Guest Blog: What I see with my ears I hear with my eyes.

Long time friend and partner in crime, Aurora*, has provided me with an opinion piece regarding an art gallery we went to this past Friday.

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We spent the evening at Towson University's senior student art exhibition at the Load of Fun gallery in downtown Baltimore.  Like most contemporary art exhibits, the gallery is a playground of speculative reality.  Unlike those Rorschach images where you interpret what you see, these images are what their creator tells you they are, often defying all laws of congruency. Tonight's were definitely exercises in the extemporaneous: welded metal bracelets linked to replicate handcuffs welded to an eyeglass case filled with origami birds made out of pages pulled from a porno mag is wittily dubbed "Sexual Frustration". Photographs of plant life bursting through plots of urban decay is "Wasted Space" - funny, my daughter is curating a gallery showing of similar works in a couple months which go by the theme of "The Third Conflict". Like I said, we must believe the artist's perspective, no matter how quantum the leap from their vision to ours.

Art is language, language similar to the speaking in tongues heard in old revival tents (or some Pentecostal churches). Not unlike Pentecost, each man hears it in his own language, regardless of what is being said. I must say some of what I looked at tonight was babble - things more geared toward the intellect than the heart.

I can't help but compare this language with the older mumblings of Mr. Van Gough or Gogh as you will or if you follow BBC's Dr. Who, Van Goth...(and a postmortem identity crisis ensues),  Like Mozart's four to eight measure classical constructions geared to the primate mind, Van Gough's language is simple and direct.  His vowels are color, his consonants clean dark lines, his elisions clouded skies and starry nights.  He will get in your face and speak of hope past despair with impeccable  diction. No need fear anything being lost in translation. He speaks to the heart, and his words leave you breathless.

I have a hard time reconciling the honesty of image found in photos by Pollock, or paintings by any great master from time immemorial with a gallery of works by students who have been taught to be fundamentally dishonest in the name of creating a commercial product, created without the discipline whose transcendence is the language of true art.

Or maybe this is the frustration of an old lady whose first love was the crayon box.  I did ok, the problem was the music was always voted more impressive than the drawings, which may have led down the inevitable path towards engineering, as it did for so many others on one side of my family.  I remember a high school guidance counselor looking over the results of one of the many tests we were subjected to and muttering something along the lines of "it seems you have an aptitude for engineering.  Too bad you're a girl. Have you considered a vocation with the Dominicans?" and so I turned to a life of crime instead.

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*I have poked and prodded Aurora to start a blog of her own, but she prefers to remain the silent but deadly member of my crime syndicate. Show her some love so that she'll blog for me again. 

School 33

Last Friday, my schools' art club paid visits to some of Baltimore's art galleries. I shared my experience at Maryland Art Place yesterday. Today, spotlight on School 33.

OMG COLOR

School 33 is a community art gallery which not only exhibits individual artists, but allows the community to become involved in the gallery as well. None of the students knew this going in, so imagine our surprise when we found out we got to contribute to the gallery.

The gallery, by local fiber artist Melissa Webb, was titled The Temporary Nature of Ideas.

"As a fiber artist, I love the process of making… of obsessively crafting an object, a costume, or an installation… then combining the fruits of these efforts to create entirely new realities through the use of performance and audience participation.  I tend to construct detail-oriented, otherworldly scenarios that can be viewed and interacted with in a casual manner, and where the performers are encouraged to react and improvise.

The work becomes fully realized through this continuous interaction between the performer, the viewer, and the surrounding environment. I am interested in removing the separation between the viewer and the work of art, as well as between the audience member and the performer.  I want to enable others to become directly involved with the work, and to give them a role in determining the ultimate outcome of each piece.  This concept is evident in The Temporary Nature of  Ideas, a series of large-scale, “living” installations that I began in 2009. Viewer / participants, using provided materials, are invited to delve into the process of making with me, and to be a part of the growth taking place over time within the space." -Melissa Webb

Walking into the gallery was initially overwhelming. There was so much to look at, so many contributions from the artist and from the public to take in and interpret. Without a chance to breathe, we were shuffled into an adjacent room, where buckets of cloth, yarn, and netting lined one wall, with hot glue guns on the other. The floor was strewn with pillows for us to sit on while we worked. We were supposed to make something, to use the cloth to express an instantaneous, fleeting idea.

