may 2006 Issue

may 2006

B A L T I M O R E

issue no. 23

y b r a a r l t o i m p o m re: e t n o c exploring t he ar t

the city’s master plan: what you need to know

sce ne

affordable art: how to start a collection

the new backyard: green your alley

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contents

21 what you’re writing 27 corkboard 29 have you heard … edited by marianne amoss

33

33 food: the farmer next door joan jacobson

37 baltimore observed: the best laid plans roberta brandes gratz

43 space: underground art cara ober

49 encounter: the last town crier jason tinney

52 state of the art

37

m a r k a l i c e d u r a n t , j . w. m a h o n e y, m i c h a e l s a l c m a n , b i l l s e b r i n g

61 in our own backyard alice ockleshaw

66 the contemporary collector andrea pollan

71 poetry yusef komunyakaa

73 sustainable city: the green between

52

fern shen

77 out there: undressing mary mack afarin majidi

81 in review 85 what i’m reading susan mccallum-smith

91 resources 94 eye to eye

66 cover note: Detail of “Milton and Little

Jack Monster” by Jennifer Strunge. Made from recycled cloth and polyester stuffing.

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9

Buying a home is a big deal.

Financing it shouldn’t be.

Urbanite Issue 23 May 2006 Publisher Tracy Ward Durkin Tracy@urbanitebaltimore.com General Manager Jean Meconi Jean@urbanitebaltimore.com Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth A. Evitts Elizabeth@urbanitebaltimore.com Guest Editor Andrea Pollan Executive Editor Heather Harris Heather@urbanitebaltimore.com Assistant Editor Marianne Amoss Marianne@urbanitebaltimore.com Copy Editor Angela Davids/Alter Communications Contributing Editors William J. Evitts Joan Jacobson Susan McCallum-Smith Contributing Writer Jason Tinney Art Director Alex Castro

CALL M&T TODAY

Production Manager Lisa Macfarlane Lisa@urbanitebaltimore.com

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Traffic/Production Coordinator Bellee Gossett Bellee@urbanitebaltimore.com

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Production and Design Assistance Ida Woldemichael Web Coordinator/Office Assistant Adam Schoonover Adam@urbanitebaltimore.com Senior Account Executive Susan R. Levy Susan@urbanitebaltimore.com

Whether you’re buying your first home or a larger home, M&T makes home financing easy and affordable. Our wide range of programs feature low downpayments with available closing cost financing, fast approvals and competitive rates. We also offer a variety of refinance options. At M&T we understand buying a home is a big deal, we just think financing it shouldn’t be. Call M&T today at (410) 354-8720.

Account Executives Darrel Butler Darrel@urbanitebaltimore.com Keri Haas Keri@urbanitebaltimore.com Bill Rush Bill@urbanitebaltimore.com Marketing Kathleen Dragovich Kathleen@urbanitebaltimore.com Interns Sid Bodalia Carey Polis Founder Laurel Harris Durenberger Advertising/Editorial/Business Offices P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 410-243-2050; Fax: 410-243-2115 www.urbanitebaltimore.com Editorial Inquiries: Send queries to the editor-in-chief (no phone calls, please) including SASE. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Urbanite does not necessarily support the opinions of its authors. To subscribe or obtain assistance with a current subscription, call 410-243-2050. Subscription price: $18 per year.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission by Urbanite is prohibited. Copyright 2006, by Urbanite LLC. All Rights Reserved.

www.mandtmortgage.com © 2005 M&T Mortgage Corporation

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Urbanite (ISSN 1556-8105) is a free publication distributed widely in the Baltimore metropolitan area. If you know of a location that urbanites frequent and would recommend placing the magazine there, please contact us at 410243-2050.

editor’s note

quotes

I don’t like to say I have given my life to art.

I prefer to say art has given me my life.

—Frank Stella, American painter and sculptor

As we

photo by Sam Holden

BALTIM ORE

began this issue, I promised myself that I wouldn’t do this. I wouldn’t compare Baltimore’s art scene to that of other cities, like Washington, D.C., and New York. I’ve grown weary of that discussion; increasingly I suspect that it undermines the work being created here and positions our artistic community as quirky, parochial, and secondary to the “real” art world. What I really wanted to talk about was Baltimore’s contemporary fine art on its own merits (and it has many) and to share the talent that exists here with our readers.

We see this talent daily at Urbanite because we are lucky enough to have a gifted staff bringing local photography, illustration, and design to our pages. Our art director, Alex Castro, is a sculptor in his own right and his passion for visual arts is contagious. Each month Alex and our design and production team of Lisa Macfarlane, Bellee Gossett, and Ida Woldemichael collaborate with local artists. So in a way, every edition of Urbanite is an “arts” issue. This month, for example, they commissioned Cornel Rubino to create an illustrated “map” of spaces where you can collect local art (“The Contemporary Collector,” p. 67). Cornel, whose work regularly appears in publications like The New Yorker, is a great example of the Baltimore-based artist working on an international scale.

But then ...

Working on an arts-focused issue forced those dreaded inter-city comparisons anyway. The topic just kept coming up, with artists, gallery owners, and curators alike. Where does Baltimore stand in the art world?

As this issue took shape, and these discussions about Baltimore’s role in the art world continued, I heard the challenges: The city has few commercial galleries. This, in turn, restricts the flow of new work going into a broader market and leads to a dearth of collectors buying art locally.

But I also heard something more. We aren’t New York. We aren’t D.C. And the people we interviewed for this issue clearly think that’s a good thing. Baltimore Museum of Art curator Darsie Alexander put it this way: “Baltimore is a place where you can take risks.

When you are not in the spotlight, you have a kind of freedom to venture into unknown territory.”

So, here we offer an introduction to those artistic ventures. This issue presents a mere sliver of what is going on in contemporary fine arts in Baltimore, and it shows the work of Baltimoreans who have had art in galleries from Station North to SoHo and beyond. Outside the feverish marketplace of the major art meccas, they can offer brilliant work (at affordable prices).

If you want to be an art star, New York is, of course, a good place to go. But what about being a vibrant, productive, working artist? Can you do it in Baltimore? Absolutely.

—Elizabeth A. Evitts

Do not fear mistakes.

There are none.

—Miles Davis, American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

—William S. Burroughs, American novelist, social critic, and spoken-word performer

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way—things I had no words for.

—Georgia O’Keefe, American modernist painter

I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

—Marcel Duchamp, French-American artist and Dadaist

The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.

—Paul Gauguin, French post-Impressionist painter

You are lost the instant you know what the result will be.

—Juan Gris, Spanish Cubist painter and sculptor

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother’s womb.

—Jean Arp, German-born French sculptor, painter, and Dadaist

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.

—Eugène Ionesco, Romanian absurdist playwright

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contributors

behind this issue

photo by Craig Chin

self-portrait

photo courtesy of Roberta Brandes Gratz

Dan Gudgel “Quality poetry can tap into a part of the mind completely run on images. To examine with the reader how it works, or why it doesn’t, is an honor and incredible fun,” says Dan Gudgel, who reviewed John Amen’s latest book of poetry (p. 81).

Gudgel came to Baltimore seven years ago after earning a master of arts in writing at Nottingham Trent University in England.

In addition to his work as a publications specialist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Gudgel is a founding member of ArtEntity, a bicoastal, collaborative arts production and distribution organization that helps its members publish work and thereby increase the amount and visibility of artistic work in the world.

Roberta Brandes Gratz An award-winning former reporter for the New York Post, Roberta Brandes Gratz now tours the country as a lecturer on urbandevelopment issues and continues to write on a freelance basis for newspapers and magazines. She is the author of The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way and Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown.

In this month’s Baltimore Observed department, Gratz shares her thoughts about Baltimore’s Comprehensive Master Plan (p. 37). She is cofounder of the Center for the Living City at Purchase College and lives in New York City, where she serves on the Landmarks Preservation Commission and is hard at work on a new book.

Christian Jeria “I found myself gazing at the pipe-lined ceiling and the worn-out columns, which give the place so much character,” says Christian Jeria of Sub-Basement Artist Studios, which he photographed for our Space department (p. 43). Jeria, a Florida native who has lived in Baltimore since 2003, earned his bachelor of fine arts with a photography concentration from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005. Since graduation, he has interned as a photography assistant for Baltimore photographer Connie Imboden and worked as a freelance photographer.

Afarin Majidi Brooklyn-based Afarin Majidi has worked and written for Time-Out, Rolling Stone, Bust, and Chronogram, among others.

She earned her bachelor of arts in English literature from Barnard College and her master of fine arts in fiction writing from New School University. Majidi wrote about a SoHo gallery opening featuring three Baltimore artists (“Undressing Mary Mack,” p. 77). “I thought the Baltimore artists’ work was refreshing and new. The opening was different from other openings. It was more like I was visiting an artist-friend’s home to see new work.” Majidi is a senior writer at the City University of New York and is finishing a novel set in pre-Revolutionary Iran.

Andrea Pollan is an independent curator, art dealer, consultant, appraiser, and writer. She was exhibitions director for ten years at the McLean Project for the Arts in Virginia and has worked at the Arlington Arts Center, The Trust for Museum Exhibitions, and the Yale University Art Gallery.

She has organized more than one hundred exhibitions of contemporary art both in the region and nationally and has written numerous catalogs and exhibition brochures.

She manages a large corporate collection and several private collections. Pollan recently opened a space called Curator’s Office in the new 1515 14th Street Arts Building in Washington, D.C., which serves both as a curatorial office for offsite exhibitions and projects and as a microgallery for diverse curatorial voices.

photo by Helen Sampson

photo by Lisa Macfarlane

with guest editor andrea pollan

W

henever I want to get away from Washington, D.C., a mood that overtakes me often these days, I find myself driving up I-95 for an urban fix. New York and Philadelphia are a bit too far for these occasional escapist urges, so I am drawn to Baltimore and its abundant eccentric charms.

As an independent curator and a budding art dealer who recently started a micro-gallery in D.C.’s Logan Circle area, I am also frequently making studio visits in Charm City and am invited to lecture or curate shows. It amazes me that D.C. and Baltimore are so close yet are so vastly different in tone and energy. In essence, they are alter-ego cities. D.C. is a city that thrives on the idea of facade and all of the fascinating intrigue that such a veneer can provide. It is a city that crafts illusions—political, economic, legal, social, and cultural. Baltimore, on the other hand, lets it all hang out. It’s honest and proud of its industrial heritage and history as a significant port town. Both cities have their allures and shortcomings.

The differences are palpable in the contemporary visual arts scene, too. We in D.C. complain that the art market here is small, even though it has grown dramatically in the last decade.

Younger collectors are beginning to get excited about nurturing the home scene. But most decent downtown artist studios have been shoved to the outer fringes of suburbia given the rise in real estate costs and the annoying flipping phenomenon. In Baltimore, the art market is even smaller, nourished by a handful of visionary collectors like Suzi Cordish, Michael Salcman, and Rachel Rabinowitz. But the studios are huge and relatively inexpensive. We are all super-jealous in D.C.!

There are all kinds of arts-district initiatives peppering downtown Baltimore. At least the city values its creative expression and knows that cultural tourism helps a city thrive. Where is the John Waters of Washington, D.C.? Of course, some worry that the “mall-ification” that happened in D.C. could happen in Baltimore as well. D.C.’s great old Chinatown district, for example, once housed prominent D.C. artists, but now those studios are gone, replaced by chains and large-scale development.

It is also important to mention that several visual-arts institutions have been slowly developing in Baltimore and have reached their twenty-fifth year. (I helped run a nonprofit visual-arts organization in Virginia and have seen D.C.’s nonprofits struggle, so I know how hard it is to keep going year after year.) Kudos to Maryland Art Place on its silver anniversary. Artscape is also celebrating its twenty-fifth year, thanks to the hard work and curatorial inventiveness of Gary Kachadourian, a man with his finger on the pulse of Baltimore’s art scene. No way would we ever see some of the edgy, unique, and eccentric public works and exhibitions in D.C. that Artscape brings to Baltimore. The Contemporary Museum has also blossomed anew in the past couple of years with great programming, while curator Darsie Alexander’s Slide Show at the Baltimore Museum of Art was deemed one of the best exhibitions of 2005 by international art mag Artforum.

Baltimore has a lot to be proud of, and it occasionally makes me want to move there.

But there is always the opportunity for those road trips. Baltimore is close enough for quick escapes to see world-class flamenco dancing and ambitious sculpture projects at Area 405, have a drink in Fells Point, catch up with artist friends in the plaza in front of the Maryland Institute College of Art’s spectacular Brown Center, visit studios and galleries, and tour the numerous under-the-radar arts organizations that are mentioned on page 66.

As Baltimore and D.C. begin the creeping real estate merger into “Baltington” or “Washingmore,” I hope each city can retain its distinctive flavor while placing high priority on the creative expression unique to the area. Contemporary art has become so hot and fashionable all around the world. There is no reason for it not to become that way here.

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what you’re saying

2006 issue no. 21

s ple peo ovation inn es issu ideas

march

B A L T I M O R E

Your Space What You’re Saying is the place for letters from our readers. We want to hear what you’re saying—and it does not have to be all about us. E-mail us at mail@urbanitebaltimore.com or send your letter to Mail, Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, MD 21211.

Submissions should include your name, address, and daytime phone number; they may be edited for length and clarity.

Seeds of Tomorrow Outstanding special issue!

As I reflect on your thought-provoking March issue about “What’s Next?” for Baltimore, what surfaces for me is the emerging awareness that creativity often occurs at the intersection of change.

How people, the place we call Baltimore, and the public/private institutions engage in weaving together meaningful threads that connect instead of polarize, collaborate instead of constrain, and channel individual initiative/energy with institutional resources—all of these contain the seeds of hope and opportunity. It is up to each of us to contribute, look up for a broader horizon, and keep our eyes firmly on the challenges surrounding us.

—Roberto Anson is a Spanish-language medical interpreter and specialist in aging.

A Plan for Preservation Did you know that Baltimore Housing has an urban renewal plan calling for the destruction of most of the Poppleton urban renewal area of West Baltimore? These houses are historically significant, and 35% are homeowner-occupied.

A year has passed since Urbanite first reported on development in the Poppleton community (“Picking Poppleton: A Sweeping Urban Renewal Plan Strives to Remake West Baltimore,” May 2005), and serious questions about the clearance and proposed new development are still not answered.

Many blocks and buildings in the urban renewal clearance area could be included in a building and preservation plan that could add to Baltimore’s success. The Poppleton neighborhood has many vacant lots already that will permit redevelopment.

There is no reason to destroy homes that can easily

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be restored and would complement the homes that are now maintained by their owners.

Baltimore Heritage, Inc. has an alternative plan that would preserve architecturally historic houses, churches, and other buildings in the neighborhood.

The plan would help bring immediate revitalization to the area and would not require the eviction of homeowners.

Massive clearance projects were once proposed for Mount Vernon, Fells Point, Federal Hill, and Gwynns Falls/Leakin. All were saved by Baltimoreans who spoke up.

—Johns Hopkins is executive director of Baltimore Heritage, Inc., and Judge Thomas Ward is a member of that organization’s board of directors. Judge Ward is the father of Urbanite Publisher Tracy Durkin.

[For a copy of the preservation plan or for more information, call Baltimore Heritage’s office at 410332-9992. To learn about Baltimore Housing’s urban renewal plan, go to www.baltimorehousing.org/index/ project_showcase.asp.]

Blame It on the Sopranos In your otherwise thoroughly inspiring publication, February’s article on Charlie Wilhelm’s culinary adventures (“Wiseguys Don’t Use Chopsticks”) was completely out of place. It was an unfortunate waste of a couple of pages of paper.

Not only did the article seem to completely lack any point or substance, but it also attempted to glamorize someone whose only claim to fame was their inability to make an honest living. Maybe future articles could highlight a local heroin dealer or a teenage prostitute?

—Jim Maguire lives in Northwest Baltimore.

A City to Live In Thank you and your staff for providing an interesting, informative, and upbeat publication.

With my wife and two children, I live in the “near exurbs” and commute daily to Charles Center.

My wife and I are facing soon-to-be empty nesthood and are beginning to consider our next move to simplify and downsize. You may hear this often, but as nearly lifetime Baltimore County residents we have become relatively unfamiliar with Baltimore City and, until recently, we had not considered a move into a city neighborhood.

With its positive approach, Urbanite has helped open our eyes to the possibilities and promise, not to mention the growing energy in many of the new and redeveloping city communities.

With apologies to Picasso, it’s an idea, albeit a vague idea, for now.

—Ted Flerlage is an attorney who lives in the Falls Road corridor of Baltimore County. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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urbanite may 06

photo courtesy of Sania Amr

In Memoriam: Dr. J. Tyson Tildon Tyson Tildon was a man of amazing grace. We first met in 1997 when the mayor and governor appointed us to the Board of School Commissioners under the city-state partnership aimed at resurrecting Baltimore City Public Schools. As our elected chair, Tyson demonstrated his leadership early, at a press conference announcing our choice of interim CEO.

Challenged by an elected official on how we could dare appoint a white man as head of a school system that was 90% African American, Tyson declared that the goal was great schools for our children. The Board would make decisions based on what was best for the children, not skin color. With that simple statement, Tyson put the issue of race to the side and set us on a path of an unequivocal commitment to improving teaching and learning in our classrooms.

We did not innovate on a timid scale. In our first summer, we launched a system-wide assault on low reading and math achievement in the elementary grades. By September, we had slashed first- and second-grade class sizes from thirty to twenty, hired one thousand new teachers, launched a new curriculum, and bought new textbooks for every student in all 110 elementary schools.

In response to research on the importance of early childhood education, Baltimore City became the first school system in Maryland to establish full-day pre-kindergarten and kindergarten in all its schools. When confronted with a state-wide shortage of qualified teachers, we embraced alternative programs designed to recruit and train the brightest college graduates through the Resident Teachers Program, Teach for America, and Project Site Support. To address the “summer learning gap,” we developed a summer reading and math program that ultimately reached half of our elementary- and middle-grade students.

While encouraging innovation and risk taking, Tyson had no tolerance for incompetence or complacency. Indefatigable in his fight against the “toxicity of low expectations,” Tyson bristled at any excuse for failure. To the depths of his heart and soul, Tyson believed that ALL of our children can succeed. Out of his intolerance for low expectations came the Board’s bold policy ending “social promotions,” setting academic standards for graduating from grade to grade and, ultimately, from high school.

I look back on my six years with Tyson as the most important in my life’s journey—an all-toofleeting moment of time when we united under this great man’s leadership to take on the immense task of fixing our schools.

When I got the call from Liz Bowie, the Sun reporter working on a story about Tyson’s life, I struggled for words. Liz wondered aloud, “What is it about this man? You’re the tenth person I’ve spoken with, and you are all overcome. Tyson’s death was no surprise to any of you. What was so special?”

