change. Mentoring Video Project has also given us the opportunity to work as a group, gain leadership skills, and gain the power needed to effect surrounding communities with our work. Without art, Baltimore would not only be without creativity or passion, it would also be without a voice. Art plays a key role in whatever we want to accomplish in Baltimore, because it brings pressing issues to the attention of those who are in the power to fix them. Kira Lanier The Park School of Baltimore Grade 12 A Member of the Mentoring Video Project (MVP), Wide Angle Community Media

Baltimore is kickin’ when it comes to music, visual arts, performance, experimentation, and this is because it is inexpensive, accessible, rowdy — like the city itself. Thanks to the energies of some tremendously talented and dedicated folk (Creative Alliance, Contemporary Art Museum, School 33, MAP, blah, blah) there are opportunities here to be seen, heard AND appreciated outside the rapacious art scenes in New York, San Fran, LA, etc. Wonder about GLBT activity? Catch the Charm City Kitty Club. Wonder about loud heathen music? Catch the 8 x 10 or Fletchers. Visual art is everywhere, in spite of (or because of) the fact that “legitimate” galleries now number in the single digits. Catch Resurgam in Federal Hill. Catch the MICA galleries. Catch City Gallery on Charles Street. As a painter and resident of Artists’ Housing (AHI, 1426 – 1452 E. Baltimore — Maryland’s first and longest-lived resident artist cooperative) I believe the only way to “make it better” is to keep doing it. And I would like to see more community involvement/interaction as the arts’ presence in the public schools diminishes to a trickle. Judith, artist

The arts bring a level of sophistication and energy to their surroundings. Architecture and people feed off this, whether it is positive or negative, but in any sense it brings about awareness and change. Josh

Almost every American can tell an immigration story: the Irish fleeing British oppression, European Jews escaping the Holocaust, Chinese seeking refuge from revolution, or Latin Americans evading poverty. Urbanite’s May/June issue will be devoted to immigration in Baltimore. We would love to hear your immigration story. Send it to our Web site at www.urbanitebaltimore.com. We will print as many as we can.

I like to draw because sometimes when I’m mad or upset I can get something out of my head. Tevin Roane 13 years old Grade 8 Dr. Carter G. Woodson Elementary/Middle School St. Veronica’s After-School Academy

I would like to see other people’s art. They say their stories and it’s very interesting to see other people’s painting. Maurice Watson Jr. 12 years old Grade 7 Cherry Hill Elementary/Middle School St. Veronica’s After-School Academy

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You don’t have to be a fan of the water meter (and let’s face it, who really is?) to love what’s inside the Baltimore Public Works Museum. It’s here in the grand Victorian Eastern Avenue Pumping Station at the edge of Little Italy — where 30 million gallons of wastewater are pumped out daily — that the average Joe or Josie can view the Byzantine world of Baltimore’s infrastructure — and actually get it. Water purification. How wastewater is carried from houses through neighborhoods. Street lights. Viaducts. Roads and tunnels. All are explained in basic lingo and simple, yet elegant displays throughout the city-owned museum. Billed as the first of its kind in the United States, the museum allows visitors to track development of the city’s public works system from the industrial 1800s to the high-tech world of today. It’s located in the original boiler and furnace room of the city’s largest pumping station, which was built in 1912, and shares space with electric pumps that slosh a river of wastewater each day. Interactive displays that show how water flows from the Liberty, Loch Raven and Pretty Boy reservoirs to area faucets blink colorful lights. A bank of computers offers kids a chance to explore all things public works. Visitors can trace the decorative lids of manhole covers with crayons and take home their very own art de les sewers. Small gifts made from recycled metals and packaging materials are for sale in the gift shop. One corner is dedicated to Abel Wolman, the trailblazing Baltimorean who in 1948 put together a purification formula with chemist Linn Enslow based on the absorption rates of chlorine and water. That discovery

By Melody Simmons

led to the standardization of chlorinating water throughout the world. Sound complex? Not here. Visitors to this museum will leave with greater respect for those underground pipes and water mains and gain a new understanding of the trite expression “down the drain.” Hours: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission: Adults $2.50; seniors and students, $2; tour groups of 10 or more, $1.50 each; and children younger than age 6, free. Information: (410)-396-5565.

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First time visitors will feel right at home in Xando’s cozy, club basement atmosphere. Vermillion and mustard colored walls, small wood tables paired with mismatched chairs, and topped, more often than not, with oversized steaming white mugs, set a supportive stage for poets to read or recite. The SLAM crowd is young, intellectual, racially mixed, and collectively seems to prefer coffee and juice to beer and wine. On the night we dropped in, poet Chris August was the evening’s SLAM master. While he bounced from table to table checking in with friends and greeting newcomers, two word lovers, surrounded by a small crowd of onlookers, sat motionless playing a game of Scrabble. At other tables, poets sat hunched over notebooks scratching last minute corrections. In the corner, a woman wearing tight jeans and a frown leafed through a stack of typed pages. Meanwhile, at the stage area — nothing more than a clearing in the room — poet Delrica Andrews tapped the microphone signaling that the evening was about to begin. First on the agenda is “open mic,” a low pressure, non-competitive opportunity for poets to practice new work. Next, a featured poet reads for thirty minutes. After a short break, it’s time for the raw competitive poetry performance known as the “SLAM” to begin. Newcomers, relax. Chris explains the rules with precision: “Poets have three minutes to perform an original work that cannot include props, costumes, animals, nudity, or musical accompaniment. Five volunteers from the audience