Though it wasn't said, it felt like we'd been shown just a glimpse of the gallery to inform us what we were creating for, but then left to our own devices and our own ideas. It was slightly staggering and most of my art club companions were sharing looks of confusion; our college does not offer courses to deal with spontaneity. But at some point we all got swept up in creation. There were plenty of ideas, tenuous and incomplete, and by the end, all but the most uninspired of us had something to add to the gallery. 

My little contribution (pictured left) got me into a discussion with the artist herself, about ideas that come out of nowhere and the bits and pieces of our lives and experiences that somehow coalesce into something coherent. By the way, Melissa is really nice. Just FYI.

I will refrain talking about my piece in this blog, but if anyone is really curious, leave a comment and I'll explain there.

As it was, this exhibit was unusual, unexpected, and totally worth the hot glue I spilled on my jeans. I'm a little sad that I won't get my little doll pictured here back, but there's a wonderful sense of satisfaction in contributing and knowing that others can see and enjoy your creations.

The Temporary Nature of Ideas closes this week, on the 30th. There's a free closing reception Friday October 29th, 6-9pm. But please check out upcoming exhibits. The gallery is free and open to all ages.

The exhibit gets an B+. It's a little cluttered and confusing, but getting to contribute adds a lot to the experience.

The gallery gets a B-. While the mission is fabulous and the galleries interesting, the building is tight. And whereas the Maryland Art Place is impossible to find because of the surround structures, School 33 is impossible to find because the last thing you'd identify the building as would be an art gallery.

Critically Yours,

Maria D.

Maryland Art Place

Friday of last week, my colleges art club visited two Baltimore art galleries: Maryland Art Place and School 33.


Maryland Art Place is a small gallery on Market Street, hidden between Rams Head Live and Power Plant Live, two of the largest, most popular clubs in the downtown (though they're moving to a larger, more visible location in a few weeks. More on that next month). The gallery is small and at times slightly sterile, but unorthodoxly charming. Their current exhibit, Art and Film, seems at first like a very stereotypical modern art exhibit. However, by the end, it was probably my favorite of the galleries we saw. The first two rooms of the gallery are devoted to Glenda Wharton, an animator whose film, "The Zo and the Invisible Friend" was at this years Sundance Film Festival. On display were 16 original cells from the movie.

Glenda Wharton's style reminded me of a more sophisticated version of the drawings in one of my favorite children's books, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Her illustrations provoke gut reactions; the imagery is not comfortable or especially beautiful, but it is captivating. The movie is hypnotic, keeping your eyes glued to the screen even as you're dragged through a nightmare. It's a fabulous show for fall, evocative of the decay and gloom we naturally associate with the shortening of days. The fact that Halloween is also fast approaching adds a disturbing appropriateness to the show.

The rest of the gallery is devoted to the videos of four other artists. Sadly, we had to move on to the next gallery before I got to really see them, so I don't have much to say. However, the one video I did get to see some of was LoopLoop by Canadian filmmaker, Patrick Bergeron. On a trip to Seoul, Korea, Bergeron videotaped a train ride through the city. The video loops sections of the ride over and over again, focusing on the details revealed in the video that were missed in real life. His concept statement and the video itself were maybe not art, but they were certainly interesting and thought-provoking. How much life do we miss while trying to survive?

The exhibition gets an A from me. It was interesting, thought-provoking, mostly unpretentious, and I want to go back.

The gallery itself gets a B. While I love the curator and the space is nice, it's nearly impossible to find. I'm eager to see the space they're moving to.

Tomorrow On the Blog: School 33. With photos!

Aesthetically Yours,
Maria D.