Tyson Tildon was a man of amazing grace.

The panel included WYPR host Marc Steiner, who acted as moderator; Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Dr. Adrian Wooldridge, Washington bureau chief for The Economist; and Aris Melissaratos, Maryland’s secretary of business and economic development. The Downtown Partnership of Baltimore and WYPR were also cosponsors of the event.

create just the kind of reader The Economist wants to attract—“internationally minded, inquisitive, urbane, and literate,” says Rossi.

The bright red advertisements that have begun appearing on buses and billboards around the city, emblazoned with pithy two- or three-word phrases like “Immaculate Perception,” are the most concrete manifestation of this initiative.

Also, he says, “From a marketing point of view, Baltimore is a city that is big enough for reliable results and small enough to be affordable, and it has all of the marketing channels of larger markets like New York and San Francisco.” According to Rossi, The Economist will apply what it learns in Baltimore to other test markets later this year when it launches a larger campaign to present the magazine to new audiences.

For this initiative, representatives of The Economist approached the editor-in-chief and the publisher of Urbanite to learn about Baltimore. “We polled a number of people about the Baltimore media scene and they told us that Urbanite should definitely be part of marketing as Urbanite readers are precisely the target demographic we are trying to reach.

Readers of The Economist, like readers of Urbanite, are intellectually curious and engaged in the world around them,” says Rossi.

For those interested in following the discussion about the new knowledge economy, Wooldridge is currently working on a Special Report (an in-depth study that runs about twenty pages) for The Economist on the subject of human capital. That report will appear in the magazine’s October 7 issue.

—Bill Struever, founding partner of Struever Bros.

Eccles & Rouse, is a long-time friend and colleague of the late Dr. J. Tyson Tildon and an Urbanite investor.

Tildon served as the guest editor for Urbanite’s education-themed issue in 2004, which is available online in our archives at www.urbanitebaltimore.com.

update

The March issue of Urbanite (themed “What’s Next?”) discussed trends, issues, and people that will influence the city’s future. One of the highlighted trends was “The Young and Restless,” a term coined by the nonprofit organization CEOs for Cities to describe the need for cities to attract young, collegeeducated workers.

On March 23, Urbanite joined with The Economist magazine to present a panel discussion that focused on this trend and to discuss how it plays out in a post-industrial city like Baltimore. Now, because of this shift, the challenge for the city is to remain competitive by recruiting and retaining workforce talent—well-educated, adaptable, mobile, and relatively inexpensive young workers—who can propel the economy.

Readers of The Economist, like readers of Urbanite, are intellectually curious and engaged in the world around them.

This program was the result of The Economist’s new marketing initiative in Baltimore. An internationally renowned, weekly publication that features a blend of commentary and analysis of world events, The Economist’s circulation is nearly 1.1 million copies worldwide, according to Paul Rossi, North American publisher. U.S. circulation has nearly doubled in the past five years and now stands at just over 515,000 copies per week.

The magazine staff chose to begin the marketing test, which aims to introduce more people to the magazine, in Baltimore because of the city’s universities and global businesses and the fact that it is a hub for international trade. These characteristics

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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urbanite may 06

Rodney will live at Village Lofts in Charles Village

what you’re writing “What You’re Writing” is the place for creative nonfiction from our readers. Each month, we pick a topic.

Use the topic as a springboard into your own life and send us a true story inspired by that month’s theme.

Only nonfiction submissions that include contact information can be considered. We have the right to edit for space and clarity, but we will give you the opportunity to review the edits.

You may submit under “name withheld” to keep your essay anonymous, but you do need to let us know how to contact you. If you’ve already changed the names of the people involved, please let us know.

Due to libel and invasion of privacy issues, we reserve the right to print the piece under your initials.

Submissions should be typed (and if you cannot type, please print clearly). Send your essay to Urbanite, P.O. Box 50158, Baltimore, Maryland 21211 or to WhatYoureWriting@urbanitebaltimore.com. Please detail of Luana Kaufmann’s collage, “Specimen”

keep submissions under five hundred words.

The themes printed below are for the “What You’re Writing” department only and are not the themes for future issues of the magazine itself.

Topic

Nakedness The summer I was 15 years old, I went

on a canoe trip sponsored by my high school. We spent eleven days camping in the remote wilderness area of Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota.

Bathroom facilities were nonexistent.

After a day or two I started to feel seriously scummy, and decided to slip away to take a bath in the lake. A typical teenager, I was modest to the extreme and terrified that someone would see me naked, so I walked through the woods to the other side of the island. I got undressed and went into water so clear I could see my feet (and the rest of me). The longer I stayed in the lake, the less concerned I became about being seen. Finally I emerged, sat on my towel, and dried off in the sunlight. I sat for a long time, my senses full of the experience of resting naked in the sun with the wind in my hair. The feeling of vulnerability had evolved into a sort of freedom I’d never known before.

Many summers have passed since that wilderness voyage, and recently I began a journey of another sort. After much internal struggle, I know now that I am an alcoholic. When I went to my first AA meeting, I could not look at anyone. I could not speak. I could barely sit still. I felt utterly exposed and sure that everyone knew what a horrible person I was. Yet the other alcoholics were curiously open and honest and shared their misadventures—driving drunk, sex with strangers, forgotten birthdays, missed T-ball games, obnoxious outbursts, lost friendships, shattered dreams, getting fired, being jailed. The list of agonies was endless.

Sometimes there would be crying and sometimes laughter, but never hiding. It took many meetings before I summoned the courage to speak. It was like undressing in front of a lover for the first time.

Finally I spoke. I spoke about my years and years of drinking to escape, to hide my feelings, to make

Deadline

Publication

Humility

May 22, 2006

Aug 2006

Commitment

June 26, 2006

Sept 2006

Blunder

July 24, 2006

Oct 2006

Duplicity

Aug 28, 2006

Nov 2006

Grace

Sept 25, 2006

Dec 2006

sure that no one (even me) would know how I felt.

I was shocked when I wept in a room full of strangers while describing a fervent wish to die, which had come to me one night as I drank alone.

Things are different for me now. My expedition into sobriety has scarcely begun but already I can feel the warm wind and sunlight on my face.

AFH is a union organizer who works in Baltimore and plays in the mountains and forests of Western Maryland as often as possible.

Summertime and close to noon. Dusty sunbeams sneaked through the cracks in the drawn blinds of the annex building that served as our kindergarten classroom.

We were using oversized pencils to trace the alphabet in our workbooks, just as the teacher had w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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urbanite may 06

shown us. Like everyone else in the class, I happily followed the shape of the letters, copying and repeating, copying and repeating, filling up my little notebook. The heat caused sweat to curl down my brow and into my eyes. I blinked and wiped away its stinging saltiness with the back of my hand.

Then, I noticed the laughter. In my efforts to etch the perfect “G” I must have missed out on a great joke because the entire classroom bubbled with muffled giggles. I looked up in puzzlement in the direction of my “study buddy.”

Tears had welled up in his eyes, and he pointed his extended index finger straight at me. He erupted in an escalating reel of laughter. The others followed suit. The teacher, who normally enforced the silent study time with a quick upward glare from the big desk at the head of the classroom, noticed the tiny pointing fingers.

Sweat flowed unencumbered down my forehead onto my chest and into the white cotton ripples of my underwear. I looked up to meet my teacher’s disapproving face.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“The assignment,” I responded, proudly. “I’m almost done.”

“No, your clothes. Why are they folded on top of your desk and not on you?”

It was the stupidest question I had ever heard.

“Because it’s hot.”

I was told to put my shirt and pants back on. I put down my pencil. Recess was called.

Two days and a parent-teacher conference later, I finally learned the error of my ways.

John Genakos graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2000 and now works in downtown Baltimore.

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror,

I do not recognize the being I have become over the last eight and a half months. A monstrous stomach looms in my reflection, evenly divided by a dark brown line broken by the flattened remnant of a former belly button. The stretch marks have started new tracks on the upper left side of my belly: small circles erupting from the pressure of another breech head. My 4-year-old son was breech too, his head never making the expected turn, staying cradled in an inward hug towards my spine. The old C-section scar smiles and I try not to think about it being re-cut two weeks from now, pulled open past the point of possibility, and then re-stapled with a set of silver teeth.

After two miscarriages I’d decided I wouldn’t let the worry take over, that I would carry my growing stomach with pride. And yet, I find myself in the

same position as with my first successful pregnancy: scared, insecure, and unfamiliar with this body that follows no direction but its own. The books don’t tell you that carrying another being inside you makes you feel so alone. I try to mimic the confidence of the pregnant actresses on the red carpet, fitted tightly into their custom-made maternity gowns, but the reality is usually an early night on the couch wearing my husband’s boxer shorts, the fan pointed directly at my topless chest.

My personal life is public these days. Pregnancy is out there for everyone to see—and for introverts like me, it can be a very uncomfortable experience— the stares and comments cut through my clothes and leave me feeling naked from the moment I walk out my front door. At home, in front of the mirror, I cannot deny the rawness of reproduction and its consequences. I stand amazed and frightened by this female body and its ability to transform into a vessel for another human being. It is hard to imagine that this is the same experience that women have been going through since the beginning of human existence.

I press my hand over the round bulge in my belly. It pushes back in return. The expectant woman’s reflection bites her lip at the response and blinks back at me. The distance between all of us is undeniable, the unborn child our only link. We wait for the scheduled day to come, for the baby to arrive, breaking our naked bodies apart and, finally, bringing us all back together.

Katherine Cottle is an instructor with the Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth distance education program.

My mother’s father, Thomas

Joseph Saragousa, who died two years before I was born, was known to make his trousers fall down by sucking in his formidable belly. He’d laugh uproariously as the stunned observers of this prank averted their eyes and went pale. There is a black-and-white photograph of him somewhere, sitting in one of the rococo chairs in his living room, staring wanly at the camera, wearing nothing but a sheet around his waist.

He and his wife, Grandma Florie, hosted fabulous cocktail parties. Because my grandfather was behind the camera, most photos of these events focus dotingly on my grandmother. Buxom, redheaded, and always poured into some wonderful dress or another, she’s usually perched on a couch arm holding a Manhattan, a tiered silver tray of Andes mints, and long, skinny cigarettes on the low table in front of her, her coy smile barely revealing the gap between her two upper front teeth. These parties were known

for passionate debates in which my grandfather would become so red in the face that guests would concede whatever point they were arguing rather than be the cause of his heart attack.

Before these parties, my grandmother was always very flustered, cleaning all day to prepare for guests. My mother remembers coming downstairs early one morning, awakened by the commotion of my grandmother, who was completely naked and on all fours, scrubbing the kitchen floor with Murphy Oil Soap. My grandfather sat with a cup of coffee and the paper, keeping her company.

Grandma Florie taught me how to play poker, and how to knit. She knelt to my height and bent back her ear to show me the precise spot to apply Chanel No.5 so that it would last all day without wearing off. But she didn’t tell me many stories.

I was a shy child who became an angst-ridden adolescent, and I hadn’t known how to ask her. She died when I was 16, so I never got to hear directly from her about her outlaw older brothers making gin in their mother’s bathtub, or about her prankster father putting grapefruits into the brassieres hanging on their clothesline to shock the neighbors. I missed out on her perspective about her marriage, which was, by all accounts, full of love, food, and playful nudity.

Once every month or so, I scrub my own dining room floor naked, on my hands and knees with a bucket of Murphy Oil Soap. My husband likes to sit at the table to keep me company, and I feel very close to Grandma Florie.

Tamar Jacobs interns at Edible Chesapeake magazine and will start the University of Maryland’s graduate program in creative writing in the fall.

We lived in a tiny cracker-box tract home

in Chicago. Our family was pretty much like every other family on the block. My dad was a rising young executive in the corrugated box industry; my mother was a stay-at-home mom, though in the early 1950s this term was not in my lexicon.

We may have been following the normal routine as my parents readied themselves for the day ahead, all three of us together in the bathroom. Perhaps it was a Saturday. No matter, I remember the screech of metal rings pulling across a metal rod and pillows of steam as Mom pushed back a plastic curtain and exited the tub. Maybe Dad’s mirror over the sink clouded as he pressed his nose to one side with a forefinger and carefully drew a safety razor through the white cream lathered on his cheeks. Three years old, perched on the toilet, swinging my legs, I enjoyed the sauna-like environment of our bathroom.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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urbanite may 06

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The fact we were all in the buff was immaterial except that I had a sudden burning desire to have an immediate answer to a perplexing question.

I asked, “Which one of you will I look like when I grow up?”

Mom must have grabbed a towel and covered up. Dad, I guess he was trapped in front of the sink looking down at, well, at his daughter through a foggy mirror.

Mom seemed angry. Her lips drew tight like elastic bands as she tersely turned my question around, “Like whom do you think, Missy?”

Since she was grumpy and looked scary, I blurted out hopefully, “My daddy?”

“Ridiculous! You’ll be like me.”

My parents scooted me out the bathroom pronto, and I was never to re-enter this realm of innocence again.

Many years later, my dad’s job took him abroad and we were with him on spring vacation touring a museum in Italy. My mother summed up my lesson on the birds and bees.

“I don’t see what’s so artistic about these classical sculptures of the male body,” she whispered to me. “Men really look quite silly without their clothes on. Now don’t you think so, honestly, dear?”

I had become more cautious about sharing my thoughts with elders. Suffice it to say, I never told my mother then, and I’ve never ever told her since, what I think about naked men in general, or any one man in particular.

A daughter, after all, is entitled to her privacy.

Elsey Curtis is a retired educator who takes care of her granddaughter and writes in her free time.

When I list all the people who have

seen my adult body naked, I am surprised by the number. There are boyfriends, some girlfriends, some roommates, some women in the locker room.

If my mother saw this list, she would be appalled.

She always taught me to be a modest person. “There is beauty in keeping your body to yourself, Angela,” she’d said.

Even though I’m surprised by the number, I am not bothered by it. I’m comforted to know that usually my body is something I can control, that, in fact, I know how to move it and present it, how to curve my hips to diminish the thickness around my thighs, distract the eye from my scars. Maybe it’s

the way we have learned to look at our bodies, or the way modesty has gone out the door with half-naked women now appearing on billboards and television ads. Even so, whenever I undress in front of someone new, I do not feel ashamed. I’m not sure where this attitude came from. Again, I hear my mother’s voice in my head, “Angela, there is beauty in modesty.”

After reviewing my list, what surprised me most is that I left off an entire population of people: my numerous doctors and nurses. Their presence almost doubles the amount. When I was diagnosed with kidney disease fifteen years ago, the first thing I learned while sitting scared and cold on that examination table is that in illness, there is no modesty. There is no way to hide your flaws or control the way you are being seen. There is no way to make your body do what you want it to do. So, I learned to surrender this part of myself. I let the nursing assistant give me a sponge bath. I let the intern, often younger than I am, feel my groin for my pulse. I oblige when the doctor, who looks like my grandfather, says, “Could you please unbutton your blouse so I may listen to your heart?” I no longer consider that he will notice that my bra is ugly and that my breasts are too small.

Instead, I concentrate on the sound of my heart, listening to it pump, realizing again that there is a whole world inside me that is undressed and bare.

And I wonder how it has the strength to keep going when every other part of my body feels worn, tired, and stripped by illness.

Sometimes my body isn’t something I can control. Sometimes I have to give in to it, its scars, its defects, its problems, and let it be a mystery and a puzzle that people need to study and investigate, and strangely enough, there is beauty in that, too.

Angela M. Balcita teaches writing and English at the University of Baltimore and at the Community College of Baltimore County.

My 18th birthday brings us to a

Dundalk strip club, where the girls are known for their cocaine habits and willingness to ignore the unspoken rule mandating G-strings at all times. An unconventional place to celebrate brand-new legal status, but there aren’t many options when you don’t smoke and can’t dance. It’s not good clean fun, but it’s at least cheap, as the club extends “kindness” to young women in the form of a $1 cover. I’m embarrassed, but my friends eagerly absorb the details of a

lifestyle far removed from our own. Our arrival has attracted the attention of the male customers, but none of them seems uncomfortable with our presence.

I venture off with a friend to find the ladies’ room, followed by more pairs of eyes than there could possibly be men in the club. When we get there, I use the bathroom, gingerly, as my friend talks with the strippers sitting on the counter. They linger over cigarettes in what seems to be their haven: just as dirty as the club outside, but separate from the intruding gazes and hands of their customers. They discuss school and boyfriends, and answer my friend’s questions about what it’s like to work here. Looking around, I realize the morbid pleasure I would get if I saw someone from my high school among the dancers. The prospect isn’t unlikely, as the monumental divide I’d assumed existed between the lives of these strippers and myself disappears during our conversation. The camaraderie among the women also strikes me, as well as their willingness to extend it to us.

We leave the bathroom, and wander over to the chairs lining the phallic-shaped stage. As we sit, a stripper slowly gyrates her way around, giving everyone a few moments of personal attention in exchange for a few dollars. She seems relieved when she gets to us. I imagine we are more like dancing in front of the mirror in the comfortable space of her bedroom. We have something in common when she compliments my purse. Yet soon I’m confronted with something else we have in common, which is more unsettling. She begins to dance for me, moving with the rhythm of what I can only guess are the fantasies of the men in the room. I’m relieved when she moves on, and I decide that I prefer this indirect angle.

I watch her perform, no longer inhibited by my embarrassment. An average girl, she reaches my height with the help of five-inch heels. Her makeup embalms her face, preserving its blank expression.

Bleached, heavily styled hair contrasts with the softness of her body. Her water-droplet breasts surprise me, and I am denied the pleasure of judging the plastic surgery I’d expected. She is not the caricature of femininity I’d anticipated. My unease at being here doesn’t stem from her nudity, but that her nudity so closely resembles my own.

Katie Conn is a student who delights in books, the city, and being outside.

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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urbanite may 06

Wednesday is Pinot Day

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Offer Valid for A Limited Period Located in Mt.Vernon’s historic district, Spirits of Mt.Vernon offers a terrific variety of wines from around the world as well as liquor and specialty beers.

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Free 89 ferro at 443-984-30 Contact Tonya Talia .org www.heritagewalk

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or’s Center, Inner Harbor Visit Opening remarks: 0 a.m.–11 a.m.)

401 Light Street (1 m Inner Harbor ughout the day fro Tours: depart thro Visitor’s Center p.m.) r Plaza (11 a.m.–4 Festival: Shot Towe e Carroll Mansion th at ld he t will be In case of rain, even rd Street at 800 East Lomba

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high destrian trail that Heritage Walk, a pe s its second season te ra leb ce ric sites, s the city’s most histo The event include of activities May 6. s, ur to , de ra with a special day pa ries, a d national dignita e liv s, or remarks by local an nd afts ve al with food and cr . and a family festiv history characters g in liv d tivities, an music, children’s ac

photo © Leon Forado | Dreamstime.

