BmoreArt’s Picks: January 9-15
This Week: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore at the Pratt, Truce curated by Cierra Lione at Motor House, Chukwudumebi “Chuks” Amadi-Emina in a virtual conversation via the BMA, Make Studio’s BRAWLIN’ opening reception, denim mending with Rosa Chang (장성지) at BMA Lexington Market, MLK celebration at the Walters with Unique Robinson, Teapots X at Baltimore Clayworks, and Dr. King and Maryland’s Year of Civil Rights celebrations at the Lewis — PLUS Arts for Learning Maryland Teaching Artist Academy and more featured opportunities!
BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.
To submit your calendar event, email us at events@bmoreart.com!
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore: “Touching the Art”
Tuesday, January 9 :: 7-8pm
@ Enoch Pratt Central Branch
A mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is queer icon and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s interrogation of the possibilities of artistic striving, the limits of the middle-class mindset, the legacy of familial abandonment, and what art can and cannot do.
Taking the form of a self-directed research project, Sycamore recounts the legacy of her fraught relationship with her late grandmother, an abstract artist from Baltimore who encouraged Mattilda as a young artist, then disparaged Mattilda’s work as “vulgar” and a “waste of talent” once it became unapologetically queer.
As she sorts through her grandmother Gladys’s paintings and handmade paperworks, Sycamore examines the creative impulse itself. In fragments evoking the movements of memory, she searches for Gladys’s place within the trajectories of midcentury modernism and Abstract Expressionism, Jewish assimilation and white flight, intergenerational trauma and class striving.
Sycamore writes, “Art is never just art, it is a history of feeling, a gap between sensations, a safety valve, an escape hatch, a sudden shift in the body, a clipboard full of flowers, a welcome mat flipped over and back, over and back, welcome.”
Refusing easy answers in search of an embodied truth, Sycamore upends propriety to touch the art and feel everything that comes through.
About the Author:
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of The Freezer Door, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, one of Oprah Magazine’s Best LGBTQ Books of 2020, and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. She’s the author of three novels and three nonfiction titles, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies, most recently Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis.
Truce: The War In The World/The War Within | Opening
Thursday, January 11 :: 6-9pm
@ Motor HouseHouse Of Sedulo Presents
Truce, curated by Cierra Lione of House of Sedulo, displays how artists use their creative practices to reflect the war in the world and the war within themselves. This exhibition follows a journey of 9 local artists through visual art, photography, script , sculpture and design. Nina Simone once said “Artists are to reflect the times”. This exhibit aspires to amplify this notion. Those whom attend this exhibit will be able to see directly where we are within the world and within ourselves.
“May this exhibition inspire us all to be deeply honest with our art.” – Cierra Lione, Curator
GALLERY HOURS
Wednesday — Friday @ 4 – 6 PM and during events
JJC Talks: Chukwudumebi “Chuks” Amadi-Emina
Thursday, January 11 :: 6:30pm
@ The Baltimore Museum of Art
Join the Joshua Johnson Council’s January 2024 meeting featuring artist Chukwudumebi “Chuks” Amadi-Emina.
This virtual conversation will stream live on the BMA’s Facebook page.
About the Artist:
Chukwudumebi “Chuks” Amadi-Emina is a Nigerian (Igbo & Yoruba) American contemporary photographer, digital & video artist, currently residing in Baltimore. He has a BFA in photography and graphic design and an MFA in photographic and electronic media from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Using photography, collage/montage theory, and digital editing and painting skills and techniques, Chuks tells stories that revolve around the duality of perspectives and experiences of being an individual raised in Africa (Nigeria specifically), as well as being a black individual in America through portraiture.
About the Joshua Johnson Council (JJC):
Joshua Johnson Council (JJC) Members share a passion for African American and African art. Named after an 18th-century African American portrait painter who lived and worked in Maryland, the JJC is one of the oldest African American museum support groups in the U.S. Its mission is to forge meaningful connections between Baltimore’s African American communities and the Baltimore Museum of Art by promoting and highlighting the achievements of African American artists.
JJC Membership offers a wide range of opportunities for active participation within a network of friends and colleagues dedicated to art, education, community, and family. JJC programs and meetings take place on the second Thursday of each month.
Find JJC on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/joshuajohnsoncouncil
Read more of this week’s picks at BmoreArt.