sr ’ m e o p e n o e wehtet er r t h a n a n o t h e b by Kelly Parisi judge the poets on a scale of zero (0.0) to ten (10.0), with the score based equally on the poet’s performance and the merit of their poetry. Picking up the pace, Chris covers every aspect of the SLAM, from point penalties to plagiarism to cash prizes, and if you suddenly feel overwhelmed, don’t fret, a hard copy of the rules is yours for the asking. If you like the Olympics, you’ll love the SLAM. To score, judges flip through two spiral bound pad of numbers, and then shoot the pads high over their heads revealing their score to everyone in the room—whole numbers in the right hand, decimals in the left. To prevent mathematical mix-ups, Chris offers the judges a tip: “Just remember your head is the decimal point.” If it sounds complicated, it is, but that’s what makes it so much fun. At the end of our night’s SLAM, Sir Reigns won with a score of 55.6 out of a possible 60. In second place was DJ Tao with 54.6. Third place went to Joanna Hoffman who scored an even 53. Newcomer Mandy finished with a 49.4. The poets are applauded, and the low scoring judges are booed. In the company of so much passion, courage, and talent, nothing could seem fairer. SLAMicide Mondays at 8:00 p.m. at Xando 3003 N. Charles Street @ 31st Street 410-889-7076 $5 cover, $2 minimum purchase

GETTING LOOPED INTO THE ART SCENE Want information on the Baltimore Art Scene delivered to your email mailbox?

Baltimore Neighborhoods Indicators Alliance

ArtMob runs five free Internet mailing lists, promoting regional, contemporary, all-media, visual and performing arts, at Artmobile, ArtMob-Events, MD-Events, MD-Arts, and WV-Arts in West Virginia. They are available at the ArtMob-Events subscription page, http://lists.IGC.org/mailman/listinfo/artmob-events or e-mail, ArtMob-EventsRequest@MD-Arts.net and include in the subject line: subscribe artmob-events.

A favorite hot spot for statistical information, Baltimore Neighborhoods Indicators Alliance (BNIA), has released Vital Signs II, a report that tracks trends in Baltimore neighborhoods, ranging from median home sales prices, number of home foreclosures to voter participation. Business owners, residents and civic activists can access data that can aid planning and investment. The report is available at www.bnia.org or by contacting Odette Ramos, executive director, BNIA, 410-235-0944.

Art Scoop, an event calendar e-letter of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, goes out Wednesdays. Art Scoop Jobs Plus, a collection of job postings, workshops, classes and a call for entries, is e-mailed every other Friday. E-mail Art Scoop at GBCA@baltimoreculture.org with “Subscribe” in the subject line. Claywords, an e-zine of Baltimore Clayworks, provides information on exhibits, classes, community arts, member artists and clay exhibits around town. To subscribe: leigh.mickelson@baltimoreclayworks.org. The Creative Alliance presents hundreds of events annually, including film, exhibitions, music performances, workshops and children’s programs. Go to its Web site, www.creativealliance.org, to join.

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BELIEVE in a greener Baltimore

With 5,500 acres of parkland in Baltimore and a workforce of 75 for the Department of Recreation and Parks (yes, that was 75!), it will take a lot more than BELIEVING to get our parks in shape for better weather. The Office of Park Conservation and Community Outreach does a remarkable job coordinating volunteer beautification efforts across the city. Times and dates are 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, March 26, and Saturday, March 27. Form a group for a favorite green space or join an organized team. Doing is BELIEVING, and working for the environment is an easy way to begin. Call 410-396-0339 to enroll. See our Web site (www.urbanitebaltimore.com) for other green Baltimore events through April. For those who want to help but are physically unable, consider a charitable contribution.

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Baltimore Green Week: March 22-26 An event series has been organized for Baltimore Green Week to enlighten city residents on sustainable building and design. Events will include a Green Town Hall Meeting, screening the nationally acclaimed The Next Industrial Revolution on the growing movement to transform the relationship between commerce and nature, and lectures. Visit our Web site, www.urbanitebaltimore.com, for information. Green Town Hall Meeting 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday, March 22 Natty Boh Building, 3701 Dillon St. Free The Next Industrial Revolution 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 23 Rotunda Cinematheque, 711 W. 40th St.

‘Slow Dance on the Killing Ground’ Fresh from the runaway success of Proof, Everyman Theatre, 1727 N. Charles St., begins its next production March 17, featuring Slow Dance on the Killing Ground, directed by Jennifer L. Nelson and starring Stanley Weiman as Mr. Glas. Written in 1964, this three-act drama explores moral questions that are relevant today. Join Everyman, Urbanite and the Baltimore Ethical Society immediately following the 2:30 p.m. performance Saturday, April 17, for a discussion inspired by the production. Information: Urbanite, 410-243-2050.

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Visit our new store in Hampden for containers, trellises, urns, and window boxes as well as select annuals, perennials and shrubs. Opening for Spring, March 13 4007 Falls Road (410) 366-9001 www.baltimoregarden.com

Mill Centre Open Studio Join artists for the Spring Arts Open Studio Saturday, April 3 and Sunday, April 4 noon to 5 p.m. Admission is Free. 3000 Chestnut Ave. Baltimore, MD 21211 (410) 752-5458

Photo taken by Bernice Walker

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Introduce your child to the magic of theatre. Registration is now underway for three summer theatre camps for ages 6 to 18. Extended day programs are available. Visit our website www.pumpkintheatre.com for details. Ruxton Towers, 8415 Bellona Lane, Suite 115 Baltimore, Maryland 21204 p 410.828.1814

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Is your office lobby or restaurant ready for a change? Local original artwork improves the overall atmosphere of a public space. If you want to enhance the decor of a restaurant, cafe, or office lobby, or brighten empty display windows, consider becoming an Art Exposure venue. Changing art displays will make a lasting impression on your patrons. Please visit our website at www.artexposureinc.com to see how we can help bring art to your space.

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