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photo by Kent Bye

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Films of all varieties c ome to Ba Festival. M ltimore for ore than o the Maryla ne hundre genres, form nd Film d films rep ats, and era re senting va s will be sc festival, alo ri ou s reened duri ng with th ng the fou e tradition As always, r-day al opening directors a night short nd produc hand for p s program tion crewm ost-film ta . embers wil lks with th l be on e audience .

Films are sc reened at v arious loca check web tions arou site for loc nd Baltimo ations, date May 11–14 re; s, and time s Screenings $10, $8 for students a all-access nd seniors pass to all ; $250 for a fi lm s, parties, 410-752-80 four-day and events 83 www.mdfi lmfest.org

rive le D g a 0E 190 27 m.

May .–4 p. ee , .m er f r 10 a r adults nd und o a .c om $5 f ren 12 ival t s e 3 d f chil 48-153 reherb o -4 410 .baltim w ww

Critics’ Picks at MAP

Live Music at Belvedere Square Spend your Friday nights at the third annual Summer Sounds at the Square. The free weekly outdoor concert series features live music from local of musicians, as well as food and drink from vendors series The rants. restau and et Mark e Belvedere Squar kicks off on May 26 with New Orleans-style band Junkyard Saints.

Corner of York Road and Northern Parkway Fridays, May 26 through September 8 6–9 p.m.

Call 410-464-9773 for updates and weather-related concerns www.belvederesquare.com

Buying a Baltimore Home The Live Baltimore Home-Buying Fair and Neighborhood Tours of Baltimore’s western region give potential homebuyers a leg up. The fair provides listings of homes for sale in that area, offers home ownership and renovation education sessions, and shares information about the home-buying process. Neighborhood bus tours are conducted all day. The City of Baltimore will award $3,000 to fifty event participants who close on a house in western Baltimore within ninety days of the event.

Baltimore Polytechnic Institute High School 1400 West Cold Spring Lane May 13 10 a.m.–2 p.m.; educational sessions begin at 9 a.m.

Free Call 410-637-3750 or visit www.livebaltimore.com/ hb/BIB to register

Maryland Art Place’s yearlong 20th Annual Critics’ Residency Program ibition. culminates in the Critics’ Picks exh al artists Critic Lilly Wei chose the nine visu exhibit and three writers featured in this May 20, and the accompanying catalog. On will the participants and an audience lic forum. pub a at es issu art ical crit discuss sts and July 15 is the deadline for area arti ics’ writers to apply for MAP’s next Crit in late Residency Program, which begins to summer. For more information, go . .org lace artp www.md 8 Market Place, Suite 100 May 16 through June 24 p.m.)

Forum (2 p.m.) and reception (3–5 take place on May 20 Free 410-962-8565

w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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Timothy Dean electrifies Baltimore dining with his first location in historic Fell’s Point. Celebrate American cooking with a nod to French tradition with one of the DC area’s hottest chefs. Expect exceptional service, ambience and, of course, cuisine.

Make your reservation today, then salivate with anticipation.

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Selected Installation shots from 'Hello Charm City'(aug/sept.05), 'Femme Effect Part Deux'(mar./apr.06), 'Subjective Sublime'(apr./may06), 'Polarity'(oct/nov.05) & works from: Dana Reifler(In-Potentia 1,2,3), Cara Ober (Carrier) Current Exhibition thru May 28 'Subjective Sublime: James Long & Julie Jankowski'

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urbanite may 06

Ben Frederick III, CCIM Ben Frederick Realty, Inc. Ben@BenFrederick.com For detailed information visit www.BenFrederick.com, or call 410-435-5040.

Online arts journal ...

Many Baltimoreans were saddened when the pocketsize arts-and-culture review Radar disappeared.

But what many don’t know is that there is still a critical eye turned on the arts in the city: It’s a website called PEEKreview, created by Jack Livingston before Radar hit the streets. When Livingston came to Baltimore from Texas in the mid-’90s, he was “shocked at both the lack of coverage of the arts in the local media and the poor quality of what appeared,” he says. He created PEEKreview, and in 2002 he and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance began to formulate a plan for a print version of the

edited by marianne amoss

website, called Radar. Editorially looser than Radar and more open to the community at large, PEEKreview is a resource for anyone interested in the arts in Baltimore.

It contains occasionally updated departments, plus a new Media Watch blog written by Livingston. The Word department, now under the creative control of Baltimore artist and writer Lauren Bender (a contributor to Urbanite), has been revamped; its latest installment, Schizotype, features an eclectic mix of poetry and writing. And Radar may soon reappear: Livingston plans to bring the publication back sometime this year. Go to www.peek review.net.

Grocery store ...

For years, Baltimore residents have struggled with the fact that there are few supermarkets in the city.

For some, that meant driving a long distance to buy groceries; for others, it meant frequent trips to a small corner store or to the arabber’s cart. A new Shoppers Food & Pharmacy Pharmacy, which opened on March 26 in Highlandtown on Eastern Avenue at Kane Street, is another in a string of new grocery stores coming to the city. The 57,000-square-foot

Radio show …

If you’ve ever felt lost in the sea of local music in Baltimore, WTMD 89.7 FM now airs a show that can be your guide. Baltimore Unsigned is a weekly program that features unsigned bands on small or independent record labels. Each week, there is an interview with and a live performance by a featured artist, and tracks from other Baltimore bands are played. The show was launched January 9 with acoustic rock group The Doug Segree Band. Artists featured on the show are usually in regular rota-

tion on WTMD, and past guests have included The Oranges Band and The Palestars. Host Don Rogers says the show has succeeded in its mission of spreading the word about good local music: “I get so many e-mails from bands that haven’t even been on the show saying thanks for getting the music out there.

And that’s really what the show is about—creating awareness that there is an established, thriving music scene in Baltimore, and that the music is quality.”

The show airs Mondays, 8–9 p.m.

building is the first newly constructed Shoppers in the area since the supermarket chain entered the Baltimore market in 2002. With new grocery stores slotted for downtown, shopping is becoming more convenient for city residents—although nothing beats the arabber for true Baltimore style! Open 6 a.m. to midnight every day. 6500 Eastern Avenue; 443-452-1050.

photo by Don Rogers

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urbanite may 06

A MORTGAGE PROGRAM OF CDA MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Michael S. Steele Victor L. Hoskins Shawn S. Karimian Governor Lt. Governor Secretary Deputy Secretary

The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on 1% origination fee, a 1% discount point, $201.50 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower.

2 The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on 1% origination fee, a no discount point, $217.00 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower.

3 The annual percentage rate (APR) quoted represents a typical $99,200 FHA-insured, 30-year fixed rate loan on a $100,000 home with a down payment of $2,250 and financed Upfront Mortgage Insurance Premium (UFMIP). This APR is based on no origination fee, a no discount point, $227.33 of prepaid interest (this APR calculation assumes 15 days of prepaid interest) and $750 in Mortgage Loan Fees paid by the borrower.

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line includes authentic modern classics such as Frank Gehry’s Face-Off Table and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s famous Barcelona Lounge Chair. Home on the Harbor, which specializes in high-quality modern furnishings, is the only officially designated Knoll Space retailer in the area. Mount Washington Mill location open Mon–Sat 10–6, Sun 12–4; 1340-C Smith Avenue; 410-433-1616. Go to www.homeon theharbor.com.

Grants ...

Are you an artist struggling to make ends meet while still making time for your art? Each year, the Maryland State Arts Council offers individual artists the chance to apply for grant awards in the amounts of $1,000, $3,000, and $6,000. The categories change each year: For 2007, they will be choreography, music composition, playwriting, poetry, crafts, photog-

Aromatherapy bar ...

A local aromatherapy expert has opened his own version of a modern-day apothecary shop. Co-owned by Richard Crafton and Sherry Fulton, Zensabar offers a full range of products and services designed for healing. Their line, all of which is produced in the shop, includes candles, facial and bath products, handmade organic soaps, aromatic misting sprays, and essential oils, which can be blended at the customer’s request.

“We make our own products with our own recipes.

Everything is natural. There are no synthetics and no preservatives,” says Crafton, who has twenty years experience in the field and is a frequent area lecturer on aromatherapy. Also available are massage therapy, reflexology, acupuncture, yogic belly dancing classes, and lectures. Open Mon–Thurs 11–7, Fri and Sat 11–8, and Sun 12–5. 720 West 36th Street; 410-235-7979.

raphy, and sculpture (excluding installation). The deadline to apply for the 2007 awards is mid-July 2006. Recipients of the awards must provide a report on how they used the funds to sustain and/or further the pursuit of artistic excellence. MSAC also awards grants to arts groups. Go to www.msac.org.

photo by Lisa Macfarlane

Laure Drogoul, “The Root (blue-eyed).” Photo by Will Kirk.

Modern design …

The style and utility of modern design is something many homeowners desire, but sometimes the price tag can be prohibitive, and sales on design standards aren’t frequent. Home on the Harbor, a home furnishings store with locations in Mount Washington and Federal Hill, hosts its annual Knoll Space sale at its Mount Washington location from May 5 to May 12, featuring a 10% discount on Knoll Space’s modern home and office furnishings. Knoll’s Space

photo courtesy of www.knoll.com

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food

The Farmer Next Door Embracing the benefits of eating locally produced food

Ever since my foodie brother ordered Chinese food in Inverness thirty years ago and was served a duck’s neck slathered with ketchup, I began to formulate this gastronomic maxim: Never order Chinese food in Scotland.

I added more rules as I stumbled on more malapropos culinary selections: Never order bagels in the Adirondack Mountains (where I felt guilty feeding a gluey, hole-less one to a goose), ask for fajitas in St. Louis, go to McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées, or buy chimichangas on Ritchie Highway.

And never, ever order blue crabs north of the Mason-Dixon Line or south of Virginia. I learned my lesson the time I was served boiled, mushy crabs in South Florida.

Over the years, my friends and I have found many restaurants serving unfamiliar or foreign food with disastrous—and occasionally comical—results.

A friend of mine dined at a Wisconsin restaurant with this note on the menu: “free-range asparagus.” Imagine those blind little creatures scurrying through a meadow on their spindly green stalks, crashing into chickens at every turn.

Forget the maxim “You are what you eat.” I say, “Eat local.” Eat what the natives are growing, harvesting, and know how best to prepare.

In Baltimore, eating local used to mean eating marshmallow donuts at Mikulski’s Bakery in East Baltimore; summer peach cake from Silbers Bakery; “whales,” or large soft-shell crabs, at Danny’s long gone restaurant on North Charles Street; or blue crabs from many street corners.

The good news today, in this age of quality international cuisine on demand, is that we don’t need

to relegate the “eating local” movement to quaint Baltimore history.

A “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” campaign is emerging from a year-old organization called the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance (CSBA), a “chamber with values,” as its executive director, Keith Losoya, calls it.

The group, which has eighty members (both individuals and businesses), is modeling its campaign after ones in Pennsylvania and other states that promote locally produced goods sold in restaurants, farmers’ markets, and other businesses.

Their guiding principle is simple: Buying locally produced food means getting fresh food that does not need chemical preservatives, does not waste fuel traveling long distances, and supports the local economy.

On a Sunday morning in late February, fifteen CSBA members met for breakfast and a brainstorming session at One Straw Farm, a 175-acre organic farm in northern Baltimore County owned by Joan and Drew Norman.

In their yellow farmhouse, Joan Norman made waffles and served coffee to the eclectic group of Baltimoreans, many having driven almost fifty miles from the city to be on the ground floor of a movement rooted in the belief that the future lies in a locally sustained economy.

In addition to the Normans, the group included chef and restaurateur John Shields, owner of Gertrude’s at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Ted Rouse, CSBA’s chair; Mick Kipp, a Waverly Farmers’ Market board member and vendor and owner of Whiskey Island, a hot-sauce specialty foods w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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urbanite may 06

2/21/06

11:48:39 AM

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photo by Gail Burton

photo by Gail Burton

The 2006 growing season begins early at One Straw Farm, a 175-acre organic farm in northern Baltimore County.

Joan Norman, who co-owns One Straw Farm with her husband, Drew, tends to young plants in the greenhouse.

business; Gaylord Clark, owner of Two Oceans Seafood; Martha Lucius, owner of Boheme Cafe at the Inner Harbor; and David Aronson and Cheryl Wade, owners of the Mill Valley Garden and Farmers Market, a year-round indoor farmers market scheduled to open this spring in Remington.

In the Normans’ cozy basement, CSBA board member Susan Fort moderated, while co-chair Janna Howley (whose day job is marketing and outreach manager of Freshfarm Markets, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit) typed notes on her laptop. An optimistic bunch, they talked about finding ways to cultivate more organic farmers; how to feed city public school children with healthy, locally grown food; how to make it easier for restaurants to buy local produce; and how to promote those restaurants with an “eat local” branding campaign.

While the movement is just reaching Baltimore, it is in full swing elsewhere, as part of an effort to support local independent businesses in cities like Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon.

Rouse says he helped found CSBA after meeting the owners of White Dog Cafe, a Philadelphia restaurant dedicated to social activism in many forms, including linking farmers directly to restaurants.

CSBA is also a local chapter of the international organization Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).

Big business, says Rouse, is “myopically focused on short-term quarterly returns at a cost to human and environmental health.” There is no reason, he believes, that business can’t be socially responsible, protect the environment, and make a profit simultaneously.

CSBA “is without a doubt one of the most important groups created in this city,” says Wade, who, with Aronson, has moved their organic gardening business from Hampden to the new Remington loca-

tion to allow for a year-round farmers’ market. She hopes to lease twenty stalls to businesses that produce their own vegetables, poultry, dairy, and baked goods from the Chesapeake region, within 150 miles of the city.

As for the Normans, they have been living and breathing an “eat local” campaign since they started their organic farm twenty-three years ago. They have been selling their produce at the Waverly Farmers’ Market on Saturdays for more than sixteen years.

Their Community Supported Agriculture program

Forget the maxim “You are what you eat.” I say, “Eat local.” Eat what the natives are growing, harvesting, and know how best to prepare. feeds 150 shareholders who pay $450 to $500 a season for weekly produce deliveries.

“I’m feeding Baltimore. I don’t need to feed Chicago,” Joan Norman tells the group.

But the Normans are in the minority of farmers who are feeding Baltimoreans directly.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation reported in 2005 that food sales “directly from the farmer to the consumer” in the Bay region have averaged only 1% of agricultural sales in the last twenty years.

CSBA hopes to change that. Joan Norman tells the group about the five friends who posed a sobering question after the September 11, 2001 attacks. “‘If we’re at war,’ they asked, ‘will you feed us?’

If you don’t know your farmer,” Norman concluded, “you’re done.”

She worries, though, that there are few programs training young farmers and that there are several farmers at the Waverly market over 70 years old.

“What’s going to happen when they die?” she asks.

There is also the problem of a lack of farmable land in suburban Baltimore.

“There are a lot of hurdles,” she says.

Despite the daunting tasks ahead for the group, they are upbeat as they talk of staging a fundraiser, called a “Tomato Ball;” leasing a small farm as an “incubator” so new farmers can test raising crops on 5-acre plots; and bringing more city school children to visit local farms like One Straw Farm.

John Shields is doing his part by serving an increasing number of locally produced items on his Gertrude’s menu, including greens, eggs, and potatoes.

“You can do it little by little,” Shields says.

Bonnie North, director of operations for Coastal Ventures (Shields’ company that promotes his cookbooks and TV shows) is publishing a new magazine, called Baltimore Eats, which debuted in April.

As the meeting breaks up and the CSBA members head south back to Baltimore, Drew Norman looks over the dozens of brown, frozen acres outside his front door that held last year’s turnips, kale, collards, strawberries, and tomatoes.

It is still February, but he will plant seeds in the greenhouse tomorrow.

It might not look like it, he says, but spring is coming very soon.

To learn more about the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance, go to CSBalliance.org or call 410342-1482. To learn more about One Straw Farm, go to www.OneStrawFarm.com. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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baltimore observed

by roberta brandes gratz

The Best Laid Plans Baltimore’s Comprehensive Master Plan is in the final stages of open debate.

Urban expert Roberta Brandes Gratz highlights the pluses and the potential pitfalls and tells you what you need to know.

In the early 1970s, Baltimore initiated a cutting-edge homesteading program. The city turned over properties that were in municipal ownership to citizens committed to living in the dwelling for three years.

The homesteader was given a lease for a nominal rent (usually $1 a year) and a twenty-year, federally financed rehab loan at 3% interest.

In principle, this modern-day initiative was not unlike the Homestead Act of 1862 wherein the government gave willing pioneers public land to develop the great open spaces of the West on the condition that the homesteader remain on the land and cultivate it for five years. Labor in exchange for a place to live and a source of livelihood was a well-accepted bartering system at the time, promoting both the settlement of the frontier and the concept of the selfsufficient entrepreneur.

Baltimore’s program not only illustrated a fundamentally wise approach to the productive reuse of vacant and abandoned properties that ultimately feeds the regeneration of troubled neighborhoods, it also illustrated the City’s ability to be ahead of the curve in finding solutions to nettlesome urban problems. The burning question today is: Is Baltimore ready to be so innovative again?

On the ground, the answer appears to be yes.

The genuine regeneration process is clearly underway in the downtown area, reflecting trends

occurring across the country. With 37,000 residents within a one-mile radius of Pratt and Light Streets, downtown Baltimore is now one of the top ten most-populated downtowns in the country.

Appropriate new development is interspersed with creative conversions of department stores, office buildings, and historic structures into apartments; there is the upgrading of theaters and the emergence of small, local retail-based projects. This sizable downtown district, with 150 historic buildings and the notable involvement of Bank of America, has the kind of mix that reflects layers of history and offers endless potential for innovative reuse and new growth. The same revitalization process is visible in many of Baltimore’s distinctive, remarkably intact neighborhoods. Historic housing is being bought and upgraded in many neighborhoods.

The momentum exists for many good things to continue. With a new Comprehensive Master Plan released this past February by the Baltimore City Planning Commission, Baltimore is poised to be innovative again.

Maybe.

Will the City’s new plan nurture this process appropriately or, instead, stimulate too many of the conventional big projects that do little for the true regeneration of an urban place? Such big projects sometimes do a lot for the tourism, sports, or conw w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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vention business that cities have come to rely on, but they are never enough to do what they promise to do for the city as a whole. It never fails that big projects rarely meet their expectations; small projects always exceed theirs.

The regeneration of a city is quite simply a process, not a project or an assortment of big projects attracting visitors. A collection of big visitor projects a city does not make. If you do it for the local, the visitor will come. Local people give a place character and appeal. If you do it for the visitor, you lose the local and, eventually, you lose the visitor.

So what is the plan and how will it impact you?

The goal of any master plan should be to look at the holistic needs of the city and to strategize for its future growth and success. Baltimore hasn’t had a new master plan in more than thirty years and this one is slightly unconventional. It was written like a business plan for the city for the next ten years, looking at four distinct areas: live, earn, play, and learn. Its goals will affect where resources and planning energies go through 2012. The plan is not a dictate, but simply a compendium of ideas and goals based on the city’s history, character, and current trends. At this stage, the plan is a draft document. Feedback from a series of community meetings held this spring is being incorporated into a final draft, which will be released to the public on May 15. The public will have one last opportunity to respond to the plan during an open hearing of the Planning Commission on June 15.

A vigilant and involved citizenry is necessary to make the positive elements of the plan the priority, even more than the several hundred citizens involved in the public meetings held in nine districts throughout the city over the last three months.

Baltimore has a great history of involved citizens.

They stopped a highway from obliterating Fells Point and Federal Hill in the 1960s. The experts declared those neighborhoods of no value and certainly of less value than the proposed new highway. They were wrong. Experts often are.

Instinctively, local residents usually know better. The citizens did know better than to cut out the heart of their city with a highway. It was a difficult fight and today Baltimore is richer for it. Those historic neighborhoods are not only jewels for the city but are catalysts for the renewed appreciation and subsequent regeneration of Baltimore’s rich assortment of historic neighborhoods. A collection of three hundred distinct neighborhoods, of which seventy are designated historic districts, is one of the city’s most important and unique assets on which to rebuild.

This current draft plan both celebrates Baltimore’s strengths and trumpets some good news: a declining crime rate, strong urban fabric, access to water, proximity to Washington, D.C., net gain of residents from D.C. and New England, an overall slowing of population loss with the expectation of that trend continuing, housing affordability due to extensive underutilized housing stock, and historic dwellings that fit today’s market demand for quality and scale of urban living.

Many of the stated goals are laudatory and reflect some of the best new urban thinking: • Encouraging sustainable development that includes green building standards and improved transit service and easing traffic congestion; • Smoother integration of the transit system and encouragement of increased density adjacent to transit hubs; • Improvement of neighborhood schools (probably the most important goal); • Acknowledgment that improved public schools are key to keeping and attracting families; • Development of crime prevention methods through environmental design; • Implementation of a Bicycle Master Plan to create a complete bikeway system; • Preservation of existing historic buildings and conversion to residential of empty commercial buildings; • Expansion of a tax credit for rehab of historic properties and rehab loans for low-income property owners in historic districts; • Revision of the current zoning code to encourage mixed-use development; • Recognition of the value of start-ups and homegrown new businesses by encouraging them with financial incentives; • Promotion of design excellence for public buildings; • Small but significant upgrades in neighborhood livability; • Recognition that the appeal of urban living includes diversity, density, and accessibility.

Clearly, many innovative ideas are expressed here and much attention has been paid to details, like planting more trees and “creating new standards for tree maintenance” and recognizing that “streets, alleys and sidewalks ... are valued parts of the City.”

Goals, of course, are goals and no more.

The plan could go either by a conventional route, resorting to new, big projects, or in the more productive, innovative one. At some point, even the best ideas and goals outlined in this document could be used to rationalize the worst project proposals or zoning changes. The key will be how this document translates into specific programs and actions. What projects are included in the capital budget and what developer projects comply with the plan will be a litmus test of the plan’s seriousness. Interpreting

the plan in relation to development proposals can be tricky.

Some items cited could be misinterpreted, misunderstood, and misused. For example, young professionals apparently are the largest group of people moving into Baltimore. This has been true in gritty neighborhoods of renewing cities across the country. The mistaken assumption nationally has been that this is the way it will continue. But young professionals have a funny habit of getting married and having children. Once they have made the commitment to urban living, they are not automatically rushing off to the suburbs anymore. That was the post-war expectation that has diminished in recent decades. Some young families do leave, of course, but many want to stay.

This is one of the reasons that improving neighborhood schools is so vital to Baltimore’s future.

While the city school system has a separate master plan, there are ways in which general planning can and should support the school’s efforts. If the city had a topnotch school system and a seamless public transit system, everything else would take care of itself. The number of families with children has declined here, as in most major cities, but that is slowly changing. Families once destined for the suburbs now opt for the urban tradeoffs.

The chance of this trend continuing is strengthened by the increase in applications to urban

Baltimore’s Master Plan What is it?

Baltimore City hasn’t had a new master plan since 1971. The City of Baltimore Comprehensive Master Plan outlines the goals for the city and this document, if approved, will serve as a map to guide the planning process through 2012.

Why should you care?

If it’s not in the plan, it may not get funding. This plan impacts the capital expenditure for the city for the next ten years. One participant at an open community meeting in March pointed out that the draft document failed to mention anything about the public library system—an accidental omission that the Planning Commision says it will address in the final draft, which is scheduled to be released to the public on May 15.

What can you do?

Speak out. This is your last chance to offer feedback before the plan is adopted. “This is just a draft,” says Doug McCoach, a citizen representative and the vice-chairman of the City Planning Commission. “We are anxious to hear from people.” You can give the Planning Commission your thoughts during a public hearing on June 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the War Memorial Building. To learn more, call 410-396-PLAN (7526) or go to www.liveearnplaylearn.com.

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colleges across the country. The number of college students in Baltimore is 48,736. Not bad in a city of 651,154 (as of the year 2000). Many of the students who chose urban higher education may similarly choose to live in a city after college as well.

The presence of so many students, especially the presence of some of the most important universities in the country, can, however, lead to abuse.

The plan calls for establishing a University District.

What will that mean? Will standard rules be waived for a university when a development project conflicts with the livability of local residents? Universities—and other institutions, like hospitals—are gaining out-of-proportion strength in many cities.

Expansion plans are increasingly developer-driven— wealthy donors ready to contribute to a building with their name on it—rather than based on programmatic needs. Too often the tail is wagging the dog.

Caution is necessary for other stated goals as well. The plan, for example, refers to “an abundance of development-ready land and land that is convertible to newer and more productive uses.” What does that cover and where?

The plan also refers to “underutilized land.”

What does that refer to? Vacant commercial buildings that could be upgraded for new uses? Vacant or abandoned housing that could be recycled but might be demolished instead? Does vacant, developmentready land mean the City would accept construction of an inappropriate, car-oriented retail mall, if it included offices and apartments above? The potential for the wrong kind of development lurks under the surface. Increasingly, cities are creating the kind of suburban development that undermines neighborhood shopping streets and local businesses and discourages establishment of the kind of home-grown new business the plan indicates as desirable.

The housing area seems to contain some of the trickier potential pitfalls. For example, referring to

suburban residents working in suburban areas who might desire to live in the city: “A relatively small stock of single family detached homes, approximately 13% of total stock, may serve as an obstacle to attracting this group of customers, since these customers are often more price-oriented than urban living-oriented.” Does this mean the City would approve the kind of low-density, suburban detached developments undermining the urbanism of city neighborhoods in many cities? This contradicts the

Even the best ideas and goals outlined in this document could be used to rationalize the worst project proposals or zoning changes. The key will be how this document translates into specific programs and actions. plan’s pronounced goal of encouraging more density rather than less.

It is a slippery slope when a city tries to lure suburban dwellers. Suburbanizing any city neighborhood undermines the potential for local retail, public transit use, local school attendance, and the livability that comes with non-auto dependant pedestrians. Today, more than ever, people have a

choice to live in a city or a suburb. They must remain distinct lifestyles. A city cannot—and should not even try—to compete with the suburbs on suburban terms.

Many American—and European—cities confront the dilemma of a diminished population, diminished since the urban heyday of World War II and booming urban economies. The risk now is to plan for the smaller city, instead of encouraging and anticipating the rebirth. In New York City in the 1970s, abandoned buildings seemed more plentiful than occupied ones, for example, in the South Bronx.

“Planned shrinkage” was the expert planning prescription of the day leading to low-density, suburbanized developments. Now New York City has little land or capacity to address its affordable housing crisis. Suburban housing sits on land that should accommodate urban density instead. Baltimore should be careful not to let this happen.

As noted in the plan, Baltimore has a great assortment of housing alternatives. If suburbanites want to move to the city, they should choose one of them. The strong urban fabric so characteristic of Baltimore that the plan celebrates should not be undermined one nibble at a time. The plan cites 16,000 vacant or abandoned structures and offers the goal to “return these properties to a productive use.” Creative strategies to do this are the key.

Obstacles exist, to be sure. All cities are struggling with high poverty rates, an undereducated workforce, and continuing job and business losses to globalization. Yet, plenty of cause for optimism exists and much of it is presented in the plan. To keep its competitive edge with the suburbs, Baltimore must not only celebrate its uniqueness but enhance it, build on its assets and proceed with a positive attitude.

The plan does not end when it is passed by the City Council. It will only be as good as a watchful citizenry makes it. ■

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space

by cara ober

photography by christian jeria

Underground Art A West Side gallery takes art to new depths

Above: Fifteen-foot ceilings and 13,000 square feet of gallery space showcase art at Sub-Basement Artist Studios.

Standing in front of The Atrium at Market Center, a luxury apartment building at 118 North Howard Street, you would never know you’re standing on top of one of the city’s larger art galleries. Close to Lexington Market, the Hippodrome Theatre, and the Inner Harbor, Sub-Basement Artist Studios gallery is located right in the heart of Baltimore’s West Side renaissance—a developing commercial, residential, and cultural arts district. If only I could find it.

Where is this gallery, anyway?

I attended the Femme Effect opening at SubBasement on a Saturday evening in January. I got the directions to the space from a friend, but I doublechecked them online (at www.subbasementartist studios.com) to make sure. The idea of going to an art show in a basement underneath another basement seemed odd and almost unbelievable, so I wrote down the directions carefully. I was sure I would get lost.

After parking in a garage, I entered The Atrium.

I took the lobby elevator to the basement, and then I walked down a small, butter-colored hallway to another elevator. Once inside the second elevator, I had two choices: B or SB. It seemed a bit Alice in Wonderland to me, but I hit SB and went down to the basement under the basement. Upon exiting the elevator, I was relieved to hear the sounds of jazz, buzzing

conversation, and clinking glasses. I walked forward, a bit dazed and surprised, into 13,000 square feet of gallery space with light-filled 15-foot ceilings and crowds of people.

“People always expect the space to be tiny—like a crawlspace or something,” says founder and director Jeffrey Kent. “But they couldn’t be more wrong.”

Kent rented the space three years ago, originally for a painting studio. A self-trained artist, Kent has been working and exhibiting in the city for more than a decade. His original studio, in the West Side’s A.S. Abell building, flooded after a water main break.

Kent knew that he needed to relocate, but he wanted to stay in the neighborhood. He says he chose the sub-basement because he couldn’t resist the sprawling space—20,000 square feet total.

The Atrium, originally a Hecht’s flagship department store, used the sub-basement as a loading dock and merchandising department. When Kent was first shown the space, The Atrium had already renovated the systems, so all he had to do was clear out debris, build walls, and paint. “There were all of these Hecht’s sales signs down here,” Kent says, “and mannequins and old bits of merchandise.”

After a few informal showings of his own textural abstract paintings, Kent decided to use the w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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The entrance to The Atrium luxury apartment building at 118 North Howard Street. Sub-Basement lies below The Atrium.

A mixed-media installation entitled “But to All These Cries, and Murmurs, There Comes a Sudden Hush,” by Lauren Sleat on display in a Sub-Basement show.

cavernous space as an alternative gallery for local Baltimore artists.

“Every neighborhood needs an art gallery,” Kent says. “Our goal is to bring together the art community, the locals, and the corporate developers to create an even better place to live.” Kent grew up in Baltimore City and feels very strongly that the presence of art in the neighborhood is a necessity. “Children should grow up in homes with original art in them. Corpo-

Our goal is to bring together the art community, the locals, and the corporate developers to create an even better place to live. rate and individual collectors should buy from the museum-quality artists that Baltimore has to offer.”

Kent’s own work has been purchased for several corporate collections, and he strives to connect the artists who exhibit in his space with potential buyers.

In addition to being exhibition space, the SubBasement functions as artist workspaces. The artists who share the space with Kent are Dana Reifler, Amy Sherald, and Terry Thompson. Sherald credits

Founder/Director Jeffrey Kent’s studio

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Kent for her blossoming art career. “After grad school, it was crucial that I had a space to paint and show my work,” she said. “I heard through word of mouth about Jeffrey Kent, and I set out to find him.”

Reifler, a painter and the gallery’s curator and manager, is excited for the future of the space, including a new residency program. “We are planning to build another studio that we will award to an artist for one year, with a curated solo show. We’re going to put out calls for applicants in fall 2007.”

Reifler is encouraged by the momentum she has observed in recent months, noting, “The number of people attending our events grows with each exhibi-

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The Finest Baltimore is on the rise, and with more wealth in the area there is more of a desire for original art. tion. We are seeing a constant increase in the support for our artists and our space.”

Besides the monthly art openings and a Web gallery, Sub-Basement hosts invitation-only wine tastings, which bring collectors and artists together.

The space also features live musical acts, artist and curator talks, and readings by local poets and writers.

When asked if he sees the gallery’s unusual location as an obstacle, Kent responds positively.

“We’re unique, and for that we are thankful. I think Baltimore is on the rise, and with more wealth in the area there is more of a desire for original art.

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encounter

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photography by sam holden

The Last Town Crier Jack Trautwein delivers news the old-fashioned way

Above: Fells Point town crier Jack Trautwein has been dressing in period garb and announcing the day’s news from 1814 since 1987. He has become a neighborhood landmark.

Outside the Daily Grind, Thames Street is slicked with rain and the sky is full of clouds. A tug is docked at the Broadway Pier. There is the occasional thud of tires over cobblestones, but, for the most part, Fells Point is quiet.

On rainy days, the smell from the Patapsco, that mixture of fresh and salt water, hangs stranded in the air, and Fells Point’s past—the old colonial port, home of privateers and shipbuilders; the chain gangs of slaves that marched down Broadway; the colorful characters who haunted watering holes, old canneries, and warehouses; and the distant echoes of “bombs bursting in air”—seems very near.

Inside the Daily Grind, it’s another story.

Espresso machines blow steam, hip-hop pounds from speakers, and fingers tap away at laptops.

Among this scene sits Jack Trautwein, 68, with his parka and Greek fisherman’s hat. His beard is full and dashed with a bit more salt than pepper.

Jack is the town crier.

When on the job, clothed in his Revolutionary War-era outfit—breeches, waistcoat, dress coat, tricorn hat, and bell—Pastor Jack, or “PJ,” as he is also known because of his career as a Lutheran minister, has become Fells Point’s voice of the past, cautionary tongue for its future, and a bearer of goodwill towards men.

In 1987, a group of Federal Hill residents celebrated the bicentennial of the adoption of the Constitution with the re-creation of a historical parade from Fells Point to Federal Hill. He’s pretty sure that’s where it all began. But, as with all historical events, there’s always a few missing details.

“I don’t remember exactly how I got to be town crier,” PJ says of the role he assumed that day in 1987. “I do know that I was the only one in the group that had a Revolutionary War-period outfit and they knew I had public speaking experience. It sort of fell into my lap by default.”

Since then, PJ has continued to perform his duties on a voluntary basis, offering proclamations and greetings to tourists, politicians, and ships visiting Fells Point. From mid-August to mid-September, every day at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, PJ marches to the Broadway Square to give the news of the day— the news of the day from 1814.

“I wanted to take that period of time—The War of 1812, specifically the defense of Baltimore— and do daily news reports, ‘On this date such and such happened,’ just like a newscaster but as the town crier.”

He says that he wrote the scripts based on research collected from history books and from newspaper accounts of the day. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

49

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“If it hadn’t been for Fells Point, the British never would have come up the Chesapeake Bay,” he says, referring to the British invasion of Baltimore in September 1814. “They didn’t come up the Chesapeake Bay so Francis Scott Key could write ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

PJ’s life has been as remarkable as the historical tales he tells. Raised in Hamilton, he studied American history at Gettysburg College and attended Gettysburg Seminary where he became a Lutheran minister. In the late 1960s he was the minister of Augsburg Lutheran Church in West Baltimore, where he says he learned about “the spirit of togetherness”—of neighbors helping one another.

“The Lutheran Church at that time had very few, if any, black ministers,” he says. “In seminary, I specialized in looking at urban situations and had a keen interest in that. I learned so much about community.”

In 1974, PJ left Augsburg after he and his wife divorced. “Basically, I burned out,” he says.

It was then that he moved to Fells Point, where he opened a craft store, PJ’s Place. It was also in Fells Point that he found a sense of community similar to the one he had experienced in West Baltimore.

“It was fantastic during those times,” he says.

“There was a bar down the street called Harry’s. I had an organ, and I would haul that organ down on the Sunday night before Christmas every year and play Christmas carols all night. We started a tradition: the lighting of the Fells Point Christmas Candle.”

As PJ describes it, closing time was about 1 a.m. and, he says, “I would close by lighting this candle and reading the poem, ‘One Solitary Life,’ and big ol’ Harry, he’d be crying in the corner and all of a sudden he would leave because he didn’t want anybody to see him crying.”

Since those nights at Harry’s, PJ has started other holiday traditions, such as Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve church services at the Vagabond Theatre. But the most popular is his town crier Christmas morning stroll through Fells Point with his dog, Duffy.

“I’ve been doing it for maybe thirteen years.

At 11 a.m., I ring the bell and go down the streets dressed in ‘the outfit’ and wish everyone a merry Christmas and happy New Year. It took off. It’s gotten to the point where people who live in Fells Point are saying, ‘What time are you going to be around my house?’”

PJ says he started the stroll as a way of thanking his neighbors for all the years of support for PJ’s, which was nearly destroyed by a fire in 2001.

Interestingly, one of the few items to survive the fire was the Fells Point Christmas Candle (he has revived the traditional lighting of the candle and reading of “One Solitary Life” at his neighborhood Christmas Eve service).

PJ is also the founder and presenter of the 9/11 Award for Selfless Community Service in Fells Point, an award established after the September 11 attacks.

“The 9/11 award was the outcome of my concern that so many people had given so much to Fells Point and the constant battle to save it and had never been recognized for their contributions. Therefore I took advantage of a theme of 9/11, those who gave selflessly to others, by honoring those who have given selflessly to Fells Point,” he says.

PJ and I leave the cozy confines of the coffee shop and step into the cold rain to begin our own walking tour of PJ’s Fells Point. He talks as he walks, holding his cup of coffee.

Returning to the British and The War of 1812, he says, “They came up the Chesapeake Bay with the specific purpose of destroying Fells Point, because this is where all the ships were being made and this is where the privateers were operating.”

It is through history that you gain that certain sense of who you are as a people, and who you are as an individual. If you don’t have that tradition, you flounder.

Privateers were the private navy of the United States in the early 1800s, commissioned by the government to seize “prizes,” namely British merchant ships and split the bounty 50/50 with the government. Between 1812 and 1814, the privateers were particularly successful, making good use of the quick topsail schooners being made in Fells Point. They were the fastest and most maneuverable ships on the high seas.

“The British used to call them gnats and fleas,” PJ says. “In those two and a half years [between 1812 and 1814], the privateers out of Fells Point captured or destroyed more than five hundred British vessels.

We had some fifty-six privateers operating out of Fells Point. We made up 14% of the privateers in the United States. But the privateers out of here captured or destroyed nearly 40% of the whole merchant fleet.”

We walk up Ann Street past the Robert Long House and take a right on Lancaster. PJ points out that Fells Point was laid out with wide streets like Ann for the wealthy, smaller cross streets like Lan-

caster for the middle-class merchants and artisans, and narrow streets like Durham between Ann and Wolfe for common laborers and free blacks.

As we pass the Wharf Rat, PJ points out that, as legend has it, “Billie Holiday had her own stool in there.”

We stop at the corner of Lancaster and Durham streets, and PJ talks a little bit about a young black slave named Frederick Bailey who escaped aboard a train east of Fells Point dressed as a sailor, took the name Frederick Johnson, made his way to Philadelphia (a free city), and then went to New York, where he became known as Frederick Douglass.

He also tells the tale of Captain Thomas Boyle, a famed privateer out of Fells Point who successfully and with much flair and bravado blockaded the entire British Isles with one lone ship, Chasseur, which was built in Fells Point.

On his return, Boyle sailed Chasseur into Fells Point, where a group of citizens had gathered on a pier, shouting, “The pride of Baltimore!”

We take a left on Thames and walk to the end of the pier. Docked leisure boats bob, ducks float on the water, and the rain picks up to a steady downpour as PJ launches into a description of the defense of Baltimore, the famed bombardment that led to the writing of our national anthem. The defense of Baltimore was a turning point in the war, which ended December 24, 1814. PJ says that although “we had gained our political freedom in the Revolutionary War, it was The War of 1812 that gave us our commercial freedom.”

In thirty vivid minutes, he lays out the invasion, but for PJ, the real story is Baltimore’s response to the fifty-one British ships slowly moving up the bay, a response to which modern Homeland Security and City officials should take note.

Between August 24 and September 10, 1814, Baltimore accomplished the following: an entrenchment was dug from Canton all the way over to Gay Street, complete with seven embankments lined with nearly one hundred cannons; sixteen thousand troops were enlisted; $700,000 was raised; a welfare fund was set up for families whose loved ones were serving in the militia; a one thousand-bed hospital was built; ships were sunk as a blockade; and Fort McHenry was completed. Not a dime was contributed by the state or federal governments.

“We did all this in three short weeks,” PJ says.

“It’s an amazing story.”

For PJ, these tales of young Fells Point are not simply dusty facts from textbooks or stale monologues from lecture halls. To him, they are very much a part of the fabric of the community. And for PJ, it’s not just about preserving that fabric—it’s about preserving the hard-won wisdom of the past in order to be well-prepared for the future.

“It is through history that you gain that certain sense of who you are as a people, and who you are as an individual. If you don’t have that tradition, you flounder.” ■

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photo by Lynn Cazaban

STATE OF THE

ART Critics discuss Baltimore’s unique take on painting, photography, sculpture, performance art, and political art

What is the nature of the art coming out of Baltimore City today? And how is the city itself impacting the work of local artists functioning in various genres?

We called upon critical writers in the region to give us a peak into the current art scene.

They investigated artists producing in five distinct disciplines and reported back on the ideas and trends influencing their work.

Mark Alice Durant looked at both photography and performance art. Durant is an artist and writer and a professor in the department of visual art at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is an editor of Link: A Critical Journal on the Arts and cocurator and coauthor of Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology and the Paranormal.

J.W. Mahoney, who writes here about painting, is a Washington, D.C.-based writer, artist, and independent curator serving as a corresponding editor for Art in America. He is an affiliate professor of visual arts at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Michael Salcman addressed sculpture. A physician by trade, Salcman was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and is past president of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. His essays on the relationship between the arts and sciences, and the visual arts and the brain have appeared in such journals as Neurosurgery and Creative Nonfiction, and online at PEEKreview.net.

Bill Sebring dissected political art. Sebring is a mathematician and writer who blogs about contemporary culture at ffactory.blogspot.com.

He is a senior editor of the arts journal Link: A Critical Journal on the Arts.

The writers were given the difficult task of succinctly describing the current state of each genre—who’s doing what, with a hint at how and why. The result is a survey of the complex, raw, ironic, and remarkably unself-conscious world of Baltimore art in the twenty-first century.

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photo by Nancy Froehlich

Photographer Lynn Silverman in her studio in Hampden

P H O T O G R A P H Y

Clockwise from top left: Lynn Cazabon, detail of “Story of M;” Lynn Silverman, detail of “Lightheaded, Solo #4;” Laura Burns, detail of “Elizabeth Ortega;” and Arthur Soontornsaratool, detail of “Untitled.”

Unlike any other medium, photography is ubiquitous and democratic. Virtually everyone has been photographed and, even more profoundly, pointed a camera at the world and made an image. Perhaps it is this accessibility and the mechanical nature of the medium that lead some to think photography does not require the skill set that, say, oil painting does. The great challenge for every photographer is reinventing this optical and mechanical process—to make imagery that does not get lost in the vast array of banal images that fill our eyes.

Although Baltimore has recently lost a number of young and ambitious photographers (Corrine May Botz, John Lehr, and Marc Alain) to the lure of bigger cities, Baltimore is still home to a number of photographers whose works enjoy local, national, and international exposure. Three standouts include Laura Burns, Lynn Cazabon, and Lynn Silverman, who serve on the faculties at Goucher College, UMBC, and MICA respectively and have a double impact on the local art scene as artists and teachers.

Laura Burns is committed to photography as a tool of political consciousness. For several years she has been traveling to sites along the border between Mexico and the United States to investigate what happens when the edges of a third-world country abruptly meet the boundaries of the world’s richest. She created an extensive portrait series of Mexican women of all walks of life and photographed forbidding landscapes in and around the city of Juarez where the bodies of countless murdered women have been discovered. Burns’ imagery is passionate in its motivation, yet cool in its presentation, allowing the viewer to contemplate the relationship between economic realities and personal history.

Lynn Cazabon’s artwork is interdisciplinary, utilizing photography, video, film, texts, and objects in her often elaborate installations. Her Baltimore/Marseille project, exhibited at the Creative Alliance in April 2005, was a cross-cultural study of the interface between individuals and technology in these two post-industrial port cities. In her stunningly beautiful Discard series, Cazabon collected deaccessioned films from the Enoch Pratt Library and photographed the unspooled films on light boxes. With this simple act she transforms the celluloid of film into delicately traced patterns that glow mysteriously yet remind us of the material nature of this soon-to-be anachronistic medium.

Lynn Silverman lived in England for sixteen years before coming back to the United States in 1999 to teach at MICA. Silverman’s elegant black-and-white photographs are as tonally rich as anything produced by Ansel Adams and Minor White. Her series Lightheaded is a collection of close-up images of light bulbs. By treating each bulb as an individual entity sitting for a photographic portrait, she reveals the elegance of these manufactured objects while simultaneously acknowledging their technological and phenomenological connections.

Arthur Soontornsaratool and Edward Winter are two younger photographers whose works are staking their own ground. Soontornsaratool’s Narcolepsy series displays an inventive playfulness that makes his photographs both smart and accessible. Edward Winter recently exhibited largescale black-and-white photos that are spooky and melancholy studies of forgotten or unseen corners of the urban landscape.

All of these artists push the boundaries of photography as an art form. They contribute significantly to the visual and cultural life of Baltimore by helping us see the world as if cleansed of the visual clutter of modern life.

—Mark Alice Durant

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photo by Nancy Froehlich

Performance artist Keri Burneston, also known as Trixie Little, with her stage partner, The Evil Hate Monkey

A R T

photo by Mike Muniak

photo by Mike Muniak

P E F O R M A N C E

photo by Mike Muniak

photo by Mike Muniak

Performance art falls between the limits of all other artistic media. It can involve dance, spoken word, sound, gesture, objects, and imagery, but it is none of those things in their pure form. Performance can happen in a theatrical setting with the audience sitting safely in their seats, or it can happen on the street at unexpected moments. But one thing all contemporary performance art has in common is its desire to thwart our expectations, to blur not only the boundaries between media but between art and life.

Since Baltimore lacks a rigorous commercial and critical infrastructure for contemporary art, it is an ideal city in which the performance spirit can thrive in new and different ways. Fluid Movement is a classic example. Founded by Keri Burneston in 1998, Fluid Movement is a Baltimore treasure, collaborating with artists, neighborhoods, and community organizations to realize a wide variety of spectacles—from synchronized swimming in Patterson Park to the Go-Go Pirate Show aboard the USS Constellation in the Inner Harbor. Burneston also performs locally and nationally as her alter ego, Trixie Little, in an outrageous neo-burlesque review.

Another distinctive artist-run event is the Transmodern Age Festival. Now in its third year, the festival brings national and international artists to Baltimore to perform and potentially collaborate with local artists. Jackie Milad (cofounder, along with Catherine Pancake and Bonnie Jones) has dubbed the underground explosion of Baltimore performance “Experimental Culture,” a term that suggests its opposition to the pre-fab quality of most of the cultural products we consume, from blockbuster exhibitions of Impressionist art to the latest pop-culture idol. The festival offers artists an opportunity to present their most experimental works, like that of Ric Royer, who comes to performance via poetry. Royer, who also helps organize the festival, uses voice and gesture to activate texts in a manner that pushes far beyond the polite confines of your typical poetry reading.

Artist Cindy Rehm’s approach to performance is more private. Her Echo project was a twenty-eight day cross-country road trip in which she re-enacted a series of seminal works from the history of performance art.

Performing both publicly and privately, on sidewalks and in motel rooms, each performance was documented with digital photography and then a written record was mailed to friends and art-world dignitaries via postcards. Because performance is not solely about the viewer but also, importantly, about the experience of the artist, Rehm’s process was an homage, an attempt to empathically know her performance forebears.

Laure Drogoul thinks of performance as an extension of sculpture, in that the body becomes a vessel with which to activate social and architectural space. The Main Drain, performed at Area 405, created a mesmerizing spectacle involving the amplified sound of water dripping and a levitating body. Drogoul also founded The 14Karat Cabaret, a series that has presented hundreds of performances since 1989 in various venues.

At its best, performance is like nothing else you’ve seen or heard before; it enthusiastically attacks boundaries or subtly alters perceptions. As any defiant art form should, performance has its excesses, but it also can have quiet moments of intense beauty. With performance thriving in Baltimore, my suggestion is to occasionally turn away from the safe products of culture and go out to one of these unique events.

Clockwise from top left: Audrey Chen performing at the 2005 Transmodern Age Festival; Cindy Rehm performing at the 2005 Transmodern Age Festival; Rehm performing Nam June Paik’s “Zen for Head” in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Zoe Charlton and Rick Delaney performing at the 2005 Transmodern Age Festival.

—Mark Alice Durant w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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photo by Nancy Froehlich

Painter Julie Jankowski at School 33 Art Center

P A I N T I N G

Clockwise from top left: Meaghan Harrison, detail of “Hot 4 Truckers;” Gloria Adams, detail of “Harvest;” Melissa Dickenson, detail of “Terriers;” and Daniel Schiavone, detail of “Ghosts Over the City.”

With a strong number of alternative spaces, but a small commercial gallery scene, Baltimore provides artists a release from the fashion-driven art market, though its anarchies come at a cost. Maintaining an art career in Baltimore isn’t easy. As Peter Walsh noted in his essay “Humor as a Subversive Act: Notes Propagandizing Baltimore Art, “ “For artists, Baltimore is a city without a market. ...

In a consumerist economy, no market means being forever marginalized—making art the way you really want to becomes the epitome of provincialism. In our glorious purity, Baltimore artists display a near complete ignorance of American culture, and out of this puritanism comes an anger approaching the incandescent.”

Six artists, some recently exhibited, offer a sample that demonstrates how far Baltimore painting stretches aesthetically, and what that art says about the city in which it is being created. Mercifully, much of this art converts anger into deadpan humor, and far from an ignorance of culture, these painters often operate with an educated, willful disregard for a “successful” contemporaneity.

Daniel Schiavone’s rigorously retro Expressionism mines the past for language uniquely suited to urban stories. His “Ghosts over the City” reflects the gritty, complex social conflict that churns in the streets of Baltimore, in faceless figures that contend over the heights of a brown cityscape.

Meaghan Harrison mirrors the city’s man-made visual environment in her abstractions using intentionally synthetic materials—Styrofoam, plastic, enamel paint—in energetic compositions that mix the configurations of garbage in a dumpster with the absurd metaphysics of Dadaist masters like Marcel Duchamp.

Baltimore’s tragicomic cartooning tradition is epitomized in MICA graduate Melissa Dickenson’s forlorn, damaged, and possibly dangerous animals. She depicts two blue-faced dogs with reddened muzzles cheerfully looking across the canvas edge at an impossibly elongated “terrier” with long, pointed ears and a similarly reddened mouth— an entertainingly humorous nightmare.

Gloria Adams presents an even darker psychic atmosphere in her paintings of fearfully distorted human figures huddled naked in dry, winter fields under a threatening sky.

The human condition, as Baltimore painters see it, is open to a continuing and relentless inquiry, as personalized as it is uncompromising.

Baltimore is home to the American Visionary Art Museum, and it is telling that many of the artists represented are current Baltimore residents. Claes Gabriel’s father is Haitian, and Gabriel’s work reflects both the joy of Caribbean decorativeness and also its ever-present evocation of the magical, with its unseen, overseeing power.

Julie Jankowski paints the poetry in materiality, the formal graces in the shapes of common things. Her recent paintings are made as flat, gray images of urban forms—highways and stadiums—seen from the air. Her forms become abstractions as oblique as the parts of an automobile engine, as beautiful as they are remote from the humanity that produced them.

These six painters weren’t selected as “Hot Picks” or “Painters to Watch.” Baltimore’s art community is densely populated with serious, radically unique painters, and these artists represent hundreds more. Painting without codes, without “art stars,” without restraint, rising to address, well, just about anything.

—J.W. Mahoney

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photo by Nancy Froehlich

Filmmaker David Beaudouin in his office

A R T

photo by Werner Kaligofsky

photo by Aiyana Paterson-Zinkand

P O L I T I C A L

photo by Jose Sanchez

Baltimore is in the midst of a remarkable run of museum shows concerned with political themes. Since late 2004, a surge of contemporary political work has figured prominently in the city’s artistic life, taking over gallery spaces while shedding light on the nature of institutional power.

Many of the shows have centered around two of the city’s established arts institutions: the Contemporary Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art. These shows can be credited to curator Chris Gilbert, who recently left the BMA for the University of California Berkeley Art Museum, and curator Cira Pascual Marquina of the Contemporary.

Shortly after Gilbert’s arrival in Baltimore in 2003, he launched a series of experimental mini-exhibitions (Cram Sessions) designed to “radicalize” the museum. Gilbert, who has described himself in the press as a “Marxist of a fairly predictable variety,” envisioned the exhibition space as a launching pad for political action. At their best, the shows illuminated the nexus between art and everyday living. The second installation, Dark Matter, drew parallels between cosmological “dark matter” (most of the universe’s stuff—black holes and subatomic particles—is invisible, since it emits little light) with the hidden economy of the arts, consisting of scrapbookers, quilters, gamers, and underground artists of all stripes. This artistic dark matter interacts with the visible economy of galleries, collectors, and institutions in ways that are little understood or noticed.

At the Contemporary, Pascual Marquina aims to reclaim the white-cube exhibition space for social works—(Re)living Democracy, which closed in January this year, examined the use of eminent domain in Baltimore to facilitate East Baltimore development by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. This, and upcoming community-based artist projects—including a partnership with a neighborhood halfway house—use the museum as a base of operations, a lecture hall, a resource center, and a forum.

Ultimately, though, these efforts to claim the museum for progressive political action suffer from several thorny problems, not the least of which is that many artists, critics, and the audience don’t quite know what to make of this new wave of projects. The shows are less concerned with traditional artistic objects and aesthetic measures, and more concerned with process—political and moral. What do these exhibitions do better than traditional journalism, community-arts centers, political action, and advocacy groups, those traditional sources of real, sustained politics? It is tempting to conclude that these efforts may be found wanting as both art and as politics. Marshall McLuhan, in his seminal 1964 book Understanding Media, noted that “the medium is the message.” McLuhan’s dictum warns us that some vehicles are more (or less) hospitable for a given message, and that human beings have the final say.

Taking politics out of the gallery and putting it back on a television set, Julia Kim Smith, Francesca Danieli, and Baltimorebased David Beaudouin collaborated to produce a video that simply and elegantly illuminates the polarized state of current political discourse. One Nice Thing implores partisans from the national conventions of 2004 to “say one nice thing about” Republicans or Democrats—the enemy, depending on one’s affiliation—and “really mean it.”

What results is not so much a list of what’s right about politicians and politics as it is an illustration of what’s wrong with us, a meditation on why we personally can’t find common ground with our political opponents, a laser-like focus on how political opinion attaches to each individual’s identity. What do our political leanings say about us? About others? One Nice Thing suggests that we carve out a little bit of time to think about those questions, and that each partisan might profit from this redemptive place.

Clockwise from top left: Documentation of the (Re)living Democracy project by Scott Berzofsky, Lasse Lau, Nicholas Petr, and Nicholas Wisniewski; and three images from Dark Matter at the BMA: untitled field photo; Marjetica ˘ detail of “Hippo Water Roller;” and photo of various ‘zines.

Portc,

—Bill Sebring w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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photo by Nancy Froehlich

Jennifer Strunge in her studio

photo by Jun Kyoung

photo by Jun Kyoung

S C U L P T U R E

The spirit of contemporary sculpture today is more in line with Cafe Hon than with the city’s cavernous warehouse spaces in which a previous generation created the mammoth iron sculptures that dot the medians along Mount Royal Avenue, great bolts of testosterone-fueled steel and bronze welded together. According to Gerald Ross, director of exhibitions at MICA, current MFA candidates are using combinations of plastic and magnetic paint, Styrofoam and cardboard, steel and water-filled glass. This is a perfect post-minimalist moment for young sculptors working in Baltimore as their interest in exotic materials meshes well with the city’s quirky ambience.

The use of unusual materials to make modestly scaled and somewhat fey sculpture is undoubtedly influenced by Richard Tuttle and Eva Hesse, international artists who pioneered this art form in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Modern technology also plays its part, allowing today’s sculptor to pick a medium and run with it. The choice of material speaks to the artist’s inner “voice” much the same way that a poet picks a form for his or her words. The sculpture often reflects on cultural issues, referring to the urban or natural environment.

Take the charming gap-toothed monsters fabricated by puppeteer Jennifer Strunge, an artist who comes out of the fiber arts program at MICA. Her sensibility is in tune with youth culture, from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are to Japanese Manga comic books and animation.

Often resembling bizarre crabs and octopi, the sculptures sprawl across the floor and furniture with an innocent sort of childhood horror.

At the opposite emotional pole is Valeska Populoh, who constructs nineteenth-century ball gowns out of found materials like broken umbrellas, plastic garbage bags, and torn scraps of cloth. From afar, her headless mannequins exude a statuesque power and formal beauty, which is enhanced and confused by their incomplete anatomy and monochromatic black color. Up close, admiration for the craft required to stitch such disparate items together is replaced by an awareness of the materials’ humble origins, their previous status as trash, their possible use by the homeless or other inhabitants of the city.

Chul-Hyun Ahn’s work is classically minimal, but— much like Populoh’s gowns—closer inspection elicits a strong emotional response. The sculptures, created from seemingly simple frames, are set into the wall or on the floor. Fluorescent light tubes inside reflect off of mirrors, playing perceptual tricks on the viewer. Like a carnival hall of mirrors, there is an impossible sense of distance. The skilled craft of Ahn’s work, which is frequently on view at C. Grimaldis Gallery, sets up a conflict for the viewer whose heart responds to the trompe l’oeil, but whose brain recognizes it as an illusion.

Even in Strunge’s apparently friendly monsters, there is a conflict between what is approachable and safe for the viewer and that which is distant and dangerous. As with any piece of art, interpretations vary on the basis of the viewer’s own social standing, and personal history.

—Michael Salcman

Clockwise from top left: Valeska Populoh, detail of “Processional Gowns;” Chul-Hyun Ahn, detail of “Visual Echo Experiment;” Jennifer Strunge, detail of “Desie May Monster;” and Chul-Hyun Ahn, detail of “Forked Series #7.”

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B M A C U R ATO R DA R S I E A L E X A N D E R W E I G H S I N O N B A LT I M O R E ’ S C O N T E M P O R A RY A RT S C E N E

B Y A L I C E O C K L E S H AW PHOTOGRAPHY BY MITRO HOOD

For centuries, artists have emerged from Baltimore to make lasting impressions on the national and global scene. At the same time, renowned artists from outside of the city have come to Baltimore for inspiration, using it as a multifaceted backdrop for their works. The museums here contain some of the world’s top collections, and the city has created a disproportionate number of cultural offerings for its size.

Yet Baltimore seems to suffer from a lack of confidence when it comes to its art. Nestled among some of the country’s—not to mention the world’s— most significant creative cities, Baltimore residents are often slow to recognize

the value of their own art. In an effort to better understand the realities of Baltimore’s contemporary art scene and how it fits into the world at large, Urbanite sat down with the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Darsie Alexander.

A former assistant curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Alexander came to the BMA six years ago, first as its associate curator of prints, drawings, and photographs, and now as its senior curator of contemporary art, with a mission to bring work by international artists to the Baltimore community while also creating a platform for local artists to be seen in the context of the global art world.

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Seth Adelsberger, “Jabberwocky”

When it comes to contemporary art, many people feel that Baltimore suffers from an inferiority complex. Do you hear that sentiment expressed here often?

I have found a lot of people have said that, and I’m not totally sure what they mean. I think that Baltimore is surely a smaller city, and it doesn’t have the same numbers of collectors or practitioners of art as a major metropolis, but the proof is really in the pudding in terms of Baltimore as a viable artistic community. All smaller cities feel a degree of inferiority because the art world is so dominated by certain cosmopolitan areas like Los Angeles or Berlin, so in that respect, sure, it’s a smaller, more compressed scene here. But it’s not legitimate to say that it has an inferiority complex. I disagree with that assessment.

THE TRICK WITH A PLACE LIKE BALT I M O R E I S T H AT T H E R E A R E T H E S E VA R I O U S S P H E R E S , A N D S O M E T I M E S T H O S E S P H E R E S D O N ’ T I N T E R S E C T. L O O K I N G A H E A D, O N E O F T H E O P P O R T U N I T I E S T H AT W E H AV E A S A C I T Y H A S TO DO WITH C RO S S - P O L L I N AT I N G THOSE DIFFERENT OUTLETS.

What’s happening with contemporary art in Baltimore that proves its significance in the larger art world?

Baltimore has a very active, vibrant art scene that is promulgated by both higher institutions and museums and a kind of grassroots array of alternative spaces, galleries, and performance venues. The trick with a place like Baltimore is that there are these various spheres, and sometimes those spheres don’t intersect. There’s the art school sphere. There’s the high-end collectors’ sphere. There’s the institutional sphere. Looking ahead, one of the opportunities that we have as a city has to do with crosspollinating those different outlets.

Seth Adelsberger, detail of “Stockpile of Oddities”

How can Baltimore achieve that?

Everyone has to take a degree of responsibility to create some coherence among these various clusters of activity. There are some practical ways to do that.

There’s actually very little information to help navigate the alternative spaces, even just geographically. The active art collector who may be in a position to support younger artists in Baltimore can’t actually find them purely on a pragmatic level. Some of the most interesting sites are definitely off the beaten path.

Does Baltimore have a unique artistic voice?

We are in a situation now where it’s very difficult to pigeonhole a community by attributing a particular aesthetic, attitude, or style. The reality is that we live in a global art sphere. The sources of the influence flow via the Internet as much as they do the classroom. The points of reference that artists in Baltimore have transgress any geographic constraints.

Does Baltimore as a city affect the art being produced here?

Baltimore is a very gritty city, and certainly the most interesting spaces devoted to showing work by emerging artists in Baltimore reflect that grittiness. But I wouldn’t necessarily call the art that is being produced here unilaterally gritty. In fact, there is a lot happening in the areas of design and technology that is pretty high-end in its production and in its look.

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When it comes to surgery, less is more.

For information about this and other minimally invasive procedures, call 1-800-492-5538 or visit www.umm.edu/mitc.

Laparoscopic pyelopasty is a minimally invasive operation for patients experiencing a blockage in the tube (ureter) leading from one of the kidneys to the bladder.

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It’s actually a really sophisticated city in terms of what the art schools are doing, in terms of what kinds of systems there are to get work disseminated.

Maryland Art Place has its role, and the Creative Alliance, and don’t forget about the Maryland Film Festival. These are serious places, and while even the most serious places have a real fun-and-games spirit sometimes, I think they are on a level of impressive art institutions and organizations in comparable cities.

photo courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art

How do you see Baltimore fitting into the contemporary art world at large?

Nicholas Petr, Nicholas Wisniewski, and Scott Berzofsky, detail of “Pirate Baltimore”

There are very unique features about Baltimore that I’ve enjoyed both as a curator and as an advocate for the city for artists. … It’s in an excellent place strategically located between New York and Washington. It’s incredibly affordable. The studio spaces available are amazing. There are excellent art programs here and systems by which the artists can disseminate their work in the real world. I think that Baltimore fitting into the contemporary art world is ultimately measured by what the individuals who live here produce, and I think that we have seen artists from Baltimore and the region often get more national attention outside Baltimore than they do inside the city limits.

W E H AV E S E E N A RT I S T S F RO M B A LT I M O R E AND THE REGION OFTEN GET MORE N AT I O N A L AT T E N T I O N O U T S I D E B A LT I M O R E THAN THEY DO INSIDE THE CITY LIMITS.

Is there a specific type of art you’re seeing more often out of Baltimore?

photo by Joseph Hyde

The current trend in artmaking among many is to identify in the detritus of everyday life the materials of art. Baltimore produces some pretty good detritus for artists to work with. In a recent walk-through of local galleries, there were some really interesting applications of found materials or practical materials in the art

being made. continued on page 87 Tonya Ingersol, “Picnic in the Graveyard”

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The Contemporary Collector

By Andrea Pollan Illustration by Cornel Rubino

Baltimore offers some of the best buys in today’s art world. Curator Andrea Pollan guides you through the city’s hidden galleries and studios to help you start your own collection.

In a time when the international contemporary art market is white-hot with correspondingly outrageous prices, Baltimore offers a treasure trove of value. By art-world standards, Baltimore is fortunate enough to be filled with high-quality artists, both emerging and well-established, whose works are incredible bargains. There is an under-the-radar side to the city’s art community that offers art lovers the opportunity to build a collection without spending a fortune. You just need to know how to get started and where to look.

There are several easy steps to beginning your collection in Baltimore.

Start by getting out and educating your eye at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Contemporary Museum, the American Visionary Art Museum, Maryland Art Place, and the established commercial galleries, like Goya Contemporary and C. Grimaldis Gallery. Go to the openings, lectures, and curators’ tours, many of which are free and feature works by local artists.

You will get to know the artists, art dealers, and curators whose passion for art is infectious.

In addition to these more mainstream galleries, there are other venues to find interesting work that is available for purchase. Part of the city’s secret charm is its underground appeal, a charisma distinctly its own, not unlike the eccentric allure of New Orleans. Artists are drawn to the city by its heady brew of industrial history and hip, gritty seediness, not to mention its inexpensive real estate and large warehouse spaces that are ideal for studios. Many of these spaces are open to the public for both studio tours and gallery shows. Not all of them have regular hours, and exhibitions can be somewhat intermittent because individual artists or collectives frequently run them. But this just adds an element of challenge to the excitement of chasing after that one work that will simultaneously grab your heart and not break your wallet.

One of the initial feelings people often experience when delving into the art scene can be fear. Many would-be gallery goers are deterred by the idea of an intimidating white-cube environment that is painfully silent and staffed by people who barely acknowledge your presence. This is a model that was established in the 1960s because of the huge scale of artworks being produced at the time. It expanded into an absurd elitism in the 1980s and lingers today in the great art capitals of the world. Luckily Baltimore is more down-to-earth and fairly free of such attitude-filled spaces.

So where do you start?

May is an exceptional month to jump head-first into the world of art because it is MFA and senior thesis show time. Major national curators, gallerists, and collectors congregate at these shows, which feature graduating art students. Baltimore has a wealth of respected institutions, like the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), a powerhouse art school known for producing top-notch artists. The University of Maryland in College

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Park, Towson University, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Villa Julie are all great resources. These shows are an unintimidating way to get to know emerging talent before their work hits the mainstream.

Many works are available for less than $500, and large original works can be found for under $3,000.

Baltimore collector Rachel Rabinowitz has identified these shows as one of the best ways to add to her growing collection of paintings and sculptures. A seasoned and savvy patron of the arts (and not yet 30 years old), Rabinowitz regularly visits major international art fairs and New York galleries, but she also actively invests in the artists in her hometown. She believes that supporting local talent will help Baltimore attract more artists, curators, gallerists, and collectors. If Philadelphia is rapidly becoming the “sixth borough” of New York City for artists with its affordable rents and correspondingly growing collector base, there is no reason that the Station North Arts District can’t grow into the “seventh borough,” she says.

“Especially with its close proximity to Penn Station and easy access to New York City,” she adds.

So how do you meet artists? One of the most direct ways is through a studio visit. Station North is home to a wealth of studios in both the Copy Cat building and the Cork Factory, many of which host occasional gallery shows. School 33 Art Center in South Baltimore offers an annual open studio tour each fall. You can preview samples of more than fifty artists’ works at the Center and then decide which studios you want to visit. Maps are available for self-guided tours, and formal bus tours are also provided. Artists tend to exhibit their best available work.

Buying directly from the artist is a deeply satisfying experience, as friendships frequently develop over time. Some of them may have gallery representation requiring any purchases to be handled through their gallery, but the social setting of a studio visit allows for in-depth looking and socializing. You begin to realize that you are not just buying an art object but investing into a heady history of ideas. Once you cultivate a relationship with the artist, ask about others in the community. They will often refer you to their network of artists, and the web of contacts mushrooms.

Throughout the year, you can also visit artist-run spaces that operate under the higher-profile commercial radar. Area 405 in Station North is a significant warehouse space that specializes in larger-scale sculptural works. It also frequently presents performance art. A hot trend in the contemporary art market is the documentation of artist performances in glossy photographs and video stills, and many performance artists are figuring out how to start making a living from their provocative and ephemeral works.

Also in Station North is the behemoth Load Of Fun Studios warehouse, which houses performance groups (like Fluid Movement), artist studios,

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Imperato 7Gallery 921 East Fort Avenue, Suite 120 443-257-4166 www.galleryimperato.com

1C. Grimaldis Gallery 523 North Charles Street 410-539-1080 www.cgrimaldisgallery.com

8 Maryland Art Place

8 Market Place, Suite 100 410-962-8565 www.mdartplace.org

2 Goya Contemporary Mill Center, Studio 214 3000 Chestnut Avenue 410-366-2001 www.goyagirl.com

9 The Creative Alliance 3134 Eastern Avenue 410-276-1651 www.creativealliance.org

3 School 33 Art Center 1427 Light Street 410-396-4641 www.school33.org

4 Area 405

405 East Oliver Street 410-528-2101 www.area405.com

5 H&H Surplus

& Camper’s Haven Gallery Four and Fifth Story 405 West Franklin Street 410-962-8941

6 Cubicle Ten

1431 North Central Avenue 410-468-0608

10

Copy Cat 1501 Guilford Avenue www.stationnorth.org

11Cork Factory

302 Federal Street 410-727-7837 www.stationnorth.org

Gallery 13 Shinola 882 Park Avenue 410-523-4657 www.shinolagallery.com Gallery 14 Current 30 South Calvert Street 410-244-7003 www.currentspace.com City Art Space 15Charm 1729 Maryland Avenue www.ccspace.org Audio/Visual Playground 16 Gspot: 2980 Falls Road 410-889-6767 www.gspotavp.com Artist Studios 17 Sub-Basement 118 North Howard Street

Fine Art 12 Schiavone 244 South Highland Avenue

410-659-6950 www.sbastudios.com

410-534-2212 www.schiavonefineart.com

18 Westnorth Studio

106 West North Avenue 410-962-1475 www.westnorthstudio.com

of Fun Studios 19 Load 120-126 West North Avenue 410-467-2126

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and a gallery with a rotating series of shows. A few doors down North Avenue is the more modest Westnorth Studio, which shows local and national artists in its rowhouse setting.

The H&H Surplus & Camper’s Haven building on West Franklin Street is home to a number of galleries and studios. Gallery Four presents large-scale museum-quality exhibitions intermittently, but the wait is generally worth it to see the curatorial inventiveness of cofounders Jason Hughes and Dustin Carlson. The Washington Post has singled out this space as one worth making the trek from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore to see innovative works by both Baltimore and international artists. Two well-known D.C.-based collectors went to a show there last summer and were seen comically fighting over a promising young artist’s work.

Above Gallery Four is another artist-run space, the Fifth Story, that programs quality exhibitions on an ad-hoc basis, such as the well-received Soft Terror exhibition last year. Both spaces have presented surprisingly inexpensive and strong works. Here it is best to go by the spaces and get yourself on an e-mail list to make sure you don’t miss the shows.

y u b u o y e r o f e b Know Your Budget It is never advisable to collect art only for investment purposes, although art can frequently escalate dramatically in value. Generally, prints, drawings, works on paper, photographs, multiples, and limited-edition works are less expensive jumping-off points. Some galleries will allow you to make purchases on payment plans without interest. Others might even

Art is not just a commodity but also a wonderfully emotional investment that allows the collector to participate in the fabrication of culture by supporting its producers.

negotiate discounts. In Baltimore, you can frequently buy directly from the artist.

Know the Market Why does art cost so much? Serious artists invest time and money into education and great effort into achieving their level of proficiency. Materials, documentation, promotion

Billy and Ozlem Colbert have opened a fantastic, funky 5,200-square-foot space called Cubicle Ten in the Oliver neighborhood along North Central Avenue. Its relaxed atmosphere allows for a great art experience. Works range in price from affordable ($250) to less so ($8,000), but the vibe is very chill.

A quirky fraternal lodge in Highlandtown houses a 1,200-square-foot gallery named Schiavone Fine Art. Founded in 2003 by Daniel Schiavone, the former artistic director of the nearby Creative Alliance, the space has been exhibiting mid-career artists from Baltimore and beyond at affordable levels.

Gallery Imperato has been making headway over in Locust Point. It’s another space that aims to present top-notch work by Baltimore and mid-Atlantic artists in an unusual exhibition/business environment. The lofty space is synergistically designed to accommodate both a gallery and a telecommunications/ IT business.

Other galleries full of street cred are the Shinola Gallery in Mount Vernon, located above a tattoo parlor, and the Current Gallery located in the heart of the Central Business District. Current focuses on art and design and has been catching the attention of Baltimore’s trend-setting art and fashion aficionados.

For a grungier, punk-rock vibe, check out Charm City Art Space on Maryland Avenue for its cheap and cool graphic works.

Hampden’s Gspot: Audio/Visual Playground is a brilliant place to see fresh work and hear fantastic music while partying in a laid-back atmosphere. In West Baltimore, Sub-Basement Artist Studios (profiled this month on p. 43) has started to make a name for itself as a go-to destination for Baltimore’s emerging artists.

For many, collecting art becomes a lifelong and deeply pleasant addiction.

Baltimore offers wide variety, great value, and idiosyncratic venues that make taking that first step a fun, un-snobby, and rewarding experience. ■

costs, and studio rent come into the picture just like in any other business. Nonetheless, art is not just a commodity but also a wonderfully emotional investment that allows the collector to participate in the fabrication of culture by supporting its producers.

Know Your Style Determine which media, content, and styles you are most drawn to, and question your own desires and motives. Good work will reveal as much to you about yourself as the artist’s intentions for the work. What bothers you or really gets under your skin may be just the work that you eventually come back to because you cannot stop thinking about it.

—A.P.

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by yusef komunyakaa

photo by Tom Wallace

poetry

Yusef Komunyakaa is the author of twelve collections of poetry, a book of collected essays and interviews, and a verse play adapted from the Gilgamesh legend. He has also coedited two volumes of poetry.

Komunyakaa, who was born in the rural community of Bogalusa, Louisiana, has won a number of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the William Faulkner Prize. He was elected chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999 and is currently a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing at Princeton University.

Slam, Dunk, & Hook

Believing In Iron

Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury’s Insignia on our sneakers, We outmaneuvered to footwork Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot Swish of strings like silk Ten feet out. In the roundhouse Labyrinth our bodies Created, we could almost Last forever, poised in midair Like storybook sea monsters.

A high note hung there A long second. Off The rim. We’d corkscrew Up & dunk balls that exploded The skullcap of hope & good Intention. Lanky, all hands & feet … sprung rhythm.

We were metaphysical when girls cheered on the sidelines.

Tangled up in a falling, Muscles were a bright motor Double-flashing to the metal hoop Nailed to our oak.

Then Sonny Boy’s mama died He played nonstop all day, so hard Our backboard splintered.

Glistening with sweat, We rolled the ball off Our fingertips. Trouble Was there slapping a blackjack Against an open palm.

Dribble, drive to the inside, & glide like a sparrow hawk.

Lay ups. Fast breaks.

We had moves we didn’t know We had. Our bodies spun On swivels of bone & faith, Through a lyric slipknot Of joy, & we knew we were Beautiful & dangerous.

The bills my brothers & I created Never balanced, & it took years To discover how the world worked.

We could look at a tree of blackbirds & tell you how many were there, But with the scrap dealer Our math was always off.

Weeks of lifting & grunting Never added up to much, But we couldn’t stop Believing in iron.

Abandoned trucks & cars Were held to the ground By thick, nostalgic fingers of vines Strong as a dozen sharecroppers.

We’d return with our wheelbarrow Groaning under a new load, Yet tiger lilies lived better In their languid, August domain.

Among paper & Coke bottles Foundry smoke erased sunsets, & we couldn’t believe iron Left men bent so close to the earth As if the ore under their breath Weighed down the gray sky.

Sometimes I dreamt how our hills Washed into a sea of metal, How it all became an anchor For a warship or bomber Out over trees with blooms Too red to look at.

—Both poems from Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems © 2001 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

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city

by fern shen

photos courtesy of Kate Herrod, Community Greens

sustainable

The Green Between

ever Bros. Ecc photo courtesy of Stru

les & Rouse, Inc.

Turning an alley into an urban oasis

Above, top: Chandlers Yard, a shared space behind eleven Federal Hill rowhouses, is home to mature trees, paths, and a small lawn.

Above, bottom: Chandlers Yard, before construction and landscaping began. Debris filled the backyards, some of which were cemented over.

Make a Baltimore alley beautiful? Most folks would find that notion inconceivable, and then crack a joke about maybe choosing a corpulent-rat-and-rancidgarbage theme for the makeover.

Not Patti Fortner.

When an architect at the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation approached Fortner four years ago about the idea of “greening” the crime-plagued alley behind her Luzerne Avenue home, she loved it.

Fortner had already been greening the tiny space behind her own rowhouse, though the Baltimore-born part-time bartender probably wouldn’t have used that term.

But she had gotten into urban gardening, found books and magazines on container planting, and turned her yard into a pretty place, with hanging baskets of plants and flowering fruit trees.

“I have beautiful butterflies back there, and praying mantises,” she says. “One year I even had a hummingbird.”

Alley-greening would mean making the whole alley look that way—better, even. Trees would be planted, fences and walls would come down, asphalt would be ripped up, and a sort of communal garden with perennials, grass, and benches would sprout up.

Fortner saw the pictures of other places in the country where urban spaces had been transformed (an Arlington, Virginia-based group called Community Greens had lots of inspiring “before” and “after” pictures) and she was swept away.

She started talking to her neighbors and they quickly realized that before the alley could be greened, it would have to be gated.

“Otherwise, anything nice we put in there would be gone the next day,” Fortner says.

Since then, her energized group hasn’t exactly turned the alley into the Luxembourg Gardens, but they have made some progress and hope to lead the way for others in Baltimore to try alley-greening too.

With support from the Mayor’s Office, they got a temporary permit to put up four locked iron gates at the entrances to the alley, which is just off Patterson Park, between Glover and Luzerne. (The gates are outfitted with Knox-Boxes so that only residents and police and fire personnel can open them.) So far, three of the four gates have been installed.

They got trash pick-up switched to the front of their houses, painted some of the walls in the alley, and put in some flower planters.

And, after many hours logged in meetings and hearings, they have put together an ordinance, still pending before the City Council, to make it easier for other city residents to close and landscape their alleys. The new law would allow residents to lease (rather than purchase) the alley from the City and would clear away a lot of the bureaucratic hurdles that currently stand in the way.

“We’ve just taken our baby steps, but once we get that last gate in and people start getting flowerpots and planting things, it’s going to really be nice,” says Fortner. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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Proponents of alley-greening and gating see it as part of the renaissance of cities, a way of making city living more pleasant by softening the harshness of concrete, brick, and asphalt, and creating outdoor spaces that feel secure. Boosters reel off a long list of alley-greening’s benefits. It provides kids with a place to play and neighbors with a place to meet and chat. It increases property values and discourages crime and loitering.

The environmental benefits are also considerable. Alleys with more dirt and less asphalt would send less gunk-laden water sluicing into stormsewers and out to the Chesapeake Bay. Adding trees and plants helps clean the air and reduces the urban heat-island effect. Pretty urban spaces attract more people to settle in cities, strengthening them and reducing sprawl.

Another byproduct of alley-greening projects: They grow great neighborhood spirit.

“It’s brought the community closer together and created some lasting friendships,” says Grant Heslin, of Glover Street, one of the dozen or so energized alley neighbors working with Fortner, holding potlucks, and writing grants. Heslin is hoping the spruced-up alley will be a place for his two young daughters to play.

Alley-greening and gating has gained popularity elsewhere in the country and in Europe in recent years. As part of the British government’s campaign to discourage “anti-social behavior,” they have spent more than $4 million on Operation Gate It, supporting more than seventy projects in England and Wales.

Another inspiration for the Patterson Park group is Montgomery Park in Boston’s South End, a green space shared by eighty-five households. Until the 1970s, fences and an alley separated the homes’ backyards from that patch of land. Since then, with the fences removed, the area has been turned into an

urban oasis with trees, a perennial border, and a lawn.

Here in Baltimore, there are several of these hidden-gem spaces tucked away in city neighborhoods. In East Baltimore, Amazing Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church has reclaimed twenty-one vacant lots behind the church and turned them into a community garden and stone-lined labyrinth that they call their “sacred commons.”

In Federal Hill, eleven homeowners donated land from their backyards and gave $1,000 to form the Chandlers Yard Neighbors Association in 1985.

Today, it’s a quiet nook with benches, tables, mature trees, climbing vines, and colorful flowers.

“People say it reminds them of Italy,” says Zoë Saint-Paul, president of the association.

Alleys have a long history, going back more than 2,500 years to ancient Greece. Beijing’s hutongs date back to at least the 1200s. After the Industrial Revolution, Western cities developed in a grid pattern that included alleys as service roads for trash collection, coal delivery, fire engine access, and parking.

In Baltimore, arabbers (peddlers with horse-drawn carts) clip-clopped through the alleys, selling fruit, vegetables, and other items.

As alleys fell out of everyday use in recent decades, they became less a place to see kids playing ball and mothers hanging up wash and more of a haven for crime, trash, rats, and prostitution.

Lately, architects and planners—including New Urbanism leader Andrés Duany—have championed the use of alleys, with trees and set-back parking areas, as a setting for social interaction. New urban dwellers have turned to gating and greening their alleys to give them the security of a backyard, along with the communal feel of a mini-park.

Artist Spotlight

THE MURPHY FINE ARTS CENTER

Urban Comedy Showcase II

Michael Brooks Rip Michaels

Roz G Skiba

S t a r r i n g t o d a y ’s h o t t e s t comics seen on

continued on page 89

◆ TV’s Bad Boys of Comedy ❖ Showtime at the Apollo

How To Do It

So you want to green your alley?

Here are some tips to get you started.

Meet informally to gauge neighborhood interest.

Find resources (community-oriented planning and architecture groups, civic or neighborhood associations, environmental groups, the local law school).

Split into teams, hold a design charette, and come up with a good plan. Hire a landscape architect, if possible.

Find a design that works for everyone. Since alleys are often narrow, one approach is to take down fences or hedges and move them back toward the homes. The property line wouldn’t move, just the fence. Neighbors would have to be willing to give up a bit of their yards for the common space. Make sure that ripping up pavement won’t cause drainage or rat problems. Planters are another way to go.

Raise money. Gating and landscaping aren’t cheap!

Gear up for the government approval process.

Find out what laws are on the books regarding alleys. Call your neighborhood liaison at the Mayor’s Office to find out the current status of pending laws regarding alleys.

If you get permission to gate your alley, install Knox-Boxes and alert the fire and police departments about the change. Arrange for trash to be picked up in front of the houses.

Set up an organization to interact with the City, oversee the initial work, and be responsible for long-term care for it.

Obtain agreements from all neighbors on sharing costs, and establish etiquette for use of shared space.

—F.S.

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You Can’t Arrive Unless You Know the Destination The Murphy Fine Arts Center 2201 Argonne Dr. 443-885-4440 www.murphyfineartscenter.org w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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urbanite may 06

out there

by afarin majidi

photography by craig chin

Undressing Mary Mack Three Baltimore artists are branded exceptional up-and-comers in a SoHo art show

Above: An exposed and assertive mannequin guards the entrance to the gallery where Mary Mack Dressed in Black, an investigation of the erotic, opened.

A blank-eyed lioness of a mannequin greets those daring enough to enter. Her naked frame squatting on a sidewalk platform, she looms taller than the passersby. Behind her, in a window nook, a DJ bounces up and down in his sneakers, hand cupping the headphones at his ear. Outside, the reverberation of bass is nearly palpable. It is not at all obvious until one looks past the DJ that the space is not a dance club but an art gallery.

Mary Mack Dressed in Black opened February 24, the third show organized and presented by GILD, the New York-based alliance of curatorial and promotional duo José Mertz (a Maryland Institute College of Art graduate) and Yesenia Cardona.

GILD isn’t a gallery. GILD curates shows at various venues, with the goal of bringing important up-and-coming artists to the attention of the established art world. For this latest show, they chose five distinct artists to showcase in New York City based on a common thread in the artists’ work: an investigation of the erotic. Karen Patterson, Marc Alain (both regular contributors to Urbanite), and Adrian Halpern are Baltimore artists, while Lisa Alisa and Doze Green are New York-based.

“A major focus we have with this show is the concept of communion between male and female,” says Mertz. “It’s amazing how differently individual artists see the connection. But what really creates a

sense of cohesion in the various artists we’re showing is that they are all avoiding an art-cum-pornography style.”

Watching the crowd, which ranges from the typical art gallery junkie to the blond-bob soccer mom-type, it’s true: People aren’t standing wideeyed with mouths hanging open in shock. While some pieces are provocative, the artwork is not gratuitous. Cardona may have set this subtle tone for the show when she named it after the popular children’s hand-clapping chant—she did so because she felt it sounded sexual.

Eroticism is truly in the eye of the beholder.

“We’re tired of shock art,” Cardona says. “The work here is more suggestive and reminiscent of ’40s pin-up art in that it leaves much to the imagination.

The pieces here aren’t pornographic, but they are very interactive with the viewer.”

So perhaps sensual would be a better word than sexual to describe the work GILD showcased in NYC. But it is the unique voice found in all the pieces that invites viewers to connect with the work, to lean in, to squint, to observe from different angles, to cock their heads, to pull back.

“People are hungry for work that pushes the boundaries of the art scene and connects with larger concepts that pertain to the world at large,” says Cardona, who beams in response to her audience’s w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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Above: Karen Patterson’s complex, multi-layered photography

Above: The art on display generates conversation among opening attendees.

eagerness. “I feel that may be dwindling in New York. We’ve been looking for something more interesting than what we’re used to seeing.”

Sensual music from the DJ booth—almost pornographic slap bass—pulls the viewer closer to the mélange of cool and warm colors in Karen Patterson’s photography, revealing that her pictures include cut-up photographs. Patterson cuts photos, tapes them to a piece of glass that sits about a foot from her camera lens, and positions her subject on the other side of the glass. She then projects a third image from a slide projector as she photographs her subject. The effect is a three-layered montage that merges dominant and submissive roles between man and woman, photographer and model, artist and critic. The ambiguous sexual dialogue Patterson creates rejects what is socially expected of both genders.

“I’ve never seen work like hers,” says Cardona, before adding, “I haven’t seen anything like any of theirs. There’s a lot of integrity in what they all do.

They’re very serious about their craft. Plus, the three [Baltimore artists] have good rapport with one another. They aren’t competitive, but nurturing.”

Photographer Marc Alain’s work complements Patterson’s, but their styles couldn’t be more different. A photograph of a blond woman mounted on a Barney-like dinosaur best represents Alain’s neardocumentary style of photography.

“There’s a dark quality to Marc’s work because the subject isn’t posed,” Cardona explains, as she steps away for a fresh look at the photograph. “But that’s just my take on it. The viewer’s response is such a part of the work.”

“Marc really captures Baltimore in a way that feels right,” Mertz adds.

Adrian Halpern is sipping wine while admiring the work showing alongside his own intricately pat-

GILD curates shows at various venues, with the goal of bringing important up-and-coming artists to the attention of the established art world. terned pen-ink drawings. When asked what his work represents to him, he explains that it is about tension.

“The top is male and the bottom is female,” says Halpern. “And I mean nothing by the hierarchy of

the way it appears at first, only that there is an energy connection between the two, which I signify with the straight lines connecting the two sections.”

Here is where the work of the Baltimore artists differs from the more clever, less detail-specific work of the New York artists. Mertz believes that the artists’ climate plays a huge role in setting that tone.

“When I lived in Baltimore, I didn’t live on the prettiest or safest block off campus at MICA,” Mertz explains. “But in a sense, that’s what created our little bubble, where we talked about art all the time.

I believe that Adrian’s work—with the relentless details—is a product of being enclosed when it got cold on campus. His environment was a big catalyst for his work.”

Thanks to GILD, these artists and their work are no longer sequestered in student workspaces.

“More than anything,” Cardona says, “José and I really want to give these emerging artists a chance to be seen. It’s not enough to have such great work be hung in a coffee shop when it deserves broader exposure. I suppose we’d like to start a dialogue with the bigger galleries, in hopes of bringing muchdeserved attention to artists on the fringe—and in other cities.” ■ For more information about GILD, their shows, and the artists they have chosen to highlight, visit www. gildlilies.com/gild.html. w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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in review

BOOK LaPorte, Indiana Jason Bitner Princeton Architectural Press, 2006

POETRY More of Me Disappears John Amen Cross Cultural Communications, 2005

For more than thirty years, 18,000 photographs sat in boxes in the back room of a diner in LaPorte, Indiana. Taken by local photographer Frank Pease (whose studio once lodged upstairs) during the 1950s and 1960s, the prints encapsulate Midwestern American life in the tweed and pearl era between the end of the Second World War and the emergence of the civil rights movement.

Jason Bitner, the cocreator of Found Magazine and an expert in “show and tell” cultural artifacts, carefully sifted through these mementoes of the universal human journey—the christenings, communions, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and retirements—to produce a portrait of the small town “everyman.” Collectively, the book feels like a tactile Winesburg, Ohio, yet each print reverberates with undeniable individuality. These people could be our relatives, triggering emotions in us both affectionate and protective.

At first glance, the order of the photographs may appear random. However, Bitner knows that much meaning in visual art is derived from bringing the viewer’s knowledge to bear, and he has collated his selection for the twenty-first-century eye. Two portraits of American businessmen are presented side by side; in their white shirts, thin ties, sensible dark suits, glasses, and neat buzz-cut hair, they would be identical were it not for the difference in their skin tones—one man is black, the other white. This superficial difference would have dictated two diverging life experiences, and two definitions of what it meant to be American.

Then as now, there was a propensity to dress and pose the children like young adults. Siblings snuggle (often reluctantly) together, the boys cow-licked and bow-tied into mini Bing Crosbys, the girls as kisscurled and demure as Deanna Durban, enduring an early lesson in the gender roles they were expected to fulfill. Such photos imply a direct leap from wearing diapers to choosing wedding china, adolescent chaos still firmly, and determinedly, under wraps.

A toddler, shot in soft focus with her chin resting on her hand, reminds us not of Shirley Temple but of JonBenet Ramsey. On a left-hand page, a blond girl poses in an ill-fitting dance costume, her arms raised in a coy “Ta Da!,” while on the righthand page, a little brunette is veiled for her first communion. Taken in combination, one may see that old cliché—the virgin and the whore. Or is this a jaded twenty-first-century reaction? Aren’t they simply two lovely young girls?

The most intriguing aspect of this collection is not its realism but its artifice. Each subject arrived at Pease’s studio with the intention of being somehow other than themselves, of projecting a more perfect, more culturally acceptable image, leaving the reader to wonder, Who were they before the shutter clicked, and what became of them after? What we see is the still surface of very deep waters.

Reading Pedestal Magazine editor John Amen’s second poetry collection, More of Me Disappears, was like having a fever. There were moments of great clarity mixed with bewitching delirium. I sometimes lost my way in its hallucinations, but I was always richly rewarded for keeping my eyes open. In this volume, the action is not always clear, but the originality and crispness of the images find their mark again and again in deeper emotional resonances: fear, dread, desire, guilt, shame, hope.

The collection contains flashes of personal and global disasters that are well conceived. But sometimes I wished Amen would let go of my hand and leave me standing on the brink by myself. More than once he closes an entrancing poem with a heavyhanded declaration of intent. In “So Many Lives,” the impact of revealing a long-held secret to a spouse is deadened when he points out that he just told the reader too. These explicit conclusions—also used in the otherwise wonderful “Verboten” and “New York Memory #10”—read as though Amen doesn’t trust us to get the point. The reader deserves some credit for being able to connect such well-placed dots.

Amen is not always this literal. Showcasing his admirable range, more than a third of the poems construct meaning from purely evocative phrases.

“There is a gift being offered,” he says in “Persistence.” “I am chiseling through ice to receive it.”

Keeping up with the montage may require a similar level of effort from the reader, but Amen’s confi-

dence with his craft is reassuring even when the shore is out of sight.

Amen might, in fact, be too skilled with simile.

His images are precise and incendiary. But as they pile up, their power is diluted. In the fifth section of collection-opener “The Consummation,” Amen muses that “Summer arrives like a parole hearing,” which artfully loosens the knot of despair in the preceding lines. But then five more “like x” constructions crowd onto that page and the next, and I couldn’t help but start a mood-breaking simile tally in the margin.

“In a Day’s Journey” puts together rich layers of style, theme, and technique, some of which are recycled to lesser effect elsewhere in the collection. A narrator moves through a biblical apocalypse, while pieces of more modern disaster poke through. “‘The dark man has died for us,’ my twin says as a maggot sips / blood from his flip-flop. The sky couldn’t be bluer.”

Amen’s poems use original language to connect elements of our familiar lives to a sublime level of shared experience. Our common struggles have often been seen before, but not in the revealing light of such precise imagery. As Amen says to himself at the close of the second section, “Find me. We have much to talk about.”

—Susan McCallum-Smith

—Dan Gudgel w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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in review

CULTURE Mural Bicycle Tour May 21, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.

MUSIC Breaking Ground Vol.1 Under Sound Music, 2006

This spring, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts and Monumental Bike Tours again offer bicycle tours of the city’s neighborhood murals. The tours allow participants to get an up-close view of the intricate and varied murals commissioned by the Baltimore Mural Program, which works with community groups in an effort to beautify industrial and residential areas, like those in Southwest Baltimore (which is highlighted on this tour).

Murals are a statement about the importance of art being in public spaces for all eyes to see and appreciate. On the bike tour, participants get the chance to learn how the mural artists reflect the perspectives of the communities that inspired them.

The murals in Southwest Baltimore range from Helen Glazer’s whimsical depiction of starscape bears to the amazingly detailed realism of James Voshell’s Pigtown snapshots.

The murals “demonstrate how the neighborhood wants to present itself to the rest of the world,” says tour leader Ralph Brown. “Traveling by bike, we are able to stop and spend some contemplative time, to appreciate blended cultures, the old and the new, the rich and the poor, and to celebrate this eclecticism.”

This is also an excellent opportunity for history buffs to explore places of historical significance and hear tales of Baltimore’s role in America’s past. In

addition to the murals, highlights of the tour include the oldest railroad bridge in the world, the H. L. Mencken House, and the only plantation within city limits left in America.

The mural bike tour is an intimate way to get to know Southwest Baltimore’s history and culture.

And for $15 per person, it’s also a relatively inexpensive way to spend a spring morning. All proceeds from the tour go toward restoring and maintaining the existing murals.

Although the outings cover a fair amount of ground, the routes are mostly flat, and people from ages 12 to 80 have participated without trouble. The tour requires that all cyclists wear helmets, as riding in the street is inevitable. Expeditions are limited to fifteen people, so there is ample opportunity to ask questions and to pause to take photos.

This season’s second tour departs at 10 a.m. on May 21 from the Gwynns Falls Bike Trail parking area off of the 2700 block of Frederick Avenue.

Mural bike tours are also offered in the autumn. To learn more or to make reservations, call 443-2634318, e-mail sjames@promotionandarts.com, or visit www.bop.org/arts/muralprogram.aspx or www. monumentalbiketours.com.

“This is big bidness,” raps D.C.-area MC Oddisee on the second track of Breaking Ground Vol. 1, a slickly packaged compilation CD from Baltimore-based Under Sound Music. Then he lays into the magazine critics and the big radio stations: “The Source tells you what this world’s like and what’s blastin’ / Urb tryin’ to tell you who the next in this rap shit … If you in rotation / then you slippin’ note payments to Funkmaster Flex on Hot 97…”

Flex may be spinning in New York, but the message is clear: This is Baltimore, “underground” by comparison, but the Under Sound crew are the guys trying to bring real lyrics, real beats, and realness to the scene—to challenge the pimp-juice aesthetics of 92Q hip-hop while at the same time rising above their predetermined geographical limitations. Because if you make it in New York, you made it; if you made it in Baltimore, well, good luck in New York.

The most notable thing about Breaking Ground is how much it doesn’t sound like other recent Baltimore mixtapes, like Darkroom Productions’ grimy cellblock anthems or Rod Lee’s freakish Baltimore club mash-ups. Instead, we have Under Sound founder MC Eyekon’s shout-outs to A Tribe Called Quest and his promises to eschew bling and “explore the art” of spitting hot rhymes. At other points, the instrumental tracks sound like Hi-Tek’s better late’90s stuff, a nice change from the Nintendo-game party beats that currently dominate the airwaves.

The problem is not that the artists on this disc aren’t good, it’s just that they’re getting ahead of themselves. For example, Atlanta battle veteran Chapter 13 snarls, “Niggas say 13 is wack, but that’s irrelevant,” but who, exactly is saying that? It’s difficult

to take these challenges to hip-hop cosmology seriously from MCs who are so unknown outside local circles.

But if you get beyond the tiresome theme of mounting a challenge against mainstream hip-hop, Breaking Ground does have some classic moments.

Baltimore’s Reggie Ruckus provides a delightful sex jam, “Keep It Coming,” with just the right pace, shall we say, and lines coaxing his lady to bed so they can make “more racket than Wimbledon.” Ab Rock’s “With Ease” is a crackalackin’ hometown anthem: “There’s no place iller than the city of Charm / City fulla crab cakes / City fulla virgins / City fulla snakes …” “Hood” by the local PX (Parts Unknown) crew bobs funkily over a strong, head-nodding bass track.

And Days Dirges has some sweet punch lines, like when he claims to be “iller than a pack of pacifists jackin’ a Baptist.” What that means, exactly, is unclear, but it sounds great in rhythm.

Still, while Under Sound does an admirable job of mixing small-time locals with big-time artists, the biggest guest spots are some of the weakest tracks.

Underground hip-hop veteran Wordsworth features Eyekon on the totally lackluster “Daylight.” Bigg Patch raps with Wu-Tang’s Cappadonna on “Simple Logic,” a clever seven-day plan for hip-hop success that is all but ruined with self-righteous platitudes about being “in love with this hip-hop shit.” These tracks are almost like warning signs: Don’t wrap up Bmore hip-hop and mail it off to the big boys in NYC just yet—this is a good mixtape, but let’s wait for volume two.

—Molly O’Donnell

—Robbie Whelan w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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urbanite may 06

what i’m reading

A

fter reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s new and articulate, if dry, study on climate change, I was tempted to hightail it in my gas-guzzling SUV to the nearest Home Depot, carbon footprint be damned, to buy two-by-fours (chopped, no doubt, from the last trees standing) and build me an ark.

Field Notes from a Catastrophe offers persuasive proof of global warming: polar bears lumbering south because their habitat is melting, butterflies fluttering north to exploit the warmer weather.

Meanwhile, the Dutch are making plans to prevent their cities from drowning and the Arctic permafrost is becoming squishy in the middle, like a poorly baked pie.

Kolbert isn’t some bug-eyed Cassandra (the legendary harbinger of doom), but a respected investigative journalist and contributor to The New Yorker (no less!). “In a year,” says Kolbert, “the average American produces the same greenhouse gas emissions as four and a half Mexicans, or eighteen Indians, or ninety-nine Bangladeshis.” If eight out of ten doctors tell you that you have an embarrassing rash, the probability is that you have an embarrassing rash; therefore when 80% of the world’s most respected scientists say the climate is changing, the probability is … well, you get the idea.

Another New Yorker regular is Haruki Murakami, who seems to time-share that soughtafter piece of literary real estate, the weekly short fiction slot, with the likes of John Updike, Louise Erdrich, William Trevor, and Alice Munro. (Given

by susan mccallum-smith

the regularity of some writers’ contributions, without denying the consistent high quality, I assume it’s not Kool-Aid they’re drinking in the editorial department of The New Yorker, but Metamucil.) Murakami’s most recent novel, Kafka on the Shore, sports his trademark kookiness, with heaps of metaphysical falderal about life, the universe, and everything. If you like that kind of thing, then Murakami is the kind of author you’ll like. Unfortunately, he is ill-served by his English translator, who makes every Murakami character sound exactly the same, whether young or old, nuts or sane. Furthermore, the pacing is so slow it’s as if it were jinxed in the Hogwarts library: The longer you read Kafka on the Shore, the longer it gets.

Colson Whitehead’s new release, Apex Hides the Hurt, contains its own dollop of metaphysics, following the adventures of a “nomenclature consultant” whose job is to match snappy names to products and places. This, the latest from the author of John Henry Days, is more allegorical satire on consumerism than flesh and blood novel; nevertheless, Whitehead is always engaging.

Whitehead’s hero could help Liz Dunn, the protagonist of Eleanor Rigby, who believes the contented ordinariness implied in her name doesn’t match her life. Provided you can tolerate an improbable plot, this darkly comic ode to the chronically lonely by Canadian author Douglas Coupland is well worth the read. Liz describes herself as “not cheerful or domestic. I’m drab, crabby, and friendless,” and I suspect she and Sylvia Plath may have got along pretty well.

To read Plath’s Ariel together with her husband Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters is to experience the discomfort of eavesdropping on the most personal of conversations. Poetry groupies often split into two hostile camps whenever Plath and Hughes are mentioned, as though other people’s marriages are basketball games played for our amusement. But taken in combination, Ariel and Birthday Letters (published in 1965 and 1998, respectively) portray a heart-wrenching love affair that seemed fated for tragedy, a tragedy for which neither party was entirely to blame. Plath didn’t write poetry about her life with Hughes—she disgorged it. It sprawls over the pages of Ariel as flawed, bloody, and raw as the day of its creation. Hughes’ response to Plath is—naturally, having had thirty years to perfect it—a marvel of precision and clarity. Because Plath died first, and has been essentially rendered mute, it could be claimed by those interested in literary tit-for-tat that Hughes gained an unfair advantage by living longer. Nevertheless, the quality of Birthday Letters is astonishing. It feels brave. It feels unseemly.

Surely that was Plath’s fear: that Hughes would say something unanswerable. Poor Sylvia, with her bairns and her baking, and her poetic fury; as a woman and a writer, I know there’s nothing more annoying than being unable to have the last word.

—Susan McCallum-Smith is Urbanite’s literary editor.

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In Our Own Backyard continued from page 65 Who are the emerging artists poised to shape the art scene in Baltimore? Who are the ones to watch?

The more emerging artists, by and large, are the ones who have graduated from art school in past five years. People like Seth Adelsberger and Tonya Ingersol, who just had her first show at June Kelly Gallery in New York. Also, I just saw this work by Valeska Populoh that I thought was really interesting. She makes the garments that she performs in out of garbage bags and found fabrics, and they are incredibly beautiful.

Nicholas Petr, Nicholas Wisniewski, and Scott Berzofsky are artists who make work onsite for a specific installation. Often their work is very explicitly about Baltimore, so if you’re interested in people who are imagining the city and its condition seriously from an artistic vantage point, they would certainly be very high on the list. They are really smart, they do a ton of research, they clearly have a great affection for the place, and yet they are critical at the same time. The piece they did for us last year was a giant map of Baltimore, which consumed a whole wall of our gallery space.

What is the BMA’s role and responsibility in showcasing current artists in Baltimore? Do you consider how residents of Baltimore City will respond to the art you choose to appear in the museum?

My goal is to bring work by international artists to the Baltimore community, and to create a platform for local artists to be seen in the context of a global art

scene. So it cuts both ways. I think about audience to the extent that I want to produce exhibitions that spark both creative and critical thinking about the world that we live in. … My criteria for art is really about what the artist is producing and not what the audience is expecting. So if I see really good art, I investigate it and then I ask myself, How does this fit within the picture of this scene?

Before you came to Baltimore, you were at the Museum of Modern Art. How has your experience as a curator for a major museum in Baltimore been different from your experience there?

Any surprises?

I felt like I could do more and take greater risks here. If I can say one thing about Baltimore, it is a place where you can take risks. … When you are not in the spotlight, you have a kind of freedom to venture into unknown territory without the sense of a world of critics and collectors looking over your shoulder. It’s so close to other major cities that there’s an energy that comes from having the ability to travel freely and bring major ideas home.

Why does Baltimore have an inferiority complex? I have seen some really good art here, and [artists] have to have a lot of confidence. You can’t worry what people are going to think. You can’t worry what audiences are going to say or what critics are going to criticize, you just have to make your work. ... That’s the beauty of the city, and the beauty of being an artist here. It’s a free space to make those leaps of faith and creativity. ■

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The Green Between continued from page 75 “In an era of diminished resources, in a city like Baltimore where there are not a lot of small community parks, alley-greening can bring nature back to cities in a way that’s human-scaled,” says Kate Herrod, director of Community Greens, an initiative of the Arlington, Virginia-based Ashoka group, which supports the transformation of the interiors of blocks into shared parks and gardens. “These greens also provide a place for citizens to get to know one another, create community, and increase the city’s social capital, along with stabilizing and improving real estate values and reducing crime and violence in neighborhoods.”

City regulations, however, still reflect the prevailing view of alleys as nuisances—which is why a change in the law is needed, proponents say.

Responsibility for the use of the 456 miles of alleys in Baltimore falls to the City’s Department of Public Works. (Maintenance is handled by the City’s Department of Transportation.) Small alleys, meaning those less than 10 feet wide, are generally considered to be privately owned, but gating still needs to be approved by DPW, following the consent of all adjoining property owners, according to Joe Kostow, engineering supervisor for the department’s Development Center.

Larger alleys are not supposed to be gated, though some Baltimore residents have ignored the law and gated them anyway, Kostow says. Generally, this has been done as a security measure, not

as part of a greening plan. City ordinances spell out a legal procedure for closing off an alley. But as the Patterson Park residents discovered, that process is difficult and costly, requiring them to purchase the land from the city and jump through numerous bureaucratic hoops.

The Luzerne Avenue/Glover Street group came up with their more user-friendly proposal by working with the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation (particularly Francis McLaughlin), the University of Maryland School of Law, Baltimore law firm Hogan & Hartson (the school and the firm both supplied pro bono legal help), and Loretta Colvin of the Patterson Park Neighborhood Association.

The ordinance they put together, with support from City officials, required the passage of enabling legislation by the General Assembly. (They got that last year.) Then, the proposed ordinance got hung up. The City’s lawyers wanted a law that would require all the neighbors with property abutting the alley to agree to the gating.

“This would be seen by some people as a taking of their property; people are very sensitive about their private property rights,” Kostow says. “We would be in court in a minute.”

Proponents of the ordinance fought against the unanimity requirement, fearing that it would allow “one curmudgeon” to hold up a whole project, says Bill Henry, director of external relations for the Patterson Park CDC. But the City remained adamant and the residents recently backed down. They are hoping the City Council will approve the ordinance this spring.

Three or four other groups from other city neighborhoods are eager to green their alleys and have been watching the issue closely, Herrod says.

On the verge of finally getting started, the Patterson Park group has realized they will have to scale back some of their plans for now. A new property owner wants to retain parking rights in the alley behind his house, so now the gated communal space won’t include the entire alley. “That parking issue is going to keep coming up,” says Fortner, sounding a bit discouraged. “People are always going to want to use the alleys for parking. Still, I can’t see many cars fitting into the small alley spaces.”

Another setback was the difficulty of replacing asphalt and cement with dirt and grass. Water might not drain properly, causing basement flooding. Emergency vehicles and utility trucks might not be able to drive over the soft surfaces. Avoiding those problems would mean costly landscaping and engineering, so for now now, they’re going to stick with trellises and planters.

“We’re out of money,” says Fortner. (By pooling their funds, holding a fundraiser, and getting grants, they raised about $14,000, which they’ve used for gates, benches, path lights, paint, and other needs.)

Still, spring is in the air and Fortner knows that everyone will feel better once the last gate’s in place and they can get their hands in the dirt and start turning their alley into the lush oasis they’ve been dreaming of.

“When that last gate is in, we’re going to have a really good party,” she says. “In the alley, of course!”

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resources

Photography: The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (Monacelli Press, 2004) contains photographs of the eerie dioramas created by murder investigator Frances Glessner Lee in order to help train detectives and solve crimes; the photographs were taken by Corrine May Botz and the book is available through the publisher’s website (www.monacelli press.com). John Lehr’s website is www.johnlehr.net.

Marc Alain is one of the founders of the online artist collective and publication Splotch (www.splotches. org). Lynn Cazabon’s website is www.research.umbc. edu/~cazabon. Lynn Silverman’s book Interior Light is available through Dewi Lewis Publishing’s website (www.dewilewispublishing.com/PHOTOGRAPHY/ Silverman.html). Arthur Soontornsaratool’s website is www.soontorn.org.

Performance Art: The website for Fluid Movement is www.fluidmovement.org. The website of Trixie Little, “Charm City’s Burlesque Superhero,” is www. trixielittle.com. Find out more about Transmodern Age Festival cofounder Jackie Milad by visiting her website (www.jackiemilad.com). Performance artist Ric Royer’s website is www.ricroyer.com. Laure Drogoul curates the 14Karat Cabaret, which takes place at Maryland Art Place (218 West Saratoga Street; 410-225-0706) and features casual performances, music, dance, film, and video in an informal nightclub setting; for more information and dates of upcoming events, see www.normals.com/14k.html.

Painting: View more of Melissa Dickenson’s paintings at her website (www.melissadickenson.com).

Keep up with Meaghan Harrison by visiting her blog at meaghanharrison.blogspot.com.

Sculpture: Jennifer Strunge’s website is www. cottonmonster.com. C. Grimaldis Gallery (523 North Charles Street; 410-539-1080) exhibits the work of several sculptors in a show that runs June 8 through July 8. Go to www.cgrimaldisgallery.com for details.

73 The Green Between For a detailed guide to alley greening from the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation, go to www.ppcdc.org/neighborhood.htm.

Community Greens (www.communitygreens.org) is the Arlington, Virginia, group that inspired Patti Fortner. Operation Gate It is a governmentsponsored program in the U.K. that aims to stop litter and vandalism by improving public spaces (www.gate-it.org.uk/about.html). The Neighborhood Design Center in Baltimore, a community design service, can help with greening projects (www.ndc md.org). The Chicago Tribune article on the history of alleys and how New Urbanism planners are reenvisioning them can be found at www.chicago tribune.com/news/local/chi-0511070026nov07,0,24 33716.story. For more on the New Urbanism movement, visit www.newurbanism.org.

photo by Arthur Soontornsaratool

52 State of the Art We put together information on some of the many artists profiled in this issue.

Political Art: Marshall McLuhan’s classic book on media and art is Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Chris Gilbert is now the Phyllis Wattis MATRIX Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (www.bampfa.berkeley.edu). He is curating a show called Now-Time Venezuela, Part 1: Worker-Controlled Factories, which runs through May 28. An exhibit called Headquarters runs May 14 through August 27 at the Contemporary Museum (www.contemporary.org). It will transform the gallery space from a traditional display area into a knowledge station, meeting place, training ground, and/or networking module for a series of diverse artistic projects. The website for the film One Nice Thing is www.onenicething.org.

For more information on photography, see page 54.

85 What I’m Reading Our literary editor included the following books in this month’s column: Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert (Bloomsbury, 2006); Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005); Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, 2006); Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland (Bloomsbury, 2005); Ariel by Sylvia Plath (Reprint by Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005; originally published in 1965); and Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998).

coming next month: we d i A look at the role of recreation d n ? e N h U W gF in our lives with guest n i v a h editor Charles Jordan stop www.urbanitebaltimore.com w w w. u r b a n i t e b a l t i m o re . c o m m a y 0 6

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Unself-conscious expression can be a great gift. Lascaux, Altamira, the petroglyphs of the American Southwest, the best of today’s street art: Each refreshes and inspires even though we have little sense of the artist.

The work shown here was painted on an elevator door at the entrance to SubBasement Artist Studios, a Baltimore art gallery located on North Howard Street. Did the unknown artist who painted this work have something to tell us? Is the brute force of the expression the message? And what are we to make of the number “7” and the word “sub”?

So much of the appeal and meaning of art is derived from mystery.

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Artist unknown Untitled 43 x 66 inches House paint on fire door